Important Word Bank (Dictionary) - じしょ

[Jacob]

みんなさんこにちは！Hello Everyone.
ここで、私たちがじゅうようのことばを集める。Here I thought we could gather important words (like a word bank) For example if you think a word is important you can create a little spot for this word kind of like shiritori, however there are no rules however if the polls say this is an important thread or not due to the shiritori like quality I may discontinue this thread I just thought it would be a good idea to make a word bank for some important words. Though there aren't many rules, Please provide the meaning and possibly an example sentence!
(Eg. よりも [yorimo] - in comparison to {sentence: 私よりも、かれは早いです。} [Watashi yorimo, kare wa hayai desu.] Compared to me, he is fast!

[MidoriAbby]

Jacob
I feel like "yori mo" has the nuance of "even more than" as well. So "he is even faster than me" would be another way to translate it. Good word!

Here's a word I use a lot:
なんだか (nandaka) means "somehow/somehow or another". For example, if you want to say "I didn't study for the test, and I don't know how this ended up happening, but somehow I managed to pass! You would say テストの前に全然勉強しなかったし、どうやってこうなったかわからないけど、なんだか合格した！（tesuto no mae ni zenzen benkyou shinakatta shi, douyatte kou natta ka wakaranai kedo, nandaka goukaku shimashita!

[Jembru]

I'm really interested about yorimo now. Hope no one minds me jumping in with my own thoughts... Abby, are you sure you're not thinking of さらにもっと? I'm not saying you're instincts are wrong, I'm just double checking in case you were getting them mixed up. よりも seems basically the same as より to me. I've never studied it as a grammar piece on its own, only as part of 'というより(は/も). In fact, the ONLY place I can think of where this construction has come up for me is in a few proverbial expressions I've added to anki in the past; 'blood is thicker than water', 'the pen is mightier than the sword' and so on, which doesn't feel to me to have the 'even more than' nuance. Based on the fact that proverbs often seem to use older or more literary styles, I'm guessing the main difference could be that よりも is kakikotoba? I mentioned というより(は/も), which means 'rather than... it's...', similar to どころか but not so strong a contrast. This came up in a business Japanese lesson where they were discussing economics and using a lot of words that I didn't bother studying as they're not really important to my needs. It seemed that the は or も could be dropped without it affecting the meaning at all, which is also why I think よりも is basically the same in meaning as より. I'd love to know what others have to say though.

Either way, due to me being disproportionately biased towards spoken or general use language, I'm not that sure I'd personally call it an 'important word'. Just my opinion though. We all have our own goals in mind, so what's unimportant to one person, could be vital to another. 

I definitely agree with なんだか (and なんか), especially as it has so many uses. ’なんだか寒いね～’ 'it's kinda cold isn't it?', ’なんか悲しくなった’ that makes me kinda sad' and so on.. I've heard parents don't like なんだか and the related form なんか, because kids use them indiscriminately which sounds uncivilized and is all the more reason to love it and use it all the time myself; I like that my Japanese makes me sound as dimwitted as my English does ^^

Let me think, what would I have on an essential list? Maybe...
Oh how about 'datte'? Datte is used in spoken Japanese and can appear in the masu/desu style, but is much more common in casual speech. I think this is worthy of making the list because it is so versatile. Not to be confused with other uses of だって which usually appear in the final position of a clause or sentence, this one starts a sentence and can mean 'but' or 'because' depending on the context. It's generally used in giving an explanation in reply to something the other person has said, so you would start your turn in an exchange with this (as apposed to continuing your monologue, where the sentence before was also spoken by you). It's one of those words that you need to tweak the English translation of sometimes, to make it sound natural, but I guess something like..

