Learning Japanese: Becoming a Master of Nuance
Japanese is a difficult language. One of the greatest obstacles is that there are usually not one, but many interpretations of a single word depending on the situation. These differences can sometimes be blatantly obvious and other times remarkably subtle. Even if you have understood the word in question you won’t necessarily understand it in certain idioms or turns of phrase.
Take the word 必ず (definitely). Assuming that you only learned this translation of the word, you might be able to understand it in the sentence 「必ずやります」(I’ll definitely do that), but not in the sentence 「必ずということではありません」(I made no promises). You might directly translate to “It isn’t definite.” or “It isn’t a sure thing.” You wouldn’t catch the idea that 必ず implies a commitment or obligation.
This is an example of a subtle nuance, which even English dictionary translations are often unable to capture well. Japanese, like any language, has a plethora of such nuances and they won’t always map one to one to the most similar English term.
That is why words need to be learned through more than just translations.
Learning all the interpretations of a word means having to notice the word in as many contexts as possible. Take, for example, the word “hot”. Most children first learn that it means “warm” and that, whatever it is, you probably shouldn’t touch it. However, “hot” can sometimes be a good thing, like in a hot bath. In Japanese, you might use the word 熱い (atsui) to refer to something painfully hot, like a fire, but you would use the word 暑い (atsui) to refer to hot weather. Both 熱い and 暑い would be translated to “hot”, even though they have very different use cases.
You can’t learn a word properly by seeing it out of context. You also won’t learn a word properly when it is only shown to you in one context. Somehow, your route to becoming a master of nuance lies in being exposed to all the words you learn many times in as many diverse situations as possible. What methods do we have to be able to read in this fashion?
Immerse yourself! Spot the words in the wild
- Read tons of texts and books.
- Watch plenty of movies.
- Have many conversations with Japanese speakers about various topics.
Look up examples
Most dictionaries include example sentences to give context to most words. When you look up a new word, this will quickly let you know about some different interpretations for the word you just learned. It lets you spend less time looking for other occurrences of the word in other contexts. However, there is a problem with looking up words all the time, especially in Japanese:
Looking up words in a standard dictionary is slow and tedious.
Whether it is looking up words by pronunciation or by kanji, it takes an impeding amount of time to look up a word in a traditional hard copy Japanese dictionary. This is why many Japanese native speakers use digital dictionaries instead because they are faster, more portable and just generally convenient. You can easily look up the word you are looking for and have all the example sentences neatly listed next to it.
However, how many times have you had a look at an example sentence in a dictionary only to find out that you don’t understand the words in the example?
At Atilika, we are currently developing a site called japanese.io. It is designed to give you the tools to read Japanese and have fun while doing it, by removing as many barriers to comprehension as possible. The service lets you click on words to look them up. The lookup card can also show you a breakdown of all the kanji used in the word.
As soon as you’ve clicked a word, you can check out the example sentences with just one more click. We have also made sure that you can look up words in the example sentences themselves. Hover over the word and you will see the furigana. Click the word and you will get a small lookup card that shows its meaning.
You’re welcome to check out this feature on this publicly shared text with no sign up required.
We also offer a chrome extension that allows you to read any Japanese web page with all the word dictionaries and lookups at your fingertips all the time.
