Studying a foreign language, there are many times when you get stuck and just don’t know what to say. Sure, you can just mutter a “ちょっと待って” (wait) and clam up for a few seconds to think, but that would set you apart from what a native would do in similar circumstances. It’s best to give… Read More »
I’ve decided to create an email account for anyone who would like to contact me personally. Blogging is great but there are times you want to send a message to someone directly, and privately, without having to comment on one of their blog posts, and WordPress doesn’t support this. I’m open to questions on any… Read More »
Foreign language study, which can take many hundreds of hours of study and practice, is anything but a joke. But keeping things light and not being afraid to attempt a joke here or an out-of-context line there is one of the keys to increased fluency. As I mentioned in this post, language is filled with… Read More »
(Update: Six years later I’ve written another post on this topic, reviewing some of the same areas and adding new content as well. You can find it here.) It’s well known to anyone who has studied Japanese seriously that the language lacks a general concept of plurality, like English’s “-s”. However, there are some cases… Read More »
When studying any foreign language, there are many things one has to learn and grow accustomed to: pronunciation, grammar, and characters, to name a few. In my study of Japanese I feel that I have a fairly good grasp of many of these things, not necessarily to the degree of what I would call ‘fluent’,… Read More »
In a recent post I commented how bad of an idea it is to use English subtitles when watching Japanese TV shows. When doing so, your brain gets lazy and stops trying to process the stream of Japanese, or at least reduces focus on it. Having said that, there is a way to use subtitles… Read More »
も is one of the first particles that is typically taught, and with good reason. Not only does it have a variety of common uses, but they tend to be pretty easy to understand and use, unlike は／が which take considerably more time to master. Just make sure you don’t confuse も with もう (already),… Read More »
One aspect of Japanese grammar that is easy to overlook is the omission of subjects and other words which would normally be included in English. If you’re not careful about subject omission you can end up with grammatically “correct” sentences that sound awkward. Let’s start with a simple example: When I got home, my television… Read More »
”気” in Japanese, pronounced “ki”, represents something like “natural energy”, though it can also mean “air” or “atmosphere” in some cases. A similar word is used in many other Asian cultures, including Chinese (‘Chi’ or ‘Qi’), Korean, Vietnamese, and Thai. The large character pictured above is a more complex version of more the commonly used… Read More »
There is one type of Japanese reference book that I often run across in bookstores that always makes me wonder. It’s the Japanese verb dictionary which have several hundreds of pages, each containing a verb and its various conjugations. For a beginner where money is no object and you just need to double check your… Read More »