When studying any foreign language, there are many things one has to learn and grow accustomed to: pronunciation, grammar, and characters, to name a few. In my study of Japanese I feel that I have a fairly good grasp of many of these things, not necessarily to the degree of what I would call ‘fluent’,… Read More »
When studying a foreign language, we have no choice but to resort to dictionaries time and time again to help comprehend new words and search for ways to express ourselves more effectively. Having said that,after many years of using dictionaries as a reference, I’ve learned to not over rely on them, sometimes even going as… Read More »
Recently, I was asked by a fellow blogger (see 1994sunshine’s blog here) why I decided to learn Japanese. I thought it would make an interesting post topic so I’ll give the story here. Ever since I was young, I remember thinking that it would be really cool to speak in another language. I was brought… Read More »
When learning a foreign language, there are always times when we make mistakes, and many of those times we end up saying or doing something embarrassing, or even funny. For example, there have been times when I tell my wife something in Japanese and she says “What?” (”何？”） and then I repeat it, and she… 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 »
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 »
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 »
This time we’ll learn some age-related expressions in Japanese. Age is dealt with a little differently compared to English so it’s good to make sure you have the basics down. The simplest way to say “age” is とし（年）which also means “year”. Here are two common expressions when asking age (remember いくつ means “how many”): お年、いくつですか？… Read More »
I’m not exaggerating when I say that Podcasts are one of the most important tools for self-study, especially for experienced students of Japanese who are living outside of Japan. I’m always surprised when I mention to people I listen to podcasts and they have no idea what that means, or have only a vague clue.… Read More »
When taking a formal foreign language class, your main goal is simple – pass the class, and maybe even aim for a A. With self-study you have much more freedom to focus your energies into one or more areas. Sure, everybody wants to ‘become fluent’, but true fluency comes from a variety of interrelated skills.… Read More »