Lesson Eight: Shokai
I first of all would like to thank Ms. Anne-May Meulmeester for sending me an email that got tagged by my server as spam and sat there for an entire 10 days before I randomly decided to check my spambox and get rid of all the rolex, viagra, free sony handicam, online cheap downloads, etc. blah blah blah spams that seem to be hitting everyone harder than the devastating South Asian tsunami on December 26th, 2004. The only difference is that the tsunami hit once; spam just keeps coming over and over and over again until the world's killer app known as E-mail is no longer a useful tool to use. Have you noticed that more and more websites say, "if you want to place an order, call or fax my number because I probably won't find your email order in all the spam I get!" Often now a days you won't even FIND a real email link on websites because the spammers are so good at culling them en-masse. Even the form page that people thought would solve that problem has been found to be exploitable by spammer cretins. Well, Anne-May sent me an email thanking me for my Japanese lessons. I really have wanted to continue them because I know how much you all have enjoyed learning "my way". It isn't standard, but then again, neither is real life, right? Thanks, Anne-May for kicking my butt and getting at least one more lesson out for all of my loyal followers in the world (before I die). (At this writing I note that I have had over 20,000 people hit this portion of my website! That is a LOT of students!!) - Cam In the previous lesson (maybe you forgot if you did it 5 years ago when I made it), we learned all about Self Introductions, or "jiko shokai". I hope that in this time you have had an opportunity to practice and become a professional. If after five years you still can't introduce yourself, maybe you had better give up and become a hermit like me, talking to no one. Just kidding. So let's say that by now you can introduce yourself. Great! OK, so you have a friend, no; you have two friends. And now you want to introduce your friends to each other so that you can take a break and let them carry on some of the conversations instead of relying on your amazing Japanese language skills (they ARE amazing now, right?). After all, you can't live your entire life alone, talking to your pet or pets. Even if that is the case and you have more than one pet, eventually one is going to leave this world before you (under natural circumstances unless you have a very unique pet like my dog who is going to live for 75 years (not dog years, but years). Well, if you lose one, you will want to get another one, right? So you get another pet. What do you do? You have to introduce this new pet to your old pet so that they can become acquainted. Right? Right! Therefore, even if you never want to talk to another person again in your entire life, there IS REASON why you might want to be able to introduce others. After all, you care about your pets, right? As an aside, look up at the kanji at the top of this page. Does it look familiar? Flip back to Lesson 7 and compare. What do you see? Yes! The last two kanji of lesson 7 are the same as these kanji! Amazing coincidence? Maybe. (I trimmed it and put it here for a purpose). Those kanji say "shokai" or introduction. And they are what you are about to do now. Once again let's memorize a few phrases so that you will not be running off to the front without any ammunition in the chamber. They might come in handy. If you are going on a trip to Japan, and want to know what some phrases mean, ask me. Some basic phrases, with a few common ways of saying more things. Just fill in the underlined part with the other words, and presto! you are introducing yourself. Oh, by the way, put some humor into the introduction, will you? Although you may not hear much humor from Japanese people in their speeches and introductions, don't follow suit. After all, YOU want to be remembered, right? One more thing to note: introductions are usually polite so use the "desu / masu" forms of verbs. Take a look at the culture pocket below before you start ranting away with the phrases below. THE PHRASES
Respond with: The Culture Pocket: Different Strokes for Different Folks Introducing people in English and Japanese are actually very different. We often say "she" or "he" instead of using their names all the time (remember learning not to use the same noun over and over again? "Paul is happy. Paul went to the store today. Paul bought a bag of donuts. Paul greedily ate them all by himself. Now Paul is obese and Paul deserves it for not sharing." Sounds kind of "low level" don't you think? But in Japanese, we actually do that. It takes some getting used to it, and even after 15 years in Japan I still feel kind of uncomfortable referring to the person I am directly talking to by their name all the time. But here, it is OK. The pronouns "kanojo" (she) and "kare" (he) exist, but often if you use them, you may get a little giggle by the listener. Why is that? Well, because they more often than not are used to mean "girlfriend" and "boyfriend" rather than the simple straightforward meaning of she and he as we learn in traditional textbooks. Remember, textbook study and real life study are two completely different monsters. If you want to be polite, you can say "ano hito" (that person), or "kono kata" (this person - honorific). Or you can say the names, "Pooru-san wa ureshii desu. Pooru-san wa kyo, hitori de kaimono he itte kimashita. Pooru-san wa doonatsu no hitofukuro wo kaimashita. Pooru-san wa donyoku ni (greedily) subete wo tabete shimaimashita. Ima Pooru-san wa debu soshite dare ni mo wakenakatta node atari mae desu." One of the other things to note, as I mentioned earlier I think, is that you can skip the names, and pronouns all together in Japanese. It works. This does not sound so low level, actually. If you have any questions or comments,
please contact me by writing to: January 20th 2005 (5 years
later - Holy Smokes!!!)
Get the program that allows you to listen
to the examples. NOTE: It seems that Qualcomm has had some copyright infringement lawsuits that it is currently dealing with and their website has been shut down. This means that this software is no longer available. Please feel free to continue with the lessons, but just skip the audio tracks. I'm very sorry about this. (Sensei, 2008/03/01)
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