Author Archives: taekk

というか、I have to go

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A friend of mine from college spoke in the most interesting fashion because she could seamlessly weave Japanese and English together in the same sentence. She would say things like, 「Meは行かないけど、Youは？」, which amused me to no end.

You see, she had attended American School in Japan, a school filled with students completely fluent in both Japanese and English, so I guess there was no problem speaking in a hybrid language that only 1% of the world’s population would understand. I know, it sounds like a great school to send your kids to because they will become bilingual automatically. The only problem is, unless you’re a diplomat or simply rich, spending a little less than $20,000 a year for tuition might be a bit tough on your wallet.

Anyway, to finally get to the point of this whole spiel, my friend and a bunch of us were chatting in the language lab when she suddenly realized that she had to leave. She promptly left the scene after saying (much to my delight) “というか、I have to go.”

Now, what did she mean by 「というか」 and why didn’t she just say, “I have to go” instead? How does adding that extra phrase change the meaning of the sentence? I previously discussed how to use 「と」 and 「いう」 to talk about the very thing itself. In this post, I’ll try to give you an idea of what 「というか」 means and when to use it.

Ok, to finally get to the point

「というか」 attaches the question marker 「か」 to 「という」, so it’s reasonable to assume that a questioning element is being added here. In fact, 「というか」 is used in order to indicate that you want to rephrase or express the same thing in a difference way. Literally, it means “I might say this or something else (in order to express what I’m trying to say) ” This expression is obviously the most useful in actual conversations when you might say something and want to rephrase yourself in mid-sentence. The order goes like this: [the first expression]というか[the same thing rephrased].

それは、良くないというか、やばくない？
– Isn’t that not good, or to rephrase, serious shit? (read about やばい)

As you can probably tell, this phrase is great for when you’re not sure how to phrase something like the following example.

Ａ：みきちゃんは、あんたの彼女でしょう？
– Miki-chan is your girlfriend, right?

Ｂ：う～ん、彼女というか、友達というか、なんというか・・・
– Um, you might say girlfriend, or friend, or something…

That last example was very hard to translate but it should make perfect sense if you understand the fact that he is rephrasing how he defines Miki and adding the question marker 「か」 to show uncertainty.

This phrase is especially useful for people learning how to speak Japanese because I’m sure you’ve experienced plenty of times when you didn’t know the exact word for something in Japanese. With this phrase, you can throw out several alternatives that kind of get at what you’re trying to say.

というか、I have to go

Going back to the original question, why did my friend add 「というか」 when saying just, “I have to go” would have been perfectly fine? I think it’s important to realize that she was in the middle of a conversation at the time. Essentially, she wanted to rephrase what she was talking about in order to correct it into the fact that she had to go. In effect, this is equivalent to saying, “Hey, what am I talking about? I have to go.”

By using 「というか」, you can backtrack and correct things said earlier and at the same time imply, “Hey wait a minute, that’s not it!” This is especially the case when everything has already been said and you are starting a new sentence with 「というか」.

In other words, 「というか」 can also be used to correct yourself or others by rephrasing what has already been said.

Ａ：他の女と付き合っているらしい。
– I hear that [he’s] going out with some other woman.

Ｂ：というか、それは単なる浮気でしょう！
– That’s just another way of saying [he’s] cheating!

This is the second of three posts discussing 「言う」.

The first post discussed “Defining things with 「いう」“.
The third post is about “Various ways to say 「いう」“.

日本語教科書の落とし穴

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I briefly mentioned 「日本語教科書の落とし穴」, an interesting book I recently picked up while killing time at a bookstore. I’m very cheap so it’s very rare for me to spend 2,000 yen on a book and actually feel happy about my purchase but this is definitely one of those books.

「日本語教科書の落とし穴」 is very interesting because it describes common pitfalls that occur from teaching textbook Japanese. This book focuses on that delicate area of Japanese where something should be correct, but upon hearing it in real-life, one is left feeling that something just isn’t quite right.

The book explains it like this.

