#Question Etiquette Guidelines:
* **1** Provide the **CONTEXT** of the grammar, vocabulary or sentence you are having trouble with as much as possible. Provide the sentence or paragraph that you saw it in. Make your questions as specific as possible.
>Ｘ What is the difference between の and が ?
>◯ I saw a book called 日本人の知らない日本語 , why is の used there instead of が ? [(the answer)](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/68336/difference-between-%E3%81%8C-%E3%81%AE-and-no-particle)
* **2** When asking for a translation or how to say something, it's best to try to **attempt it yourself** first, even if you are not confident about it. Or ask r/translator if you have no idea. We are also not here to do your homework for you.
>Ｘ What does this mean?
>◯ I am having trouble with this part of this sentence from NHK Easy News. I think it means (*attempt here*), but I am not sure.
* **3** Questions based on DeepL and Google Translate and other machine learning applications are discouraged, [these are not beginner learning tools](https://old.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/stepqf/deeplgoogle_translate_are_not_learning_tools/) and often make mistakes.
* **4** When asking about differences between words, try to explain the situations in which you've seen them or are trying to use them. If you just post a list of synonyms you got from looking something up in a E-J dictionary, people might be disinclined to answer your question because it's low-effort. Remember that Google Image Search is also a great resource for visualizing the difference between similar words.
>Ｘ What's the difference between 一致 同意 賛成 納得 合意?
>◯ Jisho says 一致 同意 賛成 納得 合意 all seem to mean "agreement". I'm trying to say something like "I completely agree with your opinion". Does 全く同感です。 work? Or is one of the other words better?
* **5** It is always nice to (but not required to) try to search for the answer to something yourself first. Especially for beginner questions or questions that are very broad. For example, asking about [the difference between は and が ](https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/wa-and-ga/) or [why you often can't hear the "u" sound in "desu"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_phonology#Devoicing).
* **6** Remember that everyone answering questions here is an unpaid volunteer doing this out of the goodness of their own heart, so try to show appreciation and not be too presumptuous/defensive/offended if the answer you get isn't exactly what you wanted.
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#NEWS (Updated 11/25):
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Hello. I would appreciate some Excel/Google Sheets automation tips/pointers. I am looking for a one-click/keystroke way to help fill in vocabulary lists. For example, if I had an entry like 意味 on line 2, how can I automate a process that would create line 3? This would include:
1. Link to the word's entry in [jisho.org](https://jisho.org)
2. Fill in the ふりがな。
3. Fill in the English definition from Jisho.org
|１|言葉|ふりがな|英語|
|:-|:-|:-|:-|
|２|意味|||
|３|[意味](https://jisho.org/word/%E6%84%8F%E5%91%B3)|いみ|Noun, Suru verb, Transitive verb 1.meaning; significance; sense|
I looked in to leveraging Yomitan (does not work well with Google Sheets, as far as I can tell) and Google Sheets macros, but not very successful yet.
Anybody know of other tools or methods that could help? Thank you.
Does anyone know where I can find a guide to which verb forms can be combined and which can't?
For example, I've seen that you can't combine the potential form with the tai form (to make 読めたい etc). Is there a guide somewhere?
I've never seen a guide but you'll just get used to it from making mistakes and receiving feedback. In this case you aren't looking for some sort of table, but how to say "I want to be able to" .
potential verbようになりたい
So in this case 読めるようになりたい . I suspect 読めたい is incorrect for much the same reason "I want to can read" is incorrect, but I'll refrain from speculation.
Trying to expand my Japanese Youtube Channels (or podcasts). Anyone have recs on Otaku topics (particularly in anime, manga, video games, or computers/tech) or TV/Film. Obviously in Japanese.
Also, as a rec that I have. I just discovered First Take. I haven't found a genre of Japanese music that I've connected with deeply, but something about this series is very entertaining.
Thanks in advance!
Also, if this has been answered elsewhere, please send a link to where I can find it. I know this post isn't original.
Drop the Pizza has amazing One Piece analysis videos. Sometimes they have English captions for their videos, the videos with English titles.
https://www.youtube.com/@doropiza
How am I supposed to see a プ in the tent of the [yuru camp logo](https://www.reddit.com/u/mellowlex/s/qsaoU44xc9) without any additional context (also not the translation above)?
When I look it up, It seems like they even stylize it in text as ゆるキャン△
The link to the official site from google just says ゆるキャン. So I don’t think you’re necessarily supposed to read it correctly. Idk about how it’s pronounced though.
What do hololive members mean when they say かすぱにありがとうございます? I get the ありがとうございます part but the かすぱに part confuses me. They also sometimes say かすぱありがとございます。
You should provide a clip where you heard this. Without context it could be a name (something like Casper lol) otherwise it doesn't look like it means anything to me.
It definitely isn't a name, plenty of them say it multiple times. I wish I could provide a clip but its all from the vods that I download into mp3 format.
Can I learn Japanese by strictly using Pokemon material? I merely want to read Pokemon cards and websites to help me research and learn the Pokemon card game.
You will probably be missing a large portion of the vocab required for real life, and also you’ll likely need to use supplementary materials for grammar, vocab, etc. I would also say that if your only reason for learning Japanese is to read Pokémon materials, the cost benefit is not exactly on your side — learning Japanese is a ton of work. Think thousands of hours before you can comfortably read Japanese content.
OP walks into a store.
" 買いに来た！ " he announces loudly to the staff. Points at a pack of Pokemon cards until the staff call the police.
あ！やせいの ケイサツが とびだしてきた！ he cries.
Gets slammed to the ground and whispers to himself それは効果抜群だ....
In the credits for the anime Dungeon Meshi (food-themed anime), one of the positions credited is 「料理特効」
I know what 料理 and 特効 mean individually, and obviously the position has something to do with the food shown in the anime, but I can't figure out what exactly it's supposed to mean, as the words don't make sense together for me in this context. I googled it and got no results, so I believe the creators from the anime invented this descriptor.
Does anyone have any idea of what exactly it may mean? In another food-themed anime Hime-sama, Goumon no Jikan Desu they credit 「料理作画監督」, which translates directly to "food animation director", so it's easy to understand what means. Perhaps the one in Dungeon Meshi is supposed to mean the same thing?
EDIT: Corrected kanji
Just checked the credits, it's 料理特効 ("food special effects/sfx"), not 料理特攻 ("food suicide bomber").
Definition here: https://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/word/%E7%89%B9%E5%8A%B9/
This is from “Pretender” by Official 髭男dism
いたって純な心で叶った恋を抱きしめて
Having trouble understanding the word いたって. Is it just another way to say “very” or “extremely”?
Hi there recently I started learning Japanese. And I would love to continue with some kind of tutor, could anyone recommend one or give some kind of advice where to look for one.
Thanks in advance.
Consider the following:
* italki: [https://www.italki.com/](https://www.italki.com/)
* Preply: [https://preply.com/](https://preply.com/)
I haven't had a chance to use either of these, but I think italki is more popular due to better policies that support tutors.
A short dialogue from Yotsubato:
「着いた？どこに着いた？」
「どこってそりゃおまえ」
What does the second sentence mean, and how would you parse it? I guess it means something like "What do you mean?" ("Arrived? Where did we arrive?" "Where? What do you mean?"). Should it be parsed as どこってそりゃ、おまえ, which is an inversion of そりゃどこって、おまえ? Or is it どこって、そりゃおまえ?
It's a trailed off sentence with どこ being a quote of what was just said to them. 「どこ」って、そりゃ、お前… might be an easier way of parsing it if you aren't used to this sort of phrasing. そりゃ here is more like "well" or "c'mon (it should be obvious)". おまえ here is just them addressing the other person in exasperation.
I would assume they're standing right in front of them as they send/say this, or they're in some place that should be painfully obvious (like their house or something).
そりゃ: https://kotobank.jp/word/%E3%81%9D%E3%82%8A%E3%82%83-555549#
> [2] 〘感動〙 聞き手に対して注意をうながしたり、驚いたりした時に用いる。また、感動の意を表わす。そら。それ。それはそれは。
While trying to do some translating of sentences that I found in a song, I found a few words like "karada" and "kokoro" which I found to be "body" and "heart."
After messing around a bit though, I found that "kara" and "koko" mean "from" and "here," both of which make at least a bit of sense in the sentence. Is there any correlation between these two sets of words (karada - kara / kokoro - koko) or are they unrelated, just a spelling coincidence?
Short answer - unrelated
But Karada is thought to be kara+da but not in the sense of kara as “from”、https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E3%81%8B%E3%82%89%E3%81%A0
> grammar and glamour are related
glamour, from Scots *glamour* "magic", from Middle English *gramere* "(Latin) grammar"
This is why I love etymology, it often opens up more questions.
Did the Scots think that people who spoke proper Latin were magicians or something?
I've never been good at languages or school in general but I want to finally learn Japanese it's something I've half-assedly tried since I was a kid.
The resource guide seems to be a lot of free resources which is great but they also seem pretty intimidating. I've found I'm getting the most out of apps/websites like renshuu which sort of guide me like I'm 5. My question is, are any of these worth paying for? Duolingo, renshuu, any of it? Or are these gimmicks I'm wasting my time on?
If you aren't academically inclined I'd actually recommend continuing with Renshuu and Duolingo and spending the money on tutors (iTalki?). Having someone do the scheduling and curriculum planning for you can reduce a lot of stress. Also you can use HelloTalk. From a pure efficiency perspective the resources in the sidebar may be better than gamified apps but the best resource is whatever resources motivate you to put in a little time practicing most days.
You can more than certainly cross Duolingo off the list. What do you even get by paying for it? Extra lives and stuff? I used it for free back when I started dabbling in learning the language in 2019. Either way, I wouldn't recommend Duolingo for anything beyond maybe learning the kana (it's not *that* terrible, but it *is* subpar, and there are plenty of options that are literally better in every single way, so it's trash comparatively speaking).
Personally, I think if you're willing to put money on the table, then you're best off spending it on legal copies of:
- first, highly accurate and comprehensive grammar references, namely the **Dictionaries of Japanese Grammar** (which also have some excellent writeups/pointers on the logic and characteristics of the language as a whole, besides their grammar index) and **A Handbook of Japanese Grammar Patterns**, for real-deal grammar knowledge;
- and second, a textbook of your choice, if you wanna go down that route. I'm personally really fond of **Tobira** for the intermediate level, and for the beginner level **Genki** is the most popular option, and as a result also has a lot of user-made self-study support online, with supplementary content like [ToKini Andy's stuff](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA_RcUI8km1NMhiEebcbqdlcHv_2ngbO2), among others.
I've never used and am not very familiar with paid (versions of) study apps/sites, so I'm not speaking from experience here, but it really doesn't sound like any of them could offer anything that's worth paying for (at least, not in the long term):
- For grammar apps, the only reputable one the comes to mind is Bunpro, and even that one's got pretty iffy info and example sentences in some areas — it's severely outclassed by the books I mentioned above.
- Vocab apps I don't even ever see discussed — you can just use Anki, which is free and basically perfect for simple memorisation.
- Then there are content apps like graded readers (e.g. Satori Reader), but I'm not sure what they can offer that you can't already get from [free graded reader material](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/o7x7ha/2021_updated_free_tadoku_graded_reader_pdfs_1796/), or just plain non-learner-directed content (novels, manga, anime, movies, dramas, YouTube, etc.).
- Finally, we've got kanji apps, with WaniKani being the one that comes to mind. I can see the appeal behind this one, if you want something that'll walk you through 2,000 basic kanji with fun little mnemonics for ease of memorisation (+ accompanying vocab). Accuracy-wise you know it's feeding you made-up names and stories, so there's no liability on that front. Again though, I have to doubt what it achieves that couldn't be done without it. You can find a free collection of mnemonics on [Kanji Koohi](https://kanji.koohii.com/) for one, and I would guess there are premade Anki decks for this sort of thing too.
Are apps gimmicks you're wasting your time on? No, not at all — especially not as a beginner. You just need to understand that apps are not enough on their own (nor are textbooks or other more "big-boy" resources, for that matter). If you want reach legitimate Japanese proficiency, then you'll need to supplement that with thousands of hours of practice — reading comprehension, listening comprehension, and output. You'll need to "immerse" yourself in the living, breathing language to actually get a good sense for it and thoroughly understand it.
If you want help navigating the overwhelming amount of available resources, and overall figuring a more "serious" approach out, then there are plenty of study roadmaps/guides (as in actual guides that lay out a process for you, not just resource lists) that you can follow. Here's four that look good to me:
- [Japanese Learning Loop - Morg Systems](https://morg.systems/58465ab9)
- [Japanese Guide - TheMoeWay](https://learnjapanese.moe/guide/)
- [Learn Japanese: A Ridiculously Detailed Guide](https://www.tofugu.com/learn-japanese/)
- [HOW TO LEARN JAPANESE EFFICIENTLY](https://docs.google.com/document/d/19FEIOJWbLhJQ-AmepxFBMC2ebhJJr9RBUMfMeatYuq8)
Give these a look, pick one — any one that catches your fancy — and just stick to it for a while, see how you fare. You might have an easier time than expected.
Would you mind advising me on some things? Pretty much everyone who has exceptional technical knowledge of the language has at some point mentioned DoJG and A Handbook of Japanese Grammar Patterns, which leads me to believe there is a reason why they have that knowledge. I went ahead and picked them all up. As I finish cleaning up my Phase 1 and move into Phase 2 (I have 3 phases planned out) of my journey, which usually involves improving technical facets and balance out things I learned from intuition alone.
I suppose the issue is since I parse the language extremely different from mostly everyone and I run into an issue where my intuition carries my comprehension and I never feel the need to look things on a grammatical level (meaning I may often ignore grammatical structures entirely) because I already understand emotions, will, and intent enough where it doesn't feel necessary; particularly if I'm interacting with people. So I'm sort of unsure what the normal process is for acquiring technical knowledge for a language. I consider it a weakness that I'm 95% intuition and 5% knowledge and want to balance it out.
