One of the first things you learn when studying Japanese is that the language incorporates four different styles of writing: the Chinese-derived characters known as kanji, the basic phonetic script of ...

Foreign words undergo transformation in various ways when they enter another language. The following are some of the technical terms that linguists use to describe such changes. All languages have ...

As a native Japanese speaker, I get annoyed when I come across English articles that tout Japanese buzzwords like ikigai. They’re not commonly used in our day-to-day conversations. Ikigai is more like ...

Words like futon, tycoon and karaoke are so ingrained in the English language that it's easy to forget they are actually of Japanese origin. In fact, Japan has long been a rich source of loan words ...