Japanese for Beginners. Learning Conversational Japanese

(cooked rice, meal) 9. _______sake
(rice wine)
10. _______hashi
(chopsticks)
11. _______kyōdai
(someone’s brothers and sisters) 12. _______cha
(Japanese green tea)
Expressing Relationships Throughout the dialogue “How Do You
Do?” it is possible to see each person’s relationship to the other. When friends,
like Mrs. Oshiro and Mrs. Miyagi, are talking to each other, they do not use
the formal speech style (polite forms). However, when they start to talk to Mr.
Brown’s family, they use desu forms or masu forms at the end of a sentence,
because Japanese people change their speaking style according to vertical
relations (e.g., rank, occupation, gender, age, etc.), and they also change it
according to general social relationships such as one’s own family members
and other people. Therefore, it is easy to know what kind of relationship the
speaker and listener have by listening to their conversation.
Making Introductions When introducing people, priority is given
first to rank or status, then to gender or age. In the process of introductions,
the style of Americans and Japanese is basically quite similar; for example,
when we introduce our family members to acquaintances (shiriai), friends, or
co-workers, we will introduce our family members to others first out of
respect.
Often when they make introductions, Japanese people use a title, an
occupation or a family term in place of saying someone’s name, such as
Kochira wa watashi no sensei desu “This is my teacher” or Kanai desu “This
is my wife.” And when Japanese people introduce themselves in Japanese, they
usually use only their surnames.
Japanese people may bow (called ojigi) instead of shaking hands when