When studying a foreign language, learning to write holds a special place because one can attain a fairly high level of competency without actually living in a country where that language is spoken. This is because both reading, an important related skill, and writing itself can be learned and practiced with just a computer and an internet connection. Strictly speaking,… Read More »
When learning a foreign language, I think we all tend to go through stages. First, we may have a mild (or major) interest in the culture of a foreign country, and begin to pick up a few words here or there in that country’s native language. In the case of Japanese, it might be a few… Read More »
I had previously written a review of the Japanese novel “Candy Candy Final Story” (キャンディ･キャンディ Final Story) written by Nagita Keiko, and later posted a translation I did of the prologue. Generally, when I do translations of small fragments of novels, I don’t intend to follow up with translations of any future chapters. However, in this case… Read More »
As anyone who has studied a foreign language can attest to, knowing what words to study is one of the more challenging things because there is so many words out there. In this post I’m going to go over the word “ほか”（also written in Kanji as “他” or ”外”) and some of it’s uses. This… Read More »
In my last post, I wrote about how the Japanese word “くるま” (which means “car”) originated from the words ”来る” (to come) and “魔” (devil). While these two words are actual words with the meanings I specified, the truth is that they have nothing to do with the word ”くるま”. After all, my post yesterday was written on April… Read More »
(Disclaimer: this was an April fool’s joke.) I always enjoy researching word origins of Japanese words, since you usually learn a little of history, culture, and it often helps you remember that word or its meanings. In this post I’d like to talk about the origin of the word “くるま” (kuruma) which means “car”, and… Read More »
Forums (also called “message boards” or “question and answer sites”) are one of the great things about the internet since they allow fast, global discussion about nearly any topic you can imagine. Discussions on foreign languages for learners is no exception, and there are many things to ask about: word meanings, grammar, what sounds “natural”, culture, etc.… Read More »
The Japanese word 親孝行 (oyakoukou) doesn’t really have an exact parallel in English, though in a dictionary you’ll find something like “being dutiful towards one’s parents” which is a good attempt to translate it. One person’s definition of this is along the lines of “respecting your parents, valuing them highly, and doing things for them”… Read More »
In early December last year, I wrote a blog entry which contained my personal, unofficial translation of Candy Candy: Final Story‘s prologue that I had worked on in my spare time. Recently, someone nicknamed Beautiful Illusion had discovered my post and written a blog entry discussing it, especially how it has the potential to be an “unbiased translation”.… Read More »
Doing translations between Japanese and English is always an educational endeavor, teaching me so much about Japanese and language in general. One thing that I’ve been thinking about lately is how one can be reasonably skilled in two languages, and yet translating simple phrases can be so challenging. I’ve seen this happen even when I… Read More »