One day in the middle of January, I woke up in the morning with an idea in my head for a new way to learn foreign languages. In the next month and a half, I spent many late nights and weekends working on a prototype for the site, which is now ready for a limited alpha… 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 »
There are several verb suffixes used in Japanese which are used to represent something is easy or difficult. [verb in “pre-masu” form] + づらい => hard to do “verb” [verb in “pre-masu” form] + にくい => hard to do “verb” [verb in “pre-masu” form] + やすい => easy to do “verb”… Read More »
A common theme of this blog (as well as my personal studies) is how to experience “real” Japanese in all its forms, without actually living in Japan. By “real”, I mean not just watching Anime or reading Manga, but rather experiencing Japanese that an everyday person would be using. Focusing on too many fantasy-oriented resources won’t… 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 this post I’d like to discuss a few ways to express probability and possibility in Japanese. I think most of you already know about some of the more basic ways to express uncertainty in Japanese, for example: かもしれない (sometimes abbreviated as かも） (じゃない) かな でしょう (discussed here) たぶん These all can be used to… Read More »
“~て＋ある” is one of those expressions that doesn’t really have a directly translation in English, but once you grasp what it used for you may find what it can express quite useful. It is made using the て form (“食べて”、”歩いて”、”話して”、etc.) plus the word “ある” which means for something to physically exist, or be in a… Read More »
I recently got a request from someone asking for usage and example sentences of the Japanese expression まし, so I thought I would write a brief post on that topic. まし is used when you want to express something is not great in an absolute sense, but relatively better when compared to something else. You… Read More »
For me, one of the attractions of studying and becoming fluent in a foreign language is the concept of thinking in a language other than my native tongue. I’m not talking about just speaking in a foreign language without first forming the thoughts in one’s native language, but also the ability to follow a chain… Read More »
Foreign language study, which can take many hundreds of hours of study and practice, is anything but a joke. But keeping things light and not being afraid to attempt a joke here or an out-of-context line there is one of the keys to increased fluency. As I mentioned in this post, language is filled with… Read More »