(*Linked or embedded content may have been removed or be unavailable.) Liu Bei, Cao Cao, Zhao Yun: If those names sound familiar, it’s no surprise. They’re just a few of the sprawling cast of characters in the great 14th-century historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms. One of Chinese literature’s Four Great Classical Novels centering on the end of the…

(*Linked or embedded content may have been removed or be unavailable.) Me, Myself and I went to Japan and were astonished at how many counterparts we had. In English, aside from the three words just mentioned and the occasional ‘yours truly,’ there isn’t much variation, but in the Japanese language, how you say ‘I’ can change de…

People learning Japanese are inevitably exposed to dajare (駄洒落), or Japanese puns, along the way. Like anything in life, some people like them and some people don’t. But then again, puns and dajare are an acquired taste, so isn’t that natural? Well, there may be a bit more to it than just ‘learning to like it.’ We did some digging onl…

*For audio recording purposes, some parts of the blog may vary. Let’s talk about “language resolution.” And no, not the “I’m going to learn a new language by the end of the year” type of resolution. More like the resolution of a picture or video image; how much detail is in the frame. Each language has its own “resolution” that can make translation either ea…

COVID-19 is transforming the lexicon of languages worldwide, but for Japanese the challenges are unique. What’s “overshoot?” Find out. In the English-speaking world, a plethora of terms, some new, some not so new, have inundated people’s daily lives. “Lockdown,” “quarantine,” “hot zones,” “social distancing” and “flattening the curve” all have a familiar rin…