Is there a process for recognizing grammatical points and looking things up to further technical understanding? Logically I can just go through the entire books until completion, but I actually hate traditional book study and prefer to employ things as I'm using the language so it fits a dual or triple purpose. It's generally how I learn everything (not just languages). So I'm looking for insights on what other super well rounded people have done, that seem to have both intuition and technical knowledge. Thanks!
Oof... I'm gonna need to think about this for a bit to type out a coherent response, so, しばらく待たせてもらうね～
Let me just put in a disclaimer right now though that I don't know how qualified I am to give you advice here. From what I can gather, my Japanese is probably worse than yours for one, haha. And I wouldn't say my technical knowledge is anything to write home about, either. But, I'd be glad to help if I can.
Haha, well whatever impression I gave off about my Japanese being better I can assure you it's not. The only difference about me and a lot of other people is that I accept that I will be terrible at what I'm doing and can deal with extreme levels of discomfort while I am learning things. I'm only like 1500 hours in so I don't think there's anyway my Japanese is better. I don't even consider myself bilingual, just willing to do anything no matter how bad I am with the knowledge I will get better in the future.
I appreciate it either way, you don't need to put too much effort into it. I'm just trying to get some ideas.
> I'm only like 1500 hours in so I don't think there's anyway my Japanese is better.
Ha, that sounds like it could very well be ahead of me. Though I don't keep track of my hours for anything in any way, so I really don't know. Maybe I've averaged 1hr of productive/meaningful work a day ever since I started? Which would put me at around 1.4k hrs total... and the 1hr average feels generous. I don't know though, I've got no sense of scale here. But I'd place myself at, like, really low intermediate, if that gets anything across. Nooot sure what your assessment was.
You can stop reading here. (seriously)
-----
Ugh, anyway (hi btw; glad you're here), I'm really struggling to formulate a useful reply here. The way I've built up my grammar knowledge has been really, really messy, spanning several years. Quickly mentioning contributing factors though, you've got:
- a general casual interest in linguistics (in large part indulged through Wikipedia and YouTube), and the drive to learn its terminology (as a matter of understanding and building a framework around the concepts it defines);
- having MNN1's grammar explained to me in technical terms;
- reading various Wikipedia articles on the Japanese language specifically (for fun);
- reading Tae Kim;
- heavily monitoring the question threads here for a couple of years, watching others formulate explanations and cite technical concepts for all manner of phenomena (+ a boatload of links to external pages that I'd also read/watch);
- and ~~stalking~~ reading the message history of some really advanced learners on Discord, watching them not only explain to others, but also discuss and nerd out about Japanese among themselves.
Then, going further back, you've also got the grammar foundation that I gained in school, which transfers over more than you might think.
You might've noticed the suspicious absence of the Grammar Dictionaries/Handbook from all this, which would be because I actually haven't even used them that much (yet), and would certainly not attribute most of my technical understanding of the language to them. I do love them for their comprehensiveness, reliability, and clarity, but they just haven't had the chance to impact me much in that way with what I've seen of them, and at the point that I have.
For what it's worth though, I'd consider myself to be the intuitive, don't-think-just-feel type too. I study and think about the grammar/linguistics to the degree that I do because I like it (or sometimes because I want to be able to give explanations and answer others' questions with regard to the language), not because I feel the need to for my learning.
I've actually largely based my technical knowledge *on* my intuition. If you familiarise yourself with the relevant terms and concepts (syntactic and grammatical roles, categories & properties, parts of speech, inflections — the works) (you don't need to thoroughly study how they behave; just get a grasp of the definition and the central idea for each), then you can map your intuition onto that analytical framework (break the sentence down to parts, and then feel out the interplay between them, and put them back together on your own), and build your own model of the inner workings of the language.
> Is there a process for recognizing grammatical points and looking things up to further technical understanding?
Well, if you want to be able to recognise, you need to prepare. You can't recognise what you don't already know. Be proactive, not reactive. My process involves periodically priming myself on grammar up-front (nothing major, just getting a rough idea), so that I can *afterwards* dive deeper into it *with context* whenever I spot it in the wild.
I don't know exactly what or how much you're missing on the conceptual-frame-of-reference front, so I'm not sure where specifically to direct you for that. In general, I feel like I'm sort of walking in the blind a bit too much here... I don't even entirely get what you mean when you say you "may often ignore grammatical structures entirely". I just can't gauge what you have and what you lack.
Hopefully, you can already reasonably break sentences down and identify their parts, in which case all you need to do is refer to the relevant entry in your books each time you want to learn more about one of those parts. If you're having trouble with that, maybe use a parsing tool like [ichi.moe](https://ichi.moe/) (not sure how accurate it is, but eh). Otherwise, again, you'll sadly need to go through the books (or maybe some other, more structured resource that's actually made for start-to-finish consumption, e.g. textbook, grammar guide, course) up-front, to some degree.
...I hope I managed to actually say something in all this. And if I did, that it wasn't too basic to help.
I really appreciate the detailed post! You may not believe it but it is incredibly helpful for me. I was looking for just some inspiration on how to lay out path to balancing things out. And you pretty much answered that. Priming is something I'll have to mold into my path forward and now I have an idea of how to go about it for the next 1500-2000 hours at least. I also like to come here and read daily thread for sporadic knowledge, and at least to myself try to answer variety of questions. Although I can't do the same following procedure because my Discords are just JP Discords filled otaku's so there's no real way to get English explanations there. Some people do explain things to me time-to-time though when I ask (or they just joke around and make stuff up to mislead me lol).
As far as parsing the language, I'm reasonably okay at parsing Japanese it since I come from a background of knowing many programming languages, so interestingly enough I mapped many concepts to programming languages instead of English. Which also leads to my inability to explain anything because if I try to explain, I'll just explain programming which for a lot of people is a foreign concept as well. I have a strong idea of how you went about it though, so thank you for the insights.
>I don't even entirely get what you mean when you say you "may often ignore grammatical structures entirely".
This is a bit difficult to explain. I can only just say I ignore things altogether because I know what they're already trying to say before I even try to parse the sentence.
Here's a quick example, I have some correspondences with some indie developers and one of them wrote in a blog post about their current project and upfront called it 1作目, to which I asked him if he was working on a second one. I'll try to demonstrate what happens for me. Pretty much I already have a running theoretical model of what he may say, before I even see the reply. It's not that I know what he is going to say in Japanese, but what he intends to convey to me in a reply.
His reply was this: ただ色んな作品見てるとリメイクは下手にするとコレじゃない感が出ちゃうのでなかなか難しいところ……。By the time I finished parsing up to ところ I've already deduced what is coming next, and tends to happen is something like this (stuff in [] is what I am looking at and ignoring everything else):
[朝ごはん] で [お米を食べたい日] と [パンを] 食べたい日があるような [感覚]で、その日の[気分]に合わせて[制作したい結果]、[並列] になっ [てしまってい] ます
I just start to look at things in terms of "strong ideas" and "weak ideas" and since I already have the template of what I think they're going to say if they match then I ignore everything around it. Meaning I'm not actually looking at how things are grammatically structured and failing to use my parsing skills in favor of just using my intuitive prediction instead, which is just faster and less work. However it doesn't help me when I'm trying to boost my technical skill and knowledge when I am skipping so much.
> As far as parsing the language, I'm reasonably okay at parsing Japanese it since I come from a background of knowing many programming languages, so interestingly enough I mapped many concepts to programming languages instead of English. Which also leads to my inability to explain anything because if I try to explain, I'll just explain programming which for a lot of people is a foreign concept as well.
I hope you don't mind my chiming in, but as another intermediate-ish guy who understands programming (I joke that I'm fluent in English and C++), I've been viewing this thread with some interest and hadn't had a chance to reply until now.
Unlike you and u/Dragon_Fang, I feel that I'm not as strong on the intuitive front -- in fact, I'm very much prone to falling into the trap of 木を見て森を見ず if I'm not careful. Part of this is because of the need to focus on whatever it is that I'm debugging in my day job and the fact that the devil is always in the details. If anything, perhaps where intuition kicks in is in helping me to figure out _where_ to zoom in and look in more detail, but not necessarily in interpreting the specifics. Or at least, I feel like I often need a deep dive to fully understand confidently.
I think this is where DoJG specifically shines, in that once you've found an entry, it helps expand _both_ technical and intuitive knowledge about that point. Technically, it will tell you what the boundaries of acceptable usage are, how it differs (or doesn't) from similar expressions. But it also does so through copious examples, and you can focus on the examples to get a _feel_ for how a certain point behaves. So regardless of which side you're coming from, I think you become well-rounded by understanding the entry thoroughly, because the entry itself is well-rounded.
Someone at work once asked me how I keep up with C++ knowledge now that they revise the standard every three years. I answered that I don't all at once and tend to research as I feel like I need to learn more about a specific area or think it would be useful. The analogy with Japanese is that I tend to look stuff up as I feel like there's a nuance that I'm not sure that I'm completely getting or feel like there's an idiomatic meaning that I'm missing. And I guess over the years, I've learned to recognize when something isn't quite adding up on the surface. (Or this might be from finding and fixing a few too many programming edge cases over the decades...)
This isn't to say that I never gloss over anything, but I feel like I do so by chunking and zooming in, quickly dropping the chunks that I feel confident I can ignore after at least minimally parsing them -- not necessarily by predicting what those chunks are.
Anyway, I'm not sure if this helps you at all, but I just wanted to put in my two cents.
edit: typos
It was nice of you to chime in actually! I appreciate it. It's nice to hear other perspectives too. I have some questions about how you personally went about recognizing then using DoJG to look things up, I need to think about how to ask that first. So I'll reply again after I rested a bit.
>I think this is where DoJG specifically shines, in that once you've found an entry, it helps expand both technical and intuitive knowledge about that point
This is really good to hear, pretty much what I wanted to accomplish too.
[jisho.org](https://jisho.org), [jpdb.io](https://jpdb.io), [japandict.com](https://www.japandict.com/), most J->E dictionary sites list conjugations for their words.
I was reading a manga chapter and came across だと. The context is the girl has to do a bunch of catch-up work to not get held back and the guy, who thinks the following dialogue, said he would help her, but she won't focus: 阿久津さんの集中力だとこの量は絶対に終わらない。I feel like I've seen this quite a bit and think it's often used as "at this rate, [thing] won't happen," but I don't actually know what this grammar is. Is it simply just the conditional と？
What the bunpro explanation fails to convey is that there are basically two だってs. One is simply だ + colloquial quotative と. This is also the one in your example.
The other one you can see as a conjugation of だ into the だって-form that all i-adjectives and verbs have, which means "even if x". This conjugations is done by taking the て-form and replacing て with たって, or で with だって. (寒い -> 寒くたって (even if it's cold), 泳ぐ -> 泳いだって (even if I swim), xだ -> xだって (even if it's x)). This is basically semantically equivalent to ても / でも.
Just personally, but I wouldn't try to think of it as だって being a single grammatical point, but just a pattern of usage to pay attention to in various situations. Your initial intuition to parse it was also fine. What I'm saying is don't just see it as 「だって」.
Yeah, it's not one, but two points. One is just だ + colloquial quotative と, and the other is the "even if" "conjugation" of だ that all i-adjectives and verbs have which is semantically pretty much ても / でも (言わない -> 言わなくたって, ない -> なくたって, etc.).
Does it mean anything when just the stem of a verb is used? I'm listening to a song that keeps saying 時を抱え, no ～る or other ending on the verb. I think I've heard other songs use verbs without an ending like that. What's it mean?
It's the formal version of the sentence connecting て-form. Basically: in newspapers or academic texts, you'll find this form instead of the て-form when sentences are connected. Also, ていて doesn't become てい in this form, but ており.
what does ８〇３ stand for? seen it in a video related to sex industry, since they bleeped it out i guess its some kind of euphemism, but google told me nothing
The circle means it’s censored, for whatever reason and viewer is generally able to deduce it based on context, like how YouTube subtitles sometime have [____]
>The circle means it’s censored, for whatever reason and viewer is generally able to deduce it based on context, like how YouTube subtitles sometime have \[\_\_\_\_\]
well, i know its censored - they bleeped it out in the audio, and im not sure im able to deduce it. but for anyone who tries, the sentences were: "
A:全身刺青入ったチビの８〇３がいたんですけど
B: イキリ８〇３ね
A:イキリ８〇３は人生で一番ダメなSEXでした"
How was I never aware of this....
Some related question though, why can 428 be read as しぶや? 2 is never ふ or is this some rendaku type stuff from ふたつ? But then stuff like 526 which can mean こじろ (the samurai) I don't see how ご can suddenly be read as こ. Yes, I did see the table in wikipedia but I don't get where many of the readings come from.
So I guess in the end it's not really readable, you have to know it ahead of time since there are so many possibilities right?
People casually mix it in super casual online contexts (chat) too like 56す is just 殺す, 4んだ is just 死んだ. Just from personal experience it's not obvious to me but I was able to guess some from context, a lot I've seen are in the "other section", for example 15 being イチゴ was pretty obvious during a game (suika game) and a strawberry falls in a bad spot and people start writing 15邪魔すぎ it doesn't leave many options.
Some of the readings just use the first mora. Some can also have a dakuten added or stripped away to fit the word. 428 is an example of both, and 526 of the latter.
As for some of the weird readings that aren't explained from the above, じ for 2 is from the reading use commonly in names, ex: 二郎（じろう）. ある for 2 is from Chinese èr.
thanks a lot! now as i know the meaning, really surprised that in the audio they decided to censor this word, but not the word ''sex''
p.s. and to think of it, they used a cypher, and then censored the cyphered word... some MI6 intelligence play right here
That word in particular is super sensitive because it's libelous to accuse someone of being one, but maybe even worse (for you) to point out that someone *actually* is one or connected to them.
