Language isn’t always about finding the one right way to say something—it’s about understanding why different expressions exist in the first place. A simple rice paddle labelled with both 立つ and 立てる becomes a window into how grammar, nuance, and perspective shape meaning in Japanese.
Reporters need to tread a fine line to get the news in the public interest out there, but also avoid liability in the form of defamation actions or other legal trouble. Japanese news, especially when reporting on crime, is characterised by a highly cautious tone. This cautiousness is not just…
If you’ve ever tried learning Japanese, you might have stumbled across a fascinating aspect of the language that leaves many learners both amused and bewildered: words that that fall under various linguistic labels such as phenomimes and onomatopes. Phenomime: A word or phrase that mimics a certain physical form or motion Onomatope:…
One recurring grammar area that I find I have to revise with almost all my students is transitive and intransitive verbs. I’ve done a few blog posts and videos on them which you can find here, here and here. It’s an area of Japanese that I struggled with, but on…
In Japanese there are a bunch of grammatical forms that you see in a textbook, but their usage in real life can be quite different. Today we’re going to look at 使役「しえき」, which are called causative verbs. I was never one for linguistics, so it’s easier for me (and you!)…
Introduced at around the N4 level for the JLPT, the ようにしている grammar is extremely useful in a wide variety of expressions, but we’re going to look at some specific usages of this referring to habits and making effort to do things. 習慣的にしていることをいう表現An expression that refers to what you are doing…
The te form is one of those topics that so many Japanese learners never get past. It involves some funky table, or a song, and it can’t really be translated into English. It ends up being the graveyard for many a Japanese learner. To spoil the ending, I never really…
This is a N4 grammar point that is often one of the trickier ones for people to get their head around. However it is so common in Japanese that you would do well to learn it as it will be used in a wide variety of circumstances, including all the…
から から can be used grammatically in certain ways to show reasons for something, basically acting as ‘because’ or ‘so’: 人とロボットが一緒に働く時代だからこそあらためて考えたい安全のことBecause it is the era where humans and robots work together, we need to rethink safety https://monoist.atmarkit.co.jp/mn/articles/2012/11/news046.html オフィスチェアメーカーだから伝えたい。Because we’re an office chair maker, we want to inform you. https://www.bauhutte.jp/bauhutte-life/chair-mat/ This…
Compilation of common Japanese Counters 助数詞 for beginners・intermediate/highschool/JLPT N5, N4 and N3. I’ll be covering the following counters: 円, 冊, 人, 名, 枚, ページ, 頭, 匹, 足, 台, 階, 歳, 杯, 個, つ, 羽, 本, 点, 泊. I reference a few webpages in this video, I would really recommend you…