Blog - How To Learn Japanese

Learning Japanese on Your Own

by David Ockey Learning Japanese on your own can seem like a daunting task. But it is possible. I know, because starting in 2003, that’s exactly what I did. I had taken Japanese classes at California State Universtiy – Fresno, but they didn’t do it for me, so I had . . . 
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Teaching English in Japan.

Why would you want to? For people who have an interest in Japan, learning Japanese is a dream. But learning Japanese is hard. Truthfully, textbooks and typical courses don’t prepare you for learning to communicate in Japanese. One of the biggest points is that they push the “proper” or polite . . . 
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What to do when you can’t understand.

When Japanese people learn English, they are taught to say, “Could you repeat that please?” or “Could you speak more slowly, please?” Consequently, when we learn Japanese, we are taught to say the same kind of things. Sounds like a good idea, but there’s just one problem: it doesn’t work. . . . 
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Particles (a brief explanation)

A Simple Explanation (Video) Particle Explanation は (HA) (pronounced WA) is the topic marker. It tells you what the sentence is about. There is no English equivalent. 私 は(topic) アメリカ 人 です。 Watashi WA amerika jeen dess. (I am an American.)[literally: I America person is.) が (GA) is the subject . . . 
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Japanese Particles

Particles In English, word order of a sentence is very important. Not just the basic subject, verb, object order, but also things like prepositional phrases. For example: I saw the lady on the train. On the train, I saw the lady. It’s not an important point for the story, perhaps, . . . 
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Why we don’t use the alphabet to teach you Japanese words

Why no use of the alphabet for Japanese words (romanization) When studying a new language it’s always fun to learn those first few words. It feels exciting and adventurous. However, as the phrases grow so too grows the difficulty in remembering. By far, however, the most difficult part has to . . . 
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Classifiers (how to count things)

Classifiers or Counters   In Japanese, they use a type of grammar word called a counter or classifier. This way of speaking exists in many eastern Asian languages.   In English and many other languages, there are ways to indicate plural. For example, one person two people. In Japanese, that’s . . . 
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