Every language of course has its strengths and weaknesses. Different languages can express layers and shades of subtlety that others cannot, and often consider things in ways that are totally different and even alien to a speaker of another language. For example, most romance languages can differentiate between leaking into and leaking out of, and inuit has many different words for different kinds of snow - fluffy snow, icy snow, fresh snow - but curiously, no word for just 'snow'. English, for all its renowned complexity and nuance, requires more explanation to get these ideas accross. Japanese also has some gaps, and none are more inappropriately bridged by the verb wakaru, which means know or understand. At first glance, these are two semantically close ideas, but in actual usage it couldn't be more inconvenient. The problem is of course that the questions 'do you know (the answer)' and 'do you understand (the question)' become the same. From a language teacher's perspective, this can be really annoying, as it is impossible to tell whether your students simply don't know the answer to your question, or have no idea what you're talking about.

     There is one lesser known facet of the Japanese language however which is possibly the leader of its kind - the so-called 'sound words', which take the concept of onomatopoeia to a whole new level. Sound words are made up of a doublet of two-kana sounds, and generally are used on their own or followed by o shimasu, to turn them into a verb. You can then of course play with the verb ending to change the meaning, such as + o shitte kudasai = please ... and + o shireba = regrettably, I ...ed, and so on. Here then is a list of all the sound words I have collected to date: