At the beginning stage of Japanese study, teachers usually would teach vocabularies with their opposite words together such as おおきい⇔ちいさい, あたらしい⇔ふるい, etc. Particularly, students need to be careful about “あつい” and “たかい”. あつい has a variety of meaning such as “hot” and “thick” with corresponding opposite words of “cold” and “thin”. たかい could be “high” […]
Have you ever thought of the difference between 重(おも)い and 重(おも)たい? This is a common question for most Japanese learners. Though Japanese seldom think about such thing, we still use it differently in the subconscious. For example, if just simply comparing which one is heavier between two pieces of luggage, people usually use 重たい rather […]
There are some sentences in Japanese that consist of the same word. However, the meaning could be quite different under different auxiliary words, location or tense. Here are some typical examples that you need to be careful. 1. ①なんでもあります vs ②なんでもありません As shown, one sentence is a positive sentence and the other one is a […]
Hi, guys! How are you? Let’s continue our topic. I hope your listening skill would be improved by using the tips here. Trap 4: changing mind In everyday oral communication, people often modify or even repeatedly correct the message that they have already said, and this communication feature is also the focus of listening […]
Hi, guys! I hope you are enjoying your weekend. For those who have difficulties to deal with the listening test in JLPT, the articles in the following two weeks might be your cure. I’m going to show you 6 types of trap that emerge in the listening test often. Trap 1: the meaning of the […]
Have you ever order the soba noodle by saying “私はたぬき”(I’m a fox.) or “私はとらだ”(I’m an eel.)? Have you ever heard any Japanese saying that? “私はxxです” is the very first expression when a Japanese lesson which is a way of self-introduction. However, how to understand the above situation? Once I have heard an interesting story. A […]
Keigo (敬語けいご) is difficult even for those who have been working in companies for a long time, in particular when answering a phone because it is not able to communicate by seeing each others’ face and body language. Undoubtedly, how people answer phone calls is very critical for the corporate image. Today, I will introduce […]
Have you ever thought about the difference among “気持ち”, ”機嫌” and ”気分”? Do you fully understand which word is the appropriate one under what situation when you want to express “feeling”? Today, I’ll show you how to distinguish these 3 words. With 3 words, “気持ち” is the word with the broadest meaning. In general, […]
In general, one of the phrases that a Japanese learner learned in the very first stage is “はじめまして”. However, in terms of Kanji, which one do you think is appropriate for this phrase: 初めまして or 始めまして? Personally, I thought it should be “初めまして”. The reason is that… well… somehow… I don’t know… it should […]
In your beginning stage of Japanese learning, I believed you had put a lot of time on the transformation between different formats of verbs such as “て形” “ます形” “受身形” etc. And I believe you would simply use the transformed verbs in a sentence without a second thought. Unfortunately, some transformed verbs cannot be directly used […]