Japanese Lesson for beginners 4-X something extra: えーと、 Sentence + ね みなさん、こんばんは。 We leanrt how to read phone number in Japanese. Do you remember your phone number by the way? Can you answer it immediately? If no, do you say something in your language? You might say "wait a sec" or "hold on, let me check" or something. What about things like "hmm.." or "err..." ? Its a word you say to fill the gap while you can' answer/reply soon. In Japanese, we say "えーと" It is of course used in spoken Japanese. For example, Aさん：<your name > さん、携帯の番号は何番ですか？ - keitai no bangou wa nanban desu ka? -- what's your mobile number? you: えーと、０９０−１２３４−５６７８です。 Then what would you say if you were Aさん？Don't you want to repeat the number in order to make it sure? Just repeat the number, and + ね at the end. Aさん；０９０−１２３４−５６７８です ね。ありがとう。 In this case, if you read like ですね↑, it sounds more you're asking if it is correct or not. So the both ですね↑ and ですね↓ is fine. I'm sure you'll hear Japanese saying ね at the end so much. It is frequently used in spoken English as well when you want somebody to agree. There's another usage, but you don't need to know it so far. So, another example of ”ね” is Aさん : 毎朝何時に起きますか？ - maiasa nanji ni okimasu ka? -- what time do you get up in the morning? Bさん：5時です。 - 5ji desu. Aさん：はやいですね。（はやい: early) - it is early, isn't it. Aさん : そのTシャツ、いいですね。 - That's T-shirt looks good/nice. Bさん：そうですか？ありがとう。 - oh, is it so? Thanks. Aさん：いくらですか？ - how much is it? Bさん：セールで８００円でした。 - 800yen on sale. Aさん：やすいですね！(やすい: its an adjective referring low price) Compared with the example of Phone number + ね, As you probably see, ”ですね↓" is better in all the sentences above, since you want somebody to agree but are not expecting the answer so much. ではまた！ 次はレッスン５です。