Japanese learning blog
Practical guides on speaking, grammar, pronunciation, listening, and study planning, written for learners who want to use Japanese in real life.
All articles · Page 151
Spoken and Written Japanese Are Not the Same Language
Learners who study from books often speak in sentences that are entirely correct and unmistakably written, which is its own kind of accent.
7 min readListening While You Speak Japanese Without Losing Track
You stopped listening the moment you started planning your answer, which is why you missed the end of their question and answered the wrong one.
7 min readHow to Prepare for a Specific Japanese Conversation
You have one important conversation in Japanese on Thursday, and the useful preparation is not the same as ordinary study.
7 min readDo You Need to Lose Your Accent in Japanese?
Nobody needs to sound Japanese, but everybody needs to be understood, and those two goals ask for very different amounts of work.
7 min readPractising Japanese Speaking on Your Commute
Forty minutes twice a day is more Japanese time than most learners get anywhere else, and almost all of it goes into silent reading that does nothing for speaking.
7 min readJapanese Conversation Topics to Handle Carefully
Most awkward moments in Japanese conversation come from topics that are perfectly ordinary where you are from, and from questions you thought were friendly.
7 min readJapanese Mistakes That Accidentally Sound Rude
The mistakes that get you corrected are rarely the ones that matter; the ones that matter are the ones nobody mentions.
7 min readWhen Japanese People Switch to English on You
You opened in Japanese, they answered in English, and the conversation you were going to practise with has quietly disappeared.
7 min readWhen to Switch to Casual Speech in Japanese
Staying in polite Japanese with someone who has become a friend is its own kind of distance, and learners often stay there for years.
7 min readHow Japanese Speakers Simplify Their Japanese for You
The Japanese spoken to you is not the Japanese spoken around you, and the gap explains why you understand your friend perfectly and understand nothing on the train.
6 min readWhat to Do When You Run Out of Things to Say
The conversation did not stop because your Japanese failed; it stopped because you answered the question and had nothing queued behind it.
7 min readHow to Practise Speaking Japanese Outside Japan
Living outside Japan does not stop you learning Japanese, but it does quietly remove the one thing that makes speaking improve.
7 min readPractical guides
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