実際の言語運用においては、言語の構造以外にもいろいろなことに気を配らなければなりません。
（省略）
学習者は教室で教えられたとおりに文を作っているのに、その文が実際の発話としては不適切になる場合があるわけです。

これらの不適切性は、初級段階では不可避の面があるとはいえ、決して放置しておいてよいものではないでしょう。文脈や場面から切り離された抽象的な「文」が作れるだけではなく、特定の文脈・場面の中で具体的な「発話」を適切に行い、相手の意図もくみ取ることができて、初めて、その言語が取得できたと言えるはすです。

Each chapter starts with a short conversation between a teacher and student. In each conversation, the student says something that should be correct according to standard textbook material. However, because of either social or contextual subtleties not explained in textbooks, what the student says ends up being incorrect. I’ve already used one of these conversations in the previous post.

Each chapter starts with a conversation like the following.
L：先生、どうぞ座ってください。
T：どうもありがとう。でも、「どうぞお座りになってください」や「お座りください」と言う方が丁寧ですよ。
L：はい、わかりました。
（数日後）
L：先生、どうぞ推薦状を書いて、あ違った、お書きになってください。
T：？？
L：(あれ？丁寧に言ったのにな）先生、どうぞ推薦状をお書きください。
T：こういうときには、「書いていただけませんか」という言い方がいいですよ。
L：はい（う～ん、難しい）。
（数日後）
L：先生、疲れているようですから、どうぞ座っていただけませんか？
T：？？（う～ん、難しい・・・）。

The rest of the chapter provides explanation on where the problem lies and provides suggestions on what the teacher should do to help correct her students. It’s obvious from reading the explanations that the authors has given a great deal of thought on aspects of Japanese that native speakers usually never consciously think about and how it causes confusion for non-native speakers. If you’re interested in finding out where the problem lies in the conversation above, get the book!

Because the entire book is in Japanese and geared toward people teaching Japanese, I highly recommend this book for advanced Japanese speakers interested in teaching Japanese or simply in learning more about the intricacies of the language.

There are a lot of good topics contained in this book and I will be going over some that caught my eye in future posts so stay tuned!

Defining things with 【いう】

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The verb, “to say” is an useful word in probably just about any language. However, 「言う」（いう）, the Japanese word meaning “to say”, is practically essential because in addition to the simple action of gabbing, it is also used to define or describe things. In this post, I will go over how to combine the 「と」 quotation particle with 「いう」 to define things.

I remember back during my tender years in Japanese 101, one of the first phrases I learned was 「”XXX”は、日本語で何と言いますか。」, which means “How do you say “XXX” in Japanese?” (I’m not talking about porn here, the “XXX” is a placeholder for any word.) Of course, at the time, it was written more like 「”XXX”は、にほんごで　なんと　いいますか。」 because exposing Japanese 101 students to kanji would instantly render them blind. Anyway, my point is that this is one of the first expressions we dutifully memorized and already it uses grammar that involves the 「と」 quotation and 「いう」.

While the 「という」 combination, of course, can be used to quote things people actually say, it can also be used to describe what something is referred to as.

彼は「はい」と言いました。
– He said, “yes”.

「ライブドア」というサイトは知っている？
– Do you know the site referred to as “livedoor”?

There is no good way to translate this usage directly into English so we have to settle for similar expressions such as “referred to as”, “called”, or “known as”. This method of defining things can be mighty handy when you want to ask about definitions of words in Japanese. For instance, here is conversation from 「日本語教科書の落とし穴」, a book I will be talking about in another post.

L: 田中先生、名字は何ですか。
T: 名字は田中ですよ。
L: ？・・・名字は何ですか？
T: ？？？

The problem here is that the student wants to know what 「名字」 means but ends up asking, “What is [your] last name?” What he really wanted to ask was, 「名字というのは何ですか。」, which means something along the lines of, “What is the thing referred to as 名字?” or more literally, “What is the thing that’s said 名字?”

Basically, this grammar is used anytime you want to talk about the thing itself.

