While I was doing research for another project I was doing, I went down a bit of a rabbithole. I was trying to explain (and make sure I understood) the uses of voiced vs. unvoiced consonants. I found a bunch of interesting things. One was that there are some kana
I really liked the format of my last post. The use of separators gave it a flow that I haven’t yet been able to achieve in any other way, and I intend on continuing to do that. The other day, the smoke alarms in an apartment in my building started
As you might have gathered at this point, I listen to the Scott Adams podcast. He’s a pretty intelligent guy and generally I respect intelligence. Of course he has a few blind spots of his own, but he’s only human, I suppose. His opinions in theology and philosophy are generally
So, I’ve gone all over the place on this blog, and I haven’t posted about Japanese for a long time. And I kinda don’t want to, really. But this blog is ostensibly about Japanese, so, I guess I’ll write about that. I’ve lost all interest. True, if I abandon Japanese
I have mentioned several times on this blog that Ihave no idea why I’m studying Japanese. Well, dear reader, I’ve figured it out. And I may quit. My mother tells me that from a very early age I loved learning. And Iguess that’s true. But there’s something else I’ve also
I’ve been studying Japanese (to varying degrees of success) for close to three years now (I think). It’s most certainly been a while. Over this time I’ve grown to understand where Japanese is simple and straightforward – and where it’s not. Here are what, in my opinion, are the most
A couple of years ago, I was watching a Morning Musume video and saw lots of strange characters flashing along the screen, along with a bunch of gibberish. And then I thought to myself, “I would like to learn Japanese”. And thus, a goal was set. Two years later, I
Let’s face it. As a Japanese learner, Kanji are intimidating. They are this set of pictographs that really seem to have nothing to do with anything, each of them have a whole bunch of readings, all of which apply only in specific contexts. There is a sentence: 明日は日曜日です Where the
I’ve been recently learning how to do sudoku puzzles, and it turns out that I’m really good at it with the right hints, and really bad at the harder ones otherwise. But I can’t help but to find some similarities between sudoku and the Japanese language. Both of them –
I’ve been using Wanikani lately I’ve gotten to level 5, and it’s actually a little frustrating. You have to get the radicals/kanji/vocabulary right a specific number of times, spaced out over months, before they consider the item “burned”, and you don’t have to see it again. And they dole out