Monday, May 29, 2017

"Magic" in Japanese

If you have ever watched ever it's likely you've already heard some word related to "magic." Be it mahou 魔法, also romanized mahō, majutsu 魔術, madou 魔道, maryoku 魔力, mana マナ, and so on. In this post I'm going to list the meaning of these magic words in Japanese and some common phrases about magic used in anime.

Thursday, May 18, 2017

ahoge アホ毛

In anime, ahoge アホ毛, literally "stupid hair," refers to a strand of hair that springs upwards from the character's head. A rebellious hair that doesn't conform to the rest of the head hairstyle, and, sometimes, appears to defy gravity and other laws of physics.

In English, "cow lick" refers to something similar.
Wednesday, May 3, 2017

「」『』 - Quotation Marks

In Japanese, 「」 and 『』 are "quotation marks," in'youfu 引用符. They work in a similar but different way to English quotes ("these ones"). Not to be confused with brackets 【】, which this article will also talk about.

The Japanese quotation marks in vertical and horizontal text.
Monday, May 1, 2017

っ - Small Tsu つ

In Japanese, there are two types of tsu characters. The normal tsu つ, and the small tsu っ, which is smaller. You can notice this in hiragana in words like mittsu みっつ, "three," and in katakana in words like nattsu ナッツ, "nuts." But how does this small tsu works? What is っ for? And what is it called?