日本人はお酒に弱いというのは本当か？
– Is it true that Japanese people are weak to alcohol?

As you can see in this example, the thing that is being discussed is the actual phrase 「日本人はお酒に弱い」 itself and whether it’s true or not. Here’s another similar example.

朝ご飯を食べないというのは、あまりよくないですよ。
– The thing of not eating breakfast is not very good.

In this fashion, the 「という」 is defining the very action of “not eating breakfast” and describing it.

You can also combine 「こう」、「そう」、and 「ああ」 with 「いう」 to define things in general. In this case, you do not need the 「と」 so you end up with 「こういう」、「そういう」 and 「ああいう」 to means “things like this”, “things like that”, and “things like that (far away)” respectively.

A: 眠くて、学校に行く気が全然なかった。
– I was sleepy and didn’t feel like going to school at all.

B: そういう時、よくあるよね。
– That kind of time occurs a lot, huh?

The reason why you hear 「って」 all the time

If you’ve spend any length of time speaking in casual Japanese, you may have noticed 「って」 being used all the time. That’s because 「って」 is an all-in-one, magical casual abbreviation for 「と」、「という」、「というのは」、and 「とは」. Because 「って」 is so short and flexible, you end up wanting to use it basically anytime you want to talk about the thing itself.

A: マイクが呼んでいるよ 。
– Mike is calling you.

B: マイクって、誰？
– Who is this “Mike”?

A: まだ仕事が決まってないんだ。
– The job has yet to be decided.

B: 就職活動って、大変だよね。
– The “finding job” thing is tough, huh?

Conclusion

As you can see from the examples, using 「という」 and its casual counterpart 「って」 to define things is a vital part of the Japanese language. Sometimes, it’s optional; for times when you want to emphasis that you are talking about the thing itself. Other times, like the 「名字は何ですか」 example, it might be required or else you end up saying completely different. In either case, 「という」 and 「って」 is very useful whenever you want to define and talk about the topic itself.

To see if you truly understand the distinction between using and not using this grammar, try out these neat questions from 「日本語教科書の落とし穴」 .

１．
ちょっとそこの雑誌を取ってくれませんか。
（Ａ：雑誌は／Ｂ：雑誌って）これですか？

２．
あ～、のどが乾いた。（Ａ：冷たいビールが／Ｂ：冷たいビールって）飲みたいな～。

３．
この（Ａ：チョコレート／Ｂ：チョコレートって）、お子さんにあげてください。

Feel free to post your answers in the comments. I’ll be waiting!

This is the first of three posts discussing 「言う」.

The second post is about “Using 「というか」 to rephrase things”“.
The third post is about “Various ways to say 「いう」“.

For those completely new to Japanese

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I hope you enjoyed my attempt at humor in the previous post about Japanese. As promised, here’s a more serious description of what Japanese is like to give you an idea of whether you really want to board this handbasket. If you are completely new to Japanese and don’t have the faintest clue what Japanese is all about, this post is for you.

So you want to learn Japanese

So you are interested in learning Japanese for some reason; you like manga/anime, you’re family is Japanese, you think Japanese men/women are hot, whatever. But you have no idea how Japanese works. How does the writing system work? What about all those Chinese characters? How should you go about studying it? Is Japanese impossible to master?

Relax. First of all, Japanese is no more difficult than learning any other language. However, I’m not saying that learning Japanese is easy by any means. Learning any foreign language basically means re-learning everything you know in a different language. Take all the knowledge from a typical 12-year education along with all cultural information that you are exposed to everyday, and you have a hefty job on your hands.

The writing system

First of all, you are going to need to master a completely different writing system which consists of hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Hiragana is a phonetic “alphabet” consisting of 46 characters and can be mastered in a few weeks. The same goes for katakana as well, because it is essentially the same thing but with different characters. Its main purpose in modern Japanese is to distinguish words that have been imported from a foreign language such as “Internet” or “email”. While things like extended vowel sounds, the small 「ゃ、ゅ、ょ、っ」, etc. might require a bit of time getting used to, mastering hiragana and katakana is not too difficult. And since they are both completely phonetic, you never have to wonder how to pronounce words like “sangfroid”.

