Aguro

We all know “LOL”, which means “Laughing Out Loud” or any other variations available. In the Internet, for example in forums and chat rooms, that acronym is often used to indicate that someone is laughing, or at least still there.

It turns out that Japanese people have their own version, which is “w”. Yes, the one letter “w”, like this snippet taken from an IRC channel:

管理者 (kanrisha): administrator

かな (kana) is used when someone is thinking whether something is true or now. “I wonder…”, “Is it true?”, etc. ねぇ (nee) here is a casual language and means じゃない (janai, not). (one feature of casual language is that words get corrupted)

Back on track. Why”w”?

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Students of Japanese language will learn many common phrases at the beginning of their study. One of those phrases is 「ただいま」 (tadaima) which is often translated as “I’m home!” That’s indeed the meaning conveyed, but if we translate it literally, the meaning is actually “just now”. What in the earth did the speaker just do (now)? Well… “I just came back home now“.

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In this article we will learn show how to ask “What is this?”, “What is that?”, and how to answer it like “That is a book”. I can assure you that the materials presented on this lesson will be useful for us that don’t know the name of many objects. After learning from this article, please do ask the name of objects around you to those with a more advanced level of Japanese.

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