When it comes to students rating teachers in a classroom, one of the most common things students look at is clarity. "Did I understand what this teacher was teaching me?" "Was the teacher clear in what they're teaching?" … [Read more...]
This is the second article in a series all about "Making Japanese Obvious" where I guide you through various things that will help you to get to the point where Japanese becomes obvious. Why? Because when something is … [Read more...]
Okay, fine, so that's a picture of Captain Hindsight and not a picture of Captain Obvious, but it's still sort of the same meessage: In order to know Japanese, Japanese has to be Obvious to you. D'uh. That's pretty obvious … [Read more...]
Bob Dylan, esteemed Japanese linguist Languages are always changing. The English that you and I speak today is almost completely different than that English people spoke a hundred years ago, and it's even a little … [Read more...]
A lot of people don't know this, but the Japanese language is actually a big mishmash of several not-Japanese languages put together. At one time though, a long long time ago, the Japanese language was a slightly less … [Read more...]
Goroawase means "wordplay" but I think it's quite a bit more interesting than that. In English, when I think of "wordplay" I think of comedy's highest and most elegant form of humor: Puns. In Japanese when I think of … [Read more...]