Japanese learning blog
Practical guides on speaking, grammar, pronunciation, listening, and study planning, written for learners who want to use Japanese in real life.
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Answering Unexpected Questions in Japanese
You prepared for the questions you expected, and then somebody asked something else, and the whole rehearsed structure evaporated.
7 min readHow to Speak in Longer Japanese Sentences
You can say a lot of short, correct Japanese sentences and still sound like a beginner, because real speech joins ideas rather than listing them.
7 min readMemorised Phrases or Improvising in Japanese?
A memorised phrase is the fastest Japanese you will ever produce, and the most brittle: it works perfectly until the conversation asks for the version you did not learn.
7 min readJapanese Minimal Pairs: Hear and Say the Difference
If two Japanese words sound the same to you, they will sound the same when you say them, and that is where most persistent pronunciation problems begin.
7 min readHow to Say a Lot With Beginner Japanese Grammar
The sentence you cannot say is almost never blocked by grammar you have not studied. It is blocked by insisting on the English version of the thought.
7 min readWhat to Do With Your Japanese Speaking Mistakes
Most learners collect corrections and never look at them again, which is why the same mistake survives a hundred conversations.
7 min readSpeaking Japanese in Chunks, Not Single Words
Native speakers are not building every sentence from scratch, which is why they are faster than you even when the grammar is simple.
7 min readBuilding Stamina for Long Japanese Conversations
Your Japanese was fine for the first twenty minutes and then it collapsed, and the reason is not that you forgot it.
7 min readHow to Plan the Next Japanese Sentence While Talking
The gap between your sentences is where fluency is won or lost, and it exists because you only start planning once you have stopped talking.
7 min readTalking About Abstract Topics in Japanese
You can describe your weekend fluently and go silent the moment somebody asks what you think about something, and the gap is not vocabulary.
7 min readJapanese Drills or Conversation: How to Split Your Time
Learners who only drill can produce perfect sentences nobody asked for, and learners who only converse repeat the same errors fluently for years.
6 min readHow Often Should You Practise Speaking Japanese?
Two hours of Japanese once a week and twenty minutes five times a week are not the same investment, even though the totals look similar.
7 min readPractical guides
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