Verb + Noun? Confused little demon.

[Oni]

こにちは！
I've been studding japanese for a year or so and this one of of those things that is totally stomping me.

For example, テレビは買うつもりです。　I intend to buy a TV。
This was under the Grammer section；　”Closer look at　を”

My understanding of つもり is that is a noun meaning "intend" (could be wrong of course)

I kinda see how it was translated, but I don't have an explination for it. Nor can I find any lessons that talk about it.

Thank'ya in advance.

[Mukade]

つもり is really easy to use, and very handy.

Just stick it on to the end of a verb in its Plain Form (or Dictionary Form), and add です and voila, you've got a "plan to do X" type sentence.

So, 買うつもり = "plan to buy"
するつもり = "plan to do"
食べるつもり = "plan to eat"

And so on.

A literal translation of a sentence like 私は買うつもりです would be "It is my intention to buy (it)."
A more loose translation would be "I plan on buying (it)."

[Diggity]

Well I am only just starting chapter 4 of the Genki Book one (one month of serious study on my own), so I have just gotten done with the present/future tense verbs, but this could be something easy for me to learn... and handy as you said!

So (for understanding...) to say:

I plan to go to Japan on Saturday.

Watashi wa doyoubi ni nihon e ikutsumori desu.

The desu thing kinda throws me off. But if I look at it (for my understanding) it is kind of literally saying "to go planning I am"

Do I have a decent grasp of this?

But what if I want to say the NEGATIVE? I know that "I am NOT going to Japan on Saturday." is

Watashi wa doyoubi ni nihon e ikimasen.

So would I simply place ja arimasen in place of desu?

Watashi wa doyoubi ni nihon e ikutsumori ja arimasen.

I am NOT planning on going to Japan on Saturday.

Arigatougozaimasu.

[Spaztick]

You could just change the verb to the negative:

Watashi wa douyoubi ni nihongo e ikinaitsumori desu -

It is my intention not to go to Japan.


That's what I do, but that might sound a little forceful, as if you're trying to stay away from Japan, but I've never held a conversation so I can't tell you for sure.

[Oni]

Thx Mukade. I do appreciate the conformation that I wasn't smoking too much, but I was really looking for an explination at how it works (or doesn't).

I did do some looking around and remembered a site I still had bookmarked that had something similar. Unfortunatly, it wasn't very clear....well to shorten this story, I found some food for thought.

Check it out.
http://www.geocities.jp/nihongoguide/subclause.html

[Mukade]

Diggity wrote:
Watashi wa doyoubi ni nihon e ikutsumori desu.

The desu thing kinda throws me off. But if I look at it (for my understanding) it is kind of literally saying "to go planning I am"

Do I have a decent grasp of this?

Perfect!

Diggity wrote:
But what if I want to say the NEGATIVE? I know that "I am NOT going to Japan on Saturday." is

Watashi wa doyoubi ni nihon e ikimasen.

So would I simply place ja arimasen in place of desu?

Watashi wa doyoubi ni nihon e ikutsumori ja arimasen.

I am NOT planning on going to Japan on Saturday.

Yes, that's it!

[Diggity]

Yea! I am finally starting to see how this language makes sense on my own! However I will probably be posting a lot of topics in the next few days. Chapter 4 of my Genki book (which I started on today) covers a lot of grammar...
For example :

1) X ga arimasu/imasu
2) Where things are ( X wa Y no "location word" desu )
3) Past tense
4) Takusan (quantity words)
5) Time duration - ji kan
6) Particle "to"
7) Particle "mo"

So if you see me posting a lot of questions on the board... please be patient with me! I wish I had a tutor or someone to study with in Kansas City. It would be so much easier to learn if I had someone to talk to in Japanese!

[InsanityRanch]

Hehehe. Boy is this board addictive!

> but I was really looking for an explination at how it works (or doesn't).

OK, yeah, つもり is roughly a noun, but you can think of "つもりです" (or "つもりだ") as the equivalent of the English verb "intend". So if you think of the plain form of the preceding Japanese verb as an infinitive in this case, it more or less fits into English as follows:

(Watashi ha) terebi wo kau tsumori desu. = I to buy a TV intend

Another way of looking at it:
terebi wo kau is a subordinate clause that specifies WHICH intention you are talking about. This puts it in a more Japanese context: "terebi wo kau" is grammatically a complete clause in Japanese. In some contexts it could stand alone as a sentence. Q: Nani shiteru no? A: Terebi wo kau.
(What are you doing? I'm buying a TV.)

A complete clause like that can and very frequently does modify a noun in Japanese. "watashi ga mita eiga" The movie (that) I saw. "hahaoya no youni yasashiku seitotachi wo ai shita Oishi sensei ha..." Miss Oishi, who loved her pupils with a mother's love, ..." The first part of that would be: "Like a mother, kindly, [she] loved her students" and if we already knew who "she" was, could stand alone as a sentence, but here it is a subordinate clause.

As you can see in this last example, the subordinate information can be quite lengthy, and you may discover what noun all this stuff is modifying only after a period of uncertainty. This was one of the most disconcerting bits of Japanese grammar for me when I began reading on my own.

So... going back to tsumori. Pick your point of view, and if you like, you can always switch later!

HTH!

Shira