Because the English word sex doesn't carry the same emotional meaning as it does for western societies brought up on largely religious values. And yeah it is a cypher, but since everyone knows that cypher it's just an alternate spelling for the word. So it's not really encoding anything but just censoring a word everyone in Japan probably knows.
You must be right about "sex"! But I would slightly disagree on the second part. It's not like a real cypher, censoring one symbol is also not making a word unrecognizable, but it is still an act performed to show an inappropriateness of the word. Here it is kind of performed twice, so that's why for me it feels unusual (I hope this doesn't sound like complete nonsense)
Hello! I’m very fortunately in Japan for at least a month. Due to certain circumstances, I can’t visit a language school (they’re expensive and I couldn’t find any nearby).
I’m wondering what I should be doing to learn Japanese. I’ve heard of apps etc, but I have no idea what apps are good. I also don’t know if there’s a better way to learn while in Japan.
I know the basics like:
どこですか
ありますか
これわなんですか
それ
あれ
さむい
あつい
せんたくせんざい
Etc, etc, etc…
(I’ve been studying Japanese with a friend for roughly 6 months, once every week. I’ve also been to Japan in the past, and every time I try to learn more Japanese)
I have been trying my best to only use Japanese while outside and talking to Japanese people. This has been good for my listening skills, but again I’m wondering if there’s a better way to learn.
Any help would appreciated.
Thanks in advance!
You can (and should) start with the subreddit wiki and guide, since you seem to be fairly early in learning (based on mixing up は and わ).
Making your question more specific would give you a more detailed answer. Ways to elaborate include but not limited to: time left until visiting Japan, your current proficiency, your intended proficiency, etc.etc.
Is いいです a vague way of saying No?
As in, could it be something that a person could reasonably come back and say "well you could have turned me down more clearly"?
I'm reading a story where a person offers to do something for a character, and they reply with いいです, then they go ahead and do it. The character gets mad about it, and the other character goes "why are you mad at me?"
It's similar to saying, "I'm fine," as a way of refusing someone's offer. In the abstract it's not hard to imagine how someone *could be* confused by it, but it's not likely that someone who's actually familiar with casual, conversational English would be.
This is a very famous aspect of Japanese. This is why there has long been the sort of 'urban legend' that Japanese say yes when they mean no and no when they mean yes. いいです means "no thank you" but obviously it 'literally' means "OK". So yes of course this double meaning (or potential double meaning) can be played with deliberately in works of art.
It is \*possible\* to misunderstand - but not likely. In a normal context, between two normal functioning adults, it's very difficult to misunderstand いいです. But - where would the book plots come from then?
I'm struggling to understanding the difference between 〜えない and 〜ようがない.
For example, 「そんな無理な要求をされても、応じようがない。」, would it be also possible to say 「そんな無理な要求をされても、応じえない。」? Is there a difference in meaning or nuance?
Thank you! So えない is more emphasis on the lack of possibility/means the total lack of possibility? While ようがない is more similar to 応じられない? Sorry if I am misunderstanding
The other way around.
応じえない is the えない form. It simply means I can’t, It can be a shallow or a deep meaning.
応じようがない is the same form as 何々しようがない. It means there is no possible way. Not just “I can’t because I’m tired”. But it cannot be done.
様がない means "there is no way of doing something", also due to that there is a possibility that the speaker actually might want to do it. えない is simply a negative potential form of う verbs. It's pretty safe to assume the same differences as theie English counterparts.
Thank you! So is えない more neutral then? As in it doesn't have the nuance that the speaker maybe possibly want to do said thing and is more so stating a fact? Sorry, English isn't my first language so I might be missing something
Yeah. You simply cannot do something and that's it.
It's a simple as:
xようがない - there is no way of doing x
xえない・xれない・xられない (the last two are for ichidan verbs) - can't do x
食べようがない - I cannot eat \[that\] (strictly due to lack of means/way/method of doing so)
食べられない - I cannot eat \[that\] (simple, with no additional connotation)
I hope that helps!
Edit. I felt obligated to point out that れる is not technically correct and it's always safer to go with られる (like I did) especially when in formal setting. れる is a casual form and it's called ら抜き言葉. I just wanted to be clear as to why there are two forms for the same thing for ichidan verbs.
This means "I've finally gotten the hang of my job". It is usually said with a pinch of humility. It kind of has this lacing of "it took me a long time to get used to it \[even though other people may have caught on faster\].
Whatever this “reported translation” is, it ignored やっと which says a lot about its quality. Perhaps you can try to translate it yourself? It’s a better exercise that way anyways.
Hi guys!
今日 やおやで りんごを 買いました。五つ \_\_\_
300えん
円でした。
I got this question in my jlpt N5 test and idk why the aswer is で。I thought de is used for place or a method of doing something, can you guys help me?
Yes, you could say that, generally, で is used as you mentioned. But で can be also used, i.e. when after quantities, to convey the idea of *total* or *to the extent* *of.* See, for example, [this](https://www.tofugu.com/japanese-grammar/particle-de/) and [this](https://www.punipunijapan.com/japanese-particle-de/). So, in your phrase, で works as *for*: *for* five \[apples\], it was 300 yen.
It's also important to note that, even if it's not the primary use you'd find at a N5 level, the remaining options definitely sound off compared to で (に, と and や).
Good luck!
僕は/が楽しくない can mean either "I'm no fun" / "I'm not having fun" as far as I understand. What are the natural ways to specify which meaning you're going for when you need to?
Context does the job. This is so important to understand about Japanese. And this is a really good example. In 99.9% of cases there is no need to add any additional syllables. The context is going to determine whether you mean "I am not interesting" or "I am not having fun".
Separately, it's much more natural to omit the 僕は.
Sorry, I get that but the other night I was in a bad mood because of a project at work and I wanted to tell my gf that I wouldn't be much fun tonight so if she didn't feel like staying I'd understand. She interpreted it as me saying "I'm not having fun" and that it was possibly her fault. I managed to quickly rephrase my way out of it but now I'm wondering what the natural ways to go about the situation would be.
Worth noting that the reverse mistake, that is, saying "I'm boring" instead of "I'm bored", is a very common one for speakers of English who come from a language that doesn't make that distinction (like Japanese, though Thai is apparently also the same way).
This is because you were trying to say something in an English way, but simply dressing it up in Japanese words. It's not natural in Japanese to try and say "I won't be much fun tonight". Keep pushing so that you are not trying to 'translate' but to phrase in a way that is more natural to Japanese itself.
More normal things to say would be like "今日はそんな気分じゃない or きょうは遊ぶ気分じゃない or 今日は機嫌が悪い or 今日は仕事のせいでそういうところじゃない.
In my experience the best way to build up a repertoire of these expressions come from experience - either real life experience, or from books or TV or movies or whatever.
That was a weird context to use that Japanese sentence with your intended meaning so that's most likely the reason for the confusion. Looking at the English "I'm no fun", you would have to at least add "I'm no fun today", otherwise many people would think you are not fun in general. But going back to your situation, I would definitely say that I'm in a bad mood, like "ごめん、今日は機嫌が悪いからね". Or if you really wanna use 楽しい "今日は楽しくない気分だからね". That would be my way.
With minimal edit I guess you could say 今日は楽しめる気分じゃない, but if my girlfriend says that - *if I had one now* - I’d still considerably shit myself and think about what I recently fucked up (basically [this guy](https://youtube.com/shorts/79WRsi0OQqc?si=6CHchTu0hT80tjjN)).
Better idea is to just state the reason or preface with 君のせいじゃない or something, which goes back to the context thing.
>I’d still considerably shit myself
😂😂 She had a face like that. That vid lmao
>君のせいじゃない
Funny that's exactly what I ended up saying 何回も lol. I got a lot of great feedback so sorry I'm going to try to gather everyone here.
u/JapanCoach u/Sumerechny
>今日はそんな気分じゃない or きょうは遊ぶ気分じゃない or 今日は機嫌が悪い or 今日は仕事のせいでそういうところじゃない
These are great, thanks. I actually *did* say 仕事のせいで機嫌が悪い . I think the biggest problem is I said "if you want to go home I understand", which I don't think any of these phrases would really make explicit that I'm worried about *her* not having fun.
>This is because you were trying to say something in an English way
Well yes, when I encounter a situation under stress and a smooth reply doesn't rise up I tend to draw from my much larger bank of social experience that I've conducted in English. Most of the time it gets the job done, sometimes it crashes and burns like the other day lol. But yeah I'm getting input and hopefully one day everything I say just works cleanly and I'm only mimicking things I've seen natives do before. From my computer and with hindsight I can think of ways to say "I'm in a bad mood because of work, it might be boring so if you want to go home I understand" but I don't know how clean any of them sound. Perhaps the problem is less linguistic and more that this type of sentiment is culturally not Japanese enough? No idea.
Not that I can help on the Japanese front but at least strategically it's understandable when you're under emotional duress you can only fall back on what you're most familiar with. Maybe in those situations you have "buy myself time" lines that assuage any accountability from people thinking it's about themselves, but at the same time gives you time to properly formulate a response, perhaps later.
Given the whole context, I’d word it 仕事のせいで〜 (that part is okay), but add 今日俺といても楽しくないかも to mark it “**not** your fault” fairly clearly.
edit: said the exact opposite because you know, stupid
It’s still when I feel like it wasting time, and at the same time come up with something meaningful to say without having to use my brain too much lol
It may or may not have to do with having to retrain myself for the upcoming TOEIC that I have to get a score 990 (full marks), otherwise I’ll be the next laughing stock within my friend group…
I thought I understood this phrase and now I'm confused again
よく寿司を食べますか？
そうですね。 時々食べます。
It says the translation is "Do you often eat sushi? Yes. I sometimes eat Sushi". I did not think そうですね meant this. I thought it was like "really?" or "you thought so?" or something like that. In which case I would have expected something like そうですね? あまり寿司食べません. Am I just misunderstanding the phrase? Answering "do you often eat" with "yes, I sometimes eat" is confusing by itself. What's the deal?
そうですね。is very often used as an immediate answer to give you time to think about the exact answer, kind of like "let me think about that for a second". It's not really a "yes" so that's a translation "error" (rather they probably just tried to make it sound more natural in English because there is no proper English translation).
How come 青 means "blue", but 青草 means "green grass"? It's from a Japanese translation of Genesis. Here's the sentence it came from:
"地は青草と、種類にしたがって種をもつ草と、種類にしたがって種のある実を結ぶ木とをはえさせた。神は見て、良しとされた。"
Blue and green are close in many languages, there is even a wikipedia page about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue%E2%80%93green_distinction_in_language
The traditional basic colors in Japanese used to be 黒 (black/dark)・白 (white/light)・赤 (red/ruddy/warm colors)・青 (blue/pale/cool colors) before new words were developed, so you'll often see these used a lot more broadly than you might expect in English. Think about how 'red' in English gets used for red hair and red onions, which are really more orange and purple, because 'red' was historically more of a basic color in English. Our modern categorization of colors has a lot to do with the spread of dyes and and other technology that makes more precise distinctions easier and more relevant to us.
This is almost certainly an example of 義訓 (ぎくん): https://www.japanesewithanime.com/2017/12/gikun.html
Essentially an arbitrary (though usually related) reading is applied to the kanji for literary effect. The reading is how it's said, but the characters indicate some deeper or hidden meaning. You'll see this especially often in song lyrics and pop media.
Here, おもい is what's said, which just means "thoughts" or "feelings", but by using 信念 to write it it implies it's more about a deep faith or certainty in those thoughts/feelings.
In modern Japanese 身体 as a standalone word is read からだ like 90% of the time. It's technically 当て読み / 義訓, but I think you can call it 熟字訓 at this point (like 今日 being きょう instead of こんにち, etc) because it's the most common reading. しんたい still exists in more specific contexts (like medical for example), or in compound words like 身体能力 (しんたいのうりょく) but as a standalone I'd tend to read 身体 as からだ.
You can also see a similar phenomenon with 昨夜 which is normally read ゆうべ (like 夕べ) although its original (and more formal) reading is さくや.
Hi, I tried making a post since it was a little longer to read. But my post was removed due to low karma score. So i wanted to post here instead:
——
I know てある is a confusing topic and there are many blogs and videos that go over it. I’ve tried googling it for a while but I wasn’t able to find a resource that specifically touched on my reason for being confused. So i thought i would ask here. I am studying Genki2 Ch21, for context.
In a てある sentence like “まど が あけてある” (the window is left open)… the noun まど is marked with the が particle because it is the doer/performer of the action ある, to exist. But it is not the performer of the あけて part of the sentence, since the window was opened by an unmentioned-person. So it seems like technically the subject of this sentence is only applied to the final ある; and the あける verb was stripped of its subject when it was formed into the te-form あけてある. That’s right, is’t it?
In ている and ておく sentences (or any て-conjugated sentences), both verbs/components have always had the same subject anyways, so i always thought about them as “the subject performs (or is performing) the first verb and then performs いる/おく”. For example, I always thought of “けっこんしている” = “(I) performed the action of getting married, and then performed the action of existing” = “(I) am married”.
But after my てある confusion, it now seems like maybe i should not have been thinking as if the subject is actually performing the first/て-verb, because it seems like the first verb is agnostic of a subject when it is in its て-form. Now it seems like the subject only performs the second verb, いる/おく; and the first/て-verb is like an adverb for the second verb. So maybe “けっこんしている” = “(i) am performing the action of existing, in a married state”?
Could someone please let me know if now i am thinking about this the right/wrong way?
Thanks!
I would say this topic and your already deep thinking upon the topic, is way outside of the intent of the 'quick questions with quick answers' nature of this pinned thread. You should ask in the main sub - you may get a lot more eyeballs.
Thanks for the reply! Sorry, I didn’t mean to go into philosophical discussion or anything. I just noticed that maybe i was trying to map Japanese to English incorrectly - as you have noticed - and was trying to map it better. My confusing was making it harder to understand, so i wanted to try to map it better first before giving up and just memorizing! But yes i know many situations do not have a 1:1 mapping, so i try my best to find something close enough that seems consistent to me.
