One of the biggest omissions in Japanese textbooks, classes and one-on-one lessons is gendered language. Ignore it and at some point you will wind up sounding like a little Japanese girl — or a guy — when you didn't intend too.

What exactly is "gendered language"? This refers to how males and females speak differently from one another within a language. It is a feature of other languages (Spanish, for one), but the Japanese version differs as it refers to gender roles and is not "grammatically gendered" — meaning that if you are a boy and speak like a girl, there is nothing grammatically incorrect about it. You would just sound like a girl, and that's no fun.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

Sometimes you just want to wring someone's neck (kubi wo hinetteyaru). Oh, only figuratively, I mean. And having wrung — verbally, that is — you feel like a new man or woman, totally refreshed. This may even clear the air, or, in Japanese, sukatto suru, and be the basis for a passionate makeup.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

Here's an addiction that doesn't require a 12-step recovery program. For the past six years, Berkeley, Calif.-based freelance writer Eve Kushner has been a self-proclaimed, unapologetic "kanji-holic." Kushner details her passion for Sino-Japanese characters in a new textbook, "Crazy for Kanji: A Student's Guide to the Wonderful World of Japanese Characters" (Stone Bridge Press).

LINK TO ORIGINAL

The first word for the new Japan travel word of the day is “nihon”. In Japanese, nihon means “Japan”. The Chinese characters used for this word mean “sun” and “root/origin”. Japan is famously dubbed, “The Land of the Rising Sun,” which is strongly based on the character meanings.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

WARABI, Saitama -- The Warabi Municipal Government has designed a T-shirt showing how to write the notoriously difficult Chinese character used in the city's name.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

COLUMBIA, Mo. — Ominous in black robes and hoods, three artists move stealthily to manipulate unique charges: 1.2-metre Japanese puppets that are putting a new face on language instruction for college students in Missouri's heartland.

Their art is Bunraku, an ancient form of lyrical theatre in Japan, and their sensei (teacher) is a former Mormon missionary-turned-devotee - University of Missouri professor Martin Holman.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

The other day in English class I shocked a student by supplying her with a translation of the Japanese proverb "Even monkeys fall from trees." (The English-language proverb I used for the translation was "Even Homer sometimes nods.") The student seemed amazed that English had proverbs; she had believed them to be a unique feature of the Japanese language. I once got the same reaction from a student who thought that "puns" were an exclusively Japanese phenomenon.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

The Internet has brought us closer together than ever before, or so the cliche goes. But has it really?

In one way, at least, it hasn't. Language barriers, the Internet's last frontiers, continue to trump technology, marking out dividing lines online just as they do offline. Beyond these barriers, new worlds of content have grown and evolved largely in isolation from one another.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

Ever wondered how the Chinese language is perceived in Korea and Japan, two countries located right next to China with languages that are originally unrelated but strongly influenced by Chinese characters? Well, here's how.

(For the purposes of this post, Chinese = Mandarin. There are many other types of "Chinese" in existence of course)

LINK TO ORIGINAL

NEW YORK - A HUNGARIAN novel about a writer who lives with his mother and an eclectic, experimental collection of Japanese verse have been named winners of the Best Translated Book Awards for fiction and poetry.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

Q: I have been an assistant language teacher for seven years. The biggest problem I have is that Japanese teachers love to translate every single word I say in class. My students are robbed of being able to understand me in English.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

Arinori Mori, a key player in the Meiji Restoration and Japan’s first minister of education, wrote a book, “Education of Japan,” in 1873 based on his experiences overseas, including in England and the U.S., as a diplomat. In the preface, he suggests the drastic measure of eliminating the Japanese language, saying all Japanese should learn English instead. According to him, Japanese has vocabulary insufficient to convey abstract ideas and is over-reliant on Chinese, which hardly helps Japanese people digest and adopt western cultures.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

Prime Minister Taro Aso is notorious for making insensitive off-the-cuff remarks to the media, and on more than one occasion recently, he has also raised eyebrows for mispronouncing kanji in his scripted speeches.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

KYOTO--A newly published book edited by an American Zen priest who lives in Kyoto provides an in-depth explanation of Zen Buddhism in English.

Thomas Kirchner, a 59-year-old associate researcher at the International Research Institute for Zen Buddhism at Hanazono University in Kyoto, spent 10 years working on "The record of Linji," a comprehensive tome supported by extensive footnotes and references.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

There is a misunderstanding commonly voiced around the world that languages borrow words from other languages when they lack a native word for something in their own vocabulary. This is, actually, only one reason, and not the primary one, for the existence of direct loan words.

It is certainly true that English-speaking peoples may never have run into chandeliers, vodka, tacos or toupees had the words for them not slipped into their language. But can it really be argued that the Japanese would have had no supo-tsu (sports), sekkusu (sex) or ro-n (loan) if these words had not burrowed their way into their language? If you had to do without one of the above, which one would you choose? In these days of credit crunches, I think most of us would have to say the loan.

LINK TO ORIGINAL