Easy Japanese 2015 - Teach Us, Teacher | NHK WORLD RADIO JAPAN (2024)

FAQs

What does Gokazoku mean in Japanese? ›

Similarly, kazoku means "my family," while go-kazoku means "your family" (or, broadly speaking, someone else's family).

1. Learn the Japanese alphabet. The best way to learn Japanese is to start with learning the alphabet. There are three basic writing systems you need to learn to be able to read Japanese: Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji.

Chowa is a Japanese concept that is often translated as 'harmony', but more accurately means 'the search for balance'. Chowa is both a philosophy and a set of practices that can help us get to the heart of what is most important to us, and, change our way of thinking about ourselves and others.

While its use is no longer common, it is still seen in constructions like chichi-ue (父上), haha-ue (母上) and ane-ue (姉上), reverent terms for "father", "mother" and "older sister" respectively.

Learn to Read Hiragana

The other two are katakana and kanji, but hiragana is where everything starts. The ability to read hiragana is going to be a prerequisite for most beginner Japanese textbooks and resources. It's the first thing you learn in a traditional classroom.

It takes committed learners around 4-6 months to achieve a beginner level of Japanese when starting without any prior knowledge of the language. Once you've reached this milestone, you'll be able to do the following: Use basic Japanese phrases to introduce yourself, order food, and ask for directions.

Therefore, when it comes to pure intelligibility, the Ryukyuan languages are said to be the most similar to Japanese. As a result, speakers of Japanese may find it relatively easy to understand Ryukyuan languages, and vice versa.

Religion in Japan is manifested primarily in Shinto and in Buddhism, the two main faiths, which Japanese people often practice simultaneously. According to estimates, as many as 80% of the populace follow Shinto rituals to some degree, worshiping ancestors and spirits at domestic altars and public shrines.

Which alphabet is most used in Japan? ›

While there are three main writing systems in Japan – Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana – the most commonly used is the Hiragana. Hiragana has the simplest character formation and can be learned relatively easily out of the three. Hiragana is also the main writing method taught to Japanese children in elementary school.

Keigo (敬語, literally "respectful language" in Japanese)

When we want to show respect to the listener or the person we are talking about, we say O or GO before nouns or adjectives concerning that person. For example, SHIGOTO (work) becomes OSHIGOTO. GENKI (healthy) becomes OGENKI. And KAZOKU (family) becomes GOKAZOKU.

Yamada (山田, lit. 'mountain rice field') is the 12th most common Japanese surname.

Meaning. Often translated as a single word. However it can mean much more – a sentence, a paragraph, a book, language, dialect, phrase. It is similar to the English noun copy or text.