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 165
To Iu and Quoting in Japanese: Saying What Someone Said
Half of ordinary conversation is repeating what somebody else said or thought. Japanese does that with one small particle and a strict rule about the form that comes before it.
14 min readKoto ga Aru: Talking About Your Experiences in Japanese
Koto turns a whole verb phrase into a thing you can talk about. Four short patterns built on it let you say what you have done, what sometimes happens, what you can do, and what you have decided.
13 min readNagara and Tari: Doing Two Things in Japanese
Nagara joins two things you do at the same moment. Tari picks a few examples out of many. Between them they carry most of what a beginner wants to say about a busy day.
13 min readJapanese Commands and Prohibitions: The Full Register Scale
Japanese has a command form, and almost nobody uses it on you in ordinary conversation. Learn where each level of the scale genuinely lives so you can understand a shouted order without ever producing one by accident.
14 min readHazu, Wake, and Beki: Expectation and Logic in Japanese
These three endings all get translated as should, and they mean three completely different things. Sort them once and you gain the vocabulary of expectation, explanation and principle in Japanese.
17 min readWatashi, Boku, Ore: Choosing How to Say I in Japanese
Japanese gives you several ways to say I, and each one tells the listener something about who you are and how you see the room. The most useful skill, though, is knowing when to say none of them.
15 min readHow to Say You in Japanese Without Sounding Rude
Textbooks teach anata as the word for you, then Japanese speakers spend all day avoiding it. Here is what they use instead, situation by situation.
15 min readDo You Really Need to Learn Kanji? An Honest Answer
Kanji is the part of Japanese most learners quietly avoid, and for some goals that avoidance costs nothing for months. For other goals it stops progress within weeks. This is the honest split.
17 min readOn and Kun Readings: Why One Kanji Has Many Sounds
A kanji is a meaning with several possible sounds attached, and choosing between them is not guesswork. There are clear patterns, and you can learn them from words rather than from reading lists.
16 min readHow Many Kanji Do You Need to Read Japanese?
There is no single number, and the honest answer depends entirely on what you want to read. This guide replaces the number with a set of goals and tells you which one to aim at first.
14 min readWhy Japanese Has Three Writing Systems
Three scripts in one line looks like an accident of history, and partly it is. It is also the mechanism that lets Japanese be read without spaces, and it is worth understanding early.
13 min read100 Most Common Japanese Verbs With Example Sentences
A few dozen verbs carry most of everyday Japanese. Learn them with their group and their particle attached, and you can build sentences instead of collecting words.
18 min readPractical guides
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