How to say Happy Birthday in Japanese?

Learning new language also means that we access to a new culture. And of course, learning Japanese means you will understand more about Japanese culture and vice-versa. In order to learn more about Japanese culture, we should take a look at their custom during special occasion. And today, we will take a look at Japanese people's birthday: How they say Happy Birthday in Japanese? How they celebrate birthday? And what is the common present for birthday?

Read more: How to say i love you in Japanese                                                                                            How to say good morning in Japanese                                                                                     Japanese Kanji

1 - How to say Happy Birthday in Japanese?

In Japanese, "happy birthday" is "Tanjoubi Omedetou", in Hiragana it is written like this: たんじょうび　おめでとう, and in Kanji: 誕生日おめでとう. So in this sentence, "Tanjoubi" (たんじょうび/誕生日) means "birthday" and "Omedetou" (おめでとう) means "congratulation". So if we translate "roughly" we can say: "Birthday Congratulation!" or "Congratulation in your Birthday!"? Anyway, Because in Japanese there are formal (or we can say polite) and informal way of speaking, the sentence above is only use for people who are so familiar with us, such as friends, brothers, sisters. To wish happy birthday in Japanese to people who has higher status, who are elder or strangers, we say: "Tanjoubi Omedetou Gozaimasu" (たんじょうび　おめでとう　ございます - 誕生日 おめでとう ございます).

2 - How Japanese people celebrate birthday?

The interesting thing about Japanese birthday is that, in the beginning there was no birthday celebration in Japan. It is said that in the past, Japanese people only celebrate birthday during New Year event. But from 1950, Japanese people has adopted the Western custom and they started to celebrate birthday. Commonly they will celebrate birthday with their family and friends at home, but if a person has boy or girlfriend then they will spend birthday with each other (often happen from 17 - 18 years old). So we can say "Japanese happy birthday" is not much different from Western culture.

On the other hand, there are several special birthday occasions in Japan, such as 20 year-old birthday (in Japanese 20 year-old considered to be the time a person officially becomes an adult), 60 year-old birthday. Also there is special festivity for children with 3 - 5 - 7 years old, 3 year-old girl and 7 year-old girl, along with 5 year-old boy will wear traditional costumes and visit Shinto shrine and pray for strength and health. According to some sources, it is believed that this ceremony held because in the past, many children could not live until 3 - 5 - 7 year-old.

3 - What is the gift during "Japanese happy birthday"?

Similar to Western culture, there is no particular gift during birthday since gift depends on different people. However, no matter how expensive a gift is, the wrapping is extremely important. And it seems that the sincerity and love of the givers are reflected from how they take care of the wrapping - carefulness, the beauty, the focus, .etc... At some point, we can say gift wrapping in Japanese has become an art.

And that is how to say happy birthday in Japanese, how Japanese people celebrate birthday, and how they give present in birthday. Stay tune, have fun and good luck in your Japanese learning journey!

Source: blog.akirademy.com

Basic Rules and Common Mistakes in JAPANESE WORDS PRONUNCIATION

As we know, Japanese language is totally different from English, the syllables are totally different, so too the pronunciations. Therefore, we cannot just bring English pronunciation rule into Japanese. And so in order to help you in learning Japanese words pronunciation, we would like to explain the basic Japanese words pronunciation, and make clear some common mistakes when pronounce Japanese words.

Read more: How to say i love you in Japanese                                                                                            How to say good morning in Japanese                                                                                     Japanese Kanji

1 - Basic rules in Japanese words Pronunciation

     a) Vowels and Consonants

In Japanese, there are 5 vowels (a, e, i, o, u) and 14 consonants (k, s, t, n, h, m, y, r, w, g, z, d, b, p), and of course, they differ from English pronunciation. Let's take the 5 vowels for example, for easier visualization, we will compare the sound to English:

• "a" - similar to "ah"
• "i" - similar to "we"
• "u" - best to describe it like "urg"/"uh"/"um"
• "e" - somewhere between "a" and "e" (in "pet")
• "o" - similar to "oh"

Combining vowels with consonants, we will have the sounds of syllables, for example: "k" + "a" = "ka" (similar to "car"). However, since it is pronunciation we are talking about, it is suggested to listen to the Japanese Hiragana syllables.

     b) Stress

So, you are non-native English speakers and you are proud of your excellent English words intonation (or stress). Then sadly, in Japanese words pronunciation they don't have such intonation. Of course in different situation people need to stress important words, but for the most part, Japanese words are spoken in the same length and strength. Let's compare:

• In English: the word "interesting", the intonation is in "int", IN - teresting.
• In Japanese: the word "interesting" is "omoshiroi" and there is no intonation, just "o - mo - shi - roi".

