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Sashimister (Offline)
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Posts: 1,258
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Tokyo, Japan
03-30-2010, 03:17 PM

Quote:
Originally Posted by Blitzwing85 View Post
The first thing i'm not sure about is when to use a space in a sentence?
The only place you will see a space is at the beginning of a paragraph. This might shock you but it's the truth.

Quote:
For instance (keeping it simple):
Mainichi terebi o mimas, soshite tokidoki sushi o tabemas
Typing it as it's spoken would result in:
まいにち てれび お みまs そして ときどき す し お たべまs
Nice try for someone who has been studying only a few hours! You will probably learn rather quickly because you are using the real Japanese letters from the start. The earlier you abandon romaji, the faster you will learn Japanese. That's a promise. Besides, there 's nothing written in romaji for you to read in the future. No books, no magazines, no websites, no restaurant menus, nothing. There's a member here that pounces on me everytime I state this. But please ignore him if he does so here. He knows nothing about Japanese.

Your sentence まいにち てれび お みまs そして ときどき す し お たべまs has a few problems.

1. Spaces. There should be no spacing within the sentence.

2. The two s's. Did you not feel anything about them?
The parts you wrote as "s" in the romaji sentence should each be す. There is no "s" that isn't immediately followed by a vowel in Japanese. In conversation, however, す can often sound like "s" without a vowel, but in writing it's always す.

3. Have you learned katakana? If so, テレビ (TV) is a katakana word. You wrote it てれび in hiragana. If you haven't, you can write it in hiragana for now. Ideally, you shouldn't worry about writing sentences until you have learned both hiragana and katakana, which won't take more than a week or two.

4. The object particle is written を, not お. The pronunciation stays the same. 
So, writen correctly without using any kanji, it is: (It's actually two sentences.)

まいにちテレビみます。そしてときどきおすしたべます。

The "no spacing" rule may baffle you now, but as you learn kanji and start replacing the kana words by kanji, each word will pretty much visually stand out clearly as if there were spaces. Katakana words help in this direction as well.
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