余裕（yoyuu) is a great word to learn in Japanese because it has no direct translation to a word in English with the same nuance, and also because you’re likely to hear in in daily life once in awhile. Generally speaking, 余裕 represents some sort of resource, and oftentimes it is used in the negative sense to… Read More »
The Japanese suffix ーがる is one of those things you aren’t too likely to learn about in a beginner Japanese course. You may have seen it in a advanced textbook if at all. I understand the reason for not introducing this expression until a student has more experience with the language’s fundamentals. After all you… Read More »
You may have heard there is no word for ‘foot’ in Japanese. That’s only partially true, and in this post I’ll talk about this misconception. When speaking everyday Japanese, it’s true there is no single which maps exactly to the English word ‘foot’. Generally speaking, the word あし refers to both the leg and the foot, but… Read More »
As I’ve touched on several times in this blog, one of the themes in my Japanese studies is uncovering what real Japanese is like. Not the stuffy textbook Japanese (though that’s also important in it’s own way), but things like slang expressions and other phrases you’d hear on the street or spoken by an everyday native… Read More »
In this post I’d like to discuss a few ways to express the concept of “except” in Japanese. 以外（いがい) 以外 is one of the most basic ways to say “except” in Japanese. You typically put it after a noun, pronoun, or verb. Here are a few examples: ゲーム以外のアプリはダウンロードしたことがない I’ve never downloaded an (computer/mobile) application except… Read More »
In this post I’d like to go over a few days to express the idea of “again” in Japanese language, keeping in mind the particular nuance of each. 1) “また” is a simple way to say “again”, and is pretty well known by even beginning Japanese learners due to some common expressions it is used… Read More »
In Japanese, the prefixes お and ご are used to add a feeling of politeness or respect to a word. The usage of these two prefix is defined as follows: お : used for words with the 訓読み（”kunyomi”), or Japanese reading. It is sometimes written in Kanij as 御. ご : used for words with… Read More »
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 »
In this post I’d like to discuss a few ways in Japanese to express the various shades of meaning of the English word ‘only’. First, there is だけ which one of the simplest and most common ways of expressing ‘only’ or ‘just’. Let’s see a few examples. 言ってみたかっただけ。 I was just saying. (this expression… 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 »