OK,
hello,
Is (ga が) also used as a Subject marker?
I noticed it in a website..
Sakura ga saita.
さくらがさいた。
Means: Cherry blossoms bloomed.
Shouldn't it be like:
Sakura wa saita.
さくらはさいた。

And you say (wa は) is not required to make a sentence.
So, you mean that subject is not always mentioned in a sentence??

There are literally books written that try to answer the question you are asking. This is one of the most difficult parts of Japanese language learning for native English speakers.

This oversimplifies it, but it sounds like you are on square one, so maybe that's OK.

http://www.tofugu.com/downloads/japa...cheatsheet.pdf

Just because there isn't a は doesn't mean there isn't a subject. Look at your own example:
さくらがさいた。

A full sentence with no は.

However, as I mentioned earlier, the subject is often dropped when it is obvious what it is. Look at this sample conversation. This is how people really talk.

A: もう食べた？　　　　　

B: ええ、食べた。

A: 何を？

B：ハンバーグとたまご。

A:おいしかった？

B: まあまあだった。

-----------
What is in brackets is what isn't stated in Japanese that is stated in English.

A: Did [you] already eat?

B: Yes, [i] ate.

A: What [did you eat]?

B: [I ate] Hamburg steak and egg.

A: [Did it] taste good?

B: [It was] so-so.

Hello,
Is that right to say
I am eating hamburger.

ハンバーガーをたべている。
Hanbaagaa o tabete iru.

Or
ハンバーガーをたべています。
Hanbaagaa o tabete imasu.

Because I wonder why they used iru in this example.
I am having lunch.
Hirugohan o tabete iru.
ひるごはんをたべている。

And they didn't use imasu....
ひるごはんをてべています。
They used it in another example.
I am watching TV.
テレビをみています。
Terebi o mite imasu.

And didn't say:
terebi o mite iru.
テレビをみている。

Is there a difference, please?
I learn at this site.
All About Verbs (3) - Japanese Verb The ~ te Form


And isn't "went" a direction verb, and we should use "e え" after the place???
Just like:
I went to Toukyou
とうきょうえいきました。
Toukyou e ikimashita.
Or
とうきょうえいった。
Toukyou e itta.

In this example, they didn't use "e", they used "ni" instead can anyone tell me why, please?
I got up at eight and went to school.
はちじにおきてがっこうにいった。　(or) 八時に起きて学校に行った。
Hachi-ji ni okite gakkou ni itta.

Why don't I just say:
はちじにおきてがっこうえいった。
Hachi-ji ni okite gakkou e itta.

'-imasu' is a polite form of '-iru'.

So, '~o tabete imasu'='~o tabete iru', and '~o mite imasu'='~o mite iru', etc.

--------

Both '~e' and '~ni' can mean 'to ~(destination)'.

I think 'Hachiji ni okite gakkou e itta' and 'Hachiji ni okite gakkou ni itta' are both correct.

--------

'iki-mashita' is a polite form of 'itta'.(=went)

Both 'Tokyo e/ni itta' and 'Tokyo e/ni iki-mashita' sound OK to me.

Thank you very much!
Domo arigatou gozaimasu.

I understand now.
By the way, I am going to study the Japanese Grammar from a book called "Baron's Japanese Grammar".
Is that book good enough to learn the grammar?

I downloaded many books some of them are:-
- Baron's Japanese Grammar.
- Genki I & II

How do you advise me?
Which of these two books is the best one to start learning the grammar?

There are both Americans and Chinese in my company.
Is it right to say

Amerika-jin mo Chuugoku-jin mo ga watashi no kaisha ni imasu.

Get rid of the が. The も replaces が. And depending on whom you are talking to, you might want to use 弊社 for "my company." It's a humble word. Also try "work at" instead of "inside" my company. Your sentence, I believe, says "there are Chinese and Americans inside the four walls of my company's building" as opposed to "Chinese and Americans work for my company."

How about に勤める instead of にいる?

アメリカ人も中国人も弊社に勤めている。

'Amerika-jin mo chuugoku-jin mo watashi no kaisha ni imasu.' is fine to me. (Right, no 'ga' in this case.)

If I want to say "There are Chinese and Americans inside the four walls of my company's building", I'd say 「（今）うちの/私の会社に中国人とアメリカ人が来ています」or something like that.

If I use '弊社', I'd say 「アメリカ人も中国人も弊社に勤めております」,「ア� �リカ人も中国人も弊社におります」etc. (I'd use 務めております/おります/勤めています/います, because 弊社 sounds very polite.)

I knew I was forgetting some 謙譲語 in my post.

Oh, yes, 「弊社」 is a 謙譲語/けんじょうご。(but 謙譲語 in English...?? 'The humble form'...??)

In English, we call
敬語 keigo (students don't translate this, but when we explain it to someone who doesn't know anything about Japanese, we tend to say "polite language" or something like that)
丁寧語 polite [form] or "desu/masu form"
謙譲語 humble [form]
尊敬語 honorific [form]
普通体 plain [form]

Some sample sentences:
"We studied お〜になる in class, but I still don't understand honorific speech."
"When you talk with friends, use plain form."
"Dictionary form is the present tense plain form."

For reference, pretty much no student in the US learns 美化語 as a term. When talking about this, we just describe it. We never say "use bikago in polite speech." Instead, we'd say something like "Use the o/go prefix in polite speech."

And, in all honesty, we usually don't learn how to properly use it anyway except for
Most students of Japanese, in my experience, never learn to tell the difference between Japanese and Sino-Japanese words. I remember when I began being able to; it was a huge revelation. Took me about a year and a half or two years of study I think.

Oh~~thank you so much, Kyle-sensei...!

