Kyo wa ii tenki desu ne
Last night was lesson three in my Japanese course - and the difficulty levels have soared compared to the first two weeks. I'd only just learnt how to count from 1-10 - this week we covered asking the time, telling the time, counting to 100, days of the week and months of the year. Some are relatively easy, like the last category there - January is 'month-one', February 'month-two', March 'month-three', and so on. Telling the time is much harder - for 11:30 we would say 'eleven-thirty' - this translates as 'juichi-ji han desu'. 11:40 is 'juichi-ji yonju-ppun'. It's pretty tough, especially when spoken quickly.
Counting to 100 is reasonable, once you've mastered the premise that Japanese numbers are similar to the French system - 20 is 'two-ten', 30 'three-ten' etc. It just takes a long time to learn. As Nobuko-san said when our faltering voices tried to say 67 'rokuju-shichi' 'Numbers are killing you'. It doesn't help that three of the basic numbers - 4, 7, and 9 - have two alternative sayings. 4 as a number is commonly 'shi', but 4 written as part of a phone number is 'yon'. If you get mixed up, both are understood, but essentially you have to learn 13 numbers to be able to recite the top ten. 'Japanese is a moody language' admitted Nobuko-san, to which we all admitted 'Hai. So desu'...