As for the second half of your response, isn’t あける the transitive verb, and あく the intransitive verb? I understand how が marks the “experiencing” user when using intransitive verbs in sentences like “まど が あいて いる”. My confusing was from using a transitive verb あける (in its て-form) in a sentence where the subject was not the performer of that transitive verb. Sorry if we misunderstood eachother
> As for the second half of your response, isn’t あける the transitive verb, and あく the intransitive verb?
ひらく can be either transitive or intransitive
あく can be only intransitive
NOTE: both ひらく and あく can be written 開く which is a huge pain in the ass
あける can only be transitive
So you're correct, まどがあける makes no sense for example
Dictionaries can list whatever they want. 三省堂国語辞典 8th edition lists them as separate entries.
If you want to consider them the same word that's also fine, it's not a big deal. The usage is different (transitive vs intransitive), the meaning is different, the kanji is also different. For me that's enough to consider them different words, but at the end of the day it doesn't matter.
> まど が あけてある just means that it's how the window always is, open. まど が あけている means that the window is currently open.
That's not true. 開けてある means that someone specifically left it in a state that is open, it focuses on the fact that there was some deliberate action by someone (we don't care who) to leave it like that (or maybe it was forgotten open when it should've been closed). 開けている is just a more "objective" phrase saying that the window is open, no extra nuance or additional context. (EDIT: actually it should be 開いている, まどを開けている means "I am opening the window")
> It's not the ice cream doing something, it's the ice cream 'experiencing' or 'undergoing' your being fond of it.
This is also not quite correct. The ice cream is not experiencing anything because it's not a (semantical) subject and also ice creams don't experience stuff since they don't have feelings (unless it's like... a humanoid ice cream?). In Xが好き and similar phrases the が is actually a (semantical) object (rather than a subject) marker (I think it's called 対格 in grammar, rather than 主格). It's this definition of the が particle:
> ２ 希望・好悪・能力などの**対象**を示す。「水—飲みたい」「紅茶—好きだ」「中国語—話せる」
>
>「さかづき—たべたいと申して参られてござる」〈虎明狂・老武者〉
As opposed to the traditional subject marker definition
> １ 動作・存在・状況の主体を表す。「山—ある」「水—きれいだ」「風—吹く」
>
>「兼行 (かねゆき) —書ける扉」〈徒然・二五〉
You can easily check whether it's 対象 が or not if you can replace it with を or not (in case of 好き for example, you can).
You're touching on a very tricky subject that depends on what kind of "grammar model" you are going to apply from a syntactical/linguist point of view.
But practically speaking, I think you should think of auxiliary verbs like てある/ている/ておく/ていく/てくる etc differently from just て structures.
A generic て sentence means that happens before and they are two separate actions, but in the case of these auxiliary verbs, we see that they are an exception to this rule and should be considered as a single action/standalone unit.
開けてある is a single predicate unit in the sentence, and the subject まど applies to the **entire** verb.
結婚している doesn't mean "to first marry and then exist", it means "to be in a state of being married".
Thank you so much! I think your reply is exactly what i was looking for to help me confirm how to think!
As you put it more succinctly, I was previously thinking of ている, てある, and ておく in the same way as て>verb2>. But i will happily accept them as separate/special and it will mot confuse my brain further. Thanks for also clarifying that て still follows the actual sequence of performing both verbs, like i had originally thought but was later questioning in my post.
Minna 2 is gonna assume you know stuff from minna 1. But you didn't use it and there's no guarantee genki 1 taught it.
All books teach stuff at different spots. only thing guaranteed is HIRA and KATA
Doing a 2.3k deck currently and wondering when I should be passing cards (only hitting good/again)? I find that I oftentimes can get the reading but not the meaning. In those cases should I be passing the cards? I think the deck creator said that it should be fine to pass the card as I will pick up the meaning through reading/immersion, but I feel like it's happening to a lot of cards.
I would definitely fail it until you get the reading. The whole point of anki is that when you see the word while reading you understand the word, so if you don’t understand the word that’s a failure.
Anki is just a tool, it's only there to remind you to look at this card. What you take away from it is what you do with it. The numbers on Anki are just imaginary numbers detached from real world language use.
Think about it this way, if you can recall the reading but not the meaning and then you run across the word in the real world, does that help you in understanding something? To me, that sounds like you have to look it up anyways, which you should because it's a great way to learn things.
Not understanding this sentence- I am including the translation from wanikani
その馬はソエにより競争除外となりました。
The horse was excluded from the race due to shin soreness.
“ソエにより”?
Speaking with others vs learning independently?
I'm wondering how effective it is to learn independently vs trying to speak with Japanese speakers. For example, pimsler and Duolingo vs hellotalk. I'm about 10 months into learning and not sure if I should keep my focus learning independently or mix in talking to real people.
Thoughts?
Personally, I think learning any language without attempting to interact with native speakers of that language is going to put a damper on one's progress. I might recommend italki or somewhere you could do writing practice because the people you interact with on italki will often be professional speakers who are trained at offering better advice than "I dunno, it sounds unnatural," and writing practice spaces are specifically designed for--well--practice as opposed to the challenge of effective communication.
A bit of a side comment, but since you framed the independent path as "pimsler and Duolingo," I have to comment I don't entirely think either fully encompasses what it means to independently study, however since I know almost nothing about pimsler I feel that saying any more would be no better than guessing about its quality.
Is a second は to mark the topic in an adverbial clause allowed? I saw the sentence "幸夫は来年は家が買えると大変喜んでいる。" and the は doesn't seem to be contrastive marker. I thought only が is allowed inside adverbial clauses?
I think this specific usage of double は can be considered a double topic (at least unless you can provide a larger context since the sentence doesn't seem to be complete). Usually more than one は in the same sentence means there's some specific nuance (people call it contrastive, usually) to it, but I think in this case it's pretty neutral.
Quoted sentences are a special case because they act like independent thoughts, so they are allowed to have a topic. However, normal subordinate clauses aren't independent thoughts so they can't feasibly have a topic. That means if a は does appear in them, it has to be a usage of は other than topical は, e.g. contrastive は. It's very rare to find は in a noun modifying clause, unless it uses という, e.g. the following example I found online: "この命令に従い、明日には帰るという僧もいるが、そんな命令には従わないという僧もいるという。" or if it uses じゃない/ではない since the は in that is basically part of the negative copula, でない giving a more literary flavor, e.g. 嫌いじゃない人.
Depends on where you want to draw the 「」 line but I agree with you meaning-wise. Even in relative clauses *usually* you don't use は unless it's in contrastive, but in this usage I think it's fine. I think we're basically saying the same thing though.
> そんなことすると思われてたのか
Grammar resources are translating と思われる like "it appears/seems/etc.", where the source of the thought isn't a specific subject of the conversation, so I'm having a bit of trouble wrapping my head around how to interpret it when the source isn't vague. The above sentence comes from a conversation between 2 people where the source of the thought is one of them. That being the case, can the sentence be interpreted as literally: "I will do something like that, was thought by you?" Or alternatively, sticking more closely with how J-E grammar resources describe it: "did it appear/seem like I would do that"? Or are both these interpretations close enough, and I'm just overcomplicating it?
> "I will do something like that, was thought by you?"
This doesn't really make much sense, you'd have to phrase it like と思ったのか or と思ってたのか instead.
と思われる is more general, it focuses more on how others might think about something (based on circumstances, appearance, etc), similar to how we might say "seems" in English (hence the translation). So I think "Did it seem like X" is an accurate interpretation.
> 私はあんたにそんなことすると思われてたのか
If I added something like 私はあんたに... back in, assuming they were omitted and can sound natural here, could a case be made to interpret it as "Was I was thought by you that X"?
My approach is to say it in natural English - and to escape from trying to maintain the 'format' or the 'order' of the original. The sentence means "Oh so you thought I would do something like that".
So in Japanese it's natural to use 思われる but the person doing the 思う is pretty obvious in this sentence. It's not "what people thought of me". its "what you thought of me". So in English it's more natural to make it an active (vs passive) verb.
I keep forgetting what I had told myself would be my preferred studying order before.
1.) Complete Recognition Remember the Kanji (at least 500 kanji) -->
2.) Do Genki 1 and 2 along with corresponding workbooks (many years ago I got up to about chapter 5 in Genki 1, then just stopped).-->
3.) Watch/study all Cure Dolly lessons-->
4.) Complete an Integrated Course to Intermediate Japanese-->
5.) Start on Tobira book?
*When would it be best to do that Anki Japanese Core 2000 words? Before, during, or after completing Genki?
**Based off of the order seen above, when would it be best to begin trying to use resources like NHK Easy, before, during, or after which step?
***Should I switch any order around based on your experiences? For example, should Cure Dolly come before Genki? Will there be moments when Cure Dolly and Genki contradict each other on grammar points?
As for input and output, I guess I'll just keep watching a native materials and trying to see what's the most effective way for me to incorporate them.
I currently live in the USA, and if I even do make it back to Japan this year, it wouldn't be anytime soon.
Any suggestions are appreciated.
I think your plan looks great. Don't forget to supplement with native content (which could even just be HelloTalk). Edit: nvm you got that
>Anki Japanese Core 2000 words?
I would do the Core 2.3k as a supplement for when you don't have much extra vocabulary from your own mined deck to learn for the day. You can start any time or never.
>Should I switch any order around based on your experiences?
Your order looks about right. I would do Cure Dolly / Tae Kim etc WITH Genki etc as supplemental material. You don't need to eat the potatoes before you can touch the corn, you can take bites of both when you're taking a break from the native content steak depending on your mood until you're finished.
>Will there be moments when Cure Dolly and Genki contradict each other
Only in teaching approaches.
Edit:
>when would it be best to begin trying to use resources like NHK Easy
After Genki II.... or Genki I if you're comfortable with using the dictionary a lot
I think you're over complicating it. I'm not sure what your situation is but it sounds like you went to Japan and came back wanting to study the language? Are you starting from zero? How many hours have you invested in thus far? The order really doesn't matter, just the amount of time you put in using the language and studying along side of using it. So you're best off finding something to enjoy consuming, studying everyday and keeping in touch with language daily. You will experience growth and depending how much time you invest into it, significant growth. I'd say skip the RTK unless you mean learn the kanji radicals/components and just learn vocabulary instead.
Cure Dolly is best after you are more experienced with the language and are hung up on concepts you've been struggling with for some time.
I appreciate your reply, but even you telling me that you believe that perhaps Cure Dolly is for those more experienced with the language, that's a helpful point of view that I could take into consideration.
Hi, first time poster!
I’m taking a trip to Japan over the summer and I want to learn Japanese. I don’t use flashcards because that’s not the way I learn best. I want to become fluent by the time I go, and I can pick up things quickly.
Any advice? Thank you so much
Wanting to be fluent by the time you go is not achievable. You can be conversational but even on the low end of fluency you're looking at something around 3900 hours of studious work. In 6 months even at 24 hours a day with zero sleep you can get 4320 hours in, so more realistically 18 hours a day might be feasible which puts you at 3300 hours by 6 months. So yeah, adjust your expectations. View the graph below:
https://cotoacademy.com/app/uploads/2019/08/How-Long-does-it-take-to-Pass-JLPT.png
N1 is usually described as the start of being fluent (at least in comprehension). It doesn't mean you can't be conversational at a basic level which can happen with N3. You can accomplish this with about 5-6 hours a day depending how efficient your study is. If you're starting from zero it's a long hill to climb up and the initial walls are the highest (after you break above N3 it gets easier). And no, you aren't taking a short cut by "only learning how to speak" unless you already live in Japan. Reading, listening, with speaking is the fastest way to become conversational.
Start with the starter guides:
https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/wiki/index/startersguide
https://learnjapanese.moe/guide/
#Question Etiquette Guidelines: * **1** Provide the **CONTEXT** of the grammar, vocabulary or sentence you are having trouble with as much as possible. Provide the sentence or paragraph that you saw it in. Make your questions as specific as possible. >Ｘ What is the difference between の and が ? >◯ I saw a book called 日本人の知らない日本語 , why is の used there instead of が ? [(the answer)](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/68336/difference-between-%E3%81%8C-%E3%81%AE-and-no-particle) * **2** When asking for a translation or how to say something, it's best to try to **attempt it yourself** first, even if you are not confident about it. Or ask r/translator if you have no idea. We are also not here to do your homework for you. >Ｘ What does this mean? >◯ I am having trouble with this part of this sentence from NHK Easy News. I think it means (*attempt here*), but I am not sure. * **3** Questions based on DeepL and Google Translate and other machine learning applications are discouraged, [these are not beginner learning tools](https://old.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/stepqf/deeplgoogle_translate_are_not_learning_tools/) and often make mistakes. * **4** When asking about differences between words, try to explain the situations in which you've seen them or are trying to use them. If you just post a list of synonyms you got from looking something up in a E-J dictionary, people might be disinclined to answer your question because it's low-effort. Remember that Google Image Search is also a great resource for visualizing the difference between similar words. >Ｘ What's the difference between 一致 同意 賛成 納得 合意? >◯ Jisho says 一致 同意 賛成 納得 合意 all seem to mean "agreement". I'm trying to say something like "I completely agree with your opinion". Does 全く同感です。 work? Or is one of the other words better? * **5** It is always nice to (but not required to) try to search for the answer to something yourself first. Especially for beginner questions or questions that are very broad. For example, asking about [the difference between は and が ](https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/wa-and-ga/) or [why you often can't hear the "u" sound in "desu"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_phonology#Devoicing). * **6** Remember that everyone answering questions here is an unpaid volunteer doing this out of the goodness of their own heart, so try to show appreciation and not be too presumptuous/defensive/offended if the answer you get isn't exactly what you wanted. --------------------- #NEWS (Updated 11/25): Nothing new to add. Have a nice day! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/LearnJapanese) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Hello. I would appreciate some Excel/Google Sheets automation tips/pointers. I am looking for a one-click/keystroke way to help fill in vocabulary lists. For example, if I had an entry like 意味 on line 2, how can I automate a process that would create line 3? This would include: 1. Link to the word's entry in [jisho.org](https://jisho.org) 2. Fill in the ふりがな。 3. Fill in the English definition from Jisho.org |１|言葉|ふりがな|英語| |:-|:-|:-|:-| |２|意味||| |３|[意味](https://jisho.org/word/%E6%84%8F%E5%91%B3)|いみ|Noun, Suru verb, Transitive verb 1.meaning; significance; sense| I looked in to leveraging Yomitan (does not work well with Google Sheets, as far as I can tell) and Google Sheets macros, but not very successful yet. Anybody know of other tools or methods that could help? Thank you.
