ThePete's 12 Second Japanese Lesson #5: Talk Like a Pirate Edition

12 challenge: Talk like a Pirate! Arrrrr! on 12seconds.tv

This both my answer to the 12seconds.tv challenge for Talk Like a Pirate Day and today's 12 Second Japanese Lesson! Sorry for the long explanation below...

Today's lesson teaches you how to be a party pooper (like me!) on "Talk Like a Pirate" Day and how to do it with style.

Mind you, I'm far from fluent but if I were, the Japanese I speak in the video would have taken much less time than it did and my pronunciation would have been better, too. Still, by listening, you can at least hear each syllable. My mistake was putting the emphasis on the "zo" in "kaizoku" (the Japanese word for pirate). A general rule of thumb in Japanese for me is that each character of kana (kana=hiragana or katakana) should take up about the same amount of time to speak. This isn't always true, but when I first started learning, thinking this way helped my accent, I think.

So, in the vid, I say "kaiZOku" when really it should just be "kaizoku" spoken very quickly.

ANYway, so here's how that phrase looks in hiragana:

かいぞくのはなしをやめてください

And here's how it breaks down in romaji with phonetics in parenthesis:

かいぞく = ka i zo ku (kah-ee-zo-ku) = pirate

の = no (no) = possessive marker. It's my understanding that you say "no" after adjectives. In this case we're describing talk as being pirate.

はなし = ha na shi = speak or talk

を = wo = topic marker - I'm still learning about markers, there are a couple of different types of these, not sure why "wo" is here instead of "ga" or others.

やめて = ya me te (yah-meh-teh) = one of the many ways to say "stop it" in Japanese

ください = ku da sa i (koo-dah-sa-ii) = one of a couple ways to say "please".

Special thanks to Alex-san (Forum Ninja) and Coffeebot3000 as well as Mushrooshi and Nexusc over at the forums at http://LearnJapanesePod.com for their help in translating my feelings into Japanese. You guys rock! I'm smarter now because of you!

---

Orignal From: ThePete's 12 Second Japanese Lesson #5: Talk Like a Pirate Edition