Are? Yet another use of the word “are” (あれ)
In this post I go over an interesting use for the word “あれ”, along with a few other common uses.
Category Archives: grammar
Japanese grammar: Solving the mystery of “僕に言われても” (boku ni iwarete mo)
In this post I go deep into the phrase “僕に言われても” and try to figure out why “に” is used, which seems to be contradictory with typical usages of it.
Japanese literary phrase: さも (samo)
In this post I’d like to go over the phrase さも (“samo”), which you are likely to come across if you read enough Japanese literature, along with a few examples and explanation of its origin. さも is usually written in hiragana, but it can technically also be written with partial kanji as 然も. さも is… Read More »
The patterns “shite dou?” / “shitara dou?” and vagueness with verb tenses in Japanese
Compared to other languages, such as English and Spanish, Japanese has a fairly small number of verb tenses. So it’s not much of a surprise that some of the tenses have many different uses, and often do not give much information as to when an action happened. In this post I’d like to talk about… Read More »
Japanese expression: というのも “to iu no mo”
In this post I want to go over the expression というのも (“to iu no mo”) as it is something you will probably hear eventually if you listen to enough native speech. It can also be written in kanji as と言うのも, though perhaps the hiragana representation is a bit more common. I will be focusing on… Read More »
Analysis of a common Internet phrase: “詳しくはこちら” (kuwashiku wa kochira)
Languages have different vocabulary and grammar for different areas (or “domains” as I call them), for example newspapers, popular novels, and Internet forums. This can be frustrating because being knowledgable in one domain doesn’t mean you’ll have an easy time in another. But the plus side is that once you learn some common phrases and… Read More »
Japanese fairy tales now available free on Kanshudo (a Japanese learning site)
One of my translations of a classic Japanese fairy tale is now available for free on Kanshudo, a full-featured site for learning Japanese.
Machine Translation Showdown: 5 MTs tested using a classical Japanese excerpt
I compared the English translation abilities of 5 different machine translation services (including those of Google and Microsoft) using a short excerpt of classic Japanese literature from Akutagawa Ryunosuke.
The right and wrong way to use the verb あげる (ageru) in Japanese
The nuances of expressing politeness is one of the most difficult parts of mastering the Japanese language, especially if your native language doesn’t have a strong concept of politeness levels (in my opinion, English does not). One of the things I always talk about when asked about politeness is the verb trio “kureru”, “morau”, and… Read More »
Getting specific with も (mo) and what not to tell your lover
The Japanese も (mo) particle has a handful of uses, but one of the most common––and easiest to understand––is when it is used to indicate that something else also applies to a certain statement. For example: バナナも好きだよ (banana mo suki da yo) (I) also like bananas. Here we can see the word “also” cleanly captures the… Read More »