Japanese language help!

[m4x30000]

hi!

It's my first time here, I haven't seen a lot of thread about people looking for help to traduce stuff though, but anyways I'll just ask. I've been "trying" to speak to someone on Mixi and can understand what she wrote (I've took some courses at college for a year now) but there's some stuff that I just can't get no matter how hard I try (with Google Traduce, Yahoo Babel, or Denshi Jisho...). Here it goes :

英語あってますか？
eigo attemasu ka
My Japanese sense reads "Do you speak english?", but I have no idea what "あってます" is...!

今日本にすんでるんですか？
ima nihon ni sunde run desu ka
My Japanses sense reads "Do you presently live in Japan?", here I know pretty much every word but "るん" after sunde (-te form of sumu, to live) ?

Thanks for any help!!
max.

[CaptainThunder]

あってます is really two words, あって and います, just with the い part left out, as often happens in normal speech. Similarly, すんでる is すんで and いる.

That should be enough to help you figure it out

[Nagoyankee]

Originally Posted by m4x30000

英語あってますか？
eigo attemasu ka
My Japanese sense reads "Do you speak english?", but I have no idea what "あってます" is...!

Thanks for any help!!
max.

That sentence means something completely different.

It means "Is (my) English correct?"

合（あ）っている = to be correct, to be matching, to be fitting

[chryuop]

Nagoyankeeさん, I thought that drop of the い in the ーている form is kinda informal. Why use it with the ます form then? Shouldn't be all formal or all informal?

[Nagoyankee]

Who taught you ます was that formal? It isn't particularly all that formal. It's just 'plain' and 'normal'. The fact that we can form ～～てます alone should prove that it isn't formal.

[chryuop]

Originally Posted by Nagoyankee

Who taught you ます was that formal? It isn't particularly all that formal. It's just 'plain' and 'normal'. The fact that we can form ～～てます alone should prove that it isn't formal.

Every text book about Japanese says that the ます form is the polite version of a verb. You just burst the bubble of many Japanese students

[Keaton421]

Originally Posted by Nagoyankee

Who taught you ます was that formal? It isn't particularly all that formal. It's just 'plain' and 'normal'. The fact that we can form ～～てます alone should prove that it isn't formal.

I asked my girlfriend, and she said that "ます" feels too formal, and just "strange" if you're talking with a friend or family member. That's how I always understood it

[Kinsora]

Originally Posted by Keaton421

I asked my girlfriend, and she said that "ます" feels too formal, and just "strange" if you're talking with a friend or family member. That's how I always understood it

ーます is the polite form of the 'am' version of "to be", yes.

...or at least that's how i learned it.

[CaptainThunder]

Originally Posted by Kinsora

ーます is the polite form of the 'am' version of "to be", yes.

...or at least that's how i learned it.

That's a little too specific; ます ends the polite form of every verb.

[Harold]

Originally Posted by chryuop

Every text book about Japanese says that the ます form is the polite version of a verb. You just burst the bubble of many Japanese students

Polite ≠ Formal!