Nihongo Ninja

四時塾語「よじじゅくご」( Yojijukugo) Notice anything interesting about this kanji compound? There are four characters, and that’s fitting- because this is the word for “four-character kanji compounds”. 四 = four 字 = character 塾 = mellow, ripen, mature, skill acquirement 語 = word, speech, language In this case, the 四字熟語 for 四字熟語 mostly make sense- something along the lines of “four-character-mature-word”. However, in most 四字熟語 , the meaning of individual kanji doesn’t necessarily give a helpful hint towards the true meaning of these compounds. Let’s look at some of my favorite interesting 四字熟語 below: 一石二鳥 「いっせきにちょう」 = killing two birds with one stone 一 = one 石 = stone 二 = two 鳥 = bird This one is about the easiest 四字熟語 I know of. These are all kanji that many Japanese learners can recognize within a short period of studying kanji. “One stone, two birds” translates pretty similarly to “killing two birds with one stone”, its English counterpart. Most 四字熟語 ar...

はじめまして！ Hajimemashite! Nice to meet you! 「はじめまして」is one of the first phrases I learned when I first started learning Japanese 4 years ago. It's an interesting phrase- literally translating to "This is the first time (meeting you)", which sounds a bit odd- imagine introducing yourself in English and starting off with "This is our first time meeting"! However, this is the normal introduction in Japanese- and means something along the lines of "Nice to meet you".  はじめまして、皆さん！僕は日本語は母国語じゃないけど、日本語が大好きです。だから、ペラペラになりたいんです。間違いがあったら、コメントで直して下さい！でも、僕はかんたんな日本語を教えたいので、このブログに投稿するつもりです。  Hajimemashite, minasan! Boku wa umaretsuki janai kedo, nihongo ga daisuki desu. Dakara, perapera ni naritaindesu. Machigai ga attara, komento ni naoshite kudasai! Demo, boku wa kantan na nihongo wo oshetai no de, kono burogu ni toukousuru tsumori desu. Nice to meet you, everyone! I'm not a native Japanese speaker, but I really like Japanese. So, I want to become flue...