You may have heard there is no word for ‘foot’ in Japanese. That’s only partially true, and in this post I’ll talk about this misconception. When speaking everyday Japanese, it’s true there is no single which maps exactly to the English word ‘foot’. Generally speaking, the word あし refers to both the leg and the foot, but… Read More »
The Japanese suffix 〜的（てき）is extremely useful and will help you understand many existing Japanese words, as well as act as a tool to create your own. The simplest way to understand this suffix is to see that it turns nouns into (Na) adjectives. 劇（drama) => 劇的 (dramatic) 政治 (politics) => 政治的 (political) 教育… Read More »
I’m extremely happy to say that Self Taught Japanese has reached it’s 100th post! A big thanks to everyone who has liked, followed, commented, or re-blogged my posts. First, I’ll give in to my penchant of analyzing blog statistics and talk about how they have changed for this blog between it’s 50th post and now. My first… Read More »
“っぽい” is a very useful expression that has three main usages. Expressing the tendency to do something っぽい can be used to express the tendency or high chance of doing something, and is generally added to the end of a verb in the pre-masu form. Though you can try using it with any verb, initially you should… 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 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 »
“~て＋ある” is one of those expressions that doesn’t really have a directly translation in English, but once you grasp what it used for you may find what it can express quite useful. It is made using the て form (“食べて”、”歩いて”、”話して”、etc.) plus the word “ある” which means for something to physically exist, or be in a… Read More »
As most people who have studied a little Japanese know, じゃない is an expression in Japanese that means “is/are not” and is be the opposite of だ (the copula, or “is”). In this post I’ll go over a few different ways to use じゃない. (じゃない happens to be an abbreviation of “ではない”, though that isn’t related… Read More »