So, you’re doing pretty well in your Japanese studies. You can now stride confidently into any Japanese restaurant and say 一つとんかつラーメンおねがいします。(Is it totally correct? Well, you won’t starve as a tourist, anyway, as long as you go into tourist-friendly restaurants.) You even proudly know that you used a kanji in 一つ. Wow! Super! And teachers give you kanji that have two or three or four pronunciations, and you’re a bit worried, but hey! You’re a language expert from birth! You can do it! And then comes the mountain. Not the mountain 山, but this: I mean, the first time I saw this, my eyelid started to twitch. If yours didn’t,… Read More
Continue ReadingExamining the Kanji (kanji form and composition)
To learn the kanji, we have to learn the following: kanji form and composition kanji pronunciations (on’yomi/kun’yomi) kanji writing This post will talk about the first one. This article describes everything very well, and was the basis for me wanting to write this post. Basically, every kanji has one and only one radical. Every radical has a meaning, some more clear than others. But acquiring an idea of what each radical means can really help in some cases when trying to figure out what an unknown kanji is referring to. If there’s only one radical in the kanji, then what are the other parts of the kanji made up of?… Read More
Continue ReadingDon’t Fear the Kanji
So, you start off wanting to learn Japanese for any number of reasons. Mine was culture and travel. Yours might be anime or movies. “How hard can it be?” you ask yourself. “It’s now almost all English words in katakana and a few connecting Japanese words, right? I can do this in 10 days, like this book ‘Learn Japanese in 10 Days’ says I can!” Photo via Good Free Photos The thing is, a lot of Japanese schools will not attempt to tell you any different. In fact, they treat kanji carefully around their beginner students, like they will render these 外国人students weak and helpless, like kryptonite. Teachers create the… Read More
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こんにちは。
[affilinet_performance_ad size=300×50] ようこそ！ I created this site to talk about learning Japanese from the viewpoint of a very poor student of it. I am going to talk about my experiences, offer some thoughts, maybe write a joke or two. Eventually, I want to travel in Japan for an extended period (2-3 weeks), and I want my Japanese to be better than survival level.
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