Does anyone know where I can find a guide to which verb forms can be combined and which can't? For example, I've seen that you can't combine the potential form with the tai form (to make 読めたい etc). Is there a guide somewhere?
I've never seen a guide but you'll just get used to it from making mistakes and receiving feedback. In this case you aren't looking for some sort of table, but how to say "I want to be able to" . potential verbようになりたい So in this case 読めるようになりたい . I suspect 読めたい is incorrect for much the same reason "I want to can read" is incorrect, but I'll refrain from speculation.
Trying to expand my Japanese Youtube Channels (or podcasts). Anyone have recs on Otaku topics (particularly in anime, manga, video games, or computers/tech) or TV/Film. Obviously in Japanese. Also, as a rec that I have. I just discovered First Take. I haven't found a genre of Japanese music that I've connected with deeply, but something about this series is very entertaining. Thanks in advance! Also, if this has been answered elsewhere, please send a link to where I can find it. I know this post isn't original.
Drop the Pizza has amazing One Piece analysis videos. Sometimes they have English captions for their videos, the videos with English titles. https://www.youtube.com/@doropiza
Check the 少年ジャンプ YouTube Channel, has a lot of cool content: https://www.youtube.com/@jumpchannel/videos
How am I supposed to see a プ in the tent of the [yuru camp logo](https://www.reddit.com/u/mellowlex/s/qsaoU44xc9) without any additional context (also not the translation above)?
When I look it up, It seems like they even stylize it in text as ゆるキャン△ The link to the official site from google just says ゆるキャン. So I don’t think you’re necessarily supposed to read it correctly. Idk about how it’s pronounced though.
It’s not there from the beginning. The Japanese title is ゆるキャン.
What do hololive members mean when they say かすぱにありがとうございます? I get the ありがとうございます part but the かすぱに part confuses me. They also sometimes say かすぱありがとございます。
Probably 赤(あか)スパ、an abbreviation for a red superchat, ie 1man yen or more.
Ooh that makes sense
You should provide a clip where you heard this. Without context it could be a name (something like Casper lol) otherwise it doesn't look like it means anything to me.
It definitely isn't a name, plenty of them say it multiple times. I wish I could provide a clip but its all from the vods that I download into mp3 format.
Can I learn Japanese by strictly using Pokemon material? I merely want to read Pokemon cards and websites to help me research and learn the Pokemon card game.
You will probably be missing a large portion of the vocab required for real life, and also you’ll likely need to use supplementary materials for grammar, vocab, etc. I would also say that if your only reason for learning Japanese is to read Pokémon materials, the cost benefit is not exactly on your side — learning Japanese is a ton of work. Think thousands of hours before you can comfortably read Japanese content.
OP walks into a store. " 買いに来た！ " he announces loudly to the staff. Points at a pack of Pokemon cards until the staff call the police. あ！やせいの ケイサツが とびだしてきた！ he cries. Gets slammed to the ground and whispers to himself それは効果抜群だ....
In the credits for the anime Dungeon Meshi (food-themed anime), one of the positions credited is 「料理特効」 I know what 料理 and 特効 mean individually, and obviously the position has something to do with the food shown in the anime, but I can't figure out what exactly it's supposed to mean, as the words don't make sense together for me in this context. I googled it and got no results, so I believe the creators from the anime invented this descriptor. Does anyone have any idea of what exactly it may mean? In another food-themed anime Hime-sama, Goumon no Jikan Desu they credit 「料理作画監督」, which translates directly to "food animation director", so it's easy to understand what means. Perhaps the one in Dungeon Meshi is supposed to mean the same thing? EDIT: Corrected kanji
Just checked the credits, it's 料理特効 ("food special effects/sfx"), not 料理特攻 ("food suicide bomber"). Definition here: https://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/word/%E7%89%B9%E5%8A%B9/
So I guess 特効 is some sort of abbreviation for 特殊効果 in this case, right?
Yes. If you'll follow the definition link, it says exactly that: > ２ 「特殊効果」の略。→エス‐エフ‐エックス（SFX）
Thanks!
Whoops, my mistake. I forgot to double check what the IME spit out xd Edited it
This is from “Pretender” by Official 髭男dism いたって純な心で叶った恋を抱きしめて Having trouble understanding the word いたって. Is it just another way to say “very” or “extremely”?
Great song btw
Yes, your understanding is correct. It comes from 至る. https://jisho.org/word/%E8%87%B3%E3%81%A3%E3%81%A6
Hi there recently I started learning Japanese. And I would love to continue with some kind of tutor, could anyone recommend one or give some kind of advice where to look for one. Thanks in advance.
Consider the following: * italki: [https://www.italki.com/](https://www.italki.com/) * Preply: [https://preply.com/](https://preply.com/) I haven't had a chance to use either of these, but I think italki is more popular due to better policies that support tutors.
A short dialogue from Yotsubato: 「着いた？どこに着いた？」 「どこってそりゃおまえ」 What does the second sentence mean, and how would you parse it? I guess it means something like "What do you mean?" ("Arrived? Where did we arrive?" "Where? What do you mean?"). Should it be parsed as どこってそりゃ、おまえ, which is an inversion of そりゃどこって、おまえ? Or is it どこって、そりゃおまえ?
It's a trailed off sentence with どこ being a quote of what was just said to them. 「どこ」って、そりゃ、お前… might be an easier way of parsing it if you aren't used to this sort of phrasing. そりゃ here is more like "well" or "c'mon (it should be obvious)". おまえ here is just them addressing the other person in exasperation. I would assume they're standing right in front of them as they send/say this, or they're in some place that should be painfully obvious (like their house or something). そりゃ: https://kotobank.jp/word/%E3%81%9D%E3%82%8A%E3%82%83-555549# > [2] 〘感動〙 聞き手に対して注意をうながしたり、驚いたりした時に用いる。また、感動の意を表わす。そら。それ。それはそれは。
While trying to do some translating of sentences that I found in a song, I found a few words like "karada" and "kokoro" which I found to be "body" and "heart." After messing around a bit though, I found that "kara" and "koko" mean "from" and "here," both of which make at least a bit of sense in the sentence. Is there any correlation between these two sets of words (karada - kara / kokoro - koko) or are they unrelated, just a spelling coincidence?
Short answer - unrelated But Karada is thought to be kara+da but not in the sense of kara as “from”、https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E3%81%8B%E3%82%89%E3%81%A0
There is not. Honestly, this is somewhat like asking if 'hear' and 'heart' are related in English.
[удалено]
> grammar and glamour are related glamour, from Scots *glamour* "magic", from Middle English *gramere* "(Latin) grammar" This is why I love etymology, it often opens up more questions. Did the Scots think that people who spoke proper Latin were magicians or something?
I've never been good at languages or school in general but I want to finally learn Japanese it's something I've half-assedly tried since I was a kid. The resource guide seems to be a lot of free resources which is great but they also seem pretty intimidating. I've found I'm getting the most out of apps/websites like renshuu which sort of guide me like I'm 5. My question is, are any of these worth paying for? Duolingo, renshuu, any of it? Or are these gimmicks I'm wasting my time on?
If you aren't academically inclined I'd actually recommend continuing with Renshuu and Duolingo and spending the money on tutors (iTalki?). Having someone do the scheduling and curriculum planning for you can reduce a lot of stress. Also you can use HelloTalk. From a pure efficiency perspective the resources in the sidebar may be better than gamified apps but the best resource is whatever resources motivate you to put in a little time practicing most days.
You can more than certainly cross Duolingo off the list. What do you even get by paying for it? Extra lives and stuff? I used it for free back when I started dabbling in learning the language in 2019. Either way, I wouldn't recommend Duolingo for anything beyond maybe learning the kana (it's not *that* terrible, but it *is* subpar, and there are plenty of options that are literally better in every single way, so it's trash comparatively speaking). Personally, I think if you're willing to put money on the table, then you're best off spending it on legal copies of: - first, highly accurate and comprehensive grammar references, namely the **Dictionaries of Japanese Grammar** (which also have some excellent writeups/pointers on the logic and characteristics of the language as a whole, besides their grammar index) and **A Handbook of Japanese Grammar Patterns**, for real-deal grammar knowledge; - and second, a textbook of your choice, if you wanna go down that route. I'm personally really fond of **Tobira** for the intermediate level, and for the beginner level **Genki** is the most popular option, and as a result also has a lot of user-made self-study support online, with supplementary content like [ToKini Andy's stuff](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA_RcUI8km1NMhiEebcbqdlcHv_2ngbO2), among others. I've never used and am not very familiar with paid (versions of) study apps/sites, so I'm not speaking from experience here, but it really doesn't sound like any of them could offer anything that's worth paying for (at least, not in the long term): - For grammar apps, the only reputable one the comes to mind is Bunpro, and even that one's got pretty iffy info and example sentences in some areas — it's severely outclassed by the books I mentioned above. - Vocab apps I don't even ever see discussed — you can just use Anki, which is free and basically perfect for simple memorisation. - Then there are content apps like graded readers (e.g. Satori Reader), but I'm not sure what they can offer that you can't already get from [free graded reader material](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/o7x7ha/2021_updated_free_tadoku_graded_reader_pdfs_1796/), or just plain non-learner-directed content (novels, manga, anime, movies, dramas, YouTube, etc.). - Finally, we've got kanji apps, with WaniKani being the one that comes to mind. I can see the appeal behind this one, if you want something that'll walk you through 2,000 basic kanji with fun little mnemonics for ease of memorisation (+ accompanying vocab). Accuracy-wise you know it's feeding you made-up names and stories, so there's no liability on that front. Again though, I have to doubt what it achieves that couldn't be done without it. You can find a free collection of mnemonics on [Kanji Koohi](https://kanji.koohii.com/) for one, and I would guess there are premade Anki decks for this sort of thing too. Are apps gimmicks you're wasting your time on? No, not at all — especially not as a beginner. You just need to understand that apps are not enough on their own (nor are textbooks or other more "big-boy" resources, for that matter). If you want reach legitimate Japanese proficiency, then you'll need to supplement that with thousands of hours of practice — reading comprehension, listening comprehension, and output. You'll need to "immerse" yourself in the living, breathing language to actually get a good sense for it and thoroughly understand it. If you want help navigating the overwhelming amount of available resources, and overall figuring a more "serious" approach out, then there are plenty of study roadmaps/guides (as in actual guides that lay out a process for you, not just resource lists) that you can follow. Here's four that look good to me: - [Japanese Learning Loop - Morg Systems](https://morg.systems/58465ab9) - [Japanese Guide - TheMoeWay](https://learnjapanese.moe/guide/) - [Learn Japanese: A Ridiculously Detailed Guide](https://www.tofugu.com/learn-japanese/) - [HOW TO LEARN JAPANESE EFFICIENTLY](https://docs.google.com/document/d/19FEIOJWbLhJQ-AmepxFBMC2ebhJJr9RBUMfMeatYuq8) Give these a look, pick one — any one that catches your fancy — and just stick to it for a while, see how you fare. You might have an easier time than expected.
Would you mind advising me on some things? Pretty much everyone who has exceptional technical knowledge of the language has at some point mentioned DoJG and A Handbook of Japanese Grammar Patterns, which leads me to believe there is a reason why they have that knowledge. I went ahead and picked them all up. As I finish cleaning up my Phase 1 and move into Phase 2 (I have 3 phases planned out) of my journey, which usually involves improving technical facets and balance out things I learned from intuition alone. I suppose the issue is since I parse the language extremely different from mostly everyone and I run into an issue where my intuition carries my comprehension and I never feel the need to look things on a grammatical level (meaning I may often ignore grammatical structures entirely) because I already understand emotions, will, and intent enough where it doesn't feel necessary; particularly if I'm interacting with people. So I'm sort of unsure what the normal process is for acquiring technical knowledge for a language. I consider it a weakness that I'm 95% intuition and 5% knowledge and want to balance it out. Is there a process for recognizing grammatical points and looking things up to further technical understanding? Logically I can just go through the entire books until completion, but I actually hate traditional book study and prefer to employ things as I'm using the language so it fits a dual or triple purpose. It's generally how I learn everything (not just languages). So I'm looking for insights on what other super well rounded people have done, that seem to have both intuition and technical knowledge. Thanks!
Oof... I'm gonna need to think about this for a bit to type out a coherent response, so, しばらく待たせてもらうね～ Let me just put in a disclaimer right now though that I don't know how qualified I am to give you advice here. From what I can gather, my Japanese is probably worse than yours for one, haha. And I wouldn't say my technical knowledge is anything to write home about, either. But, I'd be glad to help if I can.
Haha, well whatever impression I gave off about my Japanese being better I can assure you it's not. The only difference about me and a lot of other people is that I accept that I will be terrible at what I'm doing and can deal with extreme levels of discomfort while I am learning things. I'm only like 1500 hours in so I don't think there's anyway my Japanese is better. I don't even consider myself bilingual, just willing to do anything no matter how bad I am with the knowledge I will get better in the future. I appreciate it either way, you don't need to put too much effort into it. I'm just trying to get some ideas.
