Have you taught a native speaker something about Japanese?

Japanese
#1

(and if so, share here)

They say that the only way to fully understand something is to teach it. I am years away (if ever) from fully understanding Japanese (I failed the N4 exam in 2025), but I tend to overthink small things, and I have had multiple cases where I shared an epiphany with my (native Japanese speaking) partner, and she said “wow, I’ve never thought about it that way.” To be fair, there are also plenty of times where she has said: no, you are wrong. :joy:

As a side note, the same thing has happened in reverse. She often asks me something like “what is the difference between these two English words?” And I realize I can’t explain it, so I have to stop and think hard, and sometimes even consult a dictionary. Result: I learn something about English!

If others have similar stories, please share them in this thread. I can’t think of specific examples right now, except for this one because it happened very recently:

The word なくなる does not need to be memorized, because it is literally just ない (not existing, in adverbial form なく), with なる (to become) attached. Thus it means “to become not existing”. Or, to disappear.

Even better, I presume this framing explains why なくなる is translated as the polite “to pass away” (compared to 死ぬ translated as “to die”). The LLMs agree with me, but maybe we’re wrong.

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#2

I also like 命を落とす

This post also reminded me that I probably should restart doing Italian lessons with my Granny. She always asks me something, and I’m like “idk, let me check it for us both”. Now, when I can do CI without stopping every few seconds, I think it will be even more fun, because for Granny it’s fun to have lessons with me, and for me it’s a really good practice to produce speech with as few errors as I can (I’m getting enough rough, pretty unfiltered output so far)

I also have a mentee in Japanese, and oftentimes it’s really hard, something like “what is the difference between 芸術 and 美術?” And I can go like “The first seems more universal, and it’s easier to use, while 美術 might sound cringe(mb?) or pretentious (mb?)” than I google it, and it’s basically that 芸術 is all kinds of art, and 美術 is fine arts “but it still should have that strange feeling of not being used, right, right?” I’m not sure, maybe it has that nuance where I exist, maybe not.

Now when I think about it, I really like the sensation I feel when I try to explain something very familiar, but I cannot be sure, or cannot figure it out

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#3

LOL, I haven’t heard that verb yet. I laugh, because I used to skydive a lot (hence the profile pic), and in that community there’s a lot of insider language (and morbid humor) including various ways to say somebody died in the sport. The most common is probably to say that so and so “went in”. I haven’t thought about that in a long time, and I’ve never even tried to analyze it too literally, but I guess it means they “went into the ground (faster than was intended or is repeatable)”. But I feel like your verb works really well in this context too.

I know there are mixed feeling about this, but I have found LLMs to be phenomenal for these kinds of questions. They are often mediocre to poor at providing links to actual authoritative sources to the claims they make, but I’ve yet to find them mistaken about those claims. I consult them for helping to explain fine points of English to my partner (and myself) as well, and again, they are not really ever wrong. This shouldn’t be surprising… they are, after all, language models.

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#4

I actually discussed this extensively with a Japanese friend the other day, although more as a philosophical and translation theory thing (comparing with English terms like ‘art’ and ‘crafts’). There’s quite an interesting discussion to be had about the historical status of certain things as ‘art’ or not in European culture compared to Japanese culture and, consequently, to what extent the modern Western concept of institutional art has an influence on the folk Japanese concept of 美術 and 芸術 (i.e., the way people speak about ‘art’ in their daily life). Short version is that defining these words in English and Japanese is a little treacherous, although that is a more philosophical discussion.

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#5

one of my colleagues complained English was hard because Japanese doesn’t have transitive and intransitive verbs and English does… safe to say I blew her mind lmao

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#6

It’s a bit niche, but the kanji for the Japanese koto is 「箏」, not 「琴」! Even Japanese people get this wrong if they don’t have much experience with the instrument.

(It’s also incorrect on Bunpro, but my report was ignored. :frowning_face: )

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#7

An interesting thing I talk to natives about is the origin of terms used in early translations that have become mainstream terms. Like Japanese did not really have an abstract noun for the concept of beauty, so they borrowed the Kanji from 美しい and took its onyomi to coin a new word 美 when they were translating foreign text during the Meiji period. There was no kunyomi word for beauty, only the adjective beautiful, which is interesting philosophically. The same goes for 彼 and 彼女 those were coined in the same period in order to accurately translate western texts.

A corollary to that is things that natives think are native words but are not at all like カステラ.

