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Your App Taught You The Japanese Word For You. Nobody Says It To Your Face.

To say Tanaka-san. Use the person's name, not the word for you. in Japanese, say 田中さん (tanaka san).

Your app taught you 「あなた」 for the word you. Say it to a Japanese person's face and it lands wrong, sometimes cold, sometimes like a wife scolding her husband across the kitchen.

tanaka san Tanaka-san. Use the person's name, not the word for you.

Survival Common Mistake #learnjapanese #japantravel #japanesetips #japanesephrases #languagelearning

In this video

  1. 「あなた」ではなく、「田中さん」と呼びます。 "anata" de wa naku, "tanaka-san" to yobimasu. Not 「あなた」. You call them Tanaka-san.
  2. 田中さん、これ、どうですか? tanaka-san, kore, dou desu ka? Tanaka-san, how about this one?

Kanji in this phrase

田中
たなか
呼びます
よびます

Why this phrase

Every beginner app hands you 「あなた」 as the word for you, and then real Japanese almost never uses it. In practice you either drop the word entirely or you use the person's name plus 「さん」. Using 「あなた」 to someone's face reads as distant at best, and between couples it is the tone a wife takes when she is annoyed. This is a myth bust: unlearn the app default, learn the name plus 「さん」 habit instead.

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