23 topics
Japanese help, from the three scripts to keigo
The first real wall in Japanese is not vocabulary, it is は and が. Both get glossed as the subject in a beginner textbook, both sit in the same slot, and neither can be swapped for the other without changing what the sentence is doing. The same goes for the three scripts and the two readings every kanji carries: none of it is decoration, all of it is doing a job, and the job is learnable.
Where students get stuck
は and が both look like the subject marker
They mark different jobs. が points at the subject as new information; は lifts something out as the topic you are already both talking about, and often carries a quiet contrast. The reliable test is a question word. 誰が来ましたか has to take が, and the answer 田中さんが来ました keeps it, because the new name is the entire point of the sentence. Ask 田中さんは来ましたか and you are asking about Tanaka as a known topic instead. Negatives and comparisons pull は as well, which is why 私は行きません sounds ordinary while 私が行きません sounds like you are correcting somebody.
I never know when a word should be in katakana
The three scripts are a division of labour, not a style choice. Kanji carries the meaning-bearing stem of nouns, verbs and adjectives. Hiragana carries everything grammatical wrapped around it: particles, verb endings, the okurigana trailing off a kanji. Katakana is held back for loanwords, foreign names, onomatopoeia, and the odd word set in it for emphasis the way italics work in English. So コーヒー is katakana because the word arrived from Dutch and English, and 飲む is kanji plus hiragana because the stem is native and the ending has to conjugate.
The same kanji is read two completely different ways
Most kanji carry a kun reading, the native Japanese word, and an on reading borrowed from Chinese. One pattern covers most cases: a kanji standing alone or trailing hiragana usually takes kun, and a kanji glued to another kanji inside a compound usually takes on. 山 on its own is yama; inside 火山 it becomes san, giving kazan. 人 alone is hito; inside 日本人 it is jin. The practical fix is to stop learning compounds as two characters and start learning them as single words, because then the reading arrives attached.
Counters like 本, 枚 and 匹, and the sounds that change
Japanese counts things with a classifier matched to shape or category: 本 for long thin objects, 枚 for flat ones, 匹 for small animals, 人 for people, and つ as the general fallback from one to ten. What trips people is that the number and the counter fuse. 一本 is ippon, 三本 is sanbon, 六本 is roppon, 八本 is happon. Those are not four separate exceptions to be memorised. They are the regular sound change that happens when a small tsu or an n meets an h sound, so once you hear it in 本 the same shifts turn up in 匹 and in 分.
開く and 開ける look like the same word in the dictionary
They are a transitive and intransitive pair, and Japanese has hundreds of them. 開く means the door opens; 開ける means somebody opens the door. The intransitive member takes が for the thing that changes state, the transitive member takes を for the thing being acted on: ドアが開く against ドアを開ける. Picking the wrong half is how a sentence ends up grammatically clean and still marked wrong, because it says nobody was involved when somebody clearly was. When you meet one of these verbs, write its partner down in the same breath and the pair sticks.
What's covered
Japanese topics you can work through with a tutor, generate practice on, or turn into flashcards and a study plan.
Writing systems and kanji
- Hiragana and the okurigana that hangs off a kanji
- Katakana for loanwords, names and onomatopoeia
- Stroke order and radicals
- On and kun readings inside compounds
- Jōyō kanji by grade level
Particles and sentence structure
- は, が and the topic-comment frame
- を, に, で and へ
- の for possession and linking nouns
- から, まで and time expressions
- Modifying clauses that sit before the noun
Verbs and adjectives
- Dictionary form, masu form and the te-form
- Past, negative and the te-iru progressive
- Transitive and intransitive verb pairs
- i-adjectives and na-adjectives
- Potential, passive and causative
Politeness and register
- Plain form against masu form
- Sonkeigo, kenjōgo and teineigo
- Speaking to a teacher against speaking to a friend
- Set phrases for email and self-introduction
Listening, speaking and exam prep
- Pitch accent and natural rhythm
- JLPT N5 to N3 reading and listening
- Timed vocabulary and kanji sections
- Conversation practice on everyday topics
Japanese questions
Can I actually practise speaking Japanese with it?
Yes. You can hold a live voice conversation in Japanese, out loud, and it answers out loud. Ask it to slow down and it slows down; ask it to drop back into English when you are lost and it does. What it does not have is a pronunciation meter that gives you a number, because no such feature exists here. Feedback on how you sounded comes as spoken comments, the way it would from somebody sitting across the table from you.
I cannot type Japanese. Can I still ask about my textbook?
Turn the camera on and hold the page up. It reads what is there, including the Japanese in your textbook and your own handwritten kanji practice sheets. If the work is a PDF or a slide deck instead, share your screen and point at the line you are stuck on. Nothing has to be typed in Japanese before you can ask a question about it.
Will it just do my kanji homework for me?
No, and that would waste the assignment. Ask about a character and you get the radical it is built from, both readings, and a handful of words that use it, then a quiz to check whether it stuck. Copying out the strokes is the part that lays down the memory, so that part stays yours. Same answer for a translation exercise: you get the grammar it is testing, not a finished line to hand in.
Does it help with the JLPT?
It builds practice from material you give it rather than serving a fixed question bank. Paste in a reading passage or a vocabulary list and you get quizzes that come back with full worked solutions, flashcards for the kanji, and spoken practice on the same content so the listening section is less of a shock. Nobody honest promises you a level pass, and neither does this.
Stuck on japanese right now?
Talk it through out loud, share your screen, and watch it worked out step by step on a whiteboard.
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