Particles

There are some common pain points in the Japanese language.

These tend to evolve over time.

Now that I'm at a higher level, my biggest pain points are (1) phrasing things like a native speaker would and (2) having native-like prounciation and intonation.

The complaints that I hear the most often, however, are about kanji and particles, neither of which cause me much stress at all these days. I suspect that this is the case for most advanced students of the language.

My point in mentioning this is that, as we dive a bit more into Japanese particles, you might start getting a bit confused. But speaking from experience, particles will get a lot easier as you get more accustomed to using Japanese.

With that said, let's start exploring the use of 助詞 (じょし // particles) a bit more... or, as it might help to think of them, "help" (助) "parts of speech; words" (詞). ^_^