Tag - bilingual

 
 

BILINGUAL

Japan Times
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Jun 18, 2018
Why do the Japanese suck at learning English?
It's been said time and again: 日本人は英語がダメ (Nihonjin wa Eigo ga dame, The Japanese are terrible at English).
Japan Times
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Jun 11, 2018
Sexual consent in Japanese: Making it crystal clear that no means no
In a language where 'no' can mean 'yes' and vice versa, debate about sexual consent has had difficulty thriving.
Japan Times
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Jun 4, 2018
To be 'iru' or 'aru'? That is the question
To be or not to be? What Hamlet did not know (and likely didn't care about too much at the time) is that Japanese ways of 'being' make a categorical difference between animate and inanimate objects.
Japan Times
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
May 28, 2018
The 'Mao suit': One outfit for the people, but with many names
The English-language media recently described North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un as wearing a 'Mao suit,' but no one in East Asia would refer to it this way.
Japan Times
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
May 21, 2018
To know Japan, its people and its story, know its grub
Food in Japan is hardwired to emotion, personal identity and memory in a way that is often baffling to Westerners.
Japan Times
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
May 14, 2018
Whose line is it anyway? Tips for deciphering dialogue in Japanese fiction
Dialogue in Japanese fiction has its own set of rules, and if you're not paying close attention, you may have trouble understanding who is saying what to whom.
Japan Times
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Apr 30, 2018
Using the internet to dig up some basics in Japanese
Once, many, many years ago, I found a rail pass someone left behind next to a public pay phone in Hamamatsucho Station in Tokyo's Minato Ward.
Japan Times
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Apr 23, 2018
What would you pay to live in Minato Ward?
It was in 2001 when my friend, Chikako Sakamoto, paid ¥9.8 million for a six-tatami-mat apartment in Tokyo's central Minato Ward. The apartment was inside a 長期滞在者用 (chōki taizaisha-yō, long term resident's) wing of an old hotel in Roppongi, with a very low ceiling and no kitchen. Chikako...
Japan Times
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Apr 16, 2018
OK Google, auto-fill the gaps in my Japanese
If you are stuck for what to say in Japanese, Google search — and in particular, its auto-fill function — can be your friend.
Japan Times
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Apr 9, 2018
Musical vocab in Japanese can be a maddeningly multilingual minefield
A basic grounding in German, English, Italian and Heian Period poetry could be useful for those interested in reading and talking about the mechanics of music in Japan.
Japan Times
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Apr 2, 2018
A company freshman's sharp learning curve
The first Monday in April — April 2 this year — sees tens of thousands of 生き生きして元気な新入社員 (ikiiki shite genki na shinnyū shain, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed newly hired company employees) — also referred to as フレシュマン (fureshuman, freshmen) — decked out in...
Japan Times
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Mar 26, 2018
Japanese women find strength in Me Too
The Me Too movement has arrived in Japan at last, and more Japanese women are opening up about issues surrounding sexual harassment.
Japan Times
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Mar 19, 2018
In written Japanese, it's punctuation, but not as we know it
Needless to say, Japanese has its own set of punctuation marks, and a number of special rules regarding their usage.
Japan Times
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Mar 12, 2018
Cheat your way to better Japanese with walkthrough video game guides
Learners of Japanese, why not try offsetting the guilt of cheating at video games by changing your device's settings to Nihongo and checking Japanese online walkthrough guides?
Japan Times
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Mar 5, 2018
Putting Japan's Olympic success into words
Team Japan amassed 13 medals in Pyeongchang, its best ever Winter Games medal haul.
Japan Times
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Feb 26, 2018
To have and to hold, to slap and to tickle: For tactile versatility, you have to hand it to this kanji
One way to acquire more kanji is to organize them into a relational database. To show how this works, let's look at some of the many characters using the hand radical.
Japan Times
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Feb 12, 2018
A salaryman is left blinking in the dust left by the #MeToo charge
One Japanese salaryman laments the changes the #MeToo movement has had on relationships between men and women in his workplace.
Japan Times
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Jan 22, 2018
Learning Japanese from TV samurai tales of the wild East
Portraying legendary heroes in colorful costumes of yore, jidaigeki (period dramas) date back to the earliest years of silent films, and the genre has been frequently compared with America's TV Westerns.
Japan Times
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Jan 15, 2018
Yonkoma manga: Lives told, lessons learned in four frames
The internet has provided would-be manga artists with an easy way to publish their own yonkoma (four-frame manga), resulting in a wide variety of different stories that are easily accessible and free.
Japan Times
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Jan 8, 2018
Put your money where your mouth is
The Japanese money vocabulary is quite expansive, amazingly complex and certainly deserving of closer inspection.

Longform

Akiko Trush says her experience with the neurological disorder dystonia left her feeling like she wanted to chop her own hand off.
The neurological disorder that 'kills culture'