The newsletter is online and the podcast is up!

I wrote about 改めて (aratamete), which is really just a fancy way of saying また (mata, again)…to a certain extent. And while doing the podcast, I was reminded of the Japanese word 及び (oyobi) which I wrote about back in 2009. This was back when I was posting three times a week and I was in my early 20s, so the content is predictably…a bit thin. But still accurate!

While the verb 及ぶ (oyobu) has several uses—not all of which I can use actively, I’ll admit—the word 及び functions essentially as a particle that signals 並列 (heiretsu, arranging in a line/parallel). It’s mostly (only?) used in written Japanese, especially in formal documentation, so you really only need to be able to recognize it.

This got me thinking about the kinds of Japanese I have access to passively and actively, and I was a bit forlorn at the idea that I have no voice in Japanese. I can speak and do Japanese to a great degree, especially passively, but I’m not sure if I’ve developed the ability to communicate in a way that conveys my personality in the same way that I have with English. I do think my spoken Japanese is fine, so I’m mostly thinking about written Japanese here. I’ve written previously about the divide between 敬体 (keitai, distal style) and 常体 (jōtai, direct style) back in December 2022, and I think I’ve always been on the 敬体 side of that equation. A little more cautious and soft spoken, polite and neutral in terms of the spoken language, but casual in terms of the written language. I’m curious to develop more of my own style in 常体 somehow. Not that I plan to be using 及び anytime soon. That’s a level of formality and tightness reserved for city hall bureaucrats. But I would be curious to try 常体 on for size.

The main issue is that I wrote myself into…whatever this is *gestures at 18 years of online writing in English*…just by writing a lot. I do strongly believe in free writing to develop ideas and then editing to give writing meaning and purpose, but it does seem like 常体 is not something that would work for? Or maybe it could? Stay tuned. If I can somehow fit one more thing in, I might try and make it happen.

できましたら、改めて報告いたします。