After studying a foreign language for a certain amount of time, you develop a level of confidence about grammar and commonly used words. But for all of us that have learned a language as a non-native, there comes a time when we fail to use even the simplest of words properly, resulting in disastrous consequences…… Read More »
In this post I want to highlight a common and important word in the Japanese language, “yoku”. It can be written in hiragana as よく, and depending on the meaning can also be written in kanji as 良く or 欲. The first meaning I would like to go over is the most common one, which… Read More »
Weather is part of our day-to-day lives, whether it is a rainstorm, a heatwave, or extra strong winds. And the seasons are one of the fundamental ways we categorize weather in terms of certain weather patterns. In Japan the seasons are especially important, partially because the types of foods that are available fresh differ significantly… Read More »
Often language learners will wonder how long it takes them to master, or at least become fluent in a foreign language, especially when deciding whether to start studying a language or not. And from the point of view of time management, to a certain extent that is a logical thing to want to know. A… Read More »
When learning a foreign language, it’s important to learn a little bit about a lot of things: words, expressions, culture, etc. But it’s also important to learn a lot about a few things, namely those things that occur frequently in daily life. This post, falling in the latter category, is about an expression you are… Read More »
One significant difference between Japanese and a language like English is that words are more frequently omitted when they can be inferred from context. This applies to pretty much all types of speech: verbs, nouns, objects, and even particles (little grammatical helpers). In English, except for some special cases and slang usages, when referring to… Read More »
I’ve written a large amount (probably several hundred) of articles about Japanese grammar on this blog, but for a change I thought I would write about a different topic, targeting a slightly different group of people: a list of reasons to learn Japanese. This sort of list is inherently subjective, and perhaps some of these… Read More »
Compared to English, Japanese is much more consistent and predictable in terms of how words are pronounced, at least at the level of vowels and constants (intonation is another story though). There are some exceptions, for example the word 大事 which can be read as “oogoto” or “daiji”, with a slight difference in meaning and… Read More »
Sometimes when I see a thread flying by on Twitter and feel strongly towards the subject matter I will consider chiming in, but the problem is that trying to present a proper counter-argument on Twitter can be tricky. Sure, you can use a bunch of Tweets, but it gets hard to read, and also directly… Read More »
In this post I’d like go over the Japanese verb 売れる (ureru) which can be a little tricky to understand. This verb is used fairly commonly in everyday life. First, let’s look at an example sentence: このテレビはよく売れるよ (kono terebi wa yoku ureru yo) When Japanese learners generally hear a sentence like the first time, they… Read More »