There are a number of words that have more than one reading in Japanese. Sometimes, as shown by this webpage, it’s a matter of the reading changing over time. For example, I read somewhere that 「世論」 is supposed to be read as 「よろん」 but so many people misread it as 「せろん」 that it eventually emerged as an alternative reading. For words like this, choosing a reading is merely a matter of preference and depends on the popularity of the reading since the meaning is the same. However, some words have different readings and different meanings to go with them. We’ll look at two that I can think of right now (「頭」 and 「家」) and how you would identify the correct reading.

１．頭が痛いから早く家に帰りたい。
-I want to go home because my head hurts.

２．彼の家には14歳を頭に3人の子供がいる。
-In his house, there are 3 children, 14 being the oldest.

In the first sentence, 「頭」 is talking about the speaker’s head (the thing on your neck) and so we should read it as 「あたま」. However, in the second sentence, we are talking about the 14 year-old being at the head of the rest of the children. When we are using 「頭」 to mean “head” as in “chief”, or “the first”, we read it as 「かしら」. Amazingly, the English word for “head” also contains both meanings (though we don’t change the reading).

Finally, 「家」 can have two readings depending on whether the speaker is talking about his or her home or just a generic house owned by anybody. Your own home is read as 「うち」 which probably has something to do with 「内」（うち） meaning inside. The reading for a generic house is 「いえ」 (not to be confused with 「いいえ」).

So in order to figure out when to use which reading, 1) learn the difference in meaning, and then 2) look at the context of the sentence. So can you identify the correct readings for 「家」 in the examples sentences?

An interesting phenonemon of the modern Japanese language is the various crazy ways English is mixed in as slang or otherwise. Some English words are so common that practically every Japanese person will understand what they mean. For instance, despite being a fairly difficult word, probably just about everybody knows what charisma （カリスマ） means. And the phrase 「アピールする」 has become so common that it is more accurate to say that it’s simply part of the Japanese vocabulary.

However, by English, we’re not talking about real English but the special bastardized Japanese version. As a result, all of this knowledge is pretty much useless for real English (unfortunately for the Japanese who all seem keen on mastering English). However, it does make things much more interesting for us; the ones that are learning Japanese. （ある意味でね）

Making Japanese verbs with English words

Today, I want to talk about an interesting class of verbs that come directly from English. Katakana words are mostly nouns since verbs require endings that can be conjugated. However, the clever Japanese youth have figured a way around this by simply attaching a generic u-verb 「る」 ending. This ending was selected undoubtably because it felt the most natural to the pioneers of modern Japanese.

A very useful verb of this type is 「サボる」, which originally comes from サボタージュ (sabotage). You will almost certainly see this verb whenever somebody is slacking off, skipping class, and the like.

試験があるから、明日の授業はサボらない方がいいよ。
- Because there is a test, it’s better not to skip tomorrow’s class.

Other less common verbs of this type include 「ダブる」 (to coincide), 「トラブる」 (to act up, cause trouble), 「ミスる」 (to miss), and 「ハモる」 (to harmonize).

ごめん、ちょっと予定がダブっちゃったからドタキャンしていい？
- Sorry, my plans ended up doubling so is it OK if I cancel at the last minute?

In a similar vein, although it’s not used very often, instead of saying 「タクシーを呼ぶ」 or 「バスに乗る」, you can also say 「タクる」 and 「バスる」 .

終電を逃したから、仕方なく家までタクった。
- I missed the last train so having no other choice, I took a taxi home.

Yet another great, recent example of this type of verb is 「ググる」. With the popularity of google.com, you might be aware that “google” has become a new verb meaning “to search something with google”. Well, Japanese also has a similar verb: 「ググる」. (Google is 「グーグル」 in Japanese but 「グーグル」 is harder to say, so the verb became 「ググる」)

それくらい自分でググれ。
- That much, you can figure it out for youself. (Lit: That amount, search on google by yourself.)

I’m gonna stop here before mentioning the various types of restaurant verbs like 「マクる」 (to go to McDonalds)、and 「ファミる」 (to go to a family restaurant) because slang of this type are usually just a passing fad. (And probably won’t make sense to Japanese people over the age of 25)

※The key thing to remember when using these verbs is that you must conjugate them as u-verbs.

As is the case with most languages, there are so many types of slangs and abbreviations in Japanese that there is no way to categorize them in a unified manner. Trying to learn slang by memorizing rules is probably close to impossible because of the inumerous number of inconsistencies.

Here, I’m just going to go over a couple of common types of slang so that you can get an idea of how it works. Like I mentioned previously, it is impossible to fully and comprehensively explain these types of things but it can still be useful to get familiar with the general idea.

Fortunately, slang is very easy to pick up by speaking and listening because they naturally come about from people finding easier ways to say something.

In short, the driving force behind Japanese slang is to make things easier to say. There are two cardinal rules that go along with this idea.

1) Make it shorter.
2) Be lazy.

Since 「ん」 is the only letter that lacks a syllable, it is the shortest sound in the Japanese language. As a result, it is often used to substitute for other longer letters that require more energy to pronounce; in particular the tongue rolling 「ら、り、る、れ、ろ」 sounds.

