The way I learned Japanese conjugations for the potential form of “eru/iru” verbs was to remove the stem and add ~られる。All other verbs involve removing only the last character and then adding a character with the same consonant, but with a え sound, (for example く would change to け ) followed by a る. Potential (可能)… 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 »
Thanks to all who have taken my first test on basic particle usage in Japanese. I was looking through it again and realized that question #7 had the wrong answer (I had は but it should be が). I had went over the test twice before publishing it, and not sure how that error got… Read More »
It’s hard to believe, but I started this blog on WordPress exactly a year ago, on Dec 1, 2013. Although there were some periods where I didn’t write very often, overall I managed 170 posts, which translates to almost one every two days. Given my busy schedule I’m still amazed I found the time to… Read More »
In a recent poll of mine there was many responders who said they wanted to learn more about Japanese grammar from this blog. While there are many sites and books out there that have a great deal of useful information about Japanese grammar, I thought I would write a post that looks at grammar from… Read More »
The effectiveness of foreign language practice depends on part on how pressing of a need there is to communicate and understand correctly. When speaking with a native or fluent speaker of that language, there are all sorts of emotions that get engaged and one usually tries his or her hardest to comprehend and speak in… 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 »
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 »
I’m not exaggerating when I say that Podcasts are one of the most important tools for self-study, especially for experienced students of Japanese who are living outside of Japan. I’m always surprised when I mention to people I listen to podcasts and they have no idea what that means, or have only a vague clue.… Read More »
ひらがな、よめますか？ If I could go back to the time when I first began learning Japanese and change one thing, it would be to learn the hiragana alphabet as fast as possible, and avoid romaji (the romanized version of japanese script) like the plague. This is something I’ve seen expressed on other Japanese-learning web sites and… Read More »