This means if you try to put intonation into Japanese words, it would sound weird. You can test this by pronouncing a Japanese word by putting intonation into it, take "omoshiroi" as example, and then compare the pronunciation to the one spoken by native Japanese speaker. You will see the difference.

     c) Long vowel

Long vowels are comprised of 2 syllables, and so when we pronounce long vowels, normally we will have to lengthen vowel's sound. For example, long "a" would be "ahhh". In some cases, the pronunciation can be different, but that will be another story.

2 - Some common mistakes in Japanese words pronunciation

     a) Shortening the long vowel

This mistake involves in the long vowel we mentioned earlier. In this case, the sound is shortened, or cut down, and sadly the meaning of the word can be changed as it becomes a different word. For example:

• The word "obaasan" (grandmother) - will be "oh - BAHH - san".
• If shortened, "obaasan" will be "oh - BA - san" (the vowel "baa" ends much quicker), and it will become the word "aunt".

So in this case, this mistake will bring misunderstanding as people will understand the word in different meaning.

     b) Overstressing

This is most likely the influence from speaking English. As in English, each word has its own intonation, however, as we discussed, in a Japanese sentence, people will only stressed the important word which implies the information they want to deliver, other words will be spoken in equal length and strength. So what will be the effect of this mistake? People may overstress all the words within a sentence, or, stress the words indiscriminately. So sometimes we may hear people say like: "wahh - ta - shi waa daiii - ga - ku e iii - ki - ma - su", and actually it should be "watashi wa daigaku e ikimasu" (I go to University).

     c) Speaking katakana words like English

Japanese people are told to be not really good in speaking English, and the amusing thing about Japanese is that they use lots of borrowed words from English. These borrowed English words are converted into Katakana version and they sound much different from original English version. So this is where trouble starts, some people "prefer" to speak those Katakana words in English because... they are borrowed from English! But here is the thing, it is speaking Japanese we are talking about so we cannot just speak Katakana words with English because the pronunciations are so different that many native Japanese speaker may not understand (not to mention it sounds so weird in Japanese standard). Also it can affect a lot in the way we learn Japanese speaking skill (this one is already mentioned in another article).

And that's it! Some basic rules and common mistakes made by Japanese learners in term of Japanese words pronunciation. Stay tune, good luck and have fun in your Japanese learning journey!

Source: blog.akirademy.com

How to write Kanji?

Kanji is kinda a giant obstacle to Japanese beginners. At first when people see Kanji, it is like "what is this?", "why it has to be so complicated?", "how can I supposed to write this?". In somewhy, they are right, Kanji is difficult in both remembering and writing. We cannot just blindly write Kanji whatever we want, it has writing order and you will see writing Kanji isn't that hard anymore.

Read more: How to say i love you in Japanese                                                                                            How to say good morning in Japanese                                                                                     Japanese Kanji

1 - Introduction to Kanji

For those who may not learned yet, Kanji is one of the 3 syllable charts in Japanese language, beside Hiragana and Katakana. It is known that Kanji was originally borrowed from Chinese characters. It is a symbolistic system in which each symbol represents a particular meaning. But this does not mean each symbol is supposed to be a word, 2 symbols can be combined together to become a new word, thus have a different meaning. Let's take a look at this exmaple:

• 先 - Sen - Former/Previous/Old
• 生 - Sei - Life/Living
• 先 + 生 = 先生 - Sensei - Teacher/Mentor

In Kanji, it has a number of categories of Kanji radicals. Each radical represents an basic element (or category, for example: water, tree, etc...), and by combining radicals with another components to form different words.