’どうして泣いてるの？’
’だって、振られちゃったんだ’

'Why are you crying?'
'Its just... I've been dumped'

’カラオケに行こうよ’
’だって、僕は音痴なんだ

'lets go to karaoke!'
'The thing is, I'm kinda tone deaf'

[MidoriAbby]

Jembru
I had the difference between より　and よりも explained by a native speaker, my friend Momoko, a while back.
I asked if there was as nuance difference, and she said it isn't QUITE as strong as さらにもっと, but it's the nuance of "even more ___ than ___"
for example
彼は私よりも背が高い　He is taller than me. But it has the nuance of "he's /even/ taller than me", which tells us that the speaker is considered tall in the first place, but the 'he' they talk about is even TALLER.
I think with "the pen is mightier than the sword" it kind of does have that nuance, because swords are strong things in the first place, so saying that pens are even stronger than that.
Again, she said often times it will be translated without that literally stated in the translation, but coming from the perspective of a Japanese person, that's what the も sounded like to her.

Also, I feel like Jacob found this an important word (as do I) because he heard it often enough to want to know what it means/mention it. I think anything can be put here as an important word if it's something that's heard often that requires a little explanation.

だって is a very good word! I hear it used a lot.

[Jacob]

Thanks group for my much needed elaboration... I am not quite advanced and nandaka and date both seem like good words, thanks for aproving this thread

[Jade]

これは俺のセリフだよ。

セリフ (台詞、科白、科白［かはく］)
speech, words, one's lines, remarks

So I hear this a lot in TV shows, it's basically the whole 'I should be saying that' thing.

For example, seeing as I've been watching Liar Game I'll use that as an example, Nao and Akiyama have agreed they're not going to Round 2. Nao goes to Round 2, and Akiyama ends up chasing after her to protect her. Nao asks him what he's doing there, and his response is pretty much: 「これは俺のセリフだよ。」so that could be translated as "I should be asking you that."

Dec 4, 2013 4:03:30 GMT Jacob said:

thanks for aproving this thread

You don't need our approval to make threads; post and make as many as you want♥︎

[Jacob]

This is pretty common and a lot of people here probably know it if I do but,

いつも(itsumo) - which means always is so important for me because use it a lot.
あなたがいつもをうたうか? Anata ga itsumo wo utau ka? (Do you always sing)

~feel free to correct my japanese I can't figure the particles in this sentence....

[Jembru]

You just don't need that 'wo' it sounds like there's a song called 'itsumo' and you're asking someone if they always sing 'itsumo' ^^.

I think itsumo is fine for this thread. You said in the intro there aren't any rules, and I think if we just try to add unusual terms that are hardly ever used, then it won't be a very good list of important words.

I'm at work, so no script, but I guess I'd like to add tokorode and chinami ni to the list. I honestly don't know how I'd ever communicate in Japanese without these. They both mean, 'by the way', with the main difference being that chinami ni is usually changing the focus but still the same topic, while tokorode totally changes the topic.

Edit: I'm home now, here's the kanji version;

「ネーザーポータルを作れるために黒曜石は必要ね」
「そうね。ちなみに、ダイヤの鶴嘴だけで掘れるから。」
「本当？」それじゃ、まずダイヤを探しに行ったほうがいいな～’
「うん。ところで、昨日の試合を見ただろう？」

'neza-po-taru wo tsukureru tame ni, kokuyouseki wa hitsuyou ne'
'sou ne. Chinami ni daiya no tsuruhashi dake de horeru kara'
'Hontou? Soreja, mazu daiya wo sagashi ni itta hou ga ii naa'
'Un, tokorode, kinou no shiai wo mita darou?'

'You need obsidian to make a nether portal, right?'
'Yeah. By the way, you can only mine obsidian with a diamond pickaxe.'
'Oh really? Well then, first of all we had better go and look for diamonds'.
'By the way, did you see the game yesterday?'

Something like that.

Likewise, feel free to correct my mistakes.

EDIT: btw, I thought I'd read or heard somewhere that chinamini was less casual than tokorode, and so better suited to more formal interaction. However, I recently heard the above explanation on Japanesepod101 and they didn't mention this difference in formality. I can't for the life of me think where I heard this, so I can't check. Maybe something to keep in mind just in case I didn't dream it. 

[Jacob]


I think that the verb dekiru; (to be able to) is important, because of its common use factor!
Example: Depatou ni ikimashitai, kedo watashi ga nazenara isogashii dekimasen!


