Understanding jokes and other forms of comedy in a foreign language can be a difficult undertaking for language learners. To begin with, comedic wordplay based on homonyms (two words with the same sound but different meaning) is often used and may involve subtle aspects of pronunciation (intonation, etc.) Pop culture references are also abundant, including… Read More »
As I confirmed myself a few years ago, Japanese has a large number of homonyms––words that have the same sound but different meanings. Personally I’m divided on the efficacy of teaching the various meanings of a single word together, since it can confuse language learners, but sometimes it can be good to know all the… Read More »
In this post I will go over the expression “〜からすると” (~kara suru to), including a few examples and related expressions. To start the discussion, let’s look at a concrete example sentence. 色からするとかなり古いだろうね。 (iro kara suru to kanari furui darou ne.) Now let’s look at each piece of the phrase “kara suru to”: から (kara): A… Read More »
In this article I’d like to go over the expression ともなく (to mo naku), which you may come across when reading Japanese literature. While it is usually written in hiragana as ともなく, sometimes you can see it written in a mix of kanji and hiragana as とも無く It’s composed of three parts: the particle “to”,… Read More »
In this post I go over the expression 「言葉が足りず、すみませんでした」, including some variations and related expressions.
It’s rare that I read blogs written in English about Japanese, but there is one blog I do check out pretty often so I thought I would highlight in a focused post: landofnu.com. This blog, which seems to have started in February 2011, has a variety of topics: Japanese (kotowaza and 4-letter compounds), fiction, non-fiction,… Read More »
During my Japanese studies, I’ve made it a point to try and have a thorough understanding of Japanese grammar because I feel that it gives me a good base not only for speaking and writing correctly, but also understanding nuances of the language I might otherwise miss. Just the other day the word “呼ばされる” (yobasareru)… Read More »
In this article I’d like to go over the Japanese kanji 力 (which can be read “chikara”, “ryoku”, or “riki”), including some compounds that are made with it. This kanji has a bunch of meanings, but the majority of them can be categorized as “power”, “force”, or “energy”. But before we get too far I… Read More »
When learning a foreign language, it’s generally a good idea to learn some proverbs, what we call “kotowaza” (諺) in Japanese. It’s not just because they are a fun way to learn new words in context, but also because proverbs can express meaningful ideas in a concise form that often reflects that country’s history and… Read More »
My friend and collaborator Kaimai Mizuhiro (開米瑞浩) is working on an project that I think will be interesting to those studying Japanese, so I’ll talk about it a little here. Kaimai has a bunch of books out, and a common thread throughout them is how to communicate effectively (both verbally and with diagrams) in a… Read More »