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Wow! *Gasps* The site that actually pronounces the words just amazed me i am listening so i can pronounce the words that are there. smile Thanks so much for thos ausome sites!

I would be hard pressed to think of a japanese form that doesn't have a te form, though some are used more than others.

iru is a class 2 verb, so it conjugates like one, ite
aru is a class 1 verb (though it has an irregular negative form) and it's atte

Posted a couple new links: MLC Meguro Language Center, and The Kanji Site. Check it out!

Definitely having fun in my Japanese class right now with relative clauses. The concept is easy, but they can actually get kind of complex.

Yamada-san wa watashi ga kaita hon o yondeimasu.

Thats an easy example, but they can get a lot more complicated..or I'm just going braindead from learning kanji twice as fast this semester as last semester. sweatdrop

Okay, Shizuka na Sukozhi Hi Oni asked how to say "stroke order" in Japanese, so I thought I'd post some kanji related vocab for everyone to learn.

Obviously, there's "Kanji" 漢字　which literally means "Chinese Character." Every Japanese Highschool graduate is expected to know at least 1945 kanji, but there are thousands more to be learned.

Bushu　部首 is the "radical" of the kanji. Every kanji has a radical, and sometimes it can give clues to the meaning of an unknown kanji. For example, a kanji with a "kokoro" 心radical will often have something to do with feelings, as in "ai" 愛(love) or "kanashii" 悲しい(sad). Having a good understanding of radicals is important in order to use any kanji dictionary effeciently.

Yomi 読み, "reading," most kanji have two different kinds of readings (or ways of saying any particular character), onyomi and kunyomi.

Onyomi 音読み: the "chinese" reading, in a kanji dictionary, the onyomi is written in katakana, in a romanized kanji dictionary, it will usually appear in capital letters. Many kanji characters only have an onyomi.

Kunyomi 訓読み: the "japanese" reading. A kanji dictionary will have the kunyomi in hiragana, or in lower-case letters in a romanized dictionary. Very few kanji have a kunyomi but no onyomi.

imi 意味 : meaning, you'll also often see "eigo no imi" 英語の意味which means "english meaning.

Kakijun 書き順 : this means "stroke order," stroke order is very important, and can also be very tricky. In general, if you think of it as a box, when you write a kanji, you start from top left corner, and end in the bottom right corner.

Kakusu 画数 : "stroke count." Knowing the stroke count of a kanji can be helpful in looking them up.

Jukugo 熟語 : "compounds." When you see 2 or more kanji together, it's called a compound. A single character word is usually refered to as "tango." 単語

Furigana (or hurigana): this is the little hiragana you'll see written above a kanji in books intended for younger readers, or in manga. It gives you the reading, very helpful if you're learning.

The hirgana written after a particular kanji has a special name, the "okurigana" but I'm not sure. For example, for "onyomi" the "mi" is written in hiragana, that would be "okurigana."

Is your brain full yet? Good!

I got the hiragana down. So far I haven't had trouble with the little bit of vocabulary I have. I studied one or two lessons of vocabulary and remember 90% of it three weeks later after looking at it once, so I don't think I will have much trouble. I just need to start on katakana and stuff ~.<

i'm a little interested in knowing where all you guys are and if there are Japanese programs near you. Sometimes in surprises me where there are and aren't Japanese classes.

I'm in Ft Collins, Colorado and the local k-12 school disctrict doesn't have any Japanese as far as I know. My highschool had the basic French, German and Spanish (I took french) and a Chinese class that from what I understood was pretty much a joke (not that my french class was much better, I couldn't speak it to save my life)

My college is kind of the same way, French, Spanish and German are the only 3 languages you can major it. It offers minors in Russian and Japanese, and 2 years worth of classes in italian, chinese, and arabic.

I know in Boulder they have a lot of options in Japanese. CU offers it as a degree, and when I went to Japan bowl, probably half of the teams were from Boulder.

I live in Fredericksburg, Virginia, county of Stafford. There's a Japanese club at Stafford High and Grafton Elementary, but I missed out on the elementary one because I didn't care until 6th grade...one grade too late. I'm going to join the Japanese club at the High School next year though. There's also a Japanese class at least at the High School, offered for sophomores and up that I suspect is there because we're so close to Washinton, DC that some people may need it for talking. I don't know what's at UMW(University of Mary Washington) because I've never been there for anything but ballets and am going to go to a college in Virginia Beach.