So... 敬語 includes 丁寧語,尊敬語 and 謙譲語, and 普通体 is something that's not 敬語, right? Oh I don't remember learning the word 普通体...I'm even not sure if I've ever seen this word in my life...あほやん！どうしよう　笑!!

OK now I understand why 敬語 is not translated. Because we'd get confused with 丁寧語 if we did.

美化語（びかご）...OK I'll check my Japanese dictionary (again...).
'o/go prefix.' 今覚えました(^^)

Yes, o/go must be difficult, I guess. I don't think I can explain the usage of お and 御, I'm just using them without thinking about any rules...We say お茶 but not 御茶(gocha), we say ご飯 but not お飯(ohan). お水。お湯。お料理。お食事。ご機嫌。ご無沙汰。ご進 物。お知らせ。お尻。ご本。お豆腐。お箸。お豆さん(wh at is this さん？！ww)　お言葉。お世話。お車。おみ足...！？ww お手洗い、お洗濯、ご登場、ご対面、...ルールが…難し いです～（^_^;）

ハハ

外国語を勉強する生徒の母語話者より文法用語が知って いることが全く多いですよね。例えば、ベネズエラで育 った家内の英語文法の知識が詳しいです。「whichとthatは どう違うか」と、アメリカ人にきいたら、まあ、アメリ カ人は答えられないかもしれないけど、家内はできます ！

What I was taught is that: For almost all Japanese-origin words, use お. For almost all loan words from Chinese to Japanese (i.e., "Sino-Japanese words"), use ご. For Sino-Japanese words that have been an integral part of Japanese for a really long time, break the rule and use お. This explains お茶 even though it's from the Chinese "cha1".

You eventually develop an ear for telling the difference in the same way educated native English speakers eventually can tell whether a Modern English word came from Old English, French, Latin, or Greek (but often the word went Latin->French->English, so there is some ambiguity).

Yes I think I can see that... Reminded me of my linguistics professor in college telling us like... 'We tend to be using our native language (=Japanese) carelessly, and never notice some things/rules etc. about it that other language speakers can easily notice. The reverse is true; we can find some sorts of things about the English language while its native speakers tend to overlook them. That's partly why some well-known English language researchers are not from English spoken countries.'
He told us that we had an advantage in that point...I'm not sure about that though... 笑

あ～なるほど・・・！！
あ、でも、私、「お」「御」は正しく付けられますが、 Japanese wordか、Sino-Japanese かは、全然区別できていません・・・。

そ、それは難しそうですね、ラテン語起源くらいしか分 からないかも・・・（そのまんまだから）。う～ん…例 えば、beef, porkがフランス起源で、cow, pigがドイツ語とか古英語とかから来た、などということ って、「語の形」で分かるものなんでしょうか、（いや 、日本語すらも出来ていない私なので絶対無理・・・orz ）



（私はなぜ、日本語には英語で、英語には日本語で答え たのだろう・・・謎w）

"Beef" and "pork" are tough, aren't they!

Typically, it is said that old concepts and ideas are going to be descended from the same langauge's forebearer. For example, (Old) English speakers a thousand years ago needed to be able to talk about water since it existed there. So they had a word for it. So naturally that word continued on to Modern English (wæter -> water). But for a newer concept like "jury," the dominant language of the time (French in England, spoken by the aristocracy) donated the word (juris (Lat.)->juree (Anglo-French)->jury).

The interesting thing about "beef" and "pork" is that the animal name is from Old English (cu->cow, pacg->pig), but the meat word is from French/Latin (boeuf->beef, porcus->pork). The theory is that poor, English-speaking people tended the animals (and so used Old English words), but the wealthy people who ate the meat, and the cooks who worked for the wealthy people in the kitchen, had to use the French word (boeuf, porcus).

An important thing to note, for people who don't know the history of England, is that in 1006 A.D., it was taken over by the French, and French remained the "court" language until the middle of the millennium.

To this day, Latin/French-based words carry an air of sophistication in English that Germanic words do not. Consider please pardon my profanity, but I think this is a very interesting demonstration

"feces" versus "shit"
"copulate" versus "fuck"
"illegitimate" versus "bastard"
"penis" versus "dick/cock/prick"
etc.

Also, non-profane words like
labor vs. work
feline vs. cat
canine vs. dog
sustenance/cuisine vs. food/meal

Couple final notes: Japanese holds Chinese in similar respect, linguistically, with 使う being a less sophisticated word compared to 使用する, 買う vs. 購入する, etc.

Also, I tended to treat Latin and French equally in my post. This is because Latin was brought to England by the French (technically the Romans brought Latin to England, retreated and the language died out, then the French re-brought it, and it survived for a few hundred years as the upper-class language). Educated Japanese used Chinese hundreds of years ago while the lower classes used Japanese. Same deal.

You could say the 美化語 technique in English is to replace Germanic words with Latin/Frankish words.

有難うございます~大学時代に戻ったみたい！え、難し� �んですか。。。
あ、確か・・・ノルマンコンクエストとかいうころから の話でしたっけ。やっぱり少しは歴史を知らないとなぁ …って感じです。

うわっ一瞬びっくりしたっ
えっこれ、語源が関係するなんて！へ～すごいイイこと 聞いちゃった感。

あ、確かに…そういえば、二字熟語の方が堅めで、賢そ うですものね～友達へのメールは「使う」でも、丁寧な 文書だとやはり二字熟語の方を選びますね。

な～る・・・そうしますと、私なんか、丁寧かどうかな んて考えないで英語書いてたら、ごちゃ混ぜになって、 統一感がなくて不格好だったりしてるかも…？です。

何だか、丁寧さに関して「日英言語比較論」が出来そう です～