I was doing something else for a while, but now I am doing them. I just feel bad looking up how to say half of these words. you said feel free to use a dictionary, but it feels like cheating in a way. Though my alternative is dig through duolingo trying to find one in a lesson here or there. Are you sure it isn’t cheating to do this?
It’s perfectly fine to use the dictionary! You’ll gradually learn that vocabulary anyway.
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I just feel I look up too much. For the basically two that I do know, there are still 10 I don’t know.
here are my answers
I - わたし
You - あなた
He - かれ
She - 彼女
To go - トーゴ
To come - 来て
To have - 持つため
To eat - たべる
To drink -のむ
Tokyo - とうきょう
Osaka - 大阪
Apple -りんご
Water - 水
Hopefully, these are correct. I knew I and drink before this. I looked up water at some point but I didn’t remember what it was until I looked it up.
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How else are you going to learn the words? Some things you can only learn by doing (like learning how to calculate things in your head), but learning new vocabulary is not something you can do by thinking it up yourself. Immersion is more important: the more often you see a word, the more it will sink into your brain, until you know it forever.
Are you sure you can read all of these characters?
This one made me giggle a little, トーゴ is the Japanese word for Togo. I bet you got it from Google Translate. So there’s the first thing you have to know about Japanese: Google translate is pretty much worthless you only want to translate words. It does a half decent job at full sentences, but still I’d avoid using it, since it’s often more confusing than not.
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I searched through duolingo, but some of the words it got from google translate. That is how I ended up with words that I can read part of, such as to come I can only read the “te” part at the end. I can’t read the she one at all, and I think I can read the last three from to have - “tsutaa”? that sounds like it could be wrong.
Honestly, use jisho.org. It’s the best online Japanese dictionary.
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Like bugcat, I use Jisho.org to find words (mind you, it gives different results if you capitalise the first letter, something which it annoyingly automatically does on my phone). It’s probably the best Japanese dictionary that can be found online. Using this, I find the following words:
I - 私 - わたし - watashi
You - 貴方 - あなた - anata
He - 彼 - かれ - kare
She - 彼女 - かのじょ - kanojo
To go - 行く - いく - iku
To come - 来る - くる - kuru
To have - 有る - ある - aru
To eat - 食べる - たべる - taberu
To drink - 飲む - のむ - nomu
Tokyo - 東京 - とうきょう - toukyou
Osaka - 大阪 - おおさか - oosaka
Apple - 林檎 - りんご - ringo
Water - 水 - みず - mizu
So, any idea how to start with the sentences or is it too overwhelming?
I go to Tokyo
You eat an apple
He drinks water
She has an apple
He comes from Tokyo
I go from Tokyo to Osaka
(by the way, @bugcat, you were indeed correct about the meaning of “he comes from Tokyo”: as something that happened in the past it is not one of the possible meanings if the sentence is translated literally)
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For Latin, I first find my choice of translation on https://latin-dictionary.net. Then I take that Latin word and I look it up on https://en.wiktionary.org to check its meaning and inflections. I do own a printed Latin dictionary but this is quicker and easier.
How did I end up with some super complicated characters then? Also do the characters I used come from these characters?
Because Japanese has three writing systems. Hiragana are their “alphabet”, and give you a phonetic reading of each word. Katakana are variants of hiragana, and usually used only for emphasis, loan words and certain names. Then they also have kanji, which are characters borrowed from Chinese. Because Japanese has a lot of homophones (words with different meaning that sound the same), they use kanji for a lot of writing.
The list I wrote above only has the words written out in hiragana. I have now also given the way you can write them in kanji. If you want to become fluent in reading Japanese, you’ll have to learn about 2000 of these kanji to read an average book, but that’s not something to worry about too much in the beginning.
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2000 is total official list
In fact many of them are very very rare. You never will see 碁 (Go game) unless you are Go player.
There are many popular words that use no kanji
and there are many words that use multiple combinations of popular kanji only 大丈夫(all right)
So in fact only few kanji are needed for beginner, 2000 is for top professional.
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The Jōyō kanji … a list of 2,136 characters … intended as a literacy baseline for those who have completed compulsory education
It appears to me that you are supposed to know all these kanji by the time you leave school.
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2000 is the minimum. It’s basically what people learn during primary and secundary education (in fact they learn more: there are also 800 kanji that are used for names).
Sure, you don’t need all 2000 of them to get around pretty alright, but if you want to read an average book without seeing unknown symbols just about every three sentences, you’ll need at least 2000. The kanji that are not in the most frequent 1000 are individually rare to see, but as a whole they make up quite a bit of the vocabulary.
Then there are a lot of other kanji that are not Joyo, but that you will encounter sometimes. Especially in literature, there are many many kanji that are not Joyo.
Knowing about 1000 kanji would put you at elementary school level.