Also, I am a teacher, so sometimes I have to teach Japanese grammar to the students in order for them to better appreciate English grammar.

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#8

I think this is a case of having more than one acceptable kanji rather than one being wrong. I’ve seen the second used before. I don’t recall the first, but that doesn’t mean it’s not used. I looked it up in a dictionary and it says they’re both used.

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#9

From what I understand this is similar to the difference between a Viola and a Violin. Like sure they are different, but are they really. If you are in that world and care, it matters, but they both refer to nearly the same instrument. The difference being in this case that 箏 are tuned using the pillar things, and 琴 are tuned at the bridge.

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#10

琴 I think is a catch-all term for the style of instrument (a class), where 箏 is an actual instrument. It is a bit like how we have a class of zithers, which includes lots of stringed instruments, but there are actual instruments called zither.

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#11

If you ask someone that plays the koto, they will say 琴 is blatantly incorrect. If you ask a Japanese person that doesn’t play the instrument, 琴 is accepted and understood.

Also @Sidgr I found an interesting website outlining it more clearly! It also explains why 琴 has come to be widely accepted despite being technically incorrect. 琴と箏の違い 構造と歴史から漢字の使い分け 整理方法まで解説 ｜骨董品買取 緑和堂

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#12

I think this is a fun case of language use that annoys certain people but is perfectly fine because in practice that’s what’s used. It’s kind of like how “cactuses” is correct even if it annoys me because “cacti” is what I was taught. If it’s used in practice and recognized to be something, that doesn’t make it incorrect, just a different use than some people want.

This also makes me think of the 雰囲気 conversation we had the other day about pronouncing it ふんいき vs. ふいんき.

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#13

My husband is Japanese, but we don’t live in Japan. I managed to teach him about Japanese place names by accident. Last year, we were on holiday in Japan, going to Matsumoto on the train. We passed by Shiojiri station ( 塩尻市), and I asked him why the kanji ‘butt’ was in a place name, since I had recently learned it on Wanikani. He didn’t know but thought it was a weird name. Later, in the local museum, I was able to show him information about it being the end (or butt) of the salt trading route.

I’m an English teacher, so he sometimes asks me questions about English I don’t know the answer to. However, I will usually look it up if I need to.

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#14

I’ve taught them countless times that there is prime comedy when you get the order of letters wrong or confuse two words that seem similar to non-natives like 挑戦 and 抽選

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#15

oh and I’ve taught them that English and Japanese have similar proverbs despite being separated by half a planet,

kills two birds with one stone - 一石二鳥

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#16

I did unintentionally teach Japanese fighting game slang to one native at one of our weekly meetups.

I watch so much Japanese language video game and fighting game content, I just got used to how everything is shortened. 格闘ゲーム is often shortened to 格ゲー. The native speaker had the same name as famed Street Fighter player, Daigo. I mentioned this along with the slang term and he seemed perplexed. Then I said the proper version, and that’s when he understood. He seemed amused by the whole ordeal.

You know, it’s such specific slang that most Japanese people wouldn’t know that. Street Fighter II is also usually just referred to as スト２ among players.

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#18

It’s partly French - so I’m not sure how I knew this as I don’t actually know French- but I taught a Japanese person that the シュー in シュークリーム means cabbage! I mean if you look at them they kind of look like cabbages? Not sure if this counts as it’s technically a loan word-
, but it’s still fun!

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#19

I think my friend was teaching me random words and it was something like ‘火山’ where the sound changes to ざん and isn’t かさん.

So because I had just started wanikani at the time I say “Oh, so it is ‘ざん’ because of rendaku!”

He had no idea it was called rendaku 連濁

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#20

It’s funny how, after cramming so many kanjis into a year of learning (first ~20 WK levels), I can still easily recognize a kanji or word as one that I learned at the very beginning. I do specifically remember that word as being one of my first moments of realizing how semantically transparent some words built from kanjis are. I knew what it meant before I even saw the definition, and that started a tradition I still maintain which is when unlocking new vocab words, I try to guess the meaning from the kanjis before looking at it. I feel like I get it right maybe 66% of the time.

This spawned one of my favorite ever language conversations with an LLM: ChatGPT - Degrees of semantic transparency (and fittingly enough, ChatGPT used 火山 in its response :joy:).

I’ve said the word butterfly a million times in my life, and never once thought about butter.

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#21

You just taught me something about French and English and Japanese all at the same time. You win this thread. Or maybe the French win for having such a successful loan word with a very surprising meaning.

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