Blog - How To Learn Japanese

Sound Words

What’s that sound?   When you study a new language, you always learn the proper way of communicating. But when you learned your mother tongue, you learned to express yourself, in good ways and bad!   Each language has a special way of expressing specific ideas and feelings: that particular . . . 
Read More . . .

I (more pronouns)

Me, Myself and I   As I explained before, there are many words for “you” in Japanese. And, as you could expect, there are many words for “I”.   Of course, English has a few as well. The difference is that the words in English are different for grammar reasons. . . . 
Read More . . .

You (the pronouns)

Hey you!   As I said in a previous post about suffixes, when I first came to Japan, I never heard the word for “you”. The funny thing that is even though the word for “you” isn’t used much, there are actually several different words!   You あなた (awe naw . . . 
Read More . . .

Adjective Tenses

Adjective Tenses   The grammar of different languages can be quite different indeed! The title of this article is ‘Adjective Tenses’ not ‘Verb Tenses.’ The reason why is that in Japanese, not just the verbs have tenses!   Gooded??   In Japanese, there aren’t as many verb tenses as in . . . 
Read More . . .

Suffixes

And you are…? San, Sama and Other Suffixes   When I first came to Japan, I really couldn’t speak any Japanese. There were some words that I knew. Armed with potential, I went out into public. What I didn’t realize was that my thought process was hopelessly English.   One . . . 
Read More . . .

Suffixes, Past and Polite

Verb Endings   In most languages, to express things such as tenses, the endings of verbs are often changed. But not all languages do that and not all languages have all tenses. For example, English doesn’t actually have a future tense. Verbs cannot be changed to indicate that something will . . . 
Read More . . .

Plurals

Plurals   Plurals aren’t really a part of Japanese. In fact, many Japanese people that I have met just can’t seem to grasp the concept of why we need to add an “s” to so many words in English. Of course, I can’t imagine communicating without it (Although I do) . . . 
Read More . . .