Learn Japanese FAQ

Q:  In regards to the Katakana chart, you say it is easy to learn and will help you with reading menus or small things in Japanese. This would be true if one knew what the word meant in English, correct?   I appreciate you taking your time in creating a website designed to help others. I find it very useful.   -  Kaitlyn

A: Hi Kaitlyn.  What a very good question!  With regards hiragana, you are absolutely correct you’d have to know what the word means in English for the hiragana to make any sense.  But this is the beauty with katakana, because especially with menus it’s totally possible to guess at the meaning!  For example if you can read パスタ　as “pa su ta” then you can probably guess that it means “pasta” or if you can read サラダ　as “sa ra da”  with a bit of practice you can probably guess it means “salad”.   Hence why I totally recommend learning Katakana before Hiragana if you’ll actually be visiting Japan!

Q:  This could be an error in my own part, but so far, I’ve stumbled across two different words for the same thing in Japanese. Such as, in one list, I have found the word for caterpillar to be “kemushi” where in another it’s “imomushi” How do I tell if they’re right and which to use? -  Sami

A:  Hi Sami.  First of all don’t worry too much.  When you learn any language there are always words that sometimes overlap or sometimes can’t be translated.  For example what’s the difference between “couch” or “sofa” or “living room” or “lounge”.    In this case I think imomushi is one type of caterpillar.  But actually the English word caterpillar isn’t a very accurate word anyway!  So just as with everything else, simply listen to lots of Japanese and you’ll soon instinctively figure out which words to use in which circumstance.   And if you are talking you just use one word, see if the reaction is what you expect, and if not try the other word!  That’s how babies learn and that’s the same technique that people who speak many languages use to get really good!

Be genki,

Richard

Q: I love your pages, but there is one thing I think you could do to make it MUCH better.  On your 1-20 video, you show the words you are saying in English.  This helps me with the pronunciation.  On other videos, you only show the words in Japanese, which I don’t know how to pronunciate.   If you were to have the words in both english and japanese, that would be most helpful.  thanks!  -  Keith

A: Hi Keith.  I can understand your frustration with this, it can often seem much easier to read the English letters.  I also know I would get many more visitors if I used them more.  But….  although it might seem that it is helping you with the pronunciation, all it is doing is making you pronounce the Japanese with an English accent.  You won’t be able to tell the difference yourself but  if you pronounce the words as they are written in English you will have a lot of difficulty being understood.  I see it all the time with people saying something that is just slightly off, but it’s totally incomprehensible for  a Japanese person who doesn’t know English (i.e. nearly everyone!)

So what to do?  Just listen to the songs!  Eventually you’ll find them sticking in your head, then you can watch the video and link the Japanese symbol to the correct sound.   This way you’ll hace the correct pronunciation and will be understood!   I promise you this will make a huge, huge difference with your learning.   Just as with anything a little extra pain at the beginning will bring much bigger rewards at the end!

Be genki,

Richard

Q: Hello,
I love the way you have made little songs for certain subjets. I was wondering, I have an I pod touch. Can i also download it to it?  Thanks -  Elena

A: Hi Elena,  yes everything works perfectly on the ipod touch.   You can either watch the videos free on Youtube or you can buy the download pack to use offline!

Be genki,

Richard

Q: Hi richard, first of all: genkijapan.net is Sugoi! I’ve a question about the japanese way to write. By example i tryed to wrote hidari (left) and that was 5 characters. I looked of it was correct and saw in your left, right, forward and backward vid that it was simply one character. I found out that it also was in more words. I thought first that learning japanese was easy! But now i think it’s a little harder than i thought. Can you explain me how to write the characters of words correct?  thank you.  - D

A: Just like in English where we have different ways of writing things, for example you can write “thirteen” or “13″ for exactly the same word,  then in Japanese you can also do this.   “Hidari” is how you spell the word for “left” using the Western or Roman letters.  But you hardly ever use these in Japan.

Which is quite cool because hidari has a lot of letters, whereas in Japan you’d usually use the symbol for hidari “左” which is just one character!  This makes things easy!  But it also means you have to learn lots of different characters, and learning them by heart is the only way!

Be genki,

Richard

Q: Can I teach Japanese with this system? Can I teach an English speaking child to speak Japanese with this system? -  Cindy

A:  Hi Cindy.  The Genki Japan materials are aimed at young adults/teenagers, but they are based on the Genki English system which is used very successfully with students of all ages.   You might need some extra Japanese materials (like authentic picture books or videos) but it will certainly be a great staring point!

Be genki,

Richard

Here’s a quick video review of the Michel Thomas Japanese course - highly recommended!

You can buy it here on Amazon – it makes a great Christmas present!

Q: Sorry for being random, but I’d like your opinion. Would you think it is possible for an English-speaking American who learns Japanese well, to marry a Japanese? Japan seems so strict with their culture, and I often hear that they outcast foreigners, that I often wonder if intercultural marriage like that would be accepted, if even TRULY possible. -  Hannah

A: Hi Hannah,  as I mentioned before Japanese is quite a racist country, but most younger people are quite up for what’s called an “International Marriage” (i.e. one person is Japanese, one isn’t) and they are now quite a large percentages of marriages that are international as most Japanese people don’t get married at all now it seems!   You may find a few parents who are against it, but as long as you are charming enough I’m sure you can win them round!

Q: In a textbook, ‘why’ was translated as doushite, but it’s always said as nande in anime..which the textbook translated as ‘by what means’.. which is correct? -  Jordan

A:  Just like English, Japanese often has different words for similar things so “nande” and “doushite” are both pretty much meaning “why”.   “By what means” does sound wrong though,  that would be something more like “dou yatte”.

In any case I would put very, very little trust in what textbooks say.  Many of them are full of mistakes or totally unatural Japanese that no-one would ever use, so I’d always go for the anime’s version every time!

Be genki,

Richard

Q:  How do you say “answer me!” in Japanese

A: “An answer” in Japanese is 答え　”ko ta e”.  So to say “answer me” you would say 答えて “ko ta e te”, or 答えてください　”kotaete kudasai” to be more polite.  But don’t expect an answer straight away – most people are likely to turn away and chat with their friends before plucking up the courage to answer!  You do here this in movies quite a lot though!

Be genki,

Richard