The third aspect of the writing system is kanji, which is the Japanese word for Chinese characters. While every word in Japanese is pronounced with the phonetic sounds in hiragana and katakana, most words are written in kanji. You need to learn about 2,000 characters to be able to read most of Japanese. A lot of people panic upon hearing that they have to memorize 2,000 characters but I think it actually makes things easier in a sense. Let me explain.

The hardest part of learning a language is memorizing the 20,000 some words an average adult has accumulated in his or her native language. If you were learning English, this would mean you would have to memorize the spelling and definition of 20,000 separate words, many of which have similar spellings but are totally unrelated. With Japanese, if you learn how to read and recognize just 2,000 characters, it will help you learn a bulk of the Japanese vocabulary which are simply combinations of these characters. In fact, while studying vocabulary for both the GRE and the JLPT, I found that memorizing Japanese words was much easier than memorizing English words and easier to retain thanks to kanji.

Learning how to write all these words with the correct characters is, I must admit, a very, very difficult task. However, in the age of computers, you’ll find that you rarely have a chance to write by hand. And if you’re stuck, you always have hiragana to fall back on.

Japanese grammar

Every complete idea or thought in Japanese ends with an action. Everything else that comes before describes the who, what, where, etc. but everything concludes to the action. This means that you are going to need to change essentially the way you think in order to naturally express yourself in Japanese. The rest of the sentence is put together by particles that define what role each word is playing in the sentence. In English, sentence ordering often define the role each word is playing such as the sentence, “The boy hit the ball” vs “The ball hit the boy” However, in Japanese, because particles describe the role of each word and attach directly to the word that it applies to, sentence ordering is a lot less strict than English.

Another significant difference in Japanese is the large amount of information that is implied by context. For example, if I wanted to know whether you ate or not, the conversation might go like this.

Me: Ate?
You: Ate.

This is a difficult adjustment for English speakers and they often have a habit of constantly specifying the subject because it’s required for English. However, in Japanese, the subject is usually left out unless there is no way the listener could know what the subject is. This “less-is-more” philosophy of Japanese makes grammar a great deal easier in Japanese. This means that you never have to worry about singular-plural, gender, or subject agreement. Verb conjugation is relatively straightforward as well. All verbs are divided into two main categories with only two exception verbs (most of the time). Conjugation is also very consistent and systematic based on the two main categories so I think it’s fair to say that Japanese grammar is much easier than most romance languages.

Politeness levels

Japanese, unlike many languages, have different levels of politeness. While the borders are not nearly as clear-cut, you can roughly divide the levels of politeness into three levels: casual, polite, and honorific/humble. Casual speech is used for your peers and friends while polite language might be more appropriate based on age, social status, and level of intimacy. Honorific/humble forms are used for very formal situations. While polite conjugations are very straightforward and should present little difficulty, honorific/humble language is more difficult because you have to consider social status relative to your position in deciding whether to refer to someone as honorific or humble. For example, your own actions will require the humble form, while those of people above you will use the honorific form. But even people above you will be referred to in the humble form if you are addressing somebody who is above them.

However, the use of honorific and humble forms are quite limited in regular day-to-day conversations, confined mostly to the service industry such as restaurants and stores. In short, politeness levels are an important additional level to learn but is not too big an obstacle once you get the hang of several fairly simple conjugation rules for the polite forms.

Pronunciation

While the basic sounds are very easy, when you put them all together, you will most likely have some form of an accent. That’s because Japanese pronunciation is made up of high and low tones and you need to get the ordering of the pitches right in order to sound natural. The pitches are so important that sometimes Japanese people will look at you with a puzzled expression and finally say, “Oh, you’re saying that word!” and say essentially the same word you were saying all along.

