Kanji (漢字), characters adopted from Chinese, are easily one of the most challenging aspects of the Japanese language. I think it’s fiar to say the love or hate relationship a learner has with kanji can determine whether they continue learning the language or give up. Personally, while I acknowledge kanji take a lot of time… Read More »
Curse words can be funny; we try to make sure our children don’t use them and stay away from using them ourselves in inappropriate situations, but at the same time they can among the first words we learn in a foreign language. I’ve met several people who say, “All I know in so-and-so language is… Read More »
This time I’d like to focus on the word “kansou”, which can be written in kanji as 感想, or occasionally in hiragana as かんそう. The pitch rises on the second letter and stays high, potentially raising the pitch of whatever word follows it (note: this is for Tokyo dialect, pronunciation may differ in other dialects).… Read More »
In this post I’d like to go over the Japanese word “kudaranai”, which is often written in hiragana as くだらない, and sometimes in kanji as 下らない. As usual, I’ll first go into the basic meanings, followed by a discussion about the word origin and relevant nuances. The meanings of this word are fairly easy to… Read More »
In this post I want to cover two Japanese scientific terms I have come across: “chidousetsu” and “tendousetsu”. These are generally written in kanji as 地動説 and 天動説, respectively. Chidosetsu is used to describe the astronomical model whereby the Sun is at the center of the solar system, with planets (including the Earth) revolving around… Read More »
On a recent trip to Tachikawa (立川), a city that is part of Tokyo, I came across a sign that said: ホルモン焼き (horumon yaki) At first glance, the first word here sounds suspiciously like “hormone”. The second word “yaki” has a variety of meanings related to cooking: “grilled”, “toasted”, “baked”, etc. So I assumed this… Read More »
In recent years I’ve gradually transitioned from simply learning Japanese to becoming deeply interested in Japanese to English translation. Besides actually doing a lot of translations myself, I have been trying to understand how to talk about translation in Japanese, in particular understanding the nuances of various terms related to translation. As you may already… Read More »
I’m always surprised by the diversity of language and how vocabulary words tend to group into what I call “domains”. For example, many terms you read in an economic newspaper are not likely to pop up in everyday conversation, and slang words you hear on the street are not too likely be used in a… Read More »
Whereas many of this blog’s posts are about Japanese words that I use myself in daily life, in this article I’d like to talk about a word that I had some difficulty understanding and the research I did related to that. The word is 実務 (jitsumu) and I saw it used in the name of… Read More »
I’m sure many people are working full time for a company that they don’t own any part of, getting paid on a periodic rate based on a set contract. And I’m also willing to bet that a good portion of those people wish they could go independent and become their own boss, choosing what and… Read More »