2 - Kanji Writing Order

So we understand basically what Kanji is, now we will see how to write Kanji. For better visualization, take a look at the picture below (source: Basic kanji Book vol1):

And here are some examples for different kanji symbols (Source: Basic Kanji Book vol1):

By looking at these examples, we also see that each represented Kanji symbol has combination showed below, thus creating different words with different meanings.

So that is some basic comcepts of Kanji system and how to write kanji. Stay tune, good luck and have fun in your Japanese learning journey!

Source: blog.akirademy.com

DIFFERENCES between ENGLISH GRAMMAR and JAPANESE GRAMMAR

We are so used to English, which is most common language in the world, Italian, French, .etc... , and we are so in love with them. But seems things are different with Japanese, thus many people considered Japanese to be one of the hardest languages to learn in the world. So, in order to make clear of this kind of thought, we would like to point out some differences between English grammar and Japanese grammar. And from that, we will see whether Japanese is truly that hard as people said.

Read more: How to say i love you in Japanese                                                                                            How to say good morning in Japanese                                                                                     Japanese Kanji

1 - Difference in Characters:

The most obvious difference between English grammar and Japanese grammar is probably the characters. In English, or Italian, or Frence, .etc.., all of these languages follow Latin characters from A to Z. However, Japanese grammar does not have Latin characters, it has its own 3 types of characters: Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji. Sounds terrifying isn't it? While Latin script has 26 characters, Hiragana and Katakana script each has 46 and 45 characters. "Okay, so you tell me that if I'm going to learn Japanese, I'll have to learn 2 characters script with 91 characters in total?". Um... yes, you have to learn all of them. But wait! If you think that is over? Guess what, you will have to learn thousands of Kanji characters (based on Chinese characters) in which each character/word holds a difference meaning. So yes, in terms of characters. Japanese is hard.

2 - Difference in Verb Tense:

You have just read about Japanese characters and you are still afraid of learning Japanese? Then here is a good news for you. Unlike English grammar which has tons of verb tenses, ranging from past tense to the future tense and each tense has 4 forms: simple, progressive, perfect, and perfect progressive; Japanese grammar only has 2 verb tenses: past and present tense and each tense has formal and informal form. That's it! 2 tenses, in details, verbs in Japanese has "masu" ending. In present tense, the positive form will be "masu", negative form will be "masen"; and in past tense, the positive form changes to "mashita" and negative form changes to "masendeshita". On the other hand, the formal and informal aspect are quite easy to get. Therefore there is nothing to worry about in term of Japanese grammar's verb tense.

3 - Difference in Particles order:

So normally in English grammar we follow this order: Subject - Verb - Object, for example: "I eat rice." But in Japanese grammar, the order is little bit different which is: Subject - Object - Verb. Sounds weird isn't it? If we follow this order in English, the example above will be: "I rice eat." Sounds nonsensical and funny, but actually that is how it works in Japanese. In Japanese, the sentence "I eat rice" will become "わたしはごはんを食べます" (watashi wa gohan wo tabemasu - I rice eat). This difference is not that complicated as you gradually learn Japanese. However, it means that during your Japanese learning process, especially if you are beginners and if you are learning speaking Japanese, you cannot just translate whatever sentence you see into English since the two particles orders are different. Not to mention that there is high chance that you will be confused between the two language structure, and that will not be good.

Those are the 3 differences between English grammar and Japanese grammar, there probably more than what we listed here but you can find them during your Japanese learning process. In overall, if we take a deeper look then Japanese grammar is not really that hard compared to English grammar. Many aspects may contribute to the difficulty of learning Japanese, however, if you are willing to learn and you can stay firm in your learning process, you will find Japanese language might be hard to learn but a fun and exciting to learn. That is all this time, for the meanwhile, lets check out the link below and see what we offer for your new and interesting Japanese learning!

Source: http://blog.akirademy.com/

5 THINGS may DISTRACT you when LEARNING JAPANESE ONLINE

5 THINGS may DISTRACT you when LEARNING JAPANESE ONLINE

In the last article we have looked at some of the reasons why you should learn Japanese online. However, if you choose to learn Japanese online, there are some problems you have to consider in order to have best learning experience. So here are 5 THINGS may DISTRACT you when LEARNING JAPANESE ONLINE.

