100%. Personally the English r is my least favorite language sound I’ve encountered (so far)
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Bruh. 
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There’s been plenty of cool moments like that. I’ve had so many that I could fill up a book about them (and MAYBE I WILL). But the one that’s coming to mind right now is 海王星. The kanji are for “sea”, “king”, and “star”; what’s the sea king star? Neptune.
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Haha. My first language was Russian, and everyone made fun of me for not being able to pronounce the Russian hard RRrrrrrr sound. I had to go to a speech therapist and she even sort of gave up, saying I’ll never be a news reporter. Well, I showed them all! I am more fluent in English than Russian now and am an English teacher so HA.
But I observe the Japanese children trying to wrap their heads around the English R and it’s so difficult for them. T_T
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I somehow haven’t burned 用心棒 yet, but it came up for review today, and as I was typing it I realized it was the name of the movie Yojimbo and that’s why it’s called that. And my mind was so literally blown there was a mess everywhere I had to clean up.
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Have you ever played Sword of Mana [GBA]?
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For some reason, for me it was middle school/middle schooler. I knew the Japanese words, and I knew the kanji for middle and its reading, but when I saw them put together it was just a lightbulb moment and one of the things that made me love kanji. It’s like a flashcard that reminds you if you forget a meaning or reading. Other languages’ scripts feel so dull and empty by now.
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While typing a question recently, I realized my particle usage didn’t sound right, and, sure enough, one dictionary check later–
わかる
intransitive verb
Reaction: Wow, I’m a ****ing idiot.
The other day I learned the word emoji = 絵文字 and realized that it is actually a Japanese word! I had always believed it was sort of made up/derived from “emotion”, maybe a shortcut for “emoticon” or something. And it even has such a nice literal meaning, “painted/drawn character”. Mind blown 
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Oooh. My elementary school Japanese students would always call fireworks “fire flowers” when we’d talk about what they did over summer vacation. They’d have trouble understanding the “work” bit and ask, “hana jya nai~?” 
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@SakamotoRG
I love your profile picture! 
Sorry, just wanted tl say that.
Realizing how many parts of Japanese speech are technically nouns (or could be considered nouns) has been a big help lately.
This especially applies to adverbs/adverbial nouns. I’m much better at predicting when and where I’ll need a の particle in new grammar, because I’m getting better at realizing when I’m actually connecting two nouns, despite appearances to the contrary.
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Holy Moly I just had big one:
There is a super-polite form for i-adjectives that looks just like a volitional verb ending, for example:
wakai–> owakou
若い –> お若う（add ございます, the super polite version です, to make it a sentence）
this is pretty much never used in normal formal speech anymore because it’s too archaic sounding, but it IS the source of all the stock phrases you learn in beginner’s japanese:
おめでとうございます comes from 愛でたい (auspicous)
おはようございます comes from 早い (everyone after level 2 should know this)
ありがとうございまあす comes from 有難い [arigatai] (thankful)
(note the lack of honorific お prefix because the speaker is describing themselves and not the listener)
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While it is used in hyper-formal speech, and perhaps only then, those words are perhaps older than the formal usage. I hate to call it a “form” but I’m not really sure what to call it.
In classical Japanese, い-adjectives used -き in the attributive form and that’s where the -く adverbial form came from. But for some reason in the Muromachi period the く dropped out rendering the adverbial 早く to become 早う and やう → よう is another sound change that happened, you’ll see ようだ written as やうだ in the old orthography.
However, shortly after this the く came back for whatever reason but some of these expressions had already become solidified.
Similarly, because it’s missing, おめでとう comes from めでたい
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Wow! This is really interesting
…and good timing! Just the other day I was thinking about greetings, and how I’d seen こんにちは and こんばんは explained, and so I was wondering “what about おはようございます?”
So all you’re really saying is “It’s early”? I like that (because I am not a morning person)
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No, yours is way better!
Yeah, I now call Japanese text pictures emoji and Western happy faces etc. emoticons exclusively.
My biggest realization: it doesn’t matter how much or for how long I study, it feels like I’ll never get better at japanese.
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Hole E. Shit.
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