If you’ve watched any action-packed anime or gritty Japanese dramas/films, chances are you’ve heard a character yell something like: 「手を出すんじゃねえ！」Don’t you dare lay a hand (on them)! This kind of phrase is often delivered with fire and fury, but what exactly is going on grammatically? And how does it differ from more standard expressions? 🔍 […]
Tag: advanced
In Japanese grammar, “〜んとする” (n to suru) is a phrase that means for “someone to try to do” or for “something to be about to occur.” It is very often used to describe an action that someone is attempting to do or is in the process of doing. Here’s a few examples of 〜んとする in […]
For anyone interested in studying jinmeiyō kanji and wondering where to start, here’s a list of all of the jinmeiyō kanji found in one of the all-time classic Japanese novels: Botchan (坊っちゃん) by Natsume Sōseki (夏目 漱石). How many jinmeiyō kanji are these in Botchan? Good question! There are approximately 135 of them! And here […]
For quite a while now I’ve been trying to come up with an effective way to study non-jōyō kanji (technically known as jōyōgai kanji [常用外漢字] i.e. the kanji that are NOT within the 2,136 jōyō kanji), and although I’m still nowhere near achieving this goal, I recently had an interesting idea: obtain a book written […]