You may be wondering, “Can I ever really sound like a Japanese?” It depends to some extent on how old you are and how good your ear is. If you are already an adult, you need to have good ears and skills at mimicking the way other people talk. So far, I know two people who started learning Japanese as an adult yet still have a perfect Japanese accent, so it’s definitely possible. One of them is a Harvard grad and the other a Rhodes scholar but don’t let that get you down.

Conclusion

As you can see from this broad overview, Japanese, just like any language, is very easy in some respects and difficult in others. The greatest difficulty for English speakers is bridging the large gap between English and Japanese and adjusting yourself to the way Japanese people think. And just like any language, because of the sheer volume of information you need to learn, mastering Japanese will, at times, seem like an impossible task and you will feel discouraged and frustrated along the way. However, if you persevere, I think you’ll find the effort well worth it.

If you’re interested in learning more about Japanese, I suggest you check out my guides to learning Japanese.

You think Japanese is hard?

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So you think Japanese is hard?
Many of you have already seen this amusing description of the difficulty of Japanese. Well, here is my counter-argument of why Japanese is so much easier than English

Why Japanese is approximately 1.342×10^6 times easier than English
So you’re all bruised up from having engaged in a 2 hour royal rumble match with your Japanese teacher in which you failed to convince her to curve your grade even after 2 DDT’s and a Moonsault off the top rope. Well, what you need realize is that you’re a big sissy (yes, you) for not realizing just how easy Japanese is to learn. But after reading this, you’ll understand why your massive beer drinking is the root cause of your bad grade and not some intrinsic difficulty of the language.

1. Pronunciation is easy because Japanese people have a tongue disability
Japanese people can only make about 102 sounds. No, really. As a result, it’s incredibly difficult for Japanese people to correctly pronounce other languages. This is why simple English words like, “TV” sounds like “terraybi” in Japanese.

On the other hand, much to your benefit, pronouncing Japanese is a cinch. Unfortunately, your brain has been so thoroughly messed up by English that for some reason “karaoke” looks like “kery-okay”. I mean look at the word “thoroughly”, just look at it. Does the spelling make any sense? So the next time you ask in Japanese, “Where is the elevator?” and the Japanese person smiles and says, “yua japaniizu bery guddo” and just walks away, you’ll know that it’s really your fault he thought you were speaking in Swahili.

2. Grammar is easy because Japanese people are mind readers
In Japanese, there’s something called 以心伝心, which basically means that Japanese people can read each other’s minds, thereby creating a hive consciousness that is currently plotting to take over the world with giant robots. That’s why Japanese doesn’t have a singular/plural distinction and only past/non-past tenses. There really isn’t any sentence structure to speak of for that matter, either. You might think that leaving the subject and object out of a sentence would make it too ambiguous to say anything. Ahh, but you’re forgetting that Japanese people can read your mind. As a result, you don’t have to worry about subjects, objects, participles, sentence order, subject-verb agreement, articles, prepositions, pronouns, and pretty much the rest of English grammar.

For instance, if you wanted to say, “Hi, I’m looking for a cheap place to stay,” all you have to do is say, “Me…”, trail off into silence, nod, and point knowingly to your head. The Japanese person will nod knowingly back and then go back to whatever he was doing. In all likelihood, that’s probably his way of saying, “Back off you foreign infidel, you shall not have my daughters!” But you should have expected that since you were probably thinking nasty thoughts about his daughters.

3. Spelling is easy because it’s impossible
In Japanese, you don’t have to worry about spelling because each sound has a corresponding letter. Most words consists of 2 or 3 Chinese characters anyway. You might complain that it’s so hard to figure which Chinese character to use but since no one actually knows how to write Japanese without a computer, you don’t have to worry about it. Not to mention the fact that Japanese classes and textbooks don’t use Chinese characters because of the fear that it’ll make your head explode (which I imagine would create a huge headache for the janitors).