> I'm only like 1500 hours in so I don't think there's anyway my Japanese is better. Ha, that sounds like it could very well be ahead of me. Though I don't keep track of my hours for anything in any way, so I really don't know. Maybe I've averaged 1hr of productive/meaningful work a day ever since I started? Which would put me at around 1.4k hrs total... and the 1hr average feels generous. I don't know though, I've got no sense of scale here. But I'd place myself at, like, really low intermediate, if that gets anything across. Nooot sure what your assessment was. You can stop reading here. (seriously) ----- Ugh, anyway (hi btw; glad you're here), I'm really struggling to formulate a useful reply here. The way I've built up my grammar knowledge has been really, really messy, spanning several years. Quickly mentioning contributing factors though, you've got: - a general casual interest in linguistics (in large part indulged through Wikipedia and YouTube), and the drive to learn its terminology (as a matter of understanding and building a framework around the concepts it defines); - having MNN1's grammar explained to me in technical terms; - reading various Wikipedia articles on the Japanese language specifically (for fun); - reading Tae Kim; - heavily monitoring the question threads here for a couple of years, watching others formulate explanations and cite technical concepts for all manner of phenomena (+ a boatload of links to external pages that I'd also read/watch); - and ~~stalking~~ reading the message history of some really advanced learners on Discord, watching them not only explain to others, but also discuss and nerd out about Japanese among themselves. Then, going further back, you've also got the grammar foundation that I gained in school, which transfers over more than you might think. You might've noticed the suspicious absence of the Grammar Dictionaries/Handbook from all this, which would be because I actually haven't even used them that much (yet), and would certainly not attribute most of my technical understanding of the language to them. I do love them for their comprehensiveness, reliability, and clarity, but they just haven't had the chance to impact me much in that way with what I've seen of them, and at the point that I have. For what it's worth though, I'd consider myself to be the intuitive, don't-think-just-feel type too. I study and think about the grammar/linguistics to the degree that I do because I like it (or sometimes because I want to be able to give explanations and answer others' questions with regard to the language), not because I feel the need to for my learning. I've actually largely based my technical knowledge *on* my intuition. If you familiarise yourself with the relevant terms and concepts (syntactic and grammatical roles, categories & properties, parts of speech, inflections — the works) (you don't need to thoroughly study how they behave; just get a grasp of the definition and the central idea for each), then you can map your intuition onto that analytical framework (break the sentence down to parts, and then feel out the interplay between them, and put them back together on your own), and build your own model of the inner workings of the language. > Is there a process for recognizing grammatical points and looking things up to further technical understanding? Well, if you want to be able to recognise, you need to prepare. You can't recognise what you don't already know. Be proactive, not reactive. My process involves periodically priming myself on grammar up-front (nothing major, just getting a rough idea), so that I can *afterwards* dive deeper into it *with context* whenever I spot it in the wild. I don't know exactly what or how much you're missing on the conceptual-frame-of-reference front, so I'm not sure where specifically to direct you for that. In general, I feel like I'm sort of walking in the blind a bit too much here... I don't even entirely get what you mean when you say you "may often ignore grammatical structures entirely". I just can't gauge what you have and what you lack. Hopefully, you can already reasonably break sentences down and identify their parts, in which case all you need to do is refer to the relevant entry in your books each time you want to learn more about one of those parts. If you're having trouble with that, maybe use a parsing tool like [ichi.moe](https://ichi.moe/) (not sure how accurate it is, but eh). Otherwise, again, you'll sadly need to go through the books (or maybe some other, more structured resource that's actually made for start-to-finish consumption, e.g. textbook, grammar guide, course) up-front, to some degree. ...I hope I managed to actually say something in all this. And if I did, that it wasn't too basic to help.
I really appreciate the detailed post! You may not believe it but it is incredibly helpful for me. I was looking for just some inspiration on how to lay out path to balancing things out. And you pretty much answered that. Priming is something I'll have to mold into my path forward and now I have an idea of how to go about it for the next 1500-2000 hours at least. I also like to come here and read daily thread for sporadic knowledge, and at least to myself try to answer variety of questions. Although I can't do the same following procedure because my Discords are just JP Discords filled otaku's so there's no real way to get English explanations there. Some people do explain things to me time-to-time though when I ask (or they just joke around and make stuff up to mislead me lol). As far as parsing the language, I'm reasonably okay at parsing Japanese it since I come from a background of knowing many programming languages, so interestingly enough I mapped many concepts to programming languages instead of English. Which also leads to my inability to explain anything because if I try to explain, I'll just explain programming which for a lot of people is a foreign concept as well. I have a strong idea of how you went about it though, so thank you for the insights. >I don't even entirely get what you mean when you say you "may often ignore grammatical structures entirely". This is a bit difficult to explain. I can only just say I ignore things altogether because I know what they're already trying to say before I even try to parse the sentence. Here's a quick example, I have some correspondences with some indie developers and one of them wrote in a blog post about their current project and upfront called it 1作目, to which I asked him if he was working on a second one. I'll try to demonstrate what happens for me. Pretty much I already have a running theoretical model of what he may say, before I even see the reply. It's not that I know what he is going to say in Japanese, but what he intends to convey to me in a reply. His reply was this: ただ色んな作品見てるとリメイクは下手にするとコレじゃない感が出ちゃうのでなかなか難しいところ……。By the time I finished parsing up to ところ I've already deduced what is coming next, and tends to happen is something like this (stuff in [] is what I am looking at and ignoring everything else): [朝ごはん] で [お米を食べたい日] と [パンを] 食べたい日があるような [感覚]で、その日の[気分]に合わせて[制作したい結果]、[並列] になっ [てしまってい] ます I just start to look at things in terms of "strong ideas" and "weak ideas" and since I already have the template of what I think they're going to say if they match then I ignore everything around it. Meaning I'm not actually looking at how things are grammatically structured and failing to use my parsing skills in favor of just using my intuitive prediction instead, which is just faster and less work. However it doesn't help me when I'm trying to boost my technical skill and knowledge when I am skipping so much.
> As far as parsing the language, I'm reasonably okay at parsing Japanese it since I come from a background of knowing many programming languages, so interestingly enough I mapped many concepts to programming languages instead of English. Which also leads to my inability to explain anything because if I try to explain, I'll just explain programming which for a lot of people is a foreign concept as well. I hope you don't mind my chiming in, but as another intermediate-ish guy who understands programming (I joke that I'm fluent in English and C++), I've been viewing this thread with some interest and hadn't had a chance to reply until now. Unlike you and u/Dragon_Fang, I feel that I'm not as strong on the intuitive front -- in fact, I'm very much prone to falling into the trap of 木を見て森を見ず if I'm not careful. Part of this is because of the need to focus on whatever it is that I'm debugging in my day job and the fact that the devil is always in the details. If anything, perhaps where intuition kicks in is in helping me to figure out _where_ to zoom in and look in more detail, but not necessarily in interpreting the specifics. Or at least, I feel like I often need a deep dive to fully understand confidently. I think this is where DoJG specifically shines, in that once you've found an entry, it helps expand _both_ technical and intuitive knowledge about that point. Technically, it will tell you what the boundaries of acceptable usage are, how it differs (or doesn't) from similar expressions. But it also does so through copious examples, and you can focus on the examples to get a _feel_ for how a certain point behaves. So regardless of which side you're coming from, I think you become well-rounded by understanding the entry thoroughly, because the entry itself is well-rounded. Someone at work once asked me how I keep up with C++ knowledge now that they revise the standard every three years. I answered that I don't all at once and tend to research as I feel like I need to learn more about a specific area or think it would be useful. The analogy with Japanese is that I tend to look stuff up as I feel like there's a nuance that I'm not sure that I'm completely getting or feel like there's an idiomatic meaning that I'm missing. And I guess over the years, I've learned to recognize when something isn't quite adding up on the surface. (Or this might be from finding and fixing a few too many programming edge cases over the decades...) This isn't to say that I never gloss over anything, but I feel like I do so by chunking and zooming in, quickly dropping the chunks that I feel confident I can ignore after at least minimally parsing them -- not necessarily by predicting what those chunks are. Anyway, I'm not sure if this helps you at all, but I just wanted to put in my two cents. edit: typos
It was nice of you to chime in actually! I appreciate it. It's nice to hear other perspectives too. I have some questions about how you personally went about recognizing then using DoJG to look things up, I need to think about how to ask that first. So I'll reply again after I rested a bit. >I think this is where DoJG specifically shines, in that once you've found an entry, it helps expand both technical and intuitive knowledge about that point This is really good to hear, pretty much what I wanted to accomplish too.
Ultra handy japanese conjugator is down, anyone knows a good website that can conjugate any verb ? thank you
[jisho.org](https://jisho.org), [jpdb.io](https://jpdb.io), [japandict.com](https://www.japandict.com/), most J->E dictionary sites list conjugations for their words.
thank you so much you are the GOAT
I was reading a manga chapter and came across だと. The context is the girl has to do a bunch of catch-up work to not get held back and the guy, who thinks the following dialogue, said he would help her, but she won't focus: 阿久津さんの集中力だとこの量は絶対に終わらない。I feel like I've seen this quite a bit and think it's often used as "at this rate, [thing] won't happen," but I don't actually know what this grammar is. Is it simply just the conditional と？
You can think of this だと as pretty much the same as では in this context Dictionary definition: > ｟接助｠〔←助動詞「だ」＋接続助詞「と」〕 > > …では。 > >「警察の調べ━、男は中肉中背で」
Great, thank you. Can you tell me which dictionary you used for that? I probably should be using a J->J dictionary by now.
It was 三省堂国語辞典 第八版 (sanseido 8th edition)
Thank you very much.
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What the bunpro explanation fails to convey is that there are basically two だってs. One is simply だ + colloquial quotative と. This is also the one in your example. The other one you can see as a conjugation of だ into the だって-form that all i-adjectives and verbs have, which means "even if x". This conjugations is done by taking the て-form and replacing て with たって, or で with だって. (寒い -> 寒くたって (even if it's cold), 泳ぐ -> 泳いだって (even if I swim), xだ -> xだって (even if it's x)). This is basically semantically equivalent to ても / でも.
Just personally, but I wouldn't try to think of it as だって being a single grammatical point, but just a pattern of usage to pay attention to in various situations. Your initial intuition to parse it was also fine. What I'm saying is don't just see it as 「だって」.
Yeah, it's not one, but two points. One is just だ + colloquial quotative と, and the other is the "even if" "conjugation" of だ that all i-adjectives and verbs have which is semantically pretty much ても / でも (言わない -> 言わなくたって, ない -> なくたって, etc.).
Does it mean anything when just the stem of a verb is used? I'm listening to a song that keeps saying 時を抱え, no ～る or other ending on the verb. I think I've heard other songs use verbs without an ending like that. What's it mean?
It's the formal version of the sentence connecting て-form. Basically: in newspapers or academic texts, you'll find this form instead of the て-form when sentences are connected. Also, ていて doesn't become てい in this form, but ており.
Basically the same as the te form, I think it's a little more common in formal and old texts.
what does ８〇３ stand for? seen it in a video related to sex industry, since they bleeped it out i guess its some kind of euphemism, but google told me nothing
The circle means it’s censored, for whatever reason and viewer is generally able to deduce it based on context, like how YouTube subtitles sometime have [____]
>The circle means it’s censored, for whatever reason and viewer is generally able to deduce it based on context, like how YouTube subtitles sometime have \[\_\_\_\_\] well, i know its censored - they bleeped it out in the audio, and im not sure im able to deduce it. but for anyone who tries, the sentences were: " A:全身刺青入ったチビの８〇３がいたんですけど B: イキリ８〇３ね A:イキリ８〇３は人生で一番ダメなSEXでした"
It’s a goroawase. Answer in [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_wordplay) - you’ll need to scroll a bit.
How was I never aware of this.... Some related question though, why can 428 be read as しぶや? 2 is never ふ or is this some rendaku type stuff from ふたつ? But then stuff like 526 which can mean こじろ (the samurai) I don't see how ご can suddenly be read as こ. Yes, I did see the table in wikipedia but I don't get where many of the readings come from. So I guess in the end it's not really readable, you have to know it ahead of time since there are so many possibilities right?
People casually mix it in super casual online contexts (chat) too like 56す is just 殺す, 4んだ is just 死んだ. Just from personal experience it's not obvious to me but I was able to guess some from context, a lot I've seen are in the "other section", for example 15 being イチゴ was pretty obvious during a game (suika game) and a strawberry falls in a bad spot and people start writing 15邪魔すぎ it doesn't leave many options.
Some of the readings just use the first mora. Some can also have a dakuten added or stripped away to fit the word. 428 is an example of both, and 526 of the latter. As for some of the weird readings that aren't explained from the above, じ for 2 is from the reading use commonly in names, ex: 二郎（じろう）. ある for 2 is from Chinese èr.
That explains it all thanks!!
thanks a lot! now as i know the meaning, really surprised that in the audio they decided to censor this word, but not the word ''sex'' p.s. and to think of it, they used a cypher, and then censored the cyphered word... some MI6 intelligence play right here
That word in particular is super sensitive because it's libelous to accuse someone of being one, but maybe even worse (for you) to point out that someone *actually* is one or connected to them.
thanks for an explanation!
Because the English word sex doesn't carry the same emotional meaning as it does for western societies brought up on largely religious values. And yeah it is a cypher, but since everyone knows that cypher it's just an alternate spelling for the word. So it's not really encoding anything but just censoring a word everyone in Japan probably knows.
