When you start to learn foreign language, the local news can be a convenience tool for your study. There are a lot of news services in Japan so let me introduce the famous one.
The most famous one would be “NHK” which is like a government news. They are not private news so it is said to be fair news. If you buy a TV in Japan, you automatically have to have the obligation to pay for NHK. So, someone from NHK will visit your house and collect the fee. Instead of this paying system, NHK don’t adopt any TV commercial. That is why it is said to be fair.
When it comes to newspaper, I would say Asahi, Yomiuri and Nikkey could be one of the most famous journal. These three journal have their individual feature and concept for their contents. At first, Asahi deals with daily common event and its point of view is always general. In this aspect, it’s like NHK. They are recommended to be read by students for educational purpose. Second, Yomiuri more focus on Sports event than any other newspaper. Yumiuri is also famous for baseball team as well as soccer. It also arranges famous new year marathon called “Ekiden” every year. Third, Nikkey is economic news. It was said to be necessary information for stock market trader. You can see Japanese market trend with it. Compared with previous president, it seems Nikkey supports the market plan of Abe president because he more focus on economic condition.
For iPhone APP or web news, I would recommend Yahoo news in Japan, which would be more famous than Google news. One of the reasons why it became so famous in Japan is that most of PC sold in Japan typically showed Yahoo Japan web site at the first access to the internet with explorer. Yahoo mail and Yahoo auction is also popular in Japan. So, I think Yahoo service may be more widely known than Google service.
News Memo Note Recorder with iPhone APP: Catch Questions!
Friday, March 4, 2016
Preposition or Postposition?
Today, I would like to introduce the unique positioning of Japanese word.
Compared with English, Japanese does not have any preposition. On the other hand, there are things like postposition that I would tell. They are called “Joshi”.
However, their functions are absolutely different from prepositions in English. They are added to the end of some particular Japanese words and sometimes show their special functions.
In English, the sequence of sentence is so important that we can determine if the sentence is question or not with the position of verb for example. In Japanese, you only add the word of “か” at the end of sentence to show question. And, this kind of word can also express humanity of the user’s identity or relation ship with the person to talk with.
As for this word of “か”, there are several alternative words like “ですか” (polite), “かい” (friendly), “け” (countryside) or “ござるか” (old style). On the other hand, you don’t have to change the word if it is used by third person singular.
Japanese word focus on the feeling of person to talk to rather than the objective information such as the difference between single or multiple.
So, please be careful about the last word of Japanese if you talk to someone in Japanese.
Speaking Training APP: Catch Questions
Compared with English, Japanese does not have any preposition. On the other hand, there are things like postposition that I would tell. They are called “Joshi”.
However, their functions are absolutely different from prepositions in English. They are added to the end of some particular Japanese words and sometimes show their special functions.
In English, the sequence of sentence is so important that we can determine if the sentence is question or not with the position of verb for example. In Japanese, you only add the word of “か” at the end of sentence to show question. And, this kind of word can also express humanity of the user’s identity or relation ship with the person to talk with.
As for this word of “か”, there are several alternative words like “ですか” (polite), “かい” (friendly), “け” (countryside) or “ござるか” (old style). On the other hand, you don’t have to change the word if it is used by third person singular.
Japanese word focus on the feeling of person to talk to rather than the objective information such as the difference between single or multiple.
So, please be careful about the last word of Japanese if you talk to someone in Japanese.
Speaking Training APP: Catch Questions
Thursday, March 3, 2016
Different letter in languages
What is the difference between English and Japanese?
This may be the issue between Asian and American (or European) languages but I would say the difference could come from the origin of letters used by the languages.
From several kinds of Japanese letters, “Kanji” is very unique in its shape. It represents the image of subject and some of the parts called “Bush” also play a role of telling the meaning visually. So, when we see “Kanji”, it feels like seeing a painting.
On the other hand, I would say alphabet is very useful for understanding some scientific information. The objectivity of reading alphabet lead us to reach the general and natural conclusion.
I don’t want to say which one is better because it depends on the situation. However, why I mention this is that to learn the other language enables us to review our first language and understand the precious concept about why the language exists.
