Monthly Archives: March 2015

Japanese verb suffix 〜きる (~kiru)

In Japanese there are many verbs which can be as a suffix to another verb in order to enhance the other verb’s meaning. The verb which is being enhanced comes first and is always in the pre-masu form (i.e. たべる→たべ or のむ→のみ). The suffix which does the modification can be conjugated like a normal verb… Read More »

Experiment: How good are Google Translate’s English to Japanese translations?

Back when I first started studying Japanese, I wasn’t aware of any translation programs that worked between English and Japanese, and if there was I’m pretty sure they were very expensive and not very commonly used. Nowadays we have things like Google Translate, a free service that translates between over 50 world languages, including Japanese. As… Read More »

Opposition to the overuse of metrics in language learning (and in daily life)

We live in a day and age where recording aspects of our daily life as numbers, and analyzing that data, has become more and more commonplace. To give a few examples: we measure how many steps we walked, how long we brushed our teeth, how much we drank, how many times we smoked, how long… Read More »

Mini Japanese quiz 3: distinguishing between transitive and intransitive verb forms

I’ve released my 3rd Japanese quiz, this time on transitive/intransitive verbs. Take it here: testmoz.com/458663 Here are the details: Quiz Topic: Differentiating between Japanese transitive / intransitive verbs: Number of questions: 10 Question style: Multiple choice – each question has two verb, one intransitive verb and one transitive verb. Some of the verbs are conjugated. Required… Read More »

Japanese polite language and appropriate phrases for asking a person’s name

Japanese has a very complex system of politeness which is often claimed to be one of the reasons it’s so difficult to master, and I completely agree on this point. Depending on the relationship between you and the person/people you are speaking with, you will use variations on certain words, or even entirely different expressions. You have to… Read More »