"きのうはたくさんうたいました。"
Translation:I sang a lot yesterday.
42 Comments
Thank you for doing this. I really wish they implemented kanji more, with furigana as pronunciation guides.
You're welcome. Quite a few words are often written kana only, but still do have kanji that you will meet, but for verbs and nouns, especially, it's much harder without kanji.
That's the one thing I don't like about these simplified Japanese courses, once you learn the kanji they make less sense not more
Is anyone else fed up with these endless complaints from Kanji "geniuses"? Why the heck don't you guys take another course, and let the rest of us get on with it?
I don't see them as complaints at all. Just some extra bit of information that seems to be helpful to and appreciated by many, including myself.
I am.
I believe learning this in kana makes me put more effort into pronunciation than if I learned kanji.
Also, i am more interested in conversational than written japanese so i dont care much about kanji atm.
Finally, i do plan to learn kanji, by myself. Even with pronuciation, this couse is not that great so i supplement with an audio book.
If you are serious about japanese, this is only a supplement anyway.
I suspect a lot of these kanji purist are folks who want to learn japanese to read manga etc. I am not one of those.
When i come to the comment section, 90% of the time is b/c I have a question about pronunciation or grammar and I hate seeing ANY complaints about this FREE course.
Btw My original reason to come to the discussion was to comment on the use of takusan and how neat it was that i can write a sentence like this. Excited to learn more adverbs.
Sorry! Usually for "a lot", Japanese use たくさん(Kana, not Kanji) more often! Ps: Please add me as a friend if you want to improve the Japanese language together!
You know that feeling when you see a word and you know it's a word but it just seems so... odd. I know I've heard both sung and sang before but I can't remember if either one is wrong or if one is used in different times. Sung sang sung sang, they don't seem English to me anymore
Haha... They are both words, but used a little differently.
e.g. I sang a song that has been sung many times before.
present, past simple, past participle:
sing, sang, sung
ring, rang, rung
shrink, shrank, shrunk
begin, began, begun
swim, swam, swum
etc.
Exactly. So you can say: i sang a lot or I have sung a lot. They have slightly different meanings.
Apparently I'm forgetting how English works today, because I was sure both should have been correct.
I have days like that lol. Especially when studying French, weirdly.
Sang is used when the subject is doing the singing. Sung is used when the subject is the one being... sung.
Edit: of course, Alcedo-Atthis is right the object is sung
"when the subject is the one being sung" --> then it isn't the subject anymore, but the object.
Grammatically, an object in active voice becomes the subject when transformed into passive voice.
In "I sang a song," 'a song' is the direct object and the theme of the sentence.
In "A song was sung by me," 'a song' is still the theme of the sentence, but it has become the grammatical subject.
The agent of both sentences is the same (I/me), but in the active, it is the subject and in the passive, it is the object of a preposition.
"It is a song (that is/was) sung by me." The subject is 'it,' 'a song' is the subject-complement, and '(that is/was) sung by me' is a relative clause. The relative pronoun here, 'that', is the subject of the relative clause
"It is a song (that) I sing. Same as the previous sentence, except for 'that,' which is an object in this sentence.
あまり can mean "an excess/surplus", but in common usage they're almost opposites, with たくさん being "a lot / many" and あまり (+ a negative verb) being "hardly".
It's the difference between "A lot" and "Too much", the one is positive and the other one is negative.
Doesn't 「うたい」/ 「歌い」 (utai) mean "want to sing"? I've learned that words like 聞きたい and 眠たい are the want-forms, so does the rule apply to 歌い?
When ～たい is added to the renyoukei (連用形, conjugative form) of a verb, it means "want to ~", but in this case 歌い is the renyoukei. So no, that doesn't apply here.
I don't mean to go too deep into grammar (I recommend getting a proper book for that), but the renyoukei is different depending on the type of verb. With most -let's say "regular"- verbs you can tell by looking at the rentaikei (連体形, so-called 'dictionary form'). If the verb ends in -ku, then the renyoukei is -ki, like 聞く → 聞き. This is where you can add ~ます, but also ~たい.
For other verbs these are: -mu, becomes -mi （e.g. 読む → 読み~） -ru, becomes -ri （ある → あり~） -tsu , it's chi （立つ → 立ち~） -u verbs, it's -i. （買う → 買い~）
So "I want to sing" would be 歌いたい!
Yes it would be; "utaimashita" is "I sang" (from the past tense of utaimasu; the polite form of utau).
"utaishimashita" on the other hand is not a verb. It looks like "utai" + "shimashita" (the polite past tense of "to do"). The only noun like that's pronounced "utai" would be 謡, which is the chanting of a Noh play. Granted, that's not too far away from singing (related etymology even), but nevertheless distinctly different.
It just so happens that I'm on a choir rehearsal weekend today. I'll know what to say tomorrow :-)
TFW I'm being corrected on my English as a native speaker (sang/sung) in a Japanese course... I'm ashamed of myself.
can someone pls tell how the "takusan" works? T_T what part of speech is it? how is it used? before what?
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I'm no expert, but my understanding of it as I've learned it in High School and here on Duolingo is that " takusann " ( たくさん ) basically means " a lot " or " many. " For example: " 本をたくさん読みます。" ( Honn wo takusann yomimasu . ) , which means " I read a lot of books. " Takusann ( a lot ) is placed after the direct object, Honn ( book ), has been identified and right before it describes the action, Yomimasu ( to read ). Hope this helps! :-)
It shouldn't. The "many songs" part, which refers to a noun and a quantity thereof, isn't in the Japanese sentence. I know that you don't really sing other things than songs, so it sounds logical to include it, but in English the sentence works just fine without explicitly mentioning them, so adding it would not be an accurate translation here.
No, that's not really English. You'd probably be understood, but it needs to be "I sang a lot", not 'I sang much".
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No. But you could use "much" if the sentence were negative though - e.g. "I didn't sing much yesterday".