4. Japanese people are friendly to foreigners and are willing to help
In the unlikely event that you find yourself in a bind, you can easily ask any Japanese person for assistance and she’ll gladly oblige. The only catch is that you’ll have to be fluent in Japanese since Japanese people can’t speak any other language. (See the first reason) Also, when I said foreigners, what I really meant was white (and possibly black) English-speaking foreigners. That’s because Japanese people will only give you the time of day if they think it’ll land them some free English conversation practice.*

For some reason, most Japanese people are brainwashed from childhood to have an irrepressible desire to learn how to speak English. This is quite sad because it’s practically impossible considering how much more difficult English is compared to Japanese. But that doesn’t stop them for trying for 10 or 20 years. What results is a very interesting language that, unfortunately, no one understands. So remember, as long as you are either 1) fluent in Japanese, or 2) own a 200 processor Beowulf cluster that can parse Japanese English into real English, you should have no problems finding help.

Conclusion
I hope I have convinced you with my clear and concise arguments that Japanese really is just about the easiest language there is to learn. While this amusing essay makes quite a few jokes about the difficulty of Japanese, I just wanted to clear the air with a somber discussion of what Japanese is really like.

Author’s Note
I would like to clarify that I am, in no way, trying to prove that learning Japanese will make your teeth crooked and turn ugly colors. If that’s what you were thinking, you totally missed the point of this treatise.

*Then there’s the type of Japanese people who are so terrified of speaking English that they run away from you as if you were the living dead. I left that part out because it would disprove my argument, which I was told to never do in High School English class.

When it’s not quite good enough to be 「まあまあ」

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In this short post, I’ll be talking about 「微妙」（びみょう）, a na-adjective that is used quite often in Japanese. The word 「微妙」 itself describes a state of delicate balance and indicates that things can easily go one way or the other.

You can find many examples from the WWWJDIC of this usage such as the following sentence.

その言葉には微妙なニュアンスがある。
-The word has a delicate shade of difference in meaning.

While the word when used in this fashion is not slang, there is one more way to use 「微妙」 that can be considered slang: a negative version of 「まあまあ」.

Many of you probably have already learned 「まあまあ」 in the classroom as a way of describing something as “so-so”. However, while 「まあまあ」 means neither good nor bad, it has a favorable connotation. 「微妙」 on the other hand, while also used to describe something that is neither good nor bad, looks at things in a negative light. To illustrate, let’s look at the two different responses to the following question.

Q: 味はどう？ – How is the taste?

A1: まあまあ。- It’s not bad.
A2: 微妙・・・。- Umm… it’s not that good.

The first answer is saying, while the taste is not great necessarily, it not that bad. The second answer takes the opposite stance and indicates that while the taste is not terrible, it’s just not very good. It’s similar to the “cup is half-empty/half-full” distinction. While both mean the same thing, the attitude is completely opposite from each other.

Here are some interesting examples of 「微妙」 that I came up with. Be careful not to insult anybody using this word (unless that’s your intent)! That’s probably why they only teach you 「まあまあ」 in class.

1： あの子は、かわいくない？ – Don’t you think that girl is cute?
2: う～ん、微妙だな。 – Hmm, nah, not really.

1: 明日、時間空いている？ – Do you have time open tomorrow?
2: 明日は、ちょっと微妙かも。 – Tomorrow might be a bit shady.

As you can see from the second example, like most slang, you can use 「微妙」 in all sorts of situations. Try it on your Japanese friends today!

Japanese videos on Google Video

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I’ve been killing time this holiday enjoying some random videos on Google Video. I thought I’d share some interesting videos in Japanese in case anybody was looking for a fun way to study this holiday. Somebody was diligent enough to put English subtitles on the videos so you can enjoy them even if you don’t feel like studying Japanese.

Sushi Documentary

The first video is a “documentary” about sushi. And the word “documentary” is in quotes for a very good reason. It starts out like this.

寿司。日本の代表的スナック。それが寿司です。この寿司を食べるショップが寿司屋です。日本人のほとんどがこの店を毎日利用しています。


女性が男性に注ぎ、女性は自分で注ぎます。なるほど。侍の国ですね。

It’s quite amusing and represents, in my opinion, the image that some foreigners have regarding Japan. I remember, before I knew anything about Japan, that I used to think that Japanese was a country with very strict rules such as the appropriate angle for bowing.

