Japanese Language

Here are some thoughts that I have had while translating documents from Japanese to English. Language is not absolute, so feel free to disagree with my ideas. False Friends バックナンバー –> Back Number We say “back issue”, not “back number”. If you do an internet search for the words “back...

The title of this entry explains why my job is not being threatened by machine translation. At least, not yet. Because it starts endeavoring to the offer of the service which you can be satisfied also in the future, with everyone, something understanding Services of the postal savings which it...

I’ve been studying Japanese for a few years and have made a few study aids to help me along. I’ve got tons of them, but it may take me a while to get them all online. I hope you find them helpful. Feel free to leave a comment and tell...

Here are some materials that I prepared to help my friends pass Level 4 of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. (Note from Shaney: These files may be outdated now as the requirements recently changed. However, they should still serve as a good foundation for learning basic Japanese.) Full List of...

All those zeros confusing you? This wee chart should help. Japanese English ゼロ(zero), 零(rei) 0 zero 一(ichi) 1 one 十(juu) 10 ten 百(hyaku) 100 hundred 千(sen) 1,000 thousand 万(man) 10,000 ten thousand 十万 100,000 hundred thousand 百万 1,000,000 million 千万 10,000,000 ten million 億(oku) 100,000,000 hundred million 十億 1,000,000,000 billion...

In Japanese, place names are almost always written in katakana, but occasionally you will see a place name written in kanji. Also, sometimes the first character is used as an abbreviation to refer to a specific country. For example, 豪ドル means “Australian dollars”. (If you find any others that I...

Do you suffer from music store amnesia? You think about the albums you want to buy all the time, and then when you actually manage to get yourself to a store, you completely forget what you wanted to buy? This kind of thing happens to me all the time —...

Verbs 1. Present Plain Verbs (Aff, Neg) V, V+nai 2. Past Plain Verbs (Aff, Neg) V+ta, V+nakatta 3. Present Polite Verbs (Aff, Neg) V+masu, V+masen 4. Past Polite Verbs (Aff, Neg) V+mashita, V+masen deshita 5. TE form 6. Verb + te kudasai 7. Verb + nai de kudasai 8. Verb...

The one hundred poems collected in the Hyakunin Isshu are an important cultural treasure in Japan, both for the beauty of the Heian era poems themselves, and also for the creative interpretations shown in the Edo period artwork that is now almost synonymous with the poems. However, while they can...