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Japanese

Why Does One Study Japanese?

I’m sure there are many different motivations. Some people study Japanese because they love anime and manga.  That is not why I study Japanese. Some people study Japanese because they want to go to Japan.  That is not why I study Japanese. Some people study Japanese because they love the culture.  That is not why I study Japanese. Some people study Japanese because they want to find a Japanese partner.  This is not why I study Japanese. Some people study Japanese because it’s difficult.  This is not why I study… Read More »Why Does One Study Japanese?

Cadence

The fundamental difference between English-like languages and Japanese-like languages is the word order.  The other differences are important, but I think it’s this difference that requires the most change in mindset. English is a prepositional language.  This means that the particle-equivalents come before that which they are to modify.  For example,  “I am going to the store”.  “to”, in this case, is prepositioned – it is positioned before the part of speech that it is going to modify – namely, “the store”. Japanese is a postpositional language.  The particles come after the part of speech… Read More »Cadence

Culture and Humanity

As a gaijin, which literally means “outsider” or “outside person”, our exposure to Japanese culture is almost always initially through their media in some way.  Either anima, manga, J-pop, or some other type of media that Japan has spread throughout the world.  And make no mistake, Japanese media and culture is amazing. It seems, though, that people who stop there tend to have two generalized reactions.  One is to tend towards otaku or weeaboo – people who are obsessed with Japanese pop culture to the point of it being unhealthy.  The other are people… Read More »Culture and Humanity

The Japanese Mind

I went to Kinokuniya yesterday here in Austin, and found several interesting books.  One is called “Japanese Respect Language”, which I intend to read at some point soon.  One is “Read Real Japanese”, which is a reader of six stories of increasing complexity, with notes as to things that may be challenging.  The third was “The Japanese Mind”, which I find to be the most interesting book of the three so far. It is a series of about twenty essays, each of which discusses a different aspect of Japanese culture. … Read More »The Japanese Mind

Why Japanese is Hard

I was thinking this morning, on my day off for Independence Day here in the US (while waving a flag and shooting off fireworks while drinking beer and saying “hold mah beer and watch this”) about why Japanese is so hard.  I was rather lamenting in my head about something I’ve been harping about in previous posts – how there seems to be no one resource that actually tells you what you need to know about Japanese and you kind of have to piece it together from a bunch of… Read More »Why Japanese is Hard

Still plugging along…

I feel as if, if I even come close to mastering Japanese, I’ll be able to learn any other language I want.  Japanese is hard. Crazy hard. But I keep encountering ways to look at it that make it easier, and sometimes it feels like you just kind of have to luck your way into learning these things, as there seems to be nowhere that has everything you need in one place.  Every site or book seems to have parts of it, but you have to spend months just piecing… Read More »Still plugging along…

大丈夫

Learning Japanese has been frought with challenges – I mean it’s been really, really difficult.  I think one of the reasons is the scattershot nature of the resources I’ve been using to learn.  They all seem to emphasize something different, and each advertises itself as the only resource I’ll ever need. That is, of course, bull-pucky. But the word that is the title of this post is an example of why I feel this way.  大丈夫.  Pronounced “daijoubu”, this word seems to be one of the most commonly used words… Read More »大丈夫

The Genius of Kanji

I think I understand now why kanji have lasted as long as it has. Today, I saw a kanji pair.  気楽.  It means “relaxed” or some such.  The kanji by themselves mean “mood” and “comfort” (in this context).  I thought they were pronounced “kigaku”, but I looked it up and realized it was “kiraku”. But here’s the thing – I haven’t forgotten how to pronounce the word!  I forgot several times, but then I just think of the two kanji, and then I know how to pronounce it. So the… Read More »The Genius of Kanji

Post in Japanese #1

Hi all.  I am going to try to write a weekly post in Japanese, mostly to address the issue in “Crisis of Confidence“, which I wrote about earlier.  It will have a lot of mistakes and I will need to look a lot of things up.  Feel free to correct.  The point is just to do it no matter what.  Honestly, it will probably take me a long time to write this, as I refuse to use Google Translate except to check that my work is halfways intelligible… 🙂 こんいちわ。私は日本語学生です。私がとても恥ずかしいい日本語をかいてます。… Read More »Post in Japanese #1

What Exactly are Kanji?

I think one of the most difficult things for a westerner to wrap their minds around is kanji. I don’t mean memorizing the kanji or their readings, but exactly what they are in the first place. We think of them as words, but I don’t really think that’s what they are, not really.  I think they are, instead, concepts, and those concepts are represented as logographs.  But I think you don’t really directly translate a kanji.  I think you take the concept that the kanji represents, crystallize a contextual meaning… Read More »What Exactly are Kanji?