A common theme of this blog (as well as my personal studies) is how to experience “real” Japanese in all its forms, without actually living in Japan. By “real”, I mean not just watching Anime or reading Manga, but rather experiencing Japanese that an everyday person would be using. Focusing on too many fantasy-oriented resources won’t… Read More »
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 »
In this post I’d like to discuss a few ways to express probability and possibility in Japanese. I think most of you already know about some of the more basic ways to express uncertainty in Japanese, for example: かもしれない (sometimes abbreviated as かも） (じゃない) かな でしょう (discussed here) たぶん These all can be used to… Read More »
One thing that has always struck me as surprising is the large number of homophones – words with the same pronunciation – in the Japanese language. Those new to Japanese typically discover this by looking at the number of dictionary entries for a given pronunciation, or number of kanji conversions when hitting spacebar while typing. In… 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 »
In Japanese, there are three alphabets used together, and each has it’s own set of uses. Let’s go over each of them briefly before we talk about how this trio impacts the language. Hiragana: This alphabet is the most basic and is the first alphabet that Japanese children learn. Any word can be written with… Read More »
I ran across this quote online, credited as a “Japanese proverb”. ”Vision without action is a dream. Action without vision is a nightmare” I did some searching around and couldn’t find any reference to the original Japanese or the originator of this phrase, so I decided to post on Oshiete Goo in Japanese. You can… Read More »
In this post I’d like to discuss a few ways in Japanese to express the various shades of meaning of the English word ‘only’. First, there is だけ which one of the simplest and most common ways of expressing ‘only’ or ‘just’. Let’s see a few examples. 言ってみたかっただけ。 I was just saying. (this expression… Read More »
普通 (ふつう)、which is generally translated as “normal”, is an convenient word with several uses. I’ll go over a few of the more common ones in this post. One of the simplest ways to use this word is by treating it as an adjective, by adding a の on the back end of it. 普通の人は夜遅くまで日本語の勉強をしないでしょう！ A… Read More »