\u65e5\u672c\u8a9e\u306f\u3053\u3061\u3089\uff01
\u201ci\u201d \u2192 “imadoki”
(Conversation between two colleagues at work)
A: Looks like our casual, Yamada, is going to be off today.
B: What? When did he\/she call you?
A: He\/she didn\u2019t call. He\/she used LINE.
B: What? LINE? Unbelievable.
A: It seems that all university students are like that these days.
B: Really?
Do you all know the word “imadoki”? It has the same meaning as \u201crecently,\u201d but \u201cimadoki\u201d is often used with a sense of sarcasm or criticism. It\u2019s used in a similar sense to when double quotation marks are put around words in English. In the conversation just now, both A and B were clearly critical of Yamada, the university-student casual employee, for having bad manners and no common sense.
\u201cImadoki\u201d also has the meaning of \u201cthe latest\u201d or \u201cfashionable.\u201d As may also be the case in other languages, the idea of \u201cnew\u201d carries the meaning that its value or appraisal is still unstable, so \u201cnew\u201d is often used with a meaning that is not 100% positive.
Eg:
Home appliances these days have lots of functions and are difficult to understand (= they would be just fine being more simple)
I get the feeling that David\u2019s girlfriend is one of those types that you get these days (= They\u2019ll probably break up soon, don\u2019t you think?)
All this being the case, when you want to give praise, pure and simple, it\u2019s better to use \u201csaikin no.\u201d
For example: \u201cSaikin no nihongo gakushusha wa hatsuon ga ii\u201d
These days, Japanese learners have good pronunciation
I actually believe this to be the case. I feel that the pronunciation of foreigners these days is dramatically better than that of the foreigners who were living in Japan back when I was a kid (several decades ago?). I think this is because everyone now has easy access to hearing Japanese sounds thanks to increased opportunities to watch foreign-language programs on cable TV and the like, and because the Internet environment has improved a lot in recent years with things like YouTube in particular. I wonder what others think.
In terms of the process of learning Japanese, once you hit intermediate level and above, vocabulary increases and it\u2019s quite a job to remember everything. Learning the differences between words\u2014different nuances with words that have the same meaning, or words with positive or negative images\u2014is a shortcut to improving your Japanese. I hope that you will develop your Japanese skills so that you can speak employing a variety of nuances, like praise, or sometimes criticism!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u65e5\u672c\u8a9e\u306f\u3053\u3061\u3089\uff01\u201ci\u201d \u2192 “imadoki”(Conversation between two colleagues at work)A: Looks like our casual, Yama […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":59980,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[61,236,306],"class_list":["post-62809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aeiou","tag-coto-japanese-academy","tag-learn-japanese","tag-study-japanese"],"yoast_head":"\n