Went to a co-worker's birthday party in Kiryu (桐生). Became friends with a Japanese DJ and some other Japanese people that speak little to no English. I was able to make them laugh on a couple of occasions. I think the ability to tell and understand jokes is a good sign.
I went to an Izakaya (居酒屋-Japanese pub) with a friend who has been in Japan for 4 years and is close to fluent. Some really drunk Japanese came up to us and started talking to us. I think I only needed to ask my friend to translate for me once or twice the whole night. Although again, it was mostly me being Izakaya fluent. The good news is, they ended up buying us drinks and insisting to pay for our Kareoke and drinks after we left the bar. Although I know we only got that treatment for being a novelty as a gaijin who spoke some Japanese in a small city. (I'm certain I wouldn't have gotten that in a more metropolitan area), it doesn't hurt to have another motivation to improve as soon as possible.
Talking with the same friend a week later I came across a mistake which I found quite annoying. She was going home, but I couldn't see her bike so I went to ask "how are you going home" and I used "nan-de"(何で) for "how are you" or "by what means are you" going home. My friend looked very shocked and explained to me that nan-de means "why". Once again, I should be more willing to believe someone who has been living, working and talking in Japanese for years, but I knew I had been taught that somewhere before and was hesitant to believe her. That night I looked up several sources. 1) Tae Kim's explains this and apparently 何で has two pronunciations. "nand-de" meaning "why" and "nani-de" meaning "how/by what means". However I guess I didn't read that part carefully since I found it easy and knew I had learned it before. I had a hunch that I had seen it in Rosetta Stone the wrong way and sure enough I found it. Anyways a good mistake to be aware of for all of you people studying out there. Apparently a better word than "nani-de" is "donoyou-de"(どのようで)
Interesting situation. I thought you'd know 何で？from anime. But the same thing happened to me with a lot of situations. In the same way you were talking about 用事 is a very normal behaviour... it's like you are still thinking in English and now you have a vocab word, so you try and make an english sentence that's perfectly logical, but then find the more common way of saying things. I'm finding this is happening to me now when I am using words I have not used very often.
ReplyDeleteso like I friend of mine made a statement saysin 若者に確かに (you might have read my blog post on that) but I'd never seen it used naturally before, and the only way i'd learn it, is in conversation... so yeah, it's good to try because usually after you make that mistake (worse if its awkward) then you tend to not make it again.