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 »
One thing I’ve tried to be cognizant in my Japanese studies is the different nuances of each word or phrase. It is by older men, younger men, or maybe only girls? Though the dividing line between “mens language” (男言葉) and “womens language” (女言葉) is not black and white, I think there are some expressions which… Read More »
The central theme of this blog is self-studying Japanese, which means not only learning a difficult language, but doing it without much (if any) formal classes. Come to think of it, since I graduated over a decade ago I have had very few opportunities to learn in a formal class setting with a professional teacher, not… Read More »
When studying a foreign language, I’ve had all sorts of small revelations about how language works, and these are one of the things that keeps me motivated to learn even more. I remember in my first foreign language class, which happened to be for Spanish, the teacher said that “someone just didn’t sit on a hill… Read More »
Learning how animal sounds are written and pronounced in a foreign language is something that is not typically taught in textbooks, at least in most of them I’ve used (with the exception a Spanish one I used in high school). To be sure, if you meet someone on the street you are not likely going to need… Read More »
Although I’m gradually getting the hang of day-to-day Japanese conversation, I don’t any experience using that language in a work environment. My current workplace doesn’t have many Japanese people, so there isn’t much opportunity to attempt it, either. However, that doesn’t stop me from thinking about what it would be like to attempt using Japanese while working… Read More »
According to a poll I’ve been running since August 2014, the number one thing people would like more from this blog is information about Japanese Grammar. Writing about grammar is tricky since there are are many good books and websites about it, and I like to try and avoid duplicating content that is available elsewhere. So… Read More »
In the process of writing this blog, one thing I’ve discovered is that I enjoy the challenge of translating from Japanese to English. To that end, I’ve decided to put out a call for translation requests. I’m open to translating anything including portions of Manga, TV dramas, movies, novels, or newspapers. The only requirement is… Read More »
I recently got a question from one of my readers about how to increase conversation fluency in Japanese (会話力) without having someone to actually practice with. I don’t mean to dodge the question, but in all honesty without a conversation partner (話し相手）it is very difficult to reach any level of fluency. Before I go into my suggestions for… Read More »
The Japanese word “なし” (romaji: “nashi”, Kanji: “無し”) is one that I have come across now and then, but really didn’t have a thorough understanding of. So I decided to do some research and in this post I’ll report my results. (Note: I am not talking about 梨 (nashi), which means ‘pear’). “なし” has a… Read More »