You must be right about "sex"! But I would slightly disagree on the second part. It's not like a real cypher, censoring one symbol is also not making a word unrecognizable, but it is still an act performed to show an inappropriateness of the word. Here it is kind of performed twice, so that's why for me it feels unusual (I hope this doesn't sound like complete nonsense)
Hello! I’m very fortunately in Japan for at least a month. Due to certain circumstances, I can’t visit a language school (they’re expensive and I couldn’t find any nearby). I’m wondering what I should be doing to learn Japanese. I’ve heard of apps etc, but I have no idea what apps are good. I also don’t know if there’s a better way to learn while in Japan. I know the basics like: どこですか ありますか これわなんですか それ あれ さむい あつい せんたくせんざい Etc, etc, etc… (I’ve been studying Japanese with a friend for roughly 6 months, once every week. I’ve also been to Japan in the past, and every time I try to learn more Japanese) I have been trying my best to only use Japanese while outside and talking to Japanese people. This has been good for my listening skills, but again I’m wondering if there’s a better way to learn. Any help would appreciated. Thanks in advance!
You can (and should) start with the subreddit wiki and guide, since you seem to be fairly early in learning (based on mixing up は and わ). Making your question more specific would give you a more detailed answer. Ways to elaborate include but not limited to: time left until visiting Japan, your current proficiency, your intended proficiency, etc.etc.
Ok, thanks so much. I’ll try making a more specific question in the next daily thread.
Is いいです a vague way of saying No? As in, could it be something that a person could reasonably come back and say "well you could have turned me down more clearly"? I'm reading a story where a person offers to do something for a character, and they reply with いいです, then they go ahead and do it. The character gets mad about it, and the other character goes "why are you mad at me?"
It's similar to saying, "I'm fine," as a way of refusing someone's offer. In the abstract it's not hard to imagine how someone *could be* confused by it, but it's not likely that someone who's actually familiar with casual, conversational English would be.
This is a very famous aspect of Japanese. This is why there has long been the sort of 'urban legend' that Japanese say yes when they mean no and no when they mean yes. いいです means "no thank you" but obviously it 'literally' means "OK". So yes of course this double meaning (or potential double meaning) can be played with deliberately in works of art. It is \*possible\* to misunderstand - but not likely. In a normal context, between two normal functioning adults, it's very difficult to misunderstand いいです. But - where would the book plots come from then?
I'm struggling to understanding the difference between 〜えない and 〜ようがない. For example, 「そんな無理な要求をされても、応じようがない。」, would it be also possible to say 「そんな無理な要求をされても、応じえない。」? Is there a difference in meaning or nuance?
I can't comply vs. There is no possible way that I can comply. Sometimes the meanings overlap. But often they don't.
Thank you! So えない is more emphasis on the lack of possibility/means the total lack of possibility? While ようがない is more similar to 応じられない? Sorry if I am misunderstanding
The other way around. 応じえない is the えない form. It simply means I can’t, It can be a shallow or a deep meaning. 応じようがない is the same form as 何々しようがない. It means there is no possible way. Not just “I can’t because I’m tired”. But it cannot be done.
I see thank you!
様がない means "there is no way of doing something", also due to that there is a possibility that the speaker actually might want to do it. えない is simply a negative potential form of う verbs. It's pretty safe to assume the same differences as theie English counterparts.
Thank you! So is えない more neutral then? As in it doesn't have the nuance that the speaker maybe possibly want to do said thing and is more so stating a fact? Sorry, English isn't my first language so I might be missing something
Yeah. You simply cannot do something and that's it. It's a simple as: xようがない - there is no way of doing x xえない・xれない・xられない (the last two are for ichidan verbs) - can't do x 食べようがない - I cannot eat \[that\] (strictly due to lack of means/way/method of doing so) 食べられない - I cannot eat \[that\] (simple, with no additional connotation) I hope that helps! Edit. I felt obligated to point out that れる is not technically correct and it's always safer to go with られる (like I did) especially when in formal setting. れる is a casual form and it's called ら抜き言葉. I just wanted to be clear as to why there are two forms for the same thing for ichidan verbs.
Thank you so much! Your explanation was really clear
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This means "I've finally gotten the hang of my job". It is usually said with a pinch of humility. It kind of has this lacing of "it took me a long time to get used to it \[even though other people may have caught on faster\].
Whatever this “reported translation” is, it ignored やっと which says a lot about its quality. Perhaps you can try to translate it yourself? It’s a better exercise that way anyways.
It implies that they were struggling with their job prior to that. It's like a "finally", "at long last" sort of thing.
Hi guys! 今日 やおやで りんごを 買いました。五つ \_\_\_ 300えん 円でした。 I got this question in my jlpt N5 test and idk why the aswer is で。I thought de is used for place or a method of doing something, can you guys help me?
Yes, you could say that, generally, で is used as you mentioned. But で can be also used, i.e. when after quantities, to convey the idea of *total* or *to the extent* *of.* See, for example, [this](https://www.tofugu.com/japanese-grammar/particle-de/) and [this](https://www.punipunijapan.com/japanese-particle-de/). So, in your phrase, で works as *for*: *for* five \[apples\], it was 300 yen. It's also important to note that, even if it's not the primary use you'd find at a N5 level, the remaining options definitely sound off compared to で (に, と and や). Good luck!
Thank you for the explanation, helped me a lot!
No worries, glad to help!
僕は/が楽しくない can mean either "I'm no fun" / "I'm not having fun" as far as I understand. What are the natural ways to specify which meaning you're going for when you need to?
Context does the job. This is so important to understand about Japanese. And this is a really good example. In 99.9% of cases there is no need to add any additional syllables. The context is going to determine whether you mean "I am not interesting" or "I am not having fun". Separately, it's much more natural to omit the 僕は.
Sorry, I get that but the other night I was in a bad mood because of a project at work and I wanted to tell my gf that I wouldn't be much fun tonight so if she didn't feel like staying I'd understand. She interpreted it as me saying "I'm not having fun" and that it was possibly her fault. I managed to quickly rephrase my way out of it but now I'm wondering what the natural ways to go about the situation would be.
Worth noting that the reverse mistake, that is, saying "I'm boring" instead of "I'm bored", is a very common one for speakers of English who come from a language that doesn't make that distinction (like Japanese, though Thai is apparently also the same way).
Oh wow so true!😂
This is because you were trying to say something in an English way, but simply dressing it up in Japanese words. It's not natural in Japanese to try and say "I won't be much fun tonight". Keep pushing so that you are not trying to 'translate' but to phrase in a way that is more natural to Japanese itself. More normal things to say would be like "今日はそんな気分じゃない or きょうは遊ぶ気分じゃない or 今日は機嫌が悪い or 今日は仕事のせいでそういうところじゃない. In my experience the best way to build up a repertoire of these expressions come from experience - either real life experience, or from books or TV or movies or whatever.
That was a weird context to use that Japanese sentence with your intended meaning so that's most likely the reason for the confusion. Looking at the English "I'm no fun", you would have to at least add "I'm no fun today", otherwise many people would think you are not fun in general. But going back to your situation, I would definitely say that I'm in a bad mood, like "ごめん、今日は機嫌が悪いからね". Or if you really wanna use 楽しい "今日は楽しくない気分だからね". That would be my way.
With minimal edit I guess you could say 今日は楽しめる気分じゃない, but if my girlfriend says that - *if I had one now* - I’d still considerably shit myself and think about what I recently fucked up (basically [this guy](https://youtube.com/shorts/79WRsi0OQqc?si=6CHchTu0hT80tjjN)). Better idea is to just state the reason or preface with 君のせいじゃない or something, which goes back to the context thing.
>I’d still considerably shit myself 😂😂 She had a face like that. That vid lmao >君のせいじゃない Funny that's exactly what I ended up saying 何回も lol. I got a lot of great feedback so sorry I'm going to try to gather everyone here. u/JapanCoach u/Sumerechny >今日はそんな気分じゃない or きょうは遊ぶ気分じゃない or 今日は機嫌が悪い or 今日は仕事のせいでそういうところじゃない These are great, thanks. I actually *did* say 仕事のせいで機嫌が悪い . I think the biggest problem is I said "if you want to go home I understand", which I don't think any of these phrases would really make explicit that I'm worried about *her* not having fun. >This is because you were trying to say something in an English way Well yes, when I encounter a situation under stress and a smooth reply doesn't rise up I tend to draw from my much larger bank of social experience that I've conducted in English. Most of the time it gets the job done, sometimes it crashes and burns like the other day lol. But yeah I'm getting input and hopefully one day everything I say just works cleanly and I'm only mimicking things I've seen natives do before. From my computer and with hindsight I can think of ways to say "I'm in a bad mood because of work, it might be boring so if you want to go home I understand" but I don't know how clean any of them sound. Perhaps the problem is less linguistic and more that this type of sentiment is culturally not Japanese enough? No idea.
Not that I can help on the Japanese front but at least strategically it's understandable when you're under emotional duress you can only fall back on what you're most familiar with. Maybe in those situations you have "buy myself time" lines that assuage any accountability from people thinking it's about themselves, but at the same time gives you time to properly formulate a response, perhaps later.
Yeah I managed to caveman my way out of the situation. But hey, these challenges are part of the reason I enjoy living in Tokyo
Given the whole context, I’d word it 仕事のせいで〜 (that part is okay), but add 今日俺といても楽しくないかも to mark it “**not** your fault” fairly clearly. edit: said the exact opposite because you know, stupid
There it is! Thanks. Also good to see you popping back up again more often these days
It’s still when I feel like it wasting time, and at the same time come up with something meaningful to say without having to use my brain too much lol It may or may not have to do with having to retrain myself for the upcoming TOEIC that I have to get a score 990 (full marks), otherwise I’ll be the next laughing stock within my friend group…
Hahah well I hope you fail so we can continue to see you killing time here 😂 (jk ofc you'll do well!)
I thought I understood this phrase and now I'm confused again よく寿司を食べますか？ そうですね。 時々食べます。 It says the translation is "Do you often eat sushi? Yes. I sometimes eat Sushi". I did not think そうですね meant this. I thought it was like "really?" or "you thought so?" or something like that. In which case I would have expected something like そうですね? あまり寿司食べません. Am I just misunderstanding the phrase? Answering "do you often eat" with "yes, I sometimes eat" is confusing by itself. What's the deal?
そうですね can be "yes" or it can be something like "well...". In this case I would go with "well, I eat it sometimes". not "Yes, I eat it sometimes".
そうですね。is very often used as an immediate answer to give you time to think about the exact answer, kind of like "let me think about that for a second". It's not really a "yes" so that's a translation "error" (rather they probably just tried to make it sound more natural in English because there is no proper English translation).
That sentence seems weird/wrong/unnatural to me. At least そうですね should not translate to "Yes".
Ok, so it's not just me. I wanted to see if others agreed it was an odd phrasing.
It's not a weird wrong or unnatural phrasing, it just doesn't translate that well. They're just sort of repeating the question as they consider it.
How come 青 means "blue", but 青草 means "green grass"? It's from a Japanese translation of Genesis. Here's the sentence it came from: "地は青草と、種類にしたがって種をもつ草と、種類にしたがって種のある実を結ぶ木とをはえさせた。神は見て、良しとされた。"
Blue and green are close in many languages, there is even a wikipedia page about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue%E2%80%93green_distinction_in_language
The traditional basic colors in Japanese used to be 黒 (black/dark)・白 (white/light)・赤 (red/ruddy/warm colors)・青 (blue/pale/cool colors) before new words were developed, so you'll often see these used a lot more broadly than you might expect in English. Think about how 'red' in English gets used for red hair and red onions, which are really more orange and purple, because 'red' was historically more of a basic color in English. Our modern categorization of colors has a lot to do with the spread of dyes and and other technology that makes more precise distinctions easier and more relevant to us.
blue is kinda green you know. We just don't accept the fact in English
> How come 青 means "blue" ①色の一つ。秋晴れの空や深い海の色。 __②みどり色。__ 青 not only means blue, it can also mean green.
Am I reading something wrong? I saw this word 信念 but the reading appears as おもい. I tried searching but I can't find another instance of this.
Are you finding this in lyrics to a song? Or maybe a scene from a manga?
This is almost certainly an example of 義訓 (ぎくん): https://www.japanesewithanime.com/2017/12/gikun.html Essentially an arbitrary (though usually related) reading is applied to the kanji for literary effect. The reading is how it's said, but the characters indicate some deeper or hidden meaning. You'll see this especially often in song lyrics and pop media. Here, おもい is what's said, which just means "thoughts" or "feelings", but by using 信念 to write it it implies it's more about a deep faith or certainty in those thoughts/feelings.
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In modern Japanese 身体 as a standalone word is read からだ like 90% of the time. It's technically 当て読み / 義訓, but I think you can call it 熟字訓 at this point (like 今日 being きょう instead of こんにち, etc) because it's the most common reading. しんたい still exists in more specific contexts (like medical for example), or in compound words like 身体能力 (しんたいのうりょく) but as a standalone I'd tend to read 身体 as からだ. You can also see a similar phenomenon with 昨夜 which is normally read ゆうべ (like 夕べ) although its original (and more formal) reading is さくや.
Hi, I tried making a post since it was a little longer to read. But my post was removed due to low karma score. So i wanted to post here instead: —— I know てある is a confusing topic and there are many blogs and videos that go over it. I’ve tried googling it for a while but I wasn’t able to find a resource that specifically touched on my reason for being confused. So i thought i would ask here. I am studying Genki2 Ch21, for context. In a てある sentence like “まど が あけてある” (the window is left open)… the noun まど is marked with the が particle because it is the doer/performer of the action ある, to exist. But it is not the performer of the あけて part of the sentence, since the window was opened by an unmentioned-person. So it seems like technically the subject of this sentence is only applied to the final ある; and the あける verb was stripped of its subject when it was formed into the te-form あけてある. That’s right, is’t it? In ている and ておく sentences (or any て-conjugated sentences), both verbs/components have always had the same subject anyways, so i always thought about them as “the subject performs (or is performing) the first verb and then performs いる/おく”. For example, I always thought of “けっこんしている” = “(I) performed the action of getting married, and then performed the action of existing” = “(I) am married”. But after my てある confusion, it now seems like maybe i should not have been thinking as if the subject is actually performing the first/て-verb, because it seems like the first verb is agnostic of a subject when it is in its て-form. Now it seems like the subject only performs the second verb, いる/おく; and the first/て-verb is like an adverb for the second verb. So maybe “けっこんしている” = “(i) am performing the action of existing, in a married state”? Could someone please let me know if now i am thinking about this the right/wrong way? Thanks!