Read more: How to say i love you in Japanese                                                                                            How to say good morning in Japanese                                                                                     Japanese Kanji

1. Social websites/ Social networks

Some of you guys may saw this coming: social websites. Although learning Japanese online is good, for the most of the time you will study at home. And when we are at home, there is a common action which is to log in our social networks and see if there is any updates on the Internet. Yes, we know that social website is important to get in touch with people nowadays, but in term of studying? It is not recommended to log in social websites while you are studying, especially if you are learning difficult language such as Japanese. It is hard to focus on your study when new messages or notifications pop up. So if you learn Japanese online, you should log off your social website, you will not want to be both checking new notifications and learning Japanese at the same time.

2. Music and Youtube

Well... this can be controversial. For some people, they say that they can only concentrate when they listen to music. And if they learn Japanese online, probably they will also listen to music. In reality. this is called as "multi-tasking" which means doing many things at the same time. The good news for people who like multi-tasking is that they can finish multiple works in one night, but the bad news is that the finished results are rarely at their best. If you both learn Japanese and listen to music, your energy is divided into 50-50 instead of 100% focusing on learning, thus you cannot learn Japanese at your best. While what people said that "I can only focus when they listen to music" is still remain a mystery, the advice is that you should do "single-tasking" which means you should turn off music or Youtube when you learn Japanese online.

3. Games

What are the most popular online games these days? Let see there are plenty: Dota 2, League of Legends, Hearthstone, World of Warcraft, .etc... These games are really fun to play and we will be absorbed in playing them for a long, long time without realizing it. Whatever the fun they may provide, they can hinder us from learning Japanese online. Just like music or social websites, people like to keep their game applications while learning Japanese. "I will just play a little bit" they say, "There is no need to turn off the game" they say, however, if you do not turn off the game, you will be disturbed. When your friends invite you to play? High chance you will join them and waste all the time playing while you are supposed to learn. Telling yourself that "I will just play a little bit" will not help since as we said, you will easily be absorbed in playing. So, if you decide to learn Japanese online? Try to resist the urge of playing and turn off all your games (both offline and online) and gaming clients like Steam, Battlenet, ...

4. Manga and Anime

Yes we know that we mentioned this in the last article about 5 advantages of learning Japanese online, however this is different a little bit. Do not misunderstand, manga and anime are still good tools to learn Japanese, but just like games, we can be, again, absorbed in those exciting adventures of manga and anime. The ironic thing is that at first, we thought that we are watching manga and anime for the sake of learning, but after a while we feel that the manga or anime serie we are watching is so good that we forget our goals. Suggestion to deal with this situation? Try to be mindful that you are learning Japanese, not watching manga and anime for entertainment. As long as you can maintain your focus, you are good to go.

5. The enormous amount of information on the Internet

When you find something on the Internet, you will find a whole lots of information, lots of sources which later on make you question: "which websites I should trust?", "which sites are reliable?", "which online courses are good to learn?". In this information ocean called "Internet", some sources are just fraud, they are created in order to deceive people for money; some sources provide poor contents and learning experience; whereas some other sites offer good contents, the learning experience might not suit you. The advice is that you should find out as much as you can about learning Japanese online courses, information websites, .etc... In addition, it is good to have someone experienced in learning Japanese online to guide you. At the very least, there are plenty of guides online for you to search for.

Here you have it, 5 things that may distract you while learning Japanese online. For the mean time, check out the link below to join us and enjoy Japanese learning experience with us!

Source: http://blog.akirademy.com/

5 RULES should be followed when LEARNING HOW TO SPEAK JAPANESE

5 RULES should be followed when LEARNING HOW TO SPEAK JAPANESE

Learning Japanese is a hard process indeed, and learning how to speak Japanese probably harder since it is a whole new kind of speaking language we are talking about. So to help you prepare for your Japanese speaking, here are the 5 RULES should be followed when learning how to speak Japanese.

Read more: How to say i love you in Japanese                                                                                            How to say good morning in Japanese                                                                                     Japanese Kanji

1 - Avoid focusing too much on grammar...