Anyway, from that reason, I would like to introduce the feature of language. When I learned English at first, I was so surprised it only has 26 letters from “A” to “X”. How about Japanese letters? When it comes to the “Kanji” letters, even Japanese like me don’t know how many letters actually exist. It is common sense that we always find some Japanese letter we don’t know how to write, pronounce or read even in daily newspaper.
In case of English, you may also find some difficult word while reading something but it is impossible to find difficult letter if you are adult. If you find it, I think you had better learn alphabet before reading.
But, for Japanese, it is acceptable to start reading before we learn all of “Kanji” letters. Then, why can we read newspaper?
The reason of this is the shape of letter give us some hint to understand the meaning. For example, “鰯”(sardine), “鰹”(bonito) and “鮪”(tuna) has the “Bush“ of “魚”(fish) in its shape. Most of us including me cannot write them correctly but can easily assume it is the species of fish.
So, if you are beginner of learning Japanese, please don’t worry about the variety of “Kanji”. Only the key letter like “魚” would work well for understanding the meaning.
Kanji or difficult language study with Catch Questions
This may be the issue between Asian and American (or European) languages but I would say the difference could come from the origin of letters used by the languages.
From several kinds of Japanese letters, “Kanji” is very unique in its shape. It represents the image of subject and some of the parts called “Bush” also play a role of telling the meaning visually. So, when we see “Kanji”, it feels like seeing a painting.
On the other hand, I would say alphabet is very useful for understanding some scientific information. The objectivity of reading alphabet lead us to reach the general and natural conclusion.
I don’t want to say which one is better because it depends on the situation. However, why I mention this is that to learn the other language enables us to review our first language and understand the precious concept about why the language exists.
Anyway, from that reason, I would like to introduce the feature of language. When I learned English at first, I was so surprised it only has 26 letters from “A” to “X”. How about Japanese letters? When it comes to the “Kanji” letters, even Japanese like me don’t know how many letters actually exist. It is common sense that we always find some Japanese letter we don’t know how to write, pronounce or read even in daily newspaper.
In case of English, you may also find some difficult word while reading something but it is impossible to find difficult letter if you are adult. If you find it, I think you had better learn alphabet before reading.
But, for Japanese, it is acceptable to start reading before we learn all of “Kanji” letters. Then, why can we read newspaper?
The reason of this is the shape of letter give us some hint to understand the meaning. For example, “鰯”(sardine), “鰹”(bonito) and “鮪”(tuna) has the “Bush“ of “魚”(fish) in its shape. Most of us including me cannot write them correctly but can easily assume it is the species of fish.
So, if you are beginner of learning Japanese, please don’t worry about the variety of “Kanji”. Only the key letter like “魚” would work well for understanding the meaning.
Kanji or difficult language study with Catch Questions
Tuesday, March 1, 2016
Famous Japanese Dictionary
Hello, this is Shin who produced iPhone Speaking APP named Catch Questions.
As a developer of Catch Questions, I would like to introduce my favorite APPs which were very useful in my life.
For the first introduction, I would like to show you the most famous Japanese dictionally which is actually and generally used by Japanese.
The dictionally is named “Daijirin”or “大辞林” in Japanese. One of the features about this dictionally is big, heavy and thick. As the volume of information looks too much, It actually covers the usage of not only old traditional words but also brand new dialect words such as radical one which is recently used by Japanese girl in high school.
It occupies our book shelf of ordinary family but has few chance to be read because it was difficult to lift up and hard to find the word we want from the massive information. Then, why did I buy it? It may sounds strange to the people in the other country. Why we bought it was that everybody bought it. It’s like a tradition to have it like a bible. It relieves us with its existence in our house.
In addition, the necessity of the dictionally always comes while we are out or at office, not at our home.
So, at first, it was so surprising that iPhone can have the tough dictionally in the device without any weight and enabled us to bring it everywhere with iPhone.
So, at first, it was so surprising that iPhone can have the tough dictionally in the device without any weight and enabled us to bring it everywhere with iPhone.
The other useful feature as iPhone APP was you can search words with handwriting or Kanji shape. As you may know, Kanji words consist of several common shape called “Bushu”. So, it was very useful tool to search the difficult kanji with its partial shape by handwriting.
If you are now studying Japanese, I would definitely recommend you to have it!
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