せい is a word in Japanese which can be used to express blame or fault. I’ll go over a few related uses of this word. 1) Explaining something occurred because of someone or something’s fault. This is similar to using （だ）から in the sense of ‘because’ except it usually has a negative connotation. Pattern: [reason… Read More »
I this post I’d like to compare the two Japanese particles で and に, both which are used very frequently in everyday Japanese. I’m not going to do a thorough treatment of either particle covering all possible uses (there are many for both), but I’ll summarize a few of the most common usages. で is… Read More »
In Japanese, there are three alphabets used together, and each has it’s own set of uses. Let’s go over each of them briefly before we talk about how this trio impacts the language. Hiragana: This alphabet is the most basic and is the first alphabet that Japanese children learn. Any word can be written with… Read More »
普通 (ふつう)、which is generally translated as “normal”, is an convenient word with several uses. I’ll go over a few of the more common ones in this post. One of the simplest ways to use this word is by treating it as an adjective, by adding a の on the back end of it. 普通の人は夜遅くまで日本語の勉強をしないでしょう！ A… Read More »
“~て＋ある” is one of those expressions that doesn’t really have a directly translation in English, but once you grasp what it used for you may find what it can express quite useful. It is made using the て form (“食べて”、”歩いて”、”話して”、etc.) plus the word “ある” which means for something to physically exist, or be in a… Read More »
I recently got a request from someone asking for usage and example sentences of the Japanese expression まし, so I thought I would write a brief post on that topic. まし is used when you want to express something is not great in an absolute sense, but relatively better when compared to something else. You… Read More »
As most people who have studied a little Japanese know, じゃない is an expression in Japanese that means “is/are not” and is be the opposite of だ (the copula, or “is”). In this post I’ll go over a few different ways to use じゃない. (じゃない happens to be an abbreviation of “ではない”, though that isn’t related… 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 »
Studying a foreign language, there are many times when you get stuck and just don’t know what to say. Sure, you can just mutter a “ちょっと待って” (wait) and clam up for a few seconds to think, but that would set you apart from what a native would do in similar circumstances. It’s best to give… Read More »
In one of my other blog posts, I mentioned how watching subtitles when studying a foreign language is a bad idea because your brain stops paying attention to the details of the language and takes the easy route to comprehension. There’s actually another major reason to avoid subtitles which I’ve decided to devote this post… Read More »