Normally when we learn a new language, we will have to learn grammar, its basic structure, so that when we speak, listeners can understand what are we talking about. However, many people are stuck in a trap which is focusing too much on grammar. Speaking and Grammar can be drastically different and Japanese is no exception. When focusing too much on grammar, you can be in a situation in which you confuse yourself and you don’t know how you should respond to a conversation. Also your talk can be “rigid” as you tend to try talking as close as the grammar structure you have learnt. And this is really bad! Really! Since what is the point of learning how to speak Japanese when you cannot actually make a proper real-life conversation? So instead of digesting tons of grammar structure, you should try different approach, it should be more effective.

2 - ...But don’t forget to grasp the basic grammar.

Yeah, we know this may sound contradict to what we told earlier, but wait, this is different. Yes learning “too much” about grammar is bad, but if we don’t understand the basic concepts of the language so how can we suppose to speak properly? That being said, although Japanese grammar is different from other language, for example English which is pretty popular nowadays, the grammar rules are not that hard to learn and it only takes small amount of time to get hold of it. For example, in English we have to change the verb based on the subject (human, living being, or lifeless object), gender, and the number of subject, but that rule is not applied in Japanese. OR, in English we have the basic Simple Present structure: Subject - Verb - Object, on the other hand, in Japanese it looks like: Subject - Object - Verb. Lets take a look at the example below:

• English: I study in University.

• Japanese: 私は大学で勉強します (Watashi wa daigaku de benkyō shimasu) - literally means I in University study

So as you learn Japanese, if you understand the basic grammar, it will be easier for you to speak Japanese.

3 - Try to practice listening skill.

Remember when we said “try different approach”? This is exactly the different approach we are talking about. In an conversation, you do not only speak, you also have to response, so how can you response? You will have to listen. As the result, practice listening Japanese is an important part when learning how to speak Japanese. First of all, you have to listen to understand what other people say, and second, from what people say, you should be able to learn something from their speaking Japanese. Try to listen as much as you can, and then gradually you will be able to get used to Japanese speaking accent, the way Japanese people speak. From that, you will have a good foundation for your own Japanese speaking.

4 - Try to use realistic speaking or listening materials.

In truth, this rule is not an absolute rule you have to follow since each person have different preferences. However, there is a reason behind it. When you search for speaking and listening materials, surely you will look for Japanese materials, one of them is probably manga, anime, stories, books, .etc… The thing is, all these kind of materials range from “fantasy” genre to “slice of life” genre. “Slice of life” genre, which focuses on daily life, is good for your process of learning how to speak Japanese of course. But other types like “fantasy” stuffs, the way characters speak is pretty exaggerated or dramatized and you may accidentally follow that weird way of speaking (according to real-life conversation standard) and it can push you into funny situations. Don’t get it wrong, you can watch and read fantasy manga, anime, movies, films, books, .etc… in your leisure time, but when you learn to speak Japanese, try to choose materials which related to real-life.

5 - Don’t try translating Japanese to English or mother-tongue all the time.

Looking at this rule and many people may think: “weird… if I don’t translate the meaning so how can I understand what I’m learning?”. They have a point, but the downside of that thinking is this is not grammar learning. Speaking Japanese means using Japanese in real conversation, it equals to using Japanese culture. In many cases, the meaning of a word in Japanese is not the same as English or your mother-tougue, translating will lead to downfall of your learning to speak Japanese efforts. Not to mention that Japanese grammar structure is different from your mother-tongue or English grammar structure (check the example from rule nr2), so when you translate, the process will stop your fluency as you need to take time to translate. In the funnier case, you will stuck in situation where you use both Japanese and English, for example at the same time. Imagine like: “日本語のべんきょうは hard けど interesting です” (Nihongo no benkyou wa “hard” kedo “interesting” - Learning Japanese is hard but interesting). Sounds weird isn’t it?

After all, learning to speak Japanese is a long progress and it needs patient. If you want to have guidance in this difficult but fun journey, why not check out the link below to see what we have to offer!

