In Japanese there are a few expressions which are close equivalents to English “never”, and in this post I’ll go over a few. If you want to express the concept of “never” in Japanese, you can keep things simple and just use the negative form of a verb. Literally, this is close to “~will not”.… Read More »
Due to a request from one of my readers, in this post I’ll be talking about the Japanese expression “to mo” (とも), which has a variety of uses. First, “to mo” can be used to mean the particle “to” along with the particle “mo”. I won’t be going over either of these particles in great… Read More »
The Japanese particle “wa” in Japanese (written “は”) is a fundamental part of the language and is used very frequently, although it can difficult for students to learn since there is no direct parallel in English (see my blog post on “wa” and “ga”). To give a quick summary, this particle is used to establish the topic… Read More »
Recently one of my readers asked about the difference between the Japanese expressions “node” (ので）and “kara” (から), so in this post I’ll go over that. Both of these words are roughly equivalent to the English “because” when used in the following patterns: [dictionary form verb/i-adjective] + から (ex: 食べるから、寒いから) [noun/na-adjective]… Read More »
Learning the basics of a foreign language, while a time-consuming activity, is generally relatively straightforward: memorize the alphabet(s), pronunciations, grammar rules, and of course loads and loads of vocabulary words. With these fundamentals under your belt, you’ll surely be able to express a great many things in that language. The challenge comes when you want to… Read More »
In this post I’d like to go over a few ways of expressing in Japanese that two things are the same or similar. To begin with, the word 同じ (onaji) is one of most basic ways of saying “the same”. Sometimes in spoken language it can be pronounced as “おんなじ” (on’naji). This word is a bit odd grammatically because… Read More »
The word “koso” in Japanese, usually written in Hiragana as こそ, isn’t exactly a frequent word in Japanese, nor is it necessary in order to express most things in the language. However, there are a few common usages which are good to learn, regardless of your level, and you may even be able to employ a… Read More »
Oftentimes, words and phrases break out of the boxes that define their literal meanings and become something more. “Yokatta” (よかった) is the past test of the word “ii”, which means “good”, and therefore “yokatta” means “was good”. Since subjects are often omitted in Japanese this phrase can mean “it was good” or can refer to… Read More »
Last year I wrote about the ~garu suffix in Japanese, and have seen a few hits to that article since apparently it is a fairly common question for student of Japanese. Just the other day I had said to my wife the following phrase: 僕はそれ、ずっと懐かしがってた (boku ha sore, zutto natsukashigatte ita) Upon which, she showed… Read More »
In Japanese, there are several ways of saying “why” and “how”. In this post I’m going to go over a few of the more common ones and discuss a few exceptions. Starting with “why”, we have the following expressions, each with it’s own nuance. なんで (nande) – basic “why”, slightly informal nuance (Kanji: 何で) どうして (doushite) –… Read More »