You may have noticed that Japanese sentences' word order are different from English. Yet, although it may sound odd to say "I Marge am", don't be discouraged about it, it is just a matter of learning Japanese sentence structure and soon it will become second nature. Remember that to Nihon-jin our word order for "My name is Marge" must be strange too! What is Nihon-jin? Nihon-jin is the way to say "Japanese person". in Japanese, to express nationality, you add the word for person, jin （ 人 ）to the name of a country. Let's take a look at some examples. 日本 (Nihon)  +  人 (jin )= 日本人  "Japanese person" in the same way: ア メリカ (Amerika) +  人 (jin )=  アメリカ人 (Amerika-jin)  "American person" イギリス (Igirisu)  + 人 (jin )= ... Show more

If you are in Japan for business or travel, or meeting you Japanese friend's family in your own country, we are sure you would love to impress your Japanese hosts. But you have heard that Japanese is difficult and a mistake can cause great confusion or trouble. Don't worry! Here we bring you some useful tips for that sucessful first meeting: "Kon'nichi wa. Watashi wa desu" こ んにちは。　わたしは です My name is . in this sentence, こんにちは Kon'nichi wa is the Japanese equivalent of "hello" and can be used at any time of day. わ たし Watashi is a polite way for males or females to say "I" or "me." は wa is a particle that follows the topic you are going to be talking about. です Desu is called a copula, and refers to one type... Show more

Can you imagine offering to buy your new girlfriend a box of "rain" while shopping in Tokyo instead of "candy?" Impressive if you can pull it off, but not much help if she has a sweet tooth! When you can hear and say the pitch properly in Japanese, you won't be caught making embarrassing mistakes! Pitch accent refers to a characteristic of language where every syllable can be pronounced with a high or low pitch. Pitch accent is considered different from the concepts of stress and tone that appear in English and Chinese, respectively. English: Stress Chinese: Tones Japanese: Pitch Some assert that English has over 30,000 syllabic sounds. In contrast, Japanese has only 111 (112, according to some linguists). There are many... Show more

The concept of long and short vowel sounds is an important concept to understand when learning Japanese pronunciation. Vowels can be lengthened, and there is a very distinct difference between long and short vowels. Note that in this lesson, a macron (small horizontal line over a vowel) denotes a long vowel that we hold for twice as long as a regular vowel. double vowels and vowel pairs Sounds like... ああ aa あー ahh いい ii いー ee うう uu うー  ooh ええ ee えい ei えー ehh おお oo おう ou おー ohh In many cases, whether the vowel is long or short will determine the meaning of the word. Let's illustrate this with some examples: かど カード kado kaado "corner" "card" in the case of kaado ... Show more

You try your hand at Japanese at the ramen shop, and ask for "plain" ramen...but your bowl comes back covered in clams! Turns our you asked for asari ("clams"); when you meant assari ("plain"). in Japanese, sometimes you will see double consonants in the middle of a word, like (kk, ss, tt, cc, etc.). Here, you need to pause in the middle as we take extra time to pronounce double constanents. As with the example of "asari" and "assari", the double consonants can really change the meaning of words, so it is key to not overlook them. Did you know about these very similar sounding words? にし (nishi)"west"  and  にっし (nisshi) "daily report スパイ (supai) "spy"  and  すっぱい (suppai) "sour" かた (kata) "shoulder"  and かった (katta)... Show more

Are your eyes failing you, or is that hiragana character tinier than the other one? In Japanese, since there is a limit of hiragana characters, there is the need for some combinations. There are in total, 33 combination sounds that are made using small ya, yu, and yo. The following are examples of these combinations: KYA KYU KYO example : きゃく kyaku ( "customer" ), きゅう  kyuu  ("nine" ) SHA SHU SHO example : しゃかい  shakai  ("society" ) ; しゅみ  shumi  ("hobby" ) CHA CHU CHO example : ちゃいろ  chairo  ("brown" ) ;  ちゅんちゅん  chunchun  ("chirp chirp" ) NYA NYU NYO example : ぐにゃぐにゃ  gunyagunya  ("crooked" ) HYA HYU HYO example : ... Show more

Because the range of syllables (spoken and written) in Japanese is limited, we cannot properly render many foreign sounds in Japanese. And as many more foreign words are used daily in Japanese, the solution was the addition of "new" katakana characters. Here are a few of the more common ones: FA FI FE FO example words: ファイル fairu ("file" ) ; フィンランド Finrando ("Finland" ) ;　 サンタフェ Santa fe ("Santa Fe" ) ;  アイフォン aifon ("iPhone" ) VA VI VU VE VO example words: ヴァイオリン vaiorin  ( "violin" ) ;  ヴィクトリア Vikutoria  ("Victoria" (name)) ;  デジャヴ deja vu ("déjà vu" ) ;  ラスヴェガス Rasu Vegasu ("Las Vegas" ) TI TU Pronounced in English as "tee" and "too." ... Show more

Have you noticed that in words like shika ("deer" ) and hiku ("to pull" ), the "i" sound is almost inaudible?  This often happens also at the ends of the grammatical endings desu and masu, which are pronounced and , respectively. We call this devoicing "i" and "u". That means that they become almost "whispered." This happens when these vowels come between two of the voiceless consonants: p, t, k, s, or h. Also, you will notice that in Japanese, there are some sound syllable sounds that don't exist. For example: "si" doesn't exist, but is replaced by "shi". "ti" becomes "chi" and "tu  which becomes "tsu" "hu" doesn't exist, "fu" is used. However, the "fu" sound is a lot lighter than in English. (To make the sound, blow... Show more

Attention Japanese learners! Details for the first round of the 2010 Japanese Language Proficiency Test have been announced. Aiming to take the test and see how your Japanese skills stack up? Find out more information here! ★ Frequently Asked Questions about the JLPT What's the JLPT? The JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) tests reading comprehension, grammar, and listening skills in Japanese. The test is geared towards those who are non-native speakers of Japanese. Until this year, there were four levels, 4 being the easiest level and 1 being the hardest. Starting this year, however, the number of levels has been increased to five (N1, N2, N3, N4, N5), with N5 being the easiest level and N1 being the hardest. N1: nearly... Show more

This Japanese All About lesson will help you navigate your way through Japanese grammar conventions. We will talk a little bit about how Japanese sentence order differs from that in English, how easy it is to form questions in Japanese, and all the other rules of English grammar you can throw out the window. Japanese is what's called an SOV language. This means the subject comes first, followed by the object, and then the verb. Remember that: the verb comes last. This is one of the biggest differences between English and Japanese grammar and one of the most important aspects to keep in mind! Tense Japanese only has two tenses: past and non-past. It's called non-past because Japanese uses the same tense for the present and... Show more