Have you ever thought to yourself, “If I could only live in Japan, I’d become fluent in Japanese in no time”? If you’re struggling to learn this monster of a language, especially self-taught, then you likely have at least once. There is no doubt about it, living in a country whose native language is one… Read More »
One of the convenient and frequently used set of expressions in Japanese is those for giving and receiving, which can be used for both objects and actions. These are discussed in many basic Japanese textbooks, but since their usage is a little tricky I thought I would review them here so it might help others.… Read More »
I’ve been keeping an eye on this manga in Japanese book stores for a few years now, whose mysterious cover and title piqued my interest. During a recent business trip to New York, I finally decided on picking up the first issue at Book Off. (I have a review of this Japanese bookstore here.) From… Read More »
In my time studying Japanese I’ve been fortunate enough to have several pen pals and conversation partners who have corrected my grammar mistakes, and in some cases pointed out more natural phrasing. Unfortunately, experiences like that are few and far between, not only because it can be tedious and time consuming to correct someone’s language… Read More »
In this post I’ve decided to list a few of the commonly used colloquial abbreviations and transformations in Japanese. Keep in mind that many of these are slang/informal (くだけた言い方）and would typically only be used in conversation with someone you are close to, or very informal writing like a blog. This list isn’t complete and I’m… Read More »
During my study of the Japanese language, oftentimes I cannot help but think fundamentally about how humans learn a foreign language, or any language for that matter. Some years back when I was more actively studying linguistics, I read a very interesting book called “The Language Instinct” by Steven Pinker (see wikipedia page here). As… Read More »
Manga, along with Anime, is one of the biggest forms of Japanese imports to America for entertainment. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were many people who started learning Japanese after they became interested in manga. (My situation is a little different, but I’ll discuss that in another post.) As I’m sure all of you… Read More »
As I mentioned in a previous article, in my initial years of studying Japanese I made a huge emphasis on learning as much grammar as I could. For me, one of the most difficult elements of Japanese grammar is distinguishing between the particles は and が. There are surely hundreds of books and websites that describe… Read More »
We are fortunate to leave in an age where nearly unlimited resources, in nearly any language, are available online. This is a boon especially for those studying a foreign language. Blogs, news, message boards, and even videos are available with a simple search, in a matter of a seconds. But the quality and variety of… Read More »
For those who are serious about learning a foreign language, reading online sites and blogs only gets you so far. To really understand how the language is used by native speakers, you have to have two-way conversations with them. Of course its great to travel to Japan, and some of us are fortunate enough to… Read More »