If I had to make a list of the top ten most useful words in Japanese, I might very well pick ちょっと as one of them. Not only is it short and easy to say, but it’s meanings are easy to learn and use in everyday conversation. ちょっと’s basic, most fundamental meaning is “a little”, and it’s… Read More »
Once in awhile comes along a study resource thats so good, you revel in the treasure you’ve found and for a moment the thought of keeping it to yourself flashes through your mind. Podcastle is one such site, and when I first discovered it I thought it was too good to be true. It’s a… Read More »
In this blog I typically like to focus on a series of expressions or words for each post, but for once I’d like to dedicate an entire article to a single expression: そろそろ。 I was reading the other day in someone’s blog about how some words take several hearings to ‘stick’ in the mind, and… Read More »
I’ve decided to create an email account for anyone who would like to contact me personally. Blogging is great but there are times you want to send a message to someone directly, and privately, without having to comment on one of their blog posts, and WordPress doesn’t support this. I’m open to questions on any… Read More »
I recently wrote a post on usages of ‘そう’ coupled with a few particles, and I decided to write a second article with a few other things I thought of on this subject. In that post I mentioned the phrases そうだね and そうだよ, but what if you remove the だ from these? Well, the word… Read More »
(Update: Six years later I’ve written another post on this topic, reviewing some of the same areas and adding new content as well. You can find it here.) It’s well known to anyone who has studied Japanese seriously that the language lacks a general concept of plurality, like English’s “-s”. However, there are some cases… Read More »
Just like the particle は, it can take some time to get the hang of understanding and using the Japanese particle の。I’ll use what I’ve learned from textbooks, from experience, and from dictionary.goo.ne.jp to illustrate the many uses of this important element of the language. 1) Possessive or descriptive This is by far the easiest… Read More »
As I mentioned in a previous article, in my initial years of studying Japanese I made a huge emphasis on learning as much grammar as I could. For me, one of the most difficult elements of Japanese grammar is distinguishing between the particles は and が. There are surely hundreds of books and websites that describe… Read More »
For those who are serious about learning a foreign language, reading online sites and blogs only gets you so far. To really understand how the language is used by native speakers, you have to have two-way conversations with them. Of course its great to travel to Japan, and some of us are fortunate enough to… Read More »
All through my Japanese studies I have always dedicated a large portion of time to learning grammar, almost to the extent that I would call it “grammar-driven learning”. Of course it’s great to have a rich vocabulary, but without knowing the rules for how to transform and combine words to get across your intended meaning,… Read More »