In this post I’d like to go over the expression “とんだとばっちりを食う” (tonda tobacchiri wo kuu) which can be a little tricky to understand. Before talking about the overall meaning I want to look at each of the components. With the exception of children’s books, written Japanese generally does not have spaces between the words. Having… Read More »
One of the joys of reading Japanese literature is that the more you do it, the more you pick up certain words and phrases that are specific to literature and not commonly used in spoken language. This knowledge helps you not just understand the meaning of such words but also their nuances. In this post… Read More »
One thing that sets apart Japanese from other languages, such as English, is the wide variety of ways there are to express politeness, whether it is special verb forms, words, or other grammatical constructions. One of the most basic of these is the verbs “ageru” / “kureru” / “morau”, which I have written a bit… Read More »
Banana Yoshimoto is one of the most well-known Japanese authors in the Western world, with over 10 novels translated into English. Because I generally try to read, review, and translate authors which are not yet very well known in the West, it might seem odd that I choose to read and review one of her… Read More »
(Update: I have since republished these stories in a larger compilation that you can find here, which is available in both paper and ebook format. I have changed the links in the article below to the original short e-book to point to this newer book.) (To jump to the book’s page on Amazon click here) As those… Read More »
After learning of an interesting translation choice in the English version of the award winning “Convenience Store Woman” novel I decided to write a post that touches upon topics including the responsibilities of translators, publishers, and readers of literature.
When studying a foreign language, it’s common to ask a native speaker to correct your spoken or written language, which often involves determining what sort of phrasing sounds natural and correct. Similarly, as a native or at least semi-fluent speaker of some language, you can get into situations where you are answering such questions, or… Read More »
As you probably know, particles are little words that help give grammatical context to other words in Japanese and are critically important for proper grammar (and in some ways are similar to articles and prepositions in English). Particles can be used on their own, as well as in limited combinations with other particles, and in… Read More »
When learning a foreign language (or anything for that matter), the more you can interact with the material, the more likely you are to maintain focus and retain what was learned. For example, in order to improve conversation ability, the best way is clearly to have frequent real conversations with native or fluent speakers. But… Read More »
All over the internet you can find discussions about why certain languages are difficult to learn, and I have seen my share of those for Japanese language. So for a chance of pace I thought I would take the opposite angle and talk about a few things that you generally don’t have to worry about… Read More »