In which direction is Japanese written and read? Is it left to right, top to bottom like English? Or is it something else?

The answer is both, actually. On the internet, Japanese is written horizontally, left to right, top to bottom, just like English. Traditionally, however, Japanese is written vertically, top to bottom, then right to left, which from an English perspective makes it look like it goes backwards (from right to left). Lastly, there are also rare cases when it looks like Japanese is written horizontally but backwards.

The kana in the Japanese hiragana can be easy to confuse sometimes. There's mi み, ro ろ and ru る, and they all look like 3's, but luckily it stops there, right? Except when you encounter the rare wi ゐ and we ゑ which are hiragana too and look like some weird versions of first three! Just what are those kana? Since when do they exist? Weren't the kana in the w row just wa わ and wo を?!

One of the most artistically inspired symbols in the Japanese language is the prolonged sound mark. It looks like a longer horizontal dash, or a vertical line in vertical text. Like this:ー. And it performs a very simple function in writing: to make sounds longer.

• Appearance in Text
• How To Type ー
• What Is ー Called in Japanese
• Long Vowels in Japanese
• Pronunciation Rules for Prolonged Sounds
• Difference Between ああ and あー
• When to Spell a Word With ー
• When Spelling Things Wrong is The Right Way
• Usage With Differentiated Speech

In Japanese, sensei 先生 means "teacher" most of the time. It can also mean "doctor," or refer to an artist or author, a "master" of arts. It's also a honorific, so it can come after the name of someone who's a teacher, doctor, artist, etc.

Words related to ages, people's ages, in Japanese are tricky ones. This is because for every single word there seems to be a very similar word which is the wrong on. Even the phrase "years old" in English doesn't translate word-per-word to Japanese.

• Common Mistakes
• Counting Years Old
• Hatachi 二十歳
• Sai 歳 vs. Sai 才
• School Age
• Twenties, Thirties, Forties, Fifties
• Words For Age
• Aging and Getting Old
• Asking Someone's Age
• I'm X Years Old
• I become X years old.