[Azrael]

my pens arrived! I'm excited <3 they're "boring" colours but I'm excited all the same. I got Shale blue, Grey, Milky Blue, and Blue-Black pens, and a pink and blue highlighters. But these highlighters are effin awesome. They have a little window in the tip so you can see where you're highlighting. ^^

Edit:
Also, when you're trying to say something came (like, in the mail) which verb would you use?

[Coda]

You can use 来た (kita) for that just fine.

[Azrael]

If I want to say "But I still have to work there (office depot) for one more year.", how would I say it in Japanese? o.o

[Coda]

Hmm...

まだ一年間までに働かないといけません。 is my guess. ("mada ichinenkan made ni hatarakanai to ikemasen")

[Azrael]

The end part (from the "hataraKA TO IKEMASEN") part, why exactly if you could explain? I know hataraku is work, buuut ya.

also I was fooling around today and kind of practicing Japanese. Can I type it up and see if I wrote it right? >3<

[Coda]

"~nai to ikenai" is an expression meaning "must." Literally it's probably something along the lines of "unacceptable to not ~" or something. So "hatarakanai to ikenai" means "must work."

And of course I'll review your writing :)

[Azrael]

ah! XD I know that structure, I just didn't see the "i" in the "nai" when I looked at it first!

Anyway, I wouldn't call it writing more as rambling. But gimme a moment to type it.

[Azrael]

冬休みが長くてつまらなすぎると思う。バイトをしたくない。ナタシャがめっちゃ怖い（こわい）　；ー；　経 済（けいざい）の授業でいるから、いまM＆Mがない。この授業がちょうつまらない！分からない。。。そうね 。日本語を勉強するにかわっている。経済を分からない。経済を使わない。何を買い手のが分からない。正しい かどうか知っていない。

どうして疲れているなの？うん、あたしのじひつが悪くなった。忘れたくない！文法を練習しなければならない 。

Winter vacation will be long and boring I think. I don't want to do my part time job! Natasha is super scary. I'm in Economics class, but I don't have any M&M's now. (I really wanted to say "I don't have any more M&M's anymore." but I didn't have a clue how to say that.) This class is really boring. I don't understand. oh well. I will study Japanese instead (Or "I am studying Japanese instead"). I don't understand Economics. I won't use it. (I wanted to say "I want use it again," but again didn't quite know how to say it) I don't know what I'm writing. I don't know whether or not it's correct.

Why am I so tired? Yeah, my handwriting has become bad. I don't want to forget! I need to study grammar...

XD I told you, more like rambling. I usually do this in English, but I figured I needed to practice my Japanese. XD

[Coda]

First sentence is grammatically correct, but I'm uncertain how something can be "excessively" boring -- it seems to me that if it's boring it's boring, and there's no amount of boredom that isn't more than you want. ("not just boring, but TOO boring")

Fourth sentence: You probably wanted "kedo" instead of "kara" there (or maybe "ga", for a less cause-and-effect form of "but") -- what you said is "I have no M&M's BECAUSE I'm in economics class." Also, you use "ni", not "de", when describing where something/someone is. (What you said could possibly be interpreted as "I exist as an economics class.") And to answer your parenthetical, the verb you're looking for is 切らす (kirasu, "to be out of; to run out; to exhaust") -- so perhaps 経済の授業にいるが、もうM＆Msが切らしちゃった。("I'm in economics class, but I'm (regretfully) already out of M&Ms." -- if you need explanation on -chatta, just ask.)

I'm not so sure about "sou ne" there. My dictionary agrees that it means "oh well" but I've always heard it said to mean "that's right." Perhaps you want "shou ga nai" (or "shikata nai") meaning literally "there's nothing that can be done about it".

As for "I won't use it again", I'm not certain... Maybe "zenzen tsukawanai tsumori desu" ("I don't intend to ever use it.") -- Google Translate at least seems to indicate this means "I will not use at all". EDIT: Wait, the negative is in the wrong place; that means "I intend to never use it." Perhaps "tsukau tsumori ja nai" -- "I have no intent to use it."

"benkyou shinakereba naranai" is unusually formal considering the casual tone you've been using in the rest of the post. A more casual, slang way to say it would just be "benkyou shinakya". (My professor said "benkyou shinakucha" is also acceptable but I've not actually heard it.)

[Azrael]

OMG you totally just explained what my friend has been ignoring me about. I asked her what "nakya" meant. THANK YOU @_@

I also wanted to know a more casual way to say "have to" or "must" anyway, because... yeah, it seemed to formal. I just was never taught another way to say it.

Also, indeed, I've never heard Chatta. ^^ Thank you very much.

[Coda]

-chatta is slang for -te shimatta. (It'll occasionally become -jatta in the presence of rendaku, although this seems to be less predictable than normal rendaku.) Literally it means "~ finished". You use it to refer to an action that's already happened but you're regretful/disappointed/otherwise negative about that fact.

牛乳を落としちゃったら、泣かないで。

If you drop the milk, don't cry.

On the -nakya lesson, other equivalents are "~nai to ikenai", "~nakute wa dame" (and equivalently, "~nakya dame" / "~nakucha dame"), and of course you can always go more formal with "ikemasen" instead of "ikenai". The negation is to put the base verb in -te form instead of -nakute form, so while "shinakute wa ikenai" is "must do", "shite wa ikenai" (or "shite wa dame", or "shite mo dame", the nuance between the two is subtle enough that you don't need to worry about it much) is one way to say "must not do".

[Azrael]

@_@ I will be taking notes on that tomorrow...

Ooooh! So it goes with しまう？I learned that, too. @_@ But... again, I don't think we learned the casual... ~sigh~ Sometimes it's really annoying in classes only to learn formal speech since casual seems pretty dang important to /understand/ at least... I mean, obviously we need formal, and it's definitely more simple (in general) but I wish that we'd be taught both at the same time. Instead of learning something, then later learning the same thing... in casual, and being like "OH I KNOW THAT... in formal" x.x'

But thank yoou!

Also, when would you use のか or かは to connect verbs? I'm on this website called lang-8 and they corrected something to use those, but... their English isn't good enough to be able to explain WHY you do that...

[Coda]

Mmm... I actually don't recognize those particles. Link me?

[Azrael]

http://lang-8.com/512680/journals/18...25EF%25BC%259F

Ignore my stupid mistakes XD they've been pointed out. But if you scroll down you'll see where people correct you...

[Coda]

Oh!

Those aren't two-kana particles. Those are separate one-kana particles!

The easier one to explain is の. When used after a verb, it turns the verb into a gerund (that is, a noun). In English, this is using the -ing form of a verb as a noun. So for example, you might say 走るのが好き (hashiru no ga suki, "I like running") or 働くのが難しい (hataraku no ga muzukashii, "working is difficult").

か when used in that context could be translated as "whether" or "if". So 行くのか知らない (to use the example in your link) means "I don't know if I'm going." (You might see 行くかどうか which would be "whether I'm going or not".)

は in this case is just the same old wa you've always seen. It's being used in the contrastive sense here.

[Demonskid]

Lesson notes 8D yey!