I’ve written before about how it’s hard to grasp a word’s true meaning and usages just by looking it’s dictionary entry. There are often subtle nuances or assumptions missing. This time I’d like to talk about one such case. 湯 (“yu”, sometimes written as お湯, “oyu”) is a word which means “hot water”. I had… Read More »
When learning a foreign language, once you learn the basics you should always strive to be humble and never assume you have a perfect understanding. This reminds me of the expression “油断大敵” (yudan taiteki) which translates to something like “careless is your worst enemy”. In other words, letting your guard down for just a moment… Read More »
Often Japanese particles can be combined, with this example of 4 particles sandwiched together (ならではの) one of the most extreme cases. Usually the meaning of combining two or more particles can be partially guessed by thinking of it as a sum of the meanings of each particle, but there is often some extra nuance that creeps in.… Read More »
As part of my daily commute I’ve been listening to various Japanese podcasts from NHK’s podcast series Suppin. I usually get into one of them, and listen to it exclusively for a few weeks until I’ve heard every episode. With Gen’s modern Japanese corner, things started out badly because after listening to an episode or two I felt totally… Read More »
This time I’d like to talk about a few uses of the Japanese verb 限る (kagiru), which means “to limit”. The first use is to mean “not necessarily”. Here is an example sentence. 美味しいとは限らない It’s not necessarily tasty Literally 限らない is close to “do not limit to”, but in this case the meaning matches up… Read More »
I recently received a comment about translating a certain phrase, and I thought I would make an article to discuss it. “After that time, I decided that I don’t want to see him again by any means.” I think a fairly natural Japanese translation for this would be the following: “その後、彼とは二度と会いたくないって決めた。” As with most translations,… Read More »
In this post I’d like to review some of the ways to represent “truth” in Japanese, and as you’ll see there are quite a few. The most common one to know for everyday conversation is 本当 (hontou). This can be used as an adjective or as an adverb. In the latter case に is often added.… Read More »
In today’s post, I’ll be introducing a phrase you’ll not likely to learn in a Japanese textbook or class. Japanese, like English, has it’s fill of words to describe someone being mentally slow. You’ve surely heard of “baka”, but there others such as “manuke”, “noroi”, “usuratonkachi”, or even “kyouki”. Each of these has their own… Read More »
An embedded question is when a sentence contains a question inside of it, for example “I don’t know where Japan is”. Sentences with embedded questions can be declarative statements like that example, or instead can be questions themselves, as in “Do you know where Japan is?”. An example of a non-embedded question would be the… Read More »
In Japanese, differences in position, experience, and age are considered very important and are built into the language itself in the form of words that indicate where someone is with respect to others. This concept is expressed in the terms 先輩 (senpai), which refers to someone older or with more experience, and 後輩 (kouhai), which… Read More »