The narrator speaks in a very clear, standard Japanese so people learning Japanese in a classroom should have no trouble with the style. Anyway, here are a few comments and corrections just in case.

1. Most of the Japanese population cannot afford to eat sushi everyday.
2. That’s way too much soy-sauce on the sushi. （Soy-sauce, by the way, is called 「醤油」（しょうゆ）. Sometimes, it’s written as 「正油」.）
3. The wet napkin given out in restaurants to wipe your hands is actually called 「おしぼり」 and not 「雑巾」（ぞうきん）, which is a cloth used to clean around the house. 「おしぼり」 comes from the verb 「絞る」（しぼる）, which means to squeeze. I presume it’s because the excess water is squeezed from the cloth.

地球戦隊 フレッシュメン

Here’s another funny video featuring Shingo Katori （香取慎吾） from Smap, a “talent” group you can’t avoid here in Japan (as much as I try). This video features quite a lot of slang so those of you who learned Japanese on the streets should have no trouble. Here’s how it starts.

高校ん時の親友は、俺にこう言った。「ちょうだい？これ。お前っていいやつだよな。」　だからってわけじゃないけど、俺だって、自分のことを悪いやつなんて思ってなかった。地球を滅ぼすほどの悪いやつだなんて。

I intend to cover some of the expressions in the video such as 「というか」 and 「じゃん」 so make sure to subscribe to the feed.

I hope you find the videos as amusing as I did!

The subtler points of 「以」

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「以」 （not to be confused with 「似」）is a very useful character used in all sorts of words that compare time, space, or objects such as 以来、以降、以上、以下、以外、以内、以後、and 以前 . In all these words, the 「以」 essentially means “besides” and the second character indicates what to compare.

For instance, 「以外」（いがい） uses the 「外」 character for outside so it is describing anything outside of the thing we are comparing to.

田中さん以外に、行く人はいる？
– Is there person going, outside of Tanaka-san? (Is anybody going besides Tanaka-san?)

Notice how there is no particle between 「田中さん」 and 「以外」. While it is possible to insert 「の」 in between, in practice, it is more natural to directly attach the word to the end of the noun that is being compared. This applies to all the 「以」 words given above.

「以」 is an inclusive comparator

I think it’s important to mention that 「以」 means “besides [x]”, therefore, the thing that is being compared to ([x] in this case) is included in the comparison. For example, if we say 「三つ以上」, this means “three or more” and not “more than three”. Or when we say, 「明日以降」 this means “tomorrow or afterwards” not “after tomorrow”.

カードを2枚以上選んでください。
– Please select 2 or more cards.

In English, words for comparisons such as “more” and “less” implicitly exclude the thing that is being compared. People who are used to the English way of doing things need to make sure whether they need to do a little adding or subtracting before using any of the words covered here. For instance, if I wanted to say, “less than three”, I might change this to 「二つ以下」 or use some other expression such as 「未満」. Unfortunately, these comparators are not really systematic and it becomes a matter of learning vocabulary and learning when to use them based on practice.

10歳未満のお子様は乗れません。
– Children under 10 cannot go on the ride.

Here are other ways you might want to say “more than” and “less than“. Unfortunately, you can already see an inaccurate translation of 「以上」.

Sometimes, it might not be necessary to be that picky, but you should be aware of the difference for the times when it really does matter.

Finally, to prove I’m not lying, here is a similar page that explains the difference from a Japanese point of view.

Learning (Training) Vocab Tips

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Memorizing Japanese vocabulary is much more difficult than many other languages not only because they usually bear no resemblance to English but also because you have to memorize the Kanji, the reading, and the definition. Multiply that by the tens of thousands of words in the language, and you’ve got a hefty job on your hands. While you need to spend a lot of time on grammar in the first 1-2 years, after that, it’s all about memorizing one word after another after another. In fact, I’d say over 80% of the total study time required for fluency would probably be for vocabulary.

