JPNS 1010
Dialogue for
Presentation 1
(Supplements for the
textbook
Genki: An Integrated Approach, Vol. 1)
Click here to listen to the
entire dialogue.
Click on the links
below to listen to each individual sentence.
John and Akiko are
vacationing in
あきこ： きょうは、いいてんきですね。でも、ちょっとあついですね。
ジョン： ええ、あついですね。きのうもあつかったですね。
あきこ： ええ。あつかったですね。だから、きのう、うみにいきました。
ジョン： たのしかったですか。
あきこ： ええ、たのしかったですよ。
Notes:
Akiko begins by
making the statement, “As for today, the weather is nice, isn’t it?” She includes the particle ね at the end because she is making a reflection out
loud to herself. Remember that one
purpose of the particle ね is to mark the end
of subjective reflection by the speaker.
Often, the particle ね is used when the speaker assumes that the listener
agrees with him or her. Note that the
adjective いい, meaning “good” or “nice,” is placed directly in
front of the noun てんき, meaning “weather.”
いい is an
i-adjective.
Akiko then goes on
to say, “But it is a little hot, isn’t it?”
The word あつい is an i-adjective that
means “hot.” The word ちょっと, as you will
remember from JPNS 1000, means “a little bit.”
Again, Akiko uses the particle ね because this is a
reflection, and she assumes that the listener agrees. When you use ね in such a fashion, you are inviting the listener to agree with you.
John does agree with
her. He parrots back to her, “Yes, it is
hot, isn’t it?” He says, “Yesterday was
also hot, wasn’t it?” The past tense of あつい is あつかった. (Remember, when you are putting an
i-adjective in past tense, you take off the final い and replace it with かった.) Notice
that the past tense of あついです is あかったです。 The です portion does NOT change into the past tense でした. Saying あつかったでした is ungrammatical
and downright wrong. (This is one of the
mistakes that foreigners often make with Japanese. Avoid making it!)
Akiko agrees and
says, “Yes, it was hot, wasn’t it?” She
then says, “Therefore, yesterday, I went to the beach.” When だから appears at the
beginning of a sentence, it means “therefore...” or “so…” The word うみ means “sea” or “beach.”
(In other words, it can be used to the refer to the water or to the sand
along the water.)
John asks her, “Was
it fun?” たのしい is an i-adjective that means “pleasant,”
“pleasurable,” or “fun.” He uses the
past tense form of the i-adjective: たのしかったですか。
Akiko says, “Yes, it
was fun.” Her use of the particle
よ at the end gives
her utterance an exclamatory, assertive feeling. In English, we might convey the same feeling
by putting stress on the word “was.”
John uses the
question そうですか to show he has heard. He then says, よかったですね。 よかった is the past tense
of the word いい. This is an irregular adjective that does not
follow the normal rules. The reason we
have this exception is that the modern word いい used to be よい in older, classical
Japanese. (Sometimes you will still
see the word よい instead of いい, but it looks stiff
and formal. Usually it is just seen in
formal writing.)
When John says よかったです, he is commenting
that “it was good” that she had so much fun at the beach yesterday. The words よかったですね are often used when
you hear about somebody who has had something good happen to them. (The reason it is in the past tense is that
the nice thing happened in the past. It
is not an ongoing action.) Japanese
people use よかったですね like the English
expression “How nice!” or “Great!” For
instance, if your classmate gets a good grade and shows it to you or if you
learn that your acquaintance has just has won a prize, you might exclaim, “よかったですね.” The ね appears at the end because it is a subjective
exclamation and the speaker assumes the other person will agree.
Back to the homepage of Jeffrey
Angles
Updated January 16,
2008