If you’re just starting out with Japanese, it can be easy to fall prey to common misunderstandings. Some of these are really insidious, so that it seems as though the Japanese language was designed on purpose to confuse people. Adjectives that end in “i,” like 可愛い (kawaii, “cute”) and 素晴らしい (subarashii, “splendid”), are great examples. …
Japanese
A surprisingly common question is, “Should I learn Chinese or Japanese?” This is, equally, a surprisingly difficult question to answer. There’s a lot of different factors that would influence your decision. I’ll be covering a handful of different things, but we’ll focus on the earning aspect first. Should I learn Chinese or Japanese? …
No matter how hard you try, some phrases just don’t translate between languages. This isn’t necessarily because something is “untranslatable,” but rather because languages grow out of their cultures, which have different contexts and ways of thinking about things. One example of an English phrase that doesn’t have an exact Japanese equivalent is “sounds good.” …
Despite the best efforts of prescriptive grammarians, casual speech tends to follow its own rules. As any speaker of Japanese knows, that language is no exception. Dropped particles, flipped word order, and some truly impressive spelling changes are all a part of colloquial Japanese. The same is true in English, where words like “gonna” look …
Anime is an endless source of fascinating Japanese words and expressions. Most of the time, these come from colloquial Japanese, making anime a useful way to make your Japanese more natural. Sometimes, though, the things anime characters say don’t really make much sense. Let’s take a look at「～だってばよ」(dattebayo), Naruto’s catchphrase, and see which category it …
One aspect of Japanese that often causes difficulty for translators and students alike is how the language handles plural. You might have heard that there’s no plural at all in Japanese. While that’s not strictly true, for the most part it’s accurate. That means that, when translating into English or even understanding something in Japanese, …
A way to level up in any language is to move beyond simple sentences with conjunctions like “and” or “or.” Conjunctions, words that connect two clauses together, allow you to express complex thoughts and emotions and can make you sound much more fluent, as well. In this article, we’ll look at how to use the …
In this article we’re going to do a deep, deep dive into the Japanese education system. We’ll cover how the system is structured from pre-school to post-grad, what the classes are like, what exams there are, as well as hitting on all the major points in the history of Japanese education. For convenience sake, I’ll …
Anyone who has lived through 2020 knows that it’s sometimes hard to keep going. Indeed, occasional feelings of pessimism and negativity are a universal across all cultures. Because of this, it’s a good way to know how to encourage people when learning a new language. Let’s take a look at five ways to say “don’t …