SPOILER: Click to show

Sorry I am playing around with the post options.


btw Im too lazy to turn on the hiragana today......

[Jembru]

I agree! That's a really good one actually. You can do loads with dekiru: Making friends, finishing things, expressing ability and maybe not so good, but also getting acne spots ^^

This one.. I dunno if you'll agree with but I think maybe 勧める/お勧め (susumeru/osusume) is worthy of a mentionon. Although I've known the word for many years, I only recently learnt how to write the kanji for it(although being a juniour highschool kanji, you'll often see these words written in hiragana, and as you can see from the title of our recources recommendations thread, it's even sometimes written in katakana!). Since learning to write and thus read this character without my trusty rikaikun, I have come to appreciate just how often the word pops up, however it's written. Maybe it is just for me, because I tend to chat with members of the conversation group who recommend places to hold our gatherings, or study resources and so on, but as I have seen it so much I can't help feeling that this is an important word.

[MidoriAbby]

Jacob
Just a small correction- the tai form doesn't go on "masu" like that, you take off masu and add it. So it would be "ikitai, kedo..." etcetera. not Ikimashitai.
Also, in the second part of the sentence, nazenara goes first, so "nazenara watashi wa isogashii kara dekimasen." Great start though, and I agree completely that dekiru is a good one.
As Jembru mentioned it has a lot of other contexts too. She mentioned the phrase 'to succeed in making a friend' which is 友達ができる or "it's finished"（できた！）etc. Really really useful.

I agree with susumeru because I use it a lot.

Another useful word I think is つまり which means "in other words" or "to phrase it differently/in short"

[Jacob]

Dec 10, 2013 20:30:35 GMT MidoriAbby said:

Jacob
Just a small correction- the tai form doesn't go on "masu" like that, you take off masu and add it. So it would be "ikitai, kedo..." etcetera. not Ikimashitai.
Also, in the second part of the sentence, nazenara goes first, so "nazenara watashi wa isogashii kara dekimasen." Great start though, and I agree completely that dekiru is a good one.
As Jembru mentioned it has a lot of other contexts too. She mentioned the phrase 'to succeed in making a friend' which is 友達ができる or "it's finished"（できた！）etc. Really really useful.

I agree with susumeru because I use it a lot.

Another useful word I think is つまり which means "in other words" or "to phrase it differently/in short"

 Oh thanks Im just getting back in the stride of Japanese

[Jacob]

I actually just recently learned of the word ひょっとして (by any chance) in a separate post in the only Japanese section. I think this and the word "moushikashite" similar to it are important

[MidoriAbby]

Jacob
Ooh, ひょっとして is a good word!

A word that I find important/ well used is かもしれない／かもしれません　which can be shortened to simply かも, which at the end of a sentence means 'might.' for example, 雨が降るかも means "it might rain"

[Jembru]

Dec 13, 2013 21:26:29 GMT Jacob said:

I actually just recently learned of the word ひょっとして (by any chance) in a separate post in the only Japanese section. I think this and the word "moushikashite" similar to it are important

I read this when you first posted it and thought to myself, 'yeah, I think I use that now and then, but I probably use　もしかして more...' I never said anything because it was just a preference. However, just now, I was checking out the jikoshoukai thread and realised it was ME who'd used ひょっとして in the first place! ^^ On further inspection, yeah.. I use it rather a lot. Even in the last thing I posted on lang-8, (just a late night rant about my cat), I used it to say 'was it fairies maybe?'. 

Anyway, it's great that you're reading our posts and picking things up. Maybe we need to start using the monolingual section more actually. I feel uncomfortable doing so when the membership is still quite low. It feels like we're excluding the beginners from our conversations. That's why if I want to practice Japanese at Gaiwa, I prefer to do so in the bilingual section. Still, if the monolingual threads are helping you to learn, maybe I need to star posting there more from now on. 

Has anyone suggested ちょっと yet? I think ちょっと is a good candidate.  You can express a whole manner of different things with this humble little word. 


（Edited out the formatting my cat did on my post while I was out the room :s)