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Dogen — The Early Years

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(I was going to title this post “My Hero Academia”, but that would get angry anime fans leaving nasty comments. So I didn’t.) So what is his background? How did he achieve mastery over pitch accent? Did he achieve mastery over pitch accent? Let’s answer the last question first. Native speakers on YouTube have confirmed how good his Japanese is. So how did he get this expertise? Basically, he started back in undergraduate university. He began in Washington, and then got to study in Tokyo. He also decided to only focus on native pronunciation in his studies. This kind of laser-like intensity paid dividends, at the cost of maybe being… Read More

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Some new Japanese Learning Resources

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You know how it is, you find things on the web, and things find you. So I’ve added two more resources to the Japanese Learning Resources page. I’ve rejoined WaniKani. Out of a host of kanji self-study resources, it’s the one that works best for my mind. The problem is that it only works online, so when I’m traveling the subway tunnels, I use the Android Japanese Kanji Study app to reinforce knowledge. There is some overlap in the way they present kanji, but everyone seems to think there is some perfect order to learn these in. I’m happy to be a bit confused while studying, because that means my… Read More

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Google Translate and You

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Google Translate. The lazy person’s way to language. Full of errors, especially with non-Western languages. A waste of time for the serious student. Well, anyway, that’s what I used to believe. Now, I don’t believe it so strongly. (All the following is based on what I do in Android. I’m sure something similar can be done in iOS.) Here’s what I currently do when I get a sentence from a Japanese person on HelloTalk that I can’t figure out. First of all, I copy and paste it into Jota+, because sometimes a really tiny Kanji that gets a bit bigger in my text editor suddenly becomes comprehensible. If that didn’t… Read More

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Why doesn’t Maggie Sensei get more Love?

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I just realized today that every time I’ve done a search for a piece of Japanese grammar, and Maggie Sensei’s site comes up, I always get super useful content from her everytime. She explains everything clearly, gives lots of examples, and has bonus dog pictures! Today I looked up the grammatical meaning of との, and there it was, a complete list of all the particles that could be used with の , lots of clear examples, and a dog picture. Also today, I finally noticed she has a Patreon, and I subscribed immediately. I don’t have any affiliation with her, other than being a satisfied Internet user of her services.… Read More

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This Word is Rare

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So I’ve already written about how I’m using the Android app Aedict as my main Japanese dictionary. It’s really handy, acts as a simple translator, but, it has one feature I can’t understand. It (like every Japanese-English dictionary I’ve seen) uses Jim Breen’s dictionary data as the source of all the words. And, it gives a “rarity” for each word I have looked up on it. I questioned some of the rarities before, but today I really had to check what was going on. I was typing out a reply on HelloTalk to someone, and I wanted to check that I was spelling こちらこそ correctly (no doubled vowel sounds anywhere),… Read More

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Sweet YouTube Japanese Drama

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No, not a professional production. It’s Japanese From Zero versus a fan of All Japanese All The Time (AJATT). I like Japanese From Zero. I haven’t really looked at the printed materials that George Trombley puts out, but his videos are always informative. His explanations are clear, and he definitely knows his spoken Japanese very well. Then there is a guy called Matt, who runs the YouTube channel Matt VS Japan, and is a fervent disciple of the AJATT method. I don’t know a lot about AJATT, beyond the fact that its website reads like it was written by a dude bro who is trying to sell me insurance. As… Read More

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Interesting Japanese Grammar/Vocabulary Site

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So I’m working on a small written project with the help of a Japanese person. And I got a correction of a sentence, with the following added at the end: かよ (Well, I’ve gotten a lot of corrections, but this is the one that triggered this blog post.) So I did the Google search on “kayo particle”, and out of the list of hits, I came across one for Nugalis. This is a Spanish-run site, apparently not updated since August 2016, going by the last News item on the site. But it listed かよ in the Grammar section, with the explanation (sentence-ending particle expressing doubt) It looks like they have… Read More

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