In this article I’d like to talk about the Japanese word “sonna” (そんな) and a few related expressions. The word “sonna” is a close equivalent to the expression “sono you na”, which in English translates literally to “like that”. However, we will have to look a little deeper into this word in order to understand how… Read More »
In this article I would like to talk about an interesting Japanese phrase: “aa ieba kou iu” (ああ言えばこう言う). This, like many of the phrases of expressions I write about on this blog, is a phrase that I have heard used in conversations with native speakers as well as used myself. This expression is interesting because… Read More »
If you pick up a Japanese textbook, for example the popular Genki series, you’ll find a chart of “aisatsu” (挨拶). This is a list of formalized expressions that are used in daily life and include things like: こんにちは (konnichi wa) おはようございます (ohayou gozaimasu) こんばんは (konban wa) はじめまして (hajimemashite) いらっしゃいませ (irasshaimase) よろしくお願いします (yoroshiku onegaishimasu) Fortunately… Read More »
While I had watched a large number of Japanese dramas in the first few years of studying Japanese (and I feel it helped me immensely in many ways), at some point I started getting tired of the same hackneyed stories and cheesy acting. I’m also pretty picky about plot, and when I am able to… Read More »
I think for a majority of students learning a foreign language in modern times, using Google as a search tool to find word meanings is a pretty common activity. Even for translating––although it often isn’t my “first line of defense” when trying to understand a word or phrase––often I’ll end up doing a search just to… Read More »
Sometime a while ago I wrote an article about confusing Japanese loanwords which originally came from English words, and then a week or so ago I wrote another article about the reverse: a confusing English loanword that came from Japanese. Very recently I learned of another word that falls in this second category, so I… Read More »
In this post I’d like to introduce another expression that I picked up from everyday conversation with a Japanese native speaker: “七光り” (“nanahikari”) You may have noticed that this word literally means “seven lights”, but out of context it is hard to guess what it actually means. So let’s look at an example sentence. 彼は親の七光りでその会社についたよ。… Read More »
The word “naka”, often written in kanji as 仲 but sometimes in hiragana as なか, refers to a human relationship. There are a handful of expressions involving this word commonly used in everyday conversation that are useful to learn. One of the simplest and most common, ways to use this word is when describing a good or… Read More »
The folks over at Kurodahan Press have been running a yearly translation contest now for some time that typically involves translating a selected text from Japanese to English. The winner receives a monetary prize and I think also gets their story (eventually) published in some form. While I had heard about this contest a while… Read More »
Lately I’ve been making posts on words which I’ve heard in everyday conversation with Japanese native speakers, and in this post I’d like to highlight one more: “kasabaru”. It’s written in hiragana as かさばる but can also be written in kanji as 嵩張る. However, I hear this word more often than see it in writing.… Read More »