So to give you a helping hand in such a monumental task, here are my tips for effectively transferring vocab from the dictionary into your long-term memory bank.

Memorizing for tests is not productive
Because we are so used to studying for tests, we often fall into the trap of thinking that memorizing for tests is an effective way to learn vocabulary. It is not. It is a convenient method for teachers to gauge mastery, but that does not mean it’s a good method to learn vocabulary.

The most common method of memorizing vocabulary is to take a set number of words and memorize them, commonly in the form of lists or index cards. This is a great method to prepare for a test, not for learning vocabulary in general.

Remember, doing well on tests is a means to an end, and a poor one at that. If you don’t restrict yourself to a set number of words, there is a much faster method for learning a great deal of vocabulary with a lot less headaches.

Language is trained not reasoned
Now, I’m no expert in psychology, but one thing I’m sure about is that learning a language is not a cognitive process. Rather, mastering a language requires training much in the same way as learning how to ride a bike. Just think about how you use words in your native language when you read, write, listen, or speak. The words you have memorized come to mind almost instinctually as you need them. That is the level you want to ultimately attain.

The key here is to simulate that process as closely as possible in Japanese by training yourself to think in the same fashion. In order to do this, you need some sort of online dictionary to look up words as quickly as possible. For when you can’t use a computer, an electronic dictionary will also work almost as well. Once you’ve got the necessary tool, read as much as possible and look up each word you don’t know. You are essentially simulating how your mind would have worked if you had known all the words with a couple seconds lag for each word lookup. Finally, read the sentence again with all the words in your short-term memory to reinforce the process you want to attain.

For instance, let’s say you are reading 「今は忙しいから・・・」 and you don’t know what 「忙しい」 means. Quickly look up the word in an online dictionary or a tool like rikaichan then continue reading the sentence. Continue with this process until you finish reading the sentence, then read over the sentence again and make sure you get the meaning of the sentence as a whole. Rinse and repeat.

The idea is that you want to take input in and throw it out as quickly as possible to test your memory again and again. I guarantee you that staring at an index card for 2 minutes trying with all your might to recall the definition will not help you remember it later. The key here is wearing down those neural paths with repetition, just like how we train our bodies to do physical activities.

The beauty of this method is that the most common and useful words naturally get retained quicker because you run into them more often. It is the most effective method of training yourself to understand the most amount of Japanese as quickly as possible. Plus, by comprehending the material, you get a much richer context that will help with recollection a great deal more than flimsy examples sentences on index cards.

Instant gratification is good!
We human beings tend to get bored very easily and boring is painful so you want to give yourself an advantage by making studying fun. The best way to do this is to pick material that is interesting in itself (hopefully with some recommendations from other people). Also, an electronic tool is key because having to tediously look up word after word in a paper dictionary is excruciatingly boring (especially if you need to look up the kanji first) and a complete waste of time. You want to mentally reward yourself as quickly as possible with the answer so that you don’t bore yourself to death, which ultimately results in the “I’m too lazy to study” syndrome that is all too common among students.

But what about my test?
If you apply this method early enough (don’t forget to use your vacations too), you should be so far ahead that you’ll likely already know a great majority of the words that’ll show up in your tests. The only thing left is to study the one or two words you have missed in the more conventional fashion. This worked for me and saved my college grades because I could focus on my other classes while hardly studying for my Japanese class! 🙂

The hardest kanji I know

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This is a short post just for fun. Here are some of the hardest kanji I’ve run into over my years studying Japanese. If you learn these words, you can be confident in the knowledge that you’ve already tackled the hardest kanji (that I can think of).

躊躇（ちゅう・ちょ） – hesitation

朦朧（もう・ろう） – dim, hazy

憂鬱（ゆう・うつ） – depression

瀟洒（しょう・しゃ） – elegant; trim

The most difficult kanji is 「鬱」 with a total of 29 strokes. With a sufficiently small font size, it just looks like a black scribbly thing.

And here is my vote for the sneakiest kanji ever.

曰く（いわ・く） – to say

Fun stuff.