Cantonese 係唔係 hai-m-hai = Mandarin 是不是 shi-bu-shi
I mean Yes pronounced as Hai both in Cantonese and Japanese.
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Hajimemashite… 
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Tae Kim starts out with some informal Japanese. Informal and formal Japanese can sound so different!!
Formal Japanese is easier in my opinion because there is way less conjugating.
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Learning a second language is a gradual progression depending on how much you or exposed or study the language. A person’s vocabulary usually increases when one gets older. I also don’t know what I am reading but can say hiragana or katakana too. I would suspect the same applies to those learning English as a second language.
I would say the best way to build on your foundation of Japanese is to actually go to Japan and stay there for 6 months or so. Most likely a person’s fluency in reading/wring or speaking/listening would improve dramatically.
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Thank you for the information, Anna.
Do you think the young people there prefer to use informal than formal Japanese?
Maybe I misinterpret the translation???
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I thought moshimoshi is Hello??
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The Japanese are extremely polite. You will always use formal speech and they will use formal speech with you unless you are close friends, family, or they are much younger than you. Thus it is technically most useful to know if you ever want to go to Japan. If you do not use formal speech in many situations it can sound very very rude.
However, if you want to learn Japanese mostly to consume the media, like I do, informal is most useful as in tv shows, videogames, etc there’s a lot of casual talk because the characters all know each other and whatnot. So depends on what you want to learn it for.
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もしもし is a very popular way to answer the telephone in Japan. A person may answer with もしもし, insert their name here です。
I do not believe it is gender specific. It’s basically like the “Hello this is x” phone answer of English.
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Yes! It’s difficult even for me. It’s so hard to master. I’m learning business Japanese right now. But don’t worry it’s difficult for most Japanese and alot of Japanese people speak in wrong business Japanese, lol.
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Does “Damansara” have meaning in Japanese?
What about “Obama”? I think Obama is a place in Japan.
Damansara is a location here near to my city where many Japanese are staying. Am not sure it has anything to do with the location name.
Ohh…
It is like changing the word from
“I let you know…Please read the enclosed xxxxx” to “Kindly be informed that… Attached herewith xxx for your kind perusal”.
Yes, I know it is difficult in English too.
But I couldn’t believe Business Japanese is difficult for you too.
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I wanted to make a correction to this
ですね Is a way of saying, “isn’t it?” the “ne” ending means you are seeking agreement or like asking a question you already know the answer to.
For example
高いです: “It’s expensive”
高いですね: "It’s expensive, isn’t it/don’t you think?
The other popular add on to desu is よ, which is a way of telling someone something they don’t know, or a way to answer a question.
高いですよ: It’s expensive, just so you know/I’m telling you.
Note that you don’t technically need to use either “ne” or “yo” and you can get the same point across without them. However I was told by Japanese professor/tutor that using them makes a phrase sound “softer” then simply using です
ます is a part of formal Japanese. You attach it to a verb stem to make conjugations so you were closer with this one. 食べます for example is the formal/polite way of saying “I am eating”.
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I always thought it meant “I see…” like I see what you mean kinda thing. But I also just learned “naruhodo” means that too so I dunno anymore lol. Not sure of the difference there.
Or am I confusing it with something else??? Buhhh. So desu means that’s right. I think sou desu ne? Could also mean “is that right? Is that so?” And sou desu ka is something else ugh
*Oh update apparently the ka one is I see, the ne one is basically like that’s right isn’t it? Showing agreement with something And sou desu is just that’s right
Why are you like this Japanese WHY lol
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Obama is 小浜 in Fukui prefecture.
For damansara, just found this interesting page:
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Why am I talking about Japanese at 5:50 am
That extra shot of espresso in my coffee was a m i s t a k e 
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Lol, I didn’t know that the Japanese language is so confusing.
If you mean “I see”, then I guess you’d say “so desu ka!”
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Just some aspects.
Like I find Japanese grammar waaay easier than English/Romance language grammar. The alphabets are obviously way harder (for a native English speaker to learn). But there’s just tiny things like for example my tutor (who is from Japan originally and moved here as an adult), whenever she says a phrase ending in ですよ she says it with like a question inflection like it sounds like she’s saying ですよ? But よ is informative I was like why do you say it like that and she was like that’s how it be. (She didn’t literally say that that’s my paraphrasing lol.)
English is the same way though it has many aspects that are just like what the heck English why, so I can’t really complain
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