I really am a geek

[readsalot]

The latest bits of Japanese grammar from my class are: honorific mode (in which we use different verbs when talking to or about people who are given extra respect, like a teacher), and casual mode (in which bunches of particles are dropped, different verb conjugations are used, and sentence endings are changed based on the gender of the speaker).

Yes, actual different verbs. Well, actually there are only about a dozen or so verbs that are replaced by entirely different ones--for everything else, there's a conjugation for turning them into honorific mode. Still, it's yet another set of things to memorize. Also, most of these verbs are replaced in groups, so understanding the meaning can be kind of tricky. For example, in regular mode, to eat is "taberu", and to drink is "nomu". In honorific mode, both of those are replaced by "meshiagaru". Which means that I can ask sensei what she had for breakfast, but if I want to know what she had to drink, I have to say "what drink did you eat/drink for breakfast?" (We were doing this as an exercise in class--she asked someone what he had for breakfast, then said, "ok, you ask me" and approved when he used the honorific verb, and then asked people to ask other questions about breakfast, and when someone tried to mime drinking when asking what she'd eaten/drunk, she explained the correct formulation.) (There are also humble forms of all of these, but we don't have to worry about that until next term. Note, however, that the humble form of "eat/drink" is "itadaku", which is why, in anime, when people are about to eat, you'll hear a chorus of "itadakimasu".)

Casual mode was presented to us as a handout, which goes through all of the grammar we've already covered in our textbook, chapter by chapter, and gives rules and examples of everything. The problem with this is that a lot of the rules repeat--I was reading, and noticing that there was a lot of repetition, but the pattern was hard to discern. So now I'm rewriting the handout as a spreadsheet; once I've figured out what all of the rules are, I can re-sort it at will, and will then be able to see it as lists of situations in which a certain conjugation occurs. Which is why I say I'm a geek; how many people's reaction to a language-class handout would be to redo it as a spreadsheet?

Comments

[dmk.livejournal.com]

Yes, you are a geek! (Tell us something we don't know.) I love these discussions of Japanese, BTW. I think I would be frustrated by learning Japanese, but learning about the rules is fascinating.