One technique I have found useful in language learning is to find some content, whether it be reading or listening, which is a bit beyond my comfort level in terms of difficulty, and practice with it for a period of time. For this to be effective I would say it should be for at least days, ideally… Read More »
The casual English expression “by the way” is used to transition from one conversation topic into another. In this post, I’ll go over three different ways to express this type of feeling in Japanese, each with it’s own unique nuance. そういえば 「Sou ieba」 This phrase does not contain a subject and literally means something like… Read More »
The verb ことわる in Japanese, written in Kanji as 断る, is notable in that it has two meanings that are nearly opposite to one another. As usual in cases where a word has more than one definition, you need to use context to tell which is being used. The first meaning, and perhaps the more… Read More »
In Japanese, the word for ‘hand’ is written as 手 and pronounced close to the English “te” sound from “tell”. In this post I’ll talk about a few words that use this character, plus other meanings of it. To start with, in baby-speak the word “お手手” (otete) is often used to mean “hand”. The word for “wrist”… Read More »
These days I’ve been listening frequently to NHK’s 「社会の見方・私の視点」 (Societal perspective / My point of view), which is a news podcast that talks about a diverse set of topics including government, economics, world politics, business, industry, and many others. Needless to say, the Japanese is extremely high level and there are many words that you would… Read More »
In Japanese, you may have learned that the “ている” form can be used to express a state rather than an ongoing action, like ”壊れている” (broken). There is another way to express state using a noun or na-adjective, plus “でいる”. The “で” is the “te” form of “だ” (is), and “いる” is the same as in… Read More »
The Japanese particle で is one of the first particles that is typically taught, because it’s usage to mean where an action takes place, or “by means of” is pretty easy to understand. Here is one example of each: 僕は部屋でテレビを見た。 I watched TV in the room. 僕たち、バスで海に行った。 We went to the beach via bus. One… Read More »
In this post I’d like to go over the meaning and uses of the Japanese phrase “として”. Although it mean seem like this is the combination of the particles ”と” and “して”, the meaning of “として” isn’t the same as simply combining the meaning of these two. So I suggest you think of this a complete… Read More »
It’s pretty well known that the Japanese are very particular about food, which reflects on everything from cleanliness in restaurants, the difficult training required to become a chef in a restaurant, and of course the taste itself of the food. After all, the fifth basic taste, umami or savory, was discovered partially with the help of… Read More »
This time I’m going to talk about the Japanese word 後 (“あと”), as well as compounds which contain 後, where it can be pronounced “あと”, “ご”, or “こう”. I’ll start off with a useful phrase – “後で”. This matches pretty closely to English’s “later” and refers to the future in a vague sense. 後でブログを読んでね。 Check out… Read More »