One of the tricky things about running a language-learning blog is deciding what to write about. When I first started this blog back in December 2013, I mostly intended to act as support for those learning Japanese without necessarily getting too involved into detailed explanations about fundamental grammar structures that might already be covered elsewhere in… Read More »
Due to a request from one of my readers, in this post I’ll be talking about the Japanese expression “to mo” (とも), which has a variety of uses. First, “to mo” can be used to mean the particle “to” along with the particle “mo”. I won’t be going over either of these particles in great… Read More »
In a recent post I discussed how I had seen a phrase “Advilがありますか?” (“Advil ga arimasus ka?”) in a book, and upon further research confirmed it was not a natural usage of the particle “ga”. I had posted to Oshiete Goo and received an excellent response which discussed why it was unnatural. Since then, I’ve… Read More »
In this post I’m going to go over the Japanese particle “さ” (sa) and a few related words. さ is something that took me quite some time to understand, partially because it wasn’t emphasized in any of the textbooks I originally learned Japanese from. I understand authors deciding to avoid this word because it not used very… 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 »
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 »
In this post I’d like to look at the particle combination で＋は = では (pronounced ‘de wa’) and the related word じゃ (ja). To a certain extent, the various usages of “では”can be understood by taking a sum of the usages of で and は when used separately, but in some cases thinking in this… Read More »
In my second mini quiz (Japanese particles で and に), there was one question which was answered incorrectly more than half the time, so I’d like to review it in this post. (If you haven’t taken the quiz yet, you can do so here: testmoz.com/450945) The problem goes like this: 今晩、床「 」寝る 今晩：こんばん tonight 床：ゆか floor… Read More »
I got feedback from one of my readers that sometimes differentiating between で and に can be difficult, so I made a mini 8-question quiz to test everyone’s knowledge in this area. You can take it here: testmoz.com/450945 If you’d like to review before the test, you can see this post of mine which goes over the… Read More »
For my short quiz on Japanese particles, there was one question which was not answered correctly nearly half the time. In this article I’d like to go over that problem which appeared as #3 in the quiz. (For those who want to take the quiz before reading the answer and explanation, you can do so here: testmoz.com/449328)… Read More »