Japanese Langblr - Blog Posts

tip for improving japanese reading speed!

how about you try some カラオケ???

i've been doing this for a couple years now and i think this has single-handedly made my reading speed in japanese improve to the point of almost being as fast as it is in english (although i still struggle with kanji and katakana sometimes x_x)

to find one, i usually just search on youtube (song name) followed by either カラオケ or ニコカラ. if nobody has made a karaoke for your song of choice, then i'd otherwise search up (song name) followed by 歌詞 (kashi/lyrics) and you'll usually find them that way. i like to use the site utaten.com because they all feature furigana! be a little careful though because while its only happened to me a couple of times, there's been times where the furigana is wrong for one or two words.

i think this is a really fun way to practice especially if you love singing, like i do!! i've never seen anyone else recommend this so i hope this helps

Learn Japanese with me #1

Today is september 11, 2022

Let’s begin with numbers. I won’t use any kana for a time, we’ll introduce them later at a slow pace. 

1. The single numbers

   1 = ichi

   2 = ni

   3 = san

   4 = yon (shi)

   5 = go

   6 = roku 

   7 = nana (shichi)

   8 = hachi

   9 = kyuu (ku)

  10 = juu

The words in parentheses are alternative names for those numbers. Sometimes those names are evaded due to the fact that they’re pronounciations for other words regarded as unlucky words, like shi which is the same sound for death and ku which is the same sound for suffering.

2. The teens

These are very simple to work with, and the dynamics to build them are pretty much the same as those of roman numerals. What we do is that we take juu -10- and right after it we place a single number, like this:

11 = juu ichi

12 = juu ni

13 = juu san

14 = juu yon

15 = juu go

16 = juu roku

17 = juu nana

18 = juu hachi

19 = juu kyuu

3. The tens

For these numbers we take a very similar approach to the previous ones, just inverting the order. Like this:

20 = ni juu

30 = san juu

40 = yon juu

50 = go juu

60 = roku juu

70 = nana juu

80 = hachi juu

90 = kyuu juu

4. The hundreds

For 100 we use hyaku, and in order to make bigger numbers from it we just use it in a similar fashion to juu, with some exceptions:

200 = ni hyaku

300 = sanbyaku

400 = yon hyaku

500 = go hyaku

600 = roppyaku

700 = nana hyaku

800 = happyaku

900 = kyu hyaku

5. The thousands

For 1000 we say sen or issen. To build the multiple integers of 1000 we put the name of the integer before sen, with some exceptions:

2000 = ni sen

3000 = san zen

4000 = yon sen

5000 = go sen

6000 = roku sen

7000 = nana sen

8000 = hassen

9000 = kyuu sen

So now, we can build any integer number from 0 to 9999:

46 = yon juu roku

357 =  san byaku go juu nana

7569 = nana sen go hyaku roku juu kyuu

Notice how the name looks like we are adding 7000 + 500 + 60 + 9.

I’m gonna leave it here, today. Hope you may find this useful, and I’ll see you soon :3

がんばってね！