Japanese Lingo - じゃん

There are plenty of resources online where you can learn "regular" Japanese, so here I decided to let you know about words and phrases that I learned not from any textbook, but during conversations with native Japanese speakers.

じゃん, pronounced "Jah-n" or like "John," is one word that I'm pretty sure I never heard until I came to Japan. It's kind of a slang word native to Yokohama and to some extent Tokyo as well. It's pretty much just a tag word used at the end of sentences to mean "isn't it?"

Usually the "n" part of the word is only loosely pronounced, with most of the emphasis being on the "Ja" part of the word. Although it's certainly acceptable practice to say it around Yokohama and Tokyo, you may get some looks of surprise for saying if you are a foreigner. Nonetheless, you should at least know what it means in case it comes up in coversation.

Here is a real quick example sentence:

Kanji: ああ、　凄いじゃん！
Hiragana: ああ、　すごいじゃん！
Romaji: Ah, sugoi jan!
English: Whoa, pretty cool huh?!

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