Michael Cooper's blog

After reading my previous blogs in this series, you’ve got a feeling for some basic Japanese.

Maybe you’re even experimenting with sentences. This next post is intended to fill in some of the blanks that were necessarily left out for simplicity’s sake. After all, Japanese is still a fairly complicated language and there are a lot of things to cover. While I haven’t been able to cover all of them, this next section should tie a few concepts together and help you along in your study. First, we’ll go over some vocab...

Thus far, you’ve learned the basics of constructing sentences in Japanese. You know that when making a sentence, you must follow a subject-object-verb formula. You also know that Japanese uses particles and these particles follow the words they modify rather than precede them. Finally, you know that the subject, topic, or object must be denoted by particles such as wa (subject), ga (topic), and o (object). For example...

Japanese vocabulary is not particularly hard to learn.

The steadily increasing exposure to Western culture after the Second World War has resulted in a large vocabulary of borrowed words, albeit in a heavily Japanized form. The native Japanese vocabulary isn’t particularly difficult, especially once you get used to certain sentence structures. For questions, of course, you can use a sort of template to make sentences using different vocabulary...

You may already be aware that there are two types of Japanese – polite and plain. Formal and informal. Casual and black tie, if you will. When studying travel guides and other tourist literature, chances are that all of the Japanese you see there is in polite form. It’s extremely easy to tell plain and polite apart. First, a little science...

Beginners to the Japanese language don’t often realize how simple it is to pronounce.

The voicing of sounds in words follow a regular set of rules, and using them you can quickly figure out the pronunciation of a word without even having to hear it. The only time pronunciation becomes difficult is in advanced word forms, due to the quick repetition of one particular sound.

That said, let’s take a look at the basic rules for Japanese pronunciation...

Let’s say that you’ve just decided to start learning a new language.

Let’s also say that language is French, simply for the sake of an example. So, you head on over to the local bookstore and buy the biggest book on French you can find. It’s huge, maybe around 800 large pages, and really makes you feel that you’re about to accomplish something. Or, maybe it intimidates you simply due to its sheer size and comprehensiveness. "How can I possibly learn all that?" you wonder.

This, however, is the wrong question. The question you should be asking is...

Let’s take a look at the basics of Japanese grammar. First, and most importantly, Japanese is a Subject Object Verb language, or SOV. Conversely, English is a Subject Verb Object, or SVO language. An example of this in English is “I ate dinner.” In Japanese, however, you would say "I, dinner, ate," or...

When learning a language, or any skill for that matter, the most important rule to follow is daily study.

Maybe you’ve heard this many times, and perhaps you chose to ignore it. After all, your weekday schedule is busy and there’s no way you can fit in anything else, much less something “boring” such as studying languages. Many people would rather spend a few hours on the weekend, when they’ve got the time. Days off are relaxing, and theoretically more conducive to learning and deep thought. Plus, an entire day can be spent studying away. While this may be a great way to build a deck, it’s not really all that great for picking up a language...

When asked to name the most difficult languages to learn, most people would rank Japanese pretty high on that list. On the surface it seems to be an intimidating language, what with its strange kanji characters, quick mode of speech, and varying levels of “politeness.” What a lot of people don’t realize is that basic Japanese is actually relatively easy, and for at least three reasons...