Ok, so first, one of the Graduate Teaching Assistants, Kataoka-sensei, reviewed what we'd already gone over for the last renshuu mondai ("last week problems"). She was even more energetic than Noo-sensei. Spoke very fast, which was a nice change. But she only went for about 10 minutes.
After that, we started on body parts. The first group, in bold is what she actually went over and expects us to learn for the test. The rest is for our own reference. I almost put the kanji and kana in, but I figured I'd stick with what she was presenting for now.
| body | karada | hand | te |
| head | atama | finger/digit | yubi |
| hair (on head) | kami no ke* | stomach | onaka |
| eye | me | back | senaka |
| ear | mimi | leg/foot | ashi |
| nose | hana** | ||
| tooth | ha | toes | ashi no yubi |
| mouth | kuchi | waist | koshi |
| tongue | shita | knee | hiza |
| face | kao | thumb | oya-yubi |
| neck | kubi | index finger | hitosashi-yubi |
| throat | nodo | middle finger | naka-yubi |
| shoulder | kata | ring finger | kusuri-yubi |
| arm | ude | little finger (pinkie) | ko-yubi |
* Kami here means hair, and ke means fur. It's redundant for clarification.
** When saying “hana desu” the pitch stays up for desu. If the pitch drops back down, you're saying it's a flower.
The sort of drills she does for this is:
Noo: "Kore wa nan desu ka?" (gesturing)
Class: "Sore wa atama desu."
N: "Kore mo atama desu ka?" (different gesture)
C: "Iie, sore wa atama ja arimasen."
N: "Dewa, kore wa nan desu ka?"
C: "Sore wa me desu."
etc...
And she does this for the whole class, speaking with us, then student only, then one on one. This is where we really learn it. Because it's so easy, she switched dewa with ja and vice versa. Ja is the contraction of dewa, and they are interchangeable, but we've been practicing as above for over a semester, so it hangs you up a bit.
Noo: "Kore wa nan desu ka?" (gesturing)
Class: "Sore wa atama desu."
N: "Kore mo atama desu ka?" (different gesture)
C: "Iie, sore wa atama ja arimasen."
N: "Dewa, kore wa nan desu ka?"
C: "Sore wa me desu."
etc...
And she does this for the whole class, speaking with us, then student only, then one on one. This is where we really learn it. Because it's so easy, she switched dewa with ja and vice versa. Ja is the contraction of dewa, and they are interchangeable, but we've been practicing as above for over a semester, so it hangs you up a bit.
Then we learned migi and hidari (right and left). She combined this with body parts for practice. Ex. "Kore wa watashi no migi no te." There's also the "possessive pronouns." That seems like a BS definition to me because they're not really pronouns in Japanese. She's also separated them from "possessive adjectives" which are exactly the same in Japanese and I don't know the different in English either. These both consist of placing the particle "no" (の) between a word and the word it "owns" which follows. I find it easiest and least confusing to think of の as "apostrophe s". It works even for things that wouldn't come across like that in English because the meaning is essentially the same. One thing belongs to another. It works in the same order too.
This was a much bigger day than the rest because so far it's been little more than counters, which kinda suck. It was fun too, because she thought we looked sleepy, so she had us stand up and do the gestures for body parts at her prompt.
If there's anything not understood, I strongly recommend Tae Kim's for grammar, Jisho.org for definitions and kanji, and smart.fm for practice.
Also, at one point someone left -san off of the name of the imaginary person we were using for a drill, and the nihonjin TA's busted out in laughter. It is really amazing what a difference it makes to them.
