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 »
I this post I’d like to compare the two Japanese particles で and に, both which are used very frequently in everyday Japanese. I’m not going to do a thorough treatment of either particle covering all possible uses (there are many for both), but I’ll summarize a few of the most common usages. で is… 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 »
As most people who have studied a little Japanese know, じゃない is an expression in Japanese that means “is/are not” and is be the opposite of だ (the copula, or “is”). In this post I’ll go over a few different ways to use じゃない. (じゃない happens to be an abbreviation of “ではない”, though that isn’t related… Read More »
Sometimes, when you first run across a new foreign language expression your initial impression is that it’s rarely used, but days later you start seeing it crop up all over the place. The focus of today’s post is one such construct, at least for me. This expression builds off the fact that ない （無い）, which… Read More »
The Japanese word いい (also 良い or よい), roughly translated as “good,” has a variety of uses making it a “good” word indeed. It can be used to mean something that is morally “good,” of good quality, or sufficient in some way. In this post I’ll go through a bunch of ways to use this… Read More »
でしょう is one word I remember reading about in a Japanese textbook and not quite grasping it’s meaning immediately. だろう is it’s less-polite counterpart but to simplify things I’ll be focusing on でしょう for most of this article. I’ll try to explain their usage and nuances in as simple a way as possible, without resorting to any… Read More »
I recently wrote a post on usages of ‘そう’ coupled with a few particles, and I decided to write a second article with a few other things I thought of on this subject. In that post I mentioned the phrases そうだね and そうだよ, but what if you remove the だ from these? Well, the word… Read More »