If you’re living in Japan you might encounter some differences between what you’ve been taught in class and its usage in everyday life. Have you ever wondered what standard phrases you can use to say you understood what a speaker is saying, or when to use keigo (polite language) in everyday life? These little nuances come naturally to the Japanese, but a foreign speaker might be bewildered by the differing levels of courtesy you must extend to people you interact with. Or maybe you simply want to improve your Japanese with a bit of self-studying?
Yomiuri Daily’s online website has Pera Pera Penguin, a column to with lessons on conversation and daily usage.
These short, five minute lessons were created by Hitomi Hirayama. She has fifteen years of experience teaching Japanese and founded Japanese Lunch, a language school geared to business people in Tokyo. A lesson comes out every eight weeks and can be downloaded in a pdf for free from the online site. You should have These lessons are great for those who already know some Japanese but who would like to get better at it. Complete novices to the language will be overwhelmed by the format at first, because you need a grasp of the grammar and basic vocabulary to understand them. Each lesson begins with a question about using Japanese in everyday life which Ms. Hirayama will answer. Then the rest of the lesson will cover a related topic. In two pages readers get a lesson and exercises to practice with usage examples. You must remember to check if your pdf reader can read Japanese fonts, because if it can’t, part of the text looks like gibberish. There are helpful links at the bottom of the column leading to the Adobr Acrobat Reader page! So get those lessons and let’s start learning Japanese!
[tags]Pera Pera Penguin, learning Japanese[/tags]