One of the most common example of this is the substition of 「ら」 in 「わからない」.

みさちゃんはどこに行ったか、わかる？
- [Do you] know where Misa-chan went?

わかんない。
- Dunno.

In fact, you can do the same type of substitution for any 「～らない」 negative verbs.

１）なんか知んないけど、みんながすごくいいと言ってった。
- Don’t really know but everybody said it was really great.

２）ずっと暗い部屋で本を読んでいると、頭が痛くなんない？
- Doesn’t [your] head become hurting when you read a book in dark room for a long time?

Another common substitution is the 「いる」 from the 「～ている」 enduring state form.

This one’s a bit tricky because you can’t actually end a sentence with just 「ん」, you always need something to come after it.

１）何してんの？
-Whatcha doing?

誤）今、映画を見てん。
- [We need something to come after 見てん]

２）うん？今、映画を見てんだけど？
-Hm? Well, [I’m] watching movie now, but?

「ん」 is sometimes even substituted for letters in regular words such as 「つまらない」.

ここは、つまんないから、どっか行こうよ。
- It’s boring here so let’s go somewhere.

There are many more examples of 「ん」 substitution for abbreviations. One of the most common examples is the subsitution for 「のだ」 as seen here. Another example is the 「ん」 substitution for the 「ない」 in negative verb conjugations as seen here. If you spend quite a large amount of time speaking Japanese, you might find yourself making these substitutions yourself unconsciously.

If you look up 「切れる」 on Jim Breen’s WWWJDIC, you will get a huge list of definitions.

切れる 【きれる】 (v1) (1) to cut well; to be sharp; (2) to break (off); to snap; to wear out; (3) to be injured; (4) to burst; to collapse; (5) to be disconnected; to be out of; to expire; to sever (connections) with; (6) to be shrewd; to have a sharp mind;

Some of these, I would take with a grain of salt. For instance, I have no idea how you would use 「切れる」 to mean “to burst”. Nevertheless, 「切れる」 has many, many uses which you might want to become familiar with.
For instance, what if you wanted to say something ran out or expired?

１）電池が切れるから、新しいのを買った方がいい。
- The batteries are going to run out so you should buy a new one.

２）この商品はもう売り切れです。
- This item is already sold-out.

３）賞味期限がもう切れたから、捨てた方がいいよ。
- The sell-by date has already expired so you should throw it out.

Or what if your connection gets cut off such as on the phone?

１）トンネルに入ったら、電波が届かなくて電話が切れた。
- Once entering the tunnel, the signal didn’t reach and the phone got cut off.

You can even use it for when you lose your temper.

１）もう我慢できなくて、切れた。
- I couldn’t take it anymore and I lost my temper.

Perhaps, one of the most useful thing about 「切れる」 is that you can take the negative and use it as a verb suffix for things you can’t cut off and put an end to. This is the same as the expression 「切りがない」 for things that have no cut-off point and seems to be endless. As you can see by the examples, you just take the stem of the verb and attach 「切れない」 .

１）こんなにたくさん食べきれない。- I can’t eat this much.

２）どう頑張っても、この宿題は絶対やりきれないよ。
- No matter how much you try, there’s no way you will finish this homework.

３）状況はまだ把握しきれてないため、明日まで検討させてください。
- Because I haven’t finished getting a handle on the situation, please let me find things out until tomorrow.

While the word 「てき」 usually means “enemy”, that’s not the word we’re talking about today. The word I’m going to talk about uses a completely different Kanji from the 「敵」 meaning “enemy” and is in fact a very useful and helpful ally.

If you’ve studied Japanese for any length of time, you’re bound to have encountered the 「的」 kanji. While this kanji by itself is read as 「まと」 and means a “target”, its usefulness really shines as a noun suffix. This kanji can be attached to countless number of nouns to easily change them to a na-adjective. In this case, you read the kanji as 「てき」 and you’ll see it all over the place: 一般的、圧倒的、感動的、習慣的、技術的、基本的、and on and on.

Let’s take the word 「感動」 meaning “deep emotion” and say we want to say the following sentence.

That movie was very moving.

Unfortunately, since 「感動」 is a noun, we can’t just say, 「あの映画はとても感動」 because the movie is not a deep emotion. So you’re going to have to say something complicated like the following:

あの映画を見て、感動した。- I saw that movie and I was moved.

But wait! We can just use 「的」 to make 「感動」 into an adjective!

あの映画は感動的だった。- That movie was very moving.

あれは感動的な映画だった。- That was a very moving movie.

What could be argued as even more useful is if you use the 「に」 target particle with 「的」, you can make the noun into an adverb! (Actually, this applies to all na-adjectives)

それは技術的に無理です。 - That’s technically impossible.

朝ご飯は習慣的に毎朝食べます。 - I customarily eat breakfast every morning.

In fact, without 「的」 there are just so many things that can’t be expressed. I would definitely put this kanji on my top ten 50 list.

アメリカでは、車で通勤するのが一般的だ。 - In America, people generally commute by car.

客観的な視点から考えたほうがいい。 - It’s better to think of it from a objective viewpoint.