As you may already know, Japanese has three different alphabets: Katakana, Hiragana, and Kanji. Many words are written in only one of these scripts (ex: カタカナ、ひらがな、漢字), and using a split of Hiragana and Kanji is required when writing verbs (ex: 食べる). However, occasionally one sees a noun also written this way, such as “子ども”. Why not just… Read More »
In a previous post, I’ve discussed how Japanese has less curse words than languages like English. There are a few, however, which can pack quite a strong meaning, and in this post I’ll be talking about one such word – “yabai”. “yabai” originally means “dangerous” (equivalent to Japanese “abunai”) or a bad situation. 警察はやばい仕事です。 Police officer is a… Read More »
For today’s post I’d like to focus on the Japanese expression “kke” (っけ) which is typically used at the end of a sentence, and signifies that the speaker/writer is trying to remember something. For example: 今日は何曜日だっけ？ What day of the week was it again? This expression can be used when you are talking to yourself in an… Read More »
Translation of text from one language into another, in particular of a novel or short story, has been an interest of mine for quite a long time. It’s my belief that to be a superb translator, one has to have been brought up speaking both languages, or at least spent 5-10 years in a country… Read More »
Japanese pitch accent (something I’ve written about before) is tricky because each word has a different combination of up and down pitches, and sometimes the accent of one word can affect a word immediately after it. To make things even more complicated, different regional dialects of Japanese have very different patterns of accents – for example… Read More »
Being really into the grammar aspect of languages, when I first began studying Japanese I read any grammar-related book I could get my hands on. Particles, little words that pack a great deal of meaning, are integral to Japanese and also alot of fun to learn. Usually one starts with something simple like “を” (‘wo’,… Read More »
I’d like to wish a Happy New Year to everyone and best of luck with whatever foreign language(s) you are studying, if any. I’m always curious to learn more about those who read my blog, and it helps me customize the content to fit my audience. With that, I’ve created a poll that focuses on… Read More »
Japanese is filled with many slang terms and there are entire dictionaries documenting these, so if you search you can quickly fill up on hundreds of slang words. So I typically don’t focus an entire post on a slang term unless I hear/use it frequently enough to warrant such a treatment. The word 微妙 is… Read More »
Japanese, like many other languages, has a large set of terms to refer to different family members (お姉さん, お兄さん, etc.). One special thing about these words is that many of them can even be used to refer to a non family member, including someone you just met on the street and are meeting for the first… Read More »
In any basic Japanese textbook you likely be taught about the ’こそあど’ words, which refer to something that is ‘close’ (either emotionally or physically), ‘far’, ‘very far’, or ‘uncertain’ (respectively). For example, the below set of four are probably the easiest to grasp as a beginner: これ – this それ – that あれ – that… Read More »