私は自分の日本語の使い方に注意した方が良い!

On Friday, someone kindly brought something to my attention.

• There is something I'd like to bring to your attention. あなたにお伝えして［お話して］おきたいことがあります。(definition from Eijiro on the Web)

At the bottom of our posts, there's a place for a label. It's supposed to be a convenient way for people to find posts on similar topics. I don't always remember to use it, but I try to do it most of the time.

Unfortunately, over the past two months, I've been making a big mistake: choosing the wrong Japanese label for some posts! I wanted to say "vocabulary", but instead I was saying "vulgar expression". That's embarrassing!

• 卑語 (ひご) (n) vulgar expression; vulgarism;
• 単語 (たんご) (n,adj-no) (ling) word; vocabulary; (usually) single-character word; (P);

There are a few reasons. One is just carelessness on my part. Another is my poor Japanese. Look at this photo; last year, and even today, I have trouble telling the difference between ツ and シ, and also ン and ソ. I also make mistakes when writing kanji. Look at how I wrote 術. Here's my best excuse, though.

• 言い訳 (いいわけ) (n,vs) (1) excuse; (2) explanation; (P);

Look at this screen shot. When I write, I'm given a list of labels I've used before. For me, 卑語 and 単語 look almost the same. It's just like how "quiet" and "quite" look almost the same for many non-native English speakers. We've all got to be careful! I think I've fixed all of the 卑語 mistakes, but if you ever find a mistake in my Japanese, please let me know! I'd really appreciate it!