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If google translate is inaccurate, then what about Wikipedia? I have always heard that it is not a reputable source.
Wikipedia is pretty trustworthy nowadays. They have many experts writing and editing on there. However, you have to take care with controversial topics, which usually converge to a “safe middle ground”.
Many claims are sourced, though, so you could check yourself where the information comes from and if it’s trustworthy (often it is).
Google translate is inaccurate for an entirely different reason: that Japanese and English are very different languages. Literal translation from one language to the other results in unnatural sentences, especially since Japanese is highly context dependent (something the translating machine struggles with). As an example:
私は学生です。
趣味は囲碁です。
watashi wa gakusei desu.
shumi wa igo desu.
Here the first sentence translates:
I (topic marker) student am. → I am a student.
Hobby (topic marker) go is. → My hobby is (playing) go.
The second sentence does not mention “I” or “my”, because it’s clear from the first sentence that “I” is the subject of the sentences. Whenever something is clear from context, Japanese simply leaves it out. However, what happens if you change the first sentence to this:
彼は学生です。
趣味は囲碁です。
kare wa gakusei desu.
shumi wa igo desu.
Now it becomes:
He (topic marker) student is. → he is a student.
Hobby (topic marker) go is. → His hobby is (playing) go.
So the subject of the second sentence has changed, because it’s clear from the context of the first sentence that the subject is “he” and not “I”. Try putting the latter two sentences in Google translate, and watch it struggle
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(second try, the first one I accidentally deleted)
Vocab
| Word | Reading | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 盗む | ぬすむ | to steal |
| 男 | おとこ | man |
| 花瓶 | かびん | vase |
| 走る | はしる | to run |
| 買う | かう | to buy |
| 捕まえる | つかまえる | to catch / capture |
| 止める | とめる | to stop |
| 商人 | しょうにん | merchant |
| 打つ | うつ | to hit |
| 内 | うち | inside |
| 宝石 | ほうせき | jewel |
| 隠す | かくす | to hide |
The stealing man runs
盗んだ男が走る。
This is a general statement about stealing men: they run.
盗んだ男は走っている。
This is a statement about a particular stealing man who is running.
盗んだ is the past tense of the verb 盗む (to steal). Japanese does not have a participle, but we can use verbs, or indeed entire sentences, as adjectives by putting them in front of a noun.
The man buys a stolen vase
男が盗まれた花瓶を買う。
Here the vase is the thing that is stolen, so we use the passive form 盗まれる of the verb 盗む, once again in past tense to get 盗まれた.
The man bought a stolen vase
男が盗まれた花瓶を買った。
Same thing as above, but with the main verb 買う in past tense.
I catch a man stealing
盗んでいる男を捕まえる。
This sentence is apparently unnatural, but we can’t quite figure out why…
盗んでいる is the continuing form of 盗む, thus 盗んでいる男 is the man that is currently stealing. I catch him (捕まえる).
I stopped the man who had stolen a vase
花瓶を盗んだ男を止めた。
花瓶を盗んだ is a sentence meaning “to have stolen a vase”, which modifies the noun 男 to get “the man who had stolen a vase”.
The merchant will not buy the stolen vase
商人は盗まれた花瓶を買わない。
Japanese has no future tense, so this could also mean “The merchant does not buy the stolen vase”. It does not capture the meaning of “The merchant does not want to buy the stolen vase”, which would be:
商人は盗まれた花瓶を買いたくない。
I protect the vase that will be stolen
盗まれるであろう花瓶を守る。
Since the vase is not stolen yet, it is uncertain. This is why であろう is added: 盗まれるであろう means “it will probably be stolen”, “it may be stolen” or “it will surely be stolen”.
I hit the man with a stolen vase
盗まれた花瓶で男を打つ。
盗んだ花瓶で男を打つ。
This depends on who stole the vase. If it’s a vase stolen by somebody, then 盗まれた花瓶 is correct. However, if I myself stole the vase, it should be 盗んだ花瓶.
Also, English is ambiguous here, so I put the main verb 打つ in present tense.
The man hid jewels inside the stolen vase
盗まれた花瓶の内に男が宝石を隠した。
盗んだ花瓶の内に男が宝石を隠した。
Once again the difference is between whether I stole the vase or somebody else did.
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Me today: “Ah, I was wrong about the participles”
Me yesterday: “Hmm, what are the right participles here?”
Me two days ago: “What the hell is a participle?”
I’m quite tempted to do a daily “What the Hell Breakdown” on big scary grammatical words. I’m lookin’ at you, supine!
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I like to see a participle as a grammatical form of a verb that transforms it into some sort of adjective.
There should be a word for that temptation a Japanese-learner feels to replace modern, complicated kanji with alternatives that are simply-drawn but very archaic, that they find on Jisho 
“Xeno-minimalism” perhaps, lol
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