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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

Quick LinksWelcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary We start with Alberto's haiku calendar for March. It's lovely, as always, but there's one difference this time; he's the one who wrote the haiku! お疲れさまでした! (Otsukaresamadeshita! Good job!)   See the comments section for his explanation of this haiku. Now we'll return from the ethereal haiku world and come back down to earth with a thud! In an ongoing investigation of 激 (GEKI, hage(shii): violent, intense, agitated, sudden), I've come across a sample sentence with the following translation: When the flight crew has the aircraft under control, everything is working normally, and yet it still crashes into the ground, that's CFIT. Really? You call that CFIT?... Show more

梅一輪　一輪ほどの　暖かさ　　　　服部嵐雪 厳しい寒さの続く日は、春の暖かさが待ち遠しいものです。そんな気持ちを表わした俳句を紹介しましょう。 作者の嵐雪は、松尾芭蕉の優れた弟子の一人に数えられ、江戸時代に活躍しました。彼の代表作が冒頭に示した一句です。意味は、「梅の花が一輪咲いた。冬の寒さがほんの少しやわらぐように、その一輪の梅にほのかな春の暖かさを感じるなぁ」。 日本三大随筆の一つである『枕草子』に、清少納言は次のように記しています。「木の花は、濃きも薄きも紅梅（木に咲く花としては、濃い色であっても薄い色であっても赤い梅が素晴らしい）」。現在、春をイメージさせる花としては桜が有名ですが、昔は春の花の代名詞といえば梅でした。奈良時代に成立した『万葉集』にも、桜より梅を詠んだ和歌が多く残されています。 丸みを帯びた花びらの形は可愛らしく、白、ピンク、赤といった色も気持ちを華やかにしてくれます。さらに、春風に運ばれて漂ってくる香りもまた、古来から人々に愛されてきたようです。冬枯れの風景の中、まだ新芽も顔を出さない寒々しい木々の合い間に、そっと花を開く梅。「春告草（はるつげぐさ）」という別名を持つ梅は、私たちが気づかない季節の移り変わりを教えてくれる花なのです。 ================ A single plum flower, a single flower's worth of warmth   Ransetsu Hattori During the continuing intense coldness, one can't wait for the warmth of spring. A haiku... Show more

This Japanese All About lesson will teach you about the three types of artistic scripts that make up the written Japanese language, kanji, hiragana, and katakana, and the roles they play in putting together sentences. The Japanese writing system uses two syllabic scripts, known separately as hiragana (ひらがな) and katakana (カタカナ) and collectively as kana (かな), as well as thousands of Chinese characters known as kanji (漢字). Each script serves a different function. Hiragana: grammatical elements and for words that do not use kanji (or for words where the author doesn't know the kanji). We use the hiragana syllabary for two types of words; okurigana (送り仮名), which are inflected verb and adjective endings; and for grammatical elements... Show more

Every month, we are giving away great JapanesePod101.com prizes to 4 lucky listeners. Sign up to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or JapanesePod101.com to be eligible to win. Increase your chances of winning by following us on all four sites! Here are February's winners: Facebook: Andrea Youtube: Jaydub1810 Twitter: zmdane JapanesePod101.com: xylose See your name here? Email us at contactus@JapanesePod101.com to claim your prize. Check back next month for March`s winners!

Quick LinksWelcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary If you had to draw "violent," what images would you use? Maybe you'd think back to the board game Clue: Colonel Mustard committed the murder in the billiard room with a rope, whereas Mrs. Peacock used a lead pipe in the conservatory. Or maybe your mind would turn to machine guns, bombs, and other tools of warfare. Here's something you may not have considered: water. Water! It's all around us, but I've long neglected to use it as a weapon! And yet, as I've learned from one kanji, water leads to violence. So much for washing away one's sins! I've overlooked not only the violence inherent in water but also the water () inherent in violence: 激 (GEKI, hage(shii):... Show more

凩…この漢字を見たことがありますか？　何と読むのでしょうか。 ヒントは、冬に関係のある漢字であること。さらに、字形をよく見てください。「風」という漢字に似ていますね。 答えは「こがらし」。一般的には「木枯し」と書き表します。 「こがらし」とは、冬の初めに木々の葉を払い落としながら吹く、冷たく強い北風のことです。「凩」の字は「国字（こくじ）」に分類され、中国で作られた漢字にならって、日本で新たに生み出された漢字です。要するに、和製漢字ですね。こがらしとは、「木を枯らすように吹く風（几）」なので「凩」という字形が考え出されたのです。 正月の遊びに使う「凧（たこ）」も国字です。「風（几）」の中にある「巾」は「布」という意味です（「布」という漢字の中にもしっかりと「巾」が含まれていますね）。「風を受けて舞い上がる布」＝「凧」なのです。 では、「風が止まる」と書く「凪」という漢字はどう読むのでしょうか？　これは「なぎ」と読みます。朝夕に風が止まる状態や時間帯を「朝凪（あさなぎ）」「夕凪（ゆうなぎ）」と呼びます。 このように、ことば遊びや連想ゲームにも似た感覚で作り出された国字。友人に、「この漢字、読める？」と教えてあげるのも楽しいですね。 ===== Have you ever seen the character 凩? How do you read it. A hint: it's a kanji related to winter. Also, please look closely at the character's formation. It looks like the character 風 (kaze), "wind",... Show more

In today's All About Japanese lesson, we'll share some background about Japan and its native language and boil it down to bring you the top five reasons to learn Japanese-not the least of which is the fact that Japan is the world's second largest economy! Background of the Japanese Language It ranks in the list of the top ten languages based on number of native speakers, with around 130 million people speaking Japanese as their native language. The most well-known dialect is Kansai-ben the "Kansai dialect," which is spoken throughout the Kansai region of Japan. The Kansai region refers to an area in western Japan that includes major cities Osaka and Kyoto. The Japanese written language consists of three alphabets:... Show more

Many of our readers are probably familiar with Valentine’s Day, and even celebrate it in their home country. Valentine’s Day probably conjures up images of hearts, red roses, Valentine candy, and maybe even the cute little Valentine’s Day cards you used to exchange in elementary school.  But do you know how Valentine’s Day works in Japan? The Japanese Valentine’s Day has its own set of unique customs and rules that set it apart from the holiday celebrated around the world.  First of all, while in western countries it is common for both men and women to give gifts on Valentine’s Day, in Japan, the gift-giving is left strictly to the women. Girls and women give chocolate (either handmade or store-bought) to a significant other or someone... Show more

Quick LinksWelcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary As you may know, 知恵 (chie: to know + wisdom) is "wisdom" or "intelligence." And we've seen that 袋 (TAI, fukuro) can mean "bag." Given that, what do you think the following represents? 知恵袋 (chiebukuro)     wisdom (1st 2 kanji) + bag My cynical side takes over and imagines a wind bag who won't shut up about everything he claims to know. Not at all. The first definition of "wisdom bag" is literally "bag full of wisdom," and another meaning is "someone who devises a solution when others have no idea what to do": 知恵袋 (chiebukuro: (1) bag full of wisdom; bag containing all the world's wisdom; (2) person who is a fountain of wisdom; brains (of a... Show more