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Level: All About

Learn Japanese with JapanesePod101.com! So you finally got up the nerve to walk up to that really cute girl from the Japanese university you attend. You’ve rehearsed what you planned to say to her in Japanese in your head a hundred times. You’re starting to sweat as you approach her, and you just hope your deodorant is working. Everything’s going just great until you try to tell her in Japanese how “pretty” you think she is, and you end up using the Japanese word for “hated” instead. Oops! Guess you won’t be going out on Saturday night in Japan after all!

Learning Japanese with JapanesePod101.com is the most fun and effective way to learn Japanese! This Japanese All About lesson will teach you about the top five ways new students of Japanese often make blunders so you can avoid them. We’ll show you how to politely address people in Japanese who are your elders and teachers, as well as teach you to watch for distinctions between Japanese words that sound similar so you can avoid telling the guy down the hall that he’s “scary” in Japanese instead of “cute.” That’s only a good thing on Halloween. Visit us at JapanesePod101.com where you will find many more fantastic Japanese lessons and learning resources! Leave us a message while you are there!

learn Japanese, common mistakes in Japanese


This entry was posted on Monday, October 5th, 2009 at 6:30 pm and is filed under All About . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

17 Responses to “All About #14 - Top 5 Tips for Avoiding Common Mistakes in Japanese”

JapanesePod101.com says:

Hi mina-san! Have you made any of these mistakes before? We hope that the tips in this lesson will help you!

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Niclas says:

Mind anyone who want to hand over a business card (meishi), that you:
* hand it over with both hands (holding the edges close to you).
* hand it over with the text “readable”/”facing” to the receiver.

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Julian says:

Another classic short vowel-long vowel pair is;
びょういん/byouin (short)= hospital vs. びよういん/biyouin (long)=beauty salon.
I’m sure that’s tripped up lots of people. :wink:

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Dan says:

OK, well I’ll tell you one that happened to me, I accidentally said something VERY bad, in front of a lot of people. I was with some colleagues at a bar and wanted to request a change of song from the owner of the bar. I wanted to say something like “オーナに行って来る” (o-na ni itte kuru) but rather said ”おんなにい行って来る” (onnna nii itte kuru). Correct me if I’m spelling that wrong. Everyone was dying laughing. It apparently means that I’m off to go “take care of myself” to put it lightly.
恥ずかしい!!

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Zoran says:

From 5 mistakes , one for sure I never make , attaching -san to my name.
Long ago I remember, but look the forum, I smile when see how many people “bad copy” and use on their names suffix -san.
Politeness level , my Tokyo after little long time say “please do not talk too much polite, I am not stranger”
Thank to my native language I have no major trouble in Japanese
and example in this All About #14 make me smile. Is it possible make this mistake?
But really need time to remember this:
Ame,雨rain 飴candy
Hashi 箸chopsticks   橋bridge

OK understand in the All about#14 is used most bigger mistake, but this in lesson never sound me same, I hear big difference.

ゾラン

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Lars says:

Very interesting lesson :smile:

As most Japanese for foreigners teachers are female, male Japanese learners have to be careful not to use female expressions in Japanese. I have heard about this too.

Is there a list of male / female expressions e.g. particles avaible ?

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Mariam says:

:mrgreen: :kokoro: :nihon: I agree with Lars. This is a very interesting lesson and it’s quite useful. I really enjoyed it and I’m sure it will help me with my journey of learning Japanese. Thank you japanesepod101.com!

P.S. I love Hello Kitty! :mrgreen: :kokoro: :nihon:

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Jessi says:

Thanks for all of the comments and stories! :grin:

You might want to check out this link for more information on the differences between masculine and feminine speech:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_differences_in_spoken_Japanese

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Yamanchu says:

A friend of mine in Tokyo made two good mistakes. On ad train, an elder lady got on, so he stood up and offered her his seat. But instead of saying: “すわって下さい”、he said: “さわって下さい”! (Please touch me). You can imagine the strange look he got from this 80+ lady!

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Naomi says:

Yamanchu -san
I’ve heard the same story from my friend too. Are we talking about the same person? Maybe not. :lol:

I’ve also heard another mistake story.
A person wanted to say “after all we are all the same human beings”in a discussion but instead he said 「けっきょく、私たちはみんな同じニンジンじゃないですか。」”After all we’re all the same carrots.”
にんじん=Carrot
にんげん=human

I’m pretty sure I make this kind of mistakes all the time when I speak English. :wink:

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Muntosensei says:

How funny, I just taught my Year 7 students about not using ’san’ for yourself today! I will show them the picture above tomorrow to reinforce the point.
Thanks, I love this site, it’s so relevant to a lot of what I teach. I love the fact it’s ‘nama’ no nihongo!
Muntosensei

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Yamanchu says:

Naomisan,

I’m sure these mistakes happen all the time. A Japanese friend of mine here ((in Australia) was trying to tell an over-excited puppy to ’sit down’. Unfortunately for her, she couldn’t pronounce the word properly and instead of saying ’si’ was using the Japanese sound ‘し’. And was wondering why all the kids were laughing until I explained what she was saying!

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Mayumi says:

Muntosensei-san,
What an coincidence! :roll: :nihon:

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RANJANA says:

Naomi san,

Thanks for nice tips. I also made a mistake initially while asking for card. But now i am perfect, while talking to Japanese delegates, when they arrive here for the seminar or for any other job.

Thanks once again.

Ranjana

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Dave Boyer aka 「ビッピー」 says:

Konnichiwa Naomi san and Peter sanhttp://www.japanesepod101.com/wp-images/smilies/icon_smile.gif,

This is a wonderful lesson. In some cases, I have seen male students in the USA mimic physical gestures of their female Japanese sensei. One fellow started covering his mouth with his fingers whenever he laughed. It’s okay to do. But it looked very Japanese feminine to me. Another ‘home run’ lesson from JapanesePod101.com.

PS… I’ll be in Japan again for my trip #10 Nov.11 to Dec 1st. Wondering if we can shake hands with a visit together.http://www.japanesepod101.com/wp-images/smilies/icon_nihon.gif

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Renon says:

Hi everyone im extremely new just signed up today the stuff is easy to learn and your comments are hilarious and true :mrgreen: i

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Sarah says:

Is there a clue for males learning like in spanish? How would they know whats the female version and the male version

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