3 TIPS for choosing ONLINE JAPANESE COURSE

3 TIPS for choosing ONLINE JAPANESE COURSE

Japanese online course seems to be a new trend nowadays. But since there are many learning Japanese online websites available, people have a hard time finding the right websites which suit their learning interests. This time, we would like to introduce some tips for choosing suitable online Japanese course.

Read more: How to say i love you in Japanese                                                                                            How to say good morning in Japanese                                                                                     Japanese Kanji

                                                                                         

1 - The course should have creative illustration.

In the past, knowledge is mostly delivered through words and long paragraphs. This is not really a bad way of delivering knowledge but in this new era, we would like to have more creative methods. The information should not only delivered in words but also in another ways such as videos, audios, or pictures. These will help people to be able to understand easier and remember much longer than making them remember a bunch of words.

2 - The course should provide real-life conversation.

There is a fact that some people are proud of their high scores in Japanese lessons, but sadly they can hardly speak normally or naturally in everyday conversation, which leads to the question: “What’s good from learning a new language if you cannot actually use it to make conversation?”. From this point, it is suggested that the online Japanese course should have everyday-life conversation illustrations. The more people listen to the conversation, the more they will get used to Japanese accent and the way Japanese people speak. Also, people can hear how the new vocabularies are used in real-life speaking and how they are used in particular situations. Of course, it is always more interesting to hear Japanese people speak.

3 - The course should provide interesting information and facts about Japan’s cultures, society and everyday life.

Good knowledge deliver is a good value of a excellent online Japanese course, but seems that is not enough. Since it is Japanese learning we are talking about, we also want to know more about Japan, about its culture, about its people. Learning a new language can be considered as learning new culture, thus broaden our perspective about the world around us. As the results, in order to provide a better Japanese learning course in overall, giving information about Japanese culture, the country itself, Japanese people is necessary. Isn’t it interesting when you study Japanese and also learn about its cuisine at the same time? Isn’t it fun and entertaining to learn Japanese and also know more about your favorite Japan’s sites like the modern heaven for otakus - Akihabara, the ancient city of Kyoto, or the famous Osaka Castle? In any cases, this always give people higher motivation to learn Japanese.

So these are the 3 tips for choosing Japanese online course. With these tips we hope that you can find the best course for your study. And if you are still wondering, why not join us through the link below for awesome learning experience? You will not be dissapointed!

How to say good night in japanese ?

In Japanese language, there are various greeting phrases according to the situation or time. But, the daily greetings are simple. In the last post, I have written about how to say good morning in Japanese so today I  will introduce common phrases to say good night in Japanese. Let's learn it and use it now.

General i love you in japanese

1. How to say good night in Japanese ?

One of the common phrases to say good night in Japanese is おやすみなさい (oyasuminasai) . O-yasumi nasai is standard for "Good night" and dropping the nasai can make it informal. Talking with your family or friends, remove なさい (nasai), and you just say お休み (oyasumi). This way makes more closely and sweetly.

You can use some follow sentences which has the same meaning :

- おやすみなさい、良い夢を! ( oyasuminasai. Yoi yume wo ) Good night. Have a nice dream !

- 眠った方がいいよ。 (Netta kata ga iiyo ) You should go to sleep.

- 目を閉じて眠りなさい。( Me wo tojite nemurinasai )  close your eyes and take sleep.

After giving the others the declaration to wish them had a good sleep, you can also give them a kiss in their forehead or maybe a sweat hug. A tight one, which make you are close as possible to the other person. Where you are afraid that you might crushed each other, almost. One were afraid to let go.

2.  What do you ask when he/she wakes up ?

To express your concern to each other not only by 1 sentence you say before he/she sleep but also you need to ask him/her how did he/she feel after sleeping. You can use some ways such as :

What do you ask when he/she wakes up ?

• 昨日の夜はいつ寝たの. What time did you go to sleep yesterday ?
• どう 夢を見ましたか . How are your dream ?
• 昨日どのようにあなたが眠りますか. How did you sleep ?

The people, who are falling in love can say :

- あなたは私に夢を見させてくれるのね。 You make me to dream about you.

- わたしはあなたの夢を見ました。 I saw you in my dream.

This is all the way to say good night in Japanese. Wish you use it in true way and true situation.