Message-ID: From: Kevin Aw Reply-To: tenchi@ML.usagi.org To: "'tenchi@ML.usagi.org'" Subject: RE: particles of Japanese (Re: Tenchi's Juraian blood) Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 15:12:41 -0700 X-ML-archive: http://www.win.ne.jp/~doi/ML/ Precedence: bulk > From: head [mailto:head@sainet.or.jp] > > Kevin Aw wrote: > > "Nei hao ma?" (Mandarin) > > I have heard there is the word "ma?" in Mandarin and that is > like "ka?" in Japanese. > word-for-word translation of that Mandarin sentence is "You > fine **?", right? The first word is "you" most definately. The second word isn't "fine" though.. its "good." It can be used in the same place as "fine," though... For example, if someone suggests you do something and you want to say "sure," you can say "Hao ah." (ah is another particle. 8) ). But if someone says "how's the food?" you can also say "Hao ah." 8) This is the 2nd character in S-JIS: =8DD > (probably, it spells "ni hao ma?" in PinYin) (Yup.. that's it... I'm not very good at the standardized mandarin PinYin.) Here.. I can write that entire sentence, except for the last word: (I wonder if I can type it in Japanese S-JIS? 8) .. lemme fire up my writer... hehe.. kinda dangerous.. it crashes MSDEV.) OMG! You can't write the first character in S-JIS! Man.. that's odd.. there's 'ware' in Japanese, but not this character! Here it is in in Big5 then... =A7A =A6n =B6=DC =A1H Well, for english speakers learning Cantonese/Mandarin, "ma?" is called a particle. But for Chinese people it's really a word. "Ma?" is represented by the same character as "horse" but you add a small character for "mouth" on the left side. "n sj Well, I can't find it. 8) Here it is in Big5 for anyone who can read it and is interested: =B6=DC Its hard to find because its kind of a 'made-up' word (so there's probably no equivalent of this in S-JIS)... the character itself has no meaning; its just used to represent a sound. (Also, there aren't consistent rules to making up the characters for these particles or other slang, you'll have to remember every one individually... although most conform to this kind of a "find the closest sounding character and add a 'mouth' to it. 8) ) > > So this "ma?" is just a sound that you have to speak in > > order to be understood... is this the nearly the same thing > > in Japanese? > > hmmmm. almost yes, but the mean not change as much as "ma?" > if you leave out "me". This stuff is all interesting to me because I'm convinced that Japanese courses taught to Chinese speaking/writing people should be taught from a Chinese standpoint (ie. Kanji first, not "memorize sounds" first...) ... over here, most courses are only directed towards English speakers/writers. So if its easier to learn Japanese this way for Chinese people... it may be easy for Japanese people to learn Chinese this way as well! (Well.. at least in writing.. pronounciation is much tougher...) -- Kevin Aw Seagate Software