Welcome to Level 2, Lesson 2!
As you continue your N4 Japanese studies with gokigen japanese blog, Lesson 2 will focus on helping you express your inner world – your wants, hopes, and polite requests. Learning these patterns is crucial for sharing your feelings and needs effectively.
The main goals of this lesson are to enable you to understand and use various expressions to convey your desires and hopes and to communicate them clearly to others.
Key grammar patterns and vocabulary you will master in this lesson include:
- Expressing Desire for Nouns: Learn how to say that you “want a certain noun” using the pattern N が ほしい (N ga hoshii) (e.g., 時間がほしいです – I want time).
- Expressing Desire for Someone Else’s Action: Learn how to say you “want someone else to do something” using the pattern V-て + ほしい (te hoshii) (e.g., 友達に来てほしいです – I want my friend to come).
- Expressing Hope: Learn how to express your hopes for the future or for a situation using the pattern (present short) + といい (to ii) (e.g., 明日晴れるといいですね – I hope it’ll be sunny tomorrow).
- Indefinite Pronouns: Learn how to use indefinite pronouns like 何か (nanika – something/anything) and 何も (nanimo – nothing/not…anything), and どこかに (dokoka ni – somewhere) and どこにも (dokonimo – nowhere/not…anywhere) to talk about unspecified things or locations.
- Making Polite Requests: Add a very polite request form to your repertoire: V-て + いただけませんか (te itadakemasen ka), meaning “Could you please do ~ for me?” (e.g., 窓を開けていただけませんか – Could you please open the window?).
- Qualifying Nouns with Sentences: Build more complex sentences by learning how to use an entire sentence to modify a noun, providing more detailed descriptions (e.g., これは私が作ったケーキです – This is the cake I made).
By the end of Lesson 2, Level 2, you’ll be able to clearly state what items you want, what you want others to do, express your hopes, refer to unspecified things or places, and make very polite requests. These patterns are vital for richer, more personal communication in Japanese!
Explore the articles linked below to master expressing desires, hopes, and making polite requests in Japanese!
