Wakarimasen and other useful Japanese words

Konnichiwa, students,

As you can tell from the tile, this is another entry on the Japanese language.
There are certain words in all languages that convey a whole sentence in just one word. Wakarimasen and Sumimasen are two such words I think I will probably make good use of during my stay in Japan. Wakarimasen means "I don't understand", and Sumimasen means "Excuse me, or "Sorry". Since the Japanese people are very polite, they use "sumimasen" regularly.

In the picture of me posted on this blog, I am reading 15-minute Japanese . It has been a helpful guide to learning phrases that I can use in different situations. I have learned that I can make a sentence into a question by add "ka" to the end of the sentence. O genki desuka, for example, means "How are you?"

I have also learned that Japanese has been greatly influenced by the other countries it has traded with in its past, such as Portugal, the Netherlands, and the United States. Many words are "borrowed" and then Japanized. Here are some: Pants are pantsu, however, the word pants in Japanese means underwear; the color pink is pinku,the Internet is intahnetto. So, I have found I can remember many words once I know their meaning.

In other situations there are different words for the same thing. This became evident to me when I began learning how to tell the Japanese I meet about my family. Otohsan is the word for father, but if I were talking about my father, Steve, I would call him ChiChi. In some instances, I like the familiar word for "my" relative better than the formal one. Whereas Okhsan is mother, when you're talking about your mother, she is HaHa. Musume san is daughter, musume for my daughter, Sarah. I would use musuko san for son when asking someone about their son, and musuko for my son, Aaron when talking about him.


Kyo's(today's)picture is from a Japanese Anime movie, one which won the 2002 Academy Award for animation. We can't always stay focused on "school" subjects, now can we? I have seen my share of Pokemon cards when musuko, Aaron collected them. Although he doesn't trade them anymore, he is keeping them as an "investment", and memories of his younger years. And, I chose this picture because it gives another example of Japanese hiragana (Japanese characters representing syllables).