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learning japanese (Page 4)

Why is the Japanese kanji for “four” so frustratingly weird?

The history of the first kanji that makes many learners of Japanese want to pull their hair out, and why their initial guess isn’t entirely wrong.

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Learn kanji with the magical power of poop!

 

These new textbooks are the shit, you guys.

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Brain Gymnastics Quiz: Move one matchstick to create the name of a Japanese Prefecture

Find out how you can create the name of a prefecture simply by moving just one of these matchsticks.

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One simple kanji character in super-simple Japanese sentence has five different pronunciations

Amazing versatility shows the depth and difficulty of the Japanese writing system.

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W.T.F. Japan: Top 5 myths about learning Japanese【Weird Top Five】

Japanese is a crazy language, but not for the reasons you might expect. Read More

Only one out of five Japanese people can pronounce these hiragana — can you?

Wait, what? These weren’t in chapter one of Genki….

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Two months into his job, the feline Palmerston is already looking to expand his outreach to a global scale.

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Why does Japanese writing need three different sets of characters? (Part 2)

We’re back and ready to take on the third, and most puzzling, type of Japanese text: katakana.

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Why does Japanese writing need three different sets of characters? (Part 1)

No, it’s not because the Japanese language hates you.

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Offbeat learning aid has Japanese travelers cracking up even before the aliens makes their appearance.

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Seven mistakes foreigners make when speaking Japanese—and how to fix them

Master these and you can convince anyone you’re a native Japanese speaker…over the phone anyway.

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The top 10 hardest Japanese words to pronounce – which ones trip you up?【Video】

In terms of pronunciation Japanese is surprisingly easy to get to grips with, but some words can be real tongue-tanglers! Here are 10 of the worst!

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RocketNews24’s six top tips for learning Japanese

Love Japan? Want to learn Japanese? Check out RocketNews24’s six fundamental top tips for learning Japanese!

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Learning Japanese? Beware these 19 loan words—they’re not what they sound like!

Speakers of certain languages sometimes get a leg-up when learning Japanese. For example, Japanese includes Chinese characters, which means Chinese speakers can often get the gist of a text even if they don’t understand the grammar. Similarly, Korean speakers might find that Japanese grammar is kinda similar to theirs. And we native English speakers get a huge helping hand from the hundreds of English loan words that have been adopted into modern Japanese.

But sometimes, these loan words aren’t really our friends at all. Instead, they’re what’s known as false friends – words that sound similar in two languages yet have a completely different meaning. In co-opting English words into Japanese, sometimes our crafty Nihonjin pals have assigned our words to things that actually mean something totally different. It’s almost like they’re trying to trick us!

Join us for a quick primer on some Japanese loanwords you might have heard before, and what they really mean!

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Learn Japanese with us and this website of nothing but swimsuit model selfies

So today, we’d like to talk about a website called Jigadoribu. We won’t beat around the bush, it’s a site full of pictures of swimsuit models. And to all those of you who haven’t immediately skipped to the photos after reading that last sentence, thank you. Your display of self-restraint is an inspiration to us all, especially if you’re in the office, as this isn’t the sort of thing you want to be reading at work.

Sadly, our bosses won’t pay us for features that consist entirely of the phrase “And check this girl out!” repeated a dozen times. Likewise, we imagine you’d have some explaining to do should someone peek over your shoulder and see you perusing this article. So, as we did before, we’re going to mix appreciation of the female form with a little Japanese language lesson.

Let’s start with vocabulary word number one: jigadori, or selfie.

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