Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on July 2010

Mark Smith says: “Real Japanese shows how kids learn to speak by following the daily progress of a Japanese girl for a year. She picks up vocabulary and grammar in a very different order to how they are taught in textbooks and language courses. For instance, she hardly uses particles! Instead, she concentrates on the order of the words. She says stuff like: “Kore yada” (I don’t like this), “Hanabi miru hito?” (Anyone want to watch fireworks?), and “Dame datte” (I’m not allowed/She says no)… It’s casual Japanese, but not slang. And it’s definitely not the way you learned it at school. You’ll get an understanding of the building blocks of Japanese, of how Japanese people think in their minds before they speak. And you’ll be able to tell someone you’ve just wet your pants!”

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