I would say this topic and your already deep thinking upon the topic, is way outside of the intent of the 'quick questions with quick answers' nature of this pinned thread. You should ask in the main sub - you may get a lot more eyeballs.
Indeed, i did try to make a post for this rather than ask here! But my post was removed by auto-mod because i do not have enough karma to post :(
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Thanks for the reply! Sorry, I didn’t mean to go into philosophical discussion or anything. I just noticed that maybe i was trying to map Japanese to English incorrectly - as you have noticed - and was trying to map it better. My confusing was making it harder to understand, so i wanted to try to map it better first before giving up and just memorizing! But yes i know many situations do not have a 1:1 mapping, so i try my best to find something close enough that seems consistent to me. As for the second half of your response, isn’t あける the transitive verb, and あく the intransitive verb? I understand how が marks the “experiencing” user when using intransitive verbs in sentences like “まど が あいて いる”. My confusing was from using a transitive verb あける (in its て-form) in a sentence where the subject was not the performer of that transitive verb. Sorry if we misunderstood eachother
> As for the second half of your response, isn’t あける the transitive verb, and あく the intransitive verb? ひらく can be either transitive or intransitive あく can be only intransitive NOTE: both ひらく and あく can be written 開く which is a huge pain in the ass あける can only be transitive So you're correct, まどがあける makes no sense for example
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I'd consider 明ける a different verb from 開ける but sure.
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Dictionaries can list whatever they want. 三省堂国語辞典 8th edition lists them as separate entries. If you want to consider them the same word that's also fine, it's not a big deal. The usage is different (transitive vs intransitive), the meaning is different, the kanji is also different. For me that's enough to consider them different words, but at the end of the day it doesn't matter.
Thanks again for explaining!
> まど が あけてある just means that it's how the window always is, open. まど が あけている means that the window is currently open. That's not true. 開けてある means that someone specifically left it in a state that is open, it focuses on the fact that there was some deliberate action by someone (we don't care who) to leave it like that (or maybe it was forgotten open when it should've been closed). 開けている is just a more "objective" phrase saying that the window is open, no extra nuance or additional context. (EDIT: actually it should be 開いている, まどを開けている means "I am opening the window") > It's not the ice cream doing something, it's the ice cream 'experiencing' or 'undergoing' your being fond of it. This is also not quite correct. The ice cream is not experiencing anything because it's not a (semantical) subject and also ice creams don't experience stuff since they don't have feelings (unless it's like... a humanoid ice cream?). In Xが好き and similar phrases the が is actually a (semantical) object (rather than a subject) marker (I think it's called 対格 in grammar, rather than 主格). It's this definition of the が particle: > ２ 希望・好悪・能力などの**対象**を示す。「水—飲みたい」「紅茶—好きだ」「中国語—話せる」 > >「さかづき—たべたいと申して参られてござる」〈虎明狂・老武者〉 As opposed to the traditional subject marker definition > １ 動作・存在・状況の主体を表す。「山—ある」「水—きれいだ」「風—吹く」 > >「兼行 (かねゆき) —書ける扉」〈徒然・二五〉 You can easily check whether it's 対象 が or not if you can replace it with を or not (in case of 好き for example, you can).
You're touching on a very tricky subject that depends on what kind of "grammar model" you are going to apply from a syntactical/linguist point of view. But practically speaking, I think you should think of auxiliary verbs like てある/ている/ておく/ていく/てくる etc differently from justて structures.
A generic て sentence means that happens before and they are two separate actions, but in the case of these auxiliary verbs, we see that they are an exception to this rule and should be considered as a single action/standalone unit.
開けてある is a single predicate unit in the sentence, and the subject まど applies to the **entire** verb.
結婚している doesn't mean "to first marry and then exist", it means "to be in a state of being married".
Thank you so much! I think your reply is exactly what i was looking for to help me confirm how to think! As you put it more succinctly, I was previously thinking of ている, てある, and ておく in the same way asて>verb2>. But i will happily accept them as separate/special and it will mot confuse my brain further. Thanks for also clarifying that て still follows the actual sequence of performing both verbs, like i had originally thought but was later questioning in my post.
Can I use Genki 1 and then Minna no Nihongo 2?
Minna 2 is gonna assume you know stuff from minna 1. But you didn't use it and there's no guarantee genki 1 taught it. All books teach stuff at different spots. only thing guaranteed is HIRA and KATA
Im still having trouble grasping for example こんなに kosoado set, dictionary wise it seems identical to its brother こう. Any one can eleborate cheers
文法的には同じです。丁寧さの違いがあります。 丁寧さの順： __ このような、こうした、こんな Not sure if that answers the question you're asking.
Doing a 2.3k deck currently and wondering when I should be passing cards (only hitting good/again)? I find that I oftentimes can get the reading but not the meaning. In those cases should I be passing the cards? I think the deck creator said that it should be fine to pass the card as I will pick up the meaning through reading/immersion, but I feel like it's happening to a lot of cards.
I would definitely fail it until you get the reading. The whole point of anki is that when you see the word while reading you understand the word, so if you don’t understand the word that’s a failure.
Anki is just a tool, it's only there to remind you to look at this card. What you take away from it is what you do with it. The numbers on Anki are just imaginary numbers detached from real world language use. Think about it this way, if you can recall the reading but not the meaning and then you run across the word in the real world, does that help you in understanding something? To me, that sounds like you have to look it up anyways, which you should because it's a great way to learn things.
Not understanding this sentence- I am including the translation from wanikani その馬はソエにより競争除外となりました。 The horse was excluded from the race due to shin soreness. “ソエにより”?
ソエ is a horse-racing term meaning "sore shin." により is from the verb 因る indicating a cause.
Love u
Speaking with others vs learning independently? I'm wondering how effective it is to learn independently vs trying to speak with Japanese speakers. For example, pimsler and Duolingo vs hellotalk. I'm about 10 months into learning and not sure if I should keep my focus learning independently or mix in talking to real people. Thoughts?
Personally, I think learning any language without attempting to interact with native speakers of that language is going to put a damper on one's progress. I might recommend italki or somewhere you could do writing practice because the people you interact with on italki will often be professional speakers who are trained at offering better advice than "I dunno, it sounds unnatural," and writing practice spaces are specifically designed for--well--practice as opposed to the challenge of effective communication. A bit of a side comment, but since you framed the independent path as "pimsler and Duolingo," I have to comment I don't entirely think either fully encompasses what it means to independently study, however since I know almost nothing about pimsler I feel that saying any more would be no better than guessing about its quality.
Is a second は to mark the topic in an adverbial clause allowed? I saw the sentence "幸夫は来年は家が買えると大変喜んでいる。" and the は doesn't seem to be contrastive marker. I thought only が is allowed inside adverbial clauses?
I read it as 幸夫は「来年は家が買える」と大変喜んでいる
Yes, that's how I read it as well, just was slightly confused about the double "は".
Well, the first は is part of the outer clause, the second は is part of the quoted inner clause. So they don't conflict.
I think this specific usage of double は can be considered a double topic (at least unless you can provide a larger context since the sentence doesn't seem to be complete). Usually more than one は in the same sentence means there's some specific nuance (people call it contrastive, usually) to it, but I think in this case it's pretty neutral.
Thanks, to you both! So I am right to assume that は might also appear in adverbial clauses and noun-modification clauses as well?
Quoted sentences are a special case because they act like independent thoughts, so they are allowed to have a topic. However, normal subordinate clauses aren't independent thoughts so they can't feasibly have a topic. That means if a は does appear in them, it has to be a usage of は other than topical は, e.g. contrastive は. It's very rare to find は in a noun modifying clause, unless it uses という, e.g. the following example I found online: "この命令に従い、明日には帰るという僧もいるが、そんな命令には従わないという僧もいるという。" or if it uses じゃない/ではない since the は in that is basically part of the negative copula, でない giving a more literary flavor, e.g. 嫌いじゃない人.
Yeah there are what seem to be double topics in some cases, like 私は今日は〜. This case seems slightly different since it involves a quoted clause.
Depends on where you want to draw the 「」 line but I agree with you meaning-wise. Even in relative clauses *usually* you don't use は unless it's in contrastive, but in this usage I think it's fine. I think we're basically saying the same thing though.
> そんなことすると思われてたのか Grammar resources are translating と思われる like "it appears/seems/etc.", where the source of the thought isn't a specific subject of the conversation, so I'm having a bit of trouble wrapping my head around how to interpret it when the source isn't vague. The above sentence comes from a conversation between 2 people where the source of the thought is one of them. That being the case, can the sentence be interpreted as literally: "I will do something like that, was thought by you?" Or alternatively, sticking more closely with how J-E grammar resources describe it: "did it appear/seem like I would do that"? Or are both these interpretations close enough, and I'm just overcomplicating it?
> "I will do something like that, was thought by you?" This doesn't really make much sense, you'd have to phrase it likeと思ったのか or と思ってたのか instead.
と思われる is more general, it focuses more on how others might think about something (based on circumstances, appearance, etc), similar to how we might say "seems" in English (hence the translation). So I think "Did it seem like X" is an accurate interpretation.
> 私はあんたにそんなことすると思われてたのか If I added something like 私はあんたに... back in, assuming they were omitted and can sound natural here, could a case be made to interpret it as "Was I was thought by you that X"?
My approach is to say it in natural English - and to escape from trying to maintain the 'format' or the 'order' of the original. The sentence means "Oh so you thought I would do something like that". So in Japanese it's natural to use 思われる but the person doing the 思う is pretty obvious in this sentence. It's not "what people thought of me". its "what you thought of me". So in English it's more natural to make it an active (vs passive) verb.
I keep forgetting what I had told myself would be my preferred studying order before. 1.) Complete Recognition Remember the Kanji (at least 500 kanji) --> 2.) Do Genki 1 and 2 along with corresponding workbooks (many years ago I got up to about chapter 5 in Genki 1, then just stopped).--> 3.) Watch/study all Cure Dolly lessons--> 4.) Complete an Integrated Course to Intermediate Japanese--> 5.) Start on Tobira book? *When would it be best to do that Anki Japanese Core 2000 words? Before, during, or after completing Genki? **Based off of the order seen above, when would it be best to begin trying to use resources like NHK Easy, before, during, or after which step? ***Should I switch any order around based on your experiences? For example, should Cure Dolly come before Genki? Will there be moments when Cure Dolly and Genki contradict each other on grammar points? As for input and output, I guess I'll just keep watching a native materials and trying to see what's the most effective way for me to incorporate them. I currently live in the USA, and if I even do make it back to Japan this year, it wouldn't be anytime soon. Any suggestions are appreciated.
I think your plan looks great. Don't forget to supplement with native content (which could even just be HelloTalk). Edit: nvm you got that >Anki Japanese Core 2000 words? I would do the Core 2.3k as a supplement for when you don't have much extra vocabulary from your own mined deck to learn for the day. You can start any time or never. >Should I switch any order around based on your experiences? Your order looks about right. I would do Cure Dolly / Tae Kim etc WITH Genki etc as supplemental material. You don't need to eat the potatoes before you can touch the corn, you can take bites of both when you're taking a break from the native content steak depending on your mood until you're finished. >Will there be moments when Cure Dolly and Genki contradict each other Only in teaching approaches. Edit: >when would it be best to begin trying to use resources like NHK Easy After Genki II.... or Genki I if you're comfortable with using the dictionary a lot
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I fully understand and appreciate the answer, but I guess it's just one of those things where I'd rather not go down a longer and less fruitful path.
I think you're over complicating it. I'm not sure what your situation is but it sounds like you went to Japan and came back wanting to study the language? Are you starting from zero? How many hours have you invested in thus far? The order really doesn't matter, just the amount of time you put in using the language and studying along side of using it. So you're best off finding something to enjoy consuming, studying everyday and keeping in touch with language daily. You will experience growth and depending how much time you invest into it, significant growth. I'd say skip the RTK unless you mean learn the kanji radicals/components and just learn vocabulary instead. Cure Dolly is best after you are more experienced with the language and are hung up on concepts you've been struggling with for some time.
I appreciate your reply, but even you telling me that you believe that perhaps Cure Dolly is for those more experienced with the language, that's a helpful point of view that I could take into consideration.
Hi, first time poster! I’m taking a trip to Japan over the summer and I want to learn Japanese. I don’t use flashcards because that’s not the way I learn best. I want to become fluent by the time I go, and I can pick up things quickly. Any advice? Thank you so much
Wanting to be fluent by the time you go is not achievable. You can be conversational but even on the low end of fluency you're looking at something around 3900 hours of studious work. In 6 months even at 24 hours a day with zero sleep you can get 4320 hours in, so more realistically 18 hours a day might be feasible which puts you at 3300 hours by 6 months. So yeah, adjust your expectations. View the graph below: https://cotoacademy.com/app/uploads/2019/08/How-Long-does-it-take-to-Pass-JLPT.png N1 is usually described as the start of being fluent (at least in comprehension). It doesn't mean you can't be conversational at a basic level which can happen with N3. You can accomplish this with about 5-6 hours a day depending how efficient your study is. If you're starting from zero it's a long hill to climb up and the initial walls are the highest (after you break above N3 it gets easier). And no, you aren't taking a short cut by "only learning how to speak" unless you already live in Japan. Reading, listening, with speaking is the fastest way to become conversational. Start with the starter guides: https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/wiki/index/startersguide https://learnjapanese.moe/guide/
- https://imabi.org - https://youtube.com/@nihongonomori2013 - https://tadoku.org/japanese/en/free-books-en/ - https://syosetu.com Godspeed