When you study a language like Japanese, you learn many rules that make up the grammar, like the unique particles wa and ga which verbally mark the subjects of sentences; o, which conveniently marks the object of a sentence; how to change the verb forms to add whatever meaning you want to express, and so on. But as you study, you’ll learn that to every rule there’s an exception. For starters, the grammatical structures used in Japanese are important, yet in real spoken Japanese, most parts of sentences are usually understood by speakers and are thus eliminated, which can create confusion in the minds of students. When addressing someone, the Japanese add –san to the ends of their names for formal speech, and for relationships that are closer, -chan for girls and -kun for boys. But there are plenty of exceptions to this neat little system, for example, calling all children with –chan regardless of sex, mothers adding –san to the names of foods in bento lunches for their kids, –kun being used with females in formal classroom or military settings, or the Japanese obsession with nicknames, with the whole country thinking of Arnold Schwarzenegger as “Schwa-chan” because that’s so darned cute. Bottom line, any language is complex, and the best way to cover each different facet of it is to expose yourself to plenty of input in that language. Thankfully, it’s quite easy to find interesting and compelling ways to get input in Japanese, whether from manga or anime or Japanese dramas or even the PC dating-sim games we sell.
