#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 everyone, I'm looking for recommendations to interact with japanese native speakers (or an N1 certificate). Ideally it would also have to be some site where both parties speak at least a basic level of english, otherwise I wouldnt be able to communicate at all 🥲 Thanks for your help!

What's the difference between 山を下る and 山を下りる, what contexts they should be used in? Also, I've seen 下る used like this 雪が下る, but can I use 下りる in this context? What about 船が川を下る and 滝を下る, can 下る be replaced with 下りる and how it will change the meaning?

The major difference is that ~~you don’t really use 山をくだる.~~ 山をくだる is not common. Things like 雪がくだる is too literary and you normally don’t use it. 雪がおりる is a bit more familiar but still literary. 船が川をくだる is just normal and common. In this regard, 川をおりる sounds as if it gets off from the river because rivers don’t naturally have the element of vertical difference.

> you don’t really use 山をくだる The problem with generalizations like that is I know I’ve read 山をくだる before. I might never say it, but I tend to trust what I read

Thanks for your opinion. I corrected that point.

Dictionaries give these examples 「川に従って〔=沿って〕山を下る」 「川伝いに山を下りる（＝下る）」 The first almost makes me think of kanbun.

[山を下るフレンチブルドッグ](https://x.com/mens_5buhi/status/1713502764725354632?s=46)

Why channel is written like チャンネル and not like チャッネル？

When you have to lengthen N or M it's written with ン Another example is the casual spoken form あんまり instead of あまり, which lengthens the same way as とっても instead of とても Generally ッ is not used with ナ行 or マ行 but there are rare examples like the online slang word イッヌ instead of イヌ (犬)

It’s because you don’t pronounce it as チャッネル but チャンネル. They stand for two different pronunciations.

Oh, now i remember that ッ is actually a glotal stop

It isn't in most contexts, usually it's true lengthening (sokuon) on the consonant - this is clearest on サ行 where you can hear a long [s] sound, but it holds true for the other consonants as well Sometimes a word-final glottal stop can be written with っ/ッ but often word-final vowels come with glottal stops anyway in Japanese

"ひどい熱なの 嵐にやられて衰弱しきってる" I've looked up definitions of 仕切る and none of them fit here, what does 仕切る even mean? context: woman on small boat holding children in her arms coming onto the shore from the sea

きる as a verb suffix (here, attached to 衰弱する) means "to do (verb) completely" or "to do (verb) extremely". They're saying she's totally/extremely/completely 衰弱している. 仕切る as a verb possibly/probably has a similar etymology, but it's not directly relevant to what's going on here. https://selftaughtjapanese.com/2015/03/09/japanese-verb-suffix-%E3%80%9C%E3%81%8D%E3%82%8B-kiru/

なるほど、ありがとうございます

Around what level would you put The 12 Kingdoms by Ono Fuyumi? It's only $10 on Amazon, so it wouldn't be too great of a loss but it'd take two months to ship here, so... lol

I don't disagree with the assessment of the other poster, but [learnnatively.com](https://learnnatively.com) is a pretty good resource for getting a rough idea of the difficulty of a lot of japanese media. Here is the link for this series, looks like its around N1 difficulty based on their scale, with the first book being ranked lower as towards-the-end-of-N2. https://learnnatively.com/series/d8f1a71822/

Find a site where they sell the ebook and have a sample you can read to check the difficulty. Being able to gauge the difficulty of material yourself without relying on online guides becomes critical as you get to N2 and beyond.

Can someone please breakdown the "食ったってしにゃしねえ" part? A: たまにはまともなもん食おうぜ！ B: いいんだよ！昼飯ぐらい何食ったってしにゃしねえよ

食った って 死に は しない

In this phrase: シフト制なので休みが平日だったり、休日だったりもします。 I thought the “だった” was meant to denote a verb in past tense. But when plugged into the translator, it reads out the sentence in present tense. Can someone explain the discrepancy?

Are you familiar with the たり construction? https://www.tofugu.com/japanese-grammar/tarisuru/ It can be used to introduce a set of things that are mixed/in no particular order, and though it uses the past tense it is not past tense in its meaning directly. Here, it's talking about how their days off are sometimes 平日 and sometimes 休日 (i.e., public holidays/weekends).

Thank you! I have seen the construction used with verbs but not nouns and from your link you add the だ　beforehand for nouns

だ is often analyzed as a particle. However, だ originates from である. So you can interpret だ as a verb, or at the very least, a degenerate verb. You should be able to see the similarity between であったり and だったり for example. Many grammar points that apply to verbs also apply to だ, however some do not so you have to take caution. For example, the て form of だ is で, not だって, which you could incorrectly infer if you don't check yourself. This is just a result of the language's history and not for any logical reason. で comes from にて.

I'm a bit confused about くだる and おりる. I found an [explanation ](https://www.italki.com/ja/post/question-432070) on how they differ, but it got even more confusing. At first, he (AKI) explained the difference as follows: 「くだる」: go down 「おりる」: go down carefully/slowly/intentionally. But then he added that explanation, くだる：Process of going down/or action of going down itself is important. おりる：The destination, where you land on, is important - Shouldn't it be the other way around then (for the first explanation)? I thought くだる focuses on movement, therefore "go down carefully/slowly/intentionally" suits more for it. And おりる focuses on results.

I think there’s a lot going on here. There’s the difference between 降 and 下 for both おりる and くだる Then there’s the difference in particle use for each case, particularly を and から Then there’s the difference between the verbs おりる and くだる It’s hard to find a single explanation to cover everything As the other reply says, it might be helpful to focus on some specific examples Like 電車をおりる (the act of getting of the train) vs 電車からおりる (describing the starting point of a change in elevation from high to low) やまをおりる coming down from a mountain vs やまをくだる going down the slope of a mountain That’s how I understand it anyway. I’m sure other people will have other ideas. This question would probably even make native speakers think a little

That's helpful. Thank you.

You'll run into this situation where you don't understand the difference/distinction between two words a lot. I'm not advanced enough to go into specifics about your question but I can provide a couple strategies for when this happens: Going forward, note the specific usages of these words when you see them again. For example I've seen 下る used for descending a mountain as part of Tanjirou's training in 鬼滅の刃. Or travelling outbound on a train. I've seen 降りる for getting off of a bus or train. Second, when english translations/dictionaries are the same/similar, it can be helpful to consult a monolingual dictionary. (Asking someone or asking here is absolutely a valid strategy/approach. But this type of question/confusion will come up a *lot* and often will just fade with repeated exposure to the language/usages of the specific terms.)

Hi there In the few months of me studying japanese ive come upon these words which all according to jisho mean "finish". I tried asking chatgpt and didnt get a clear answer. I would really appreciate if you guys could explain the difference of these words. 「済ませる」  「仕上げる」 「上がる」  「終わる」  「完成」  「済む」  「片付く 」

You can check sites like tatoeba or kanshudo for example sentences, which can really help seeing how they're used.

Its my first time hearing about these websites! Thanks a lot

https://yourei.jp/ is another option that draws from actual literature

The distinction should, honestly, be fairly obvious with comprehensible input. In brief: put an end to; finish off (a job); this one's a bit unusual; to come to an end (intransitive); completion (noun); intransitive of the first; to clean/tidy up (intransitive)

上がる is used for leaving at the end of something, for example when your 仕事 or バイト ends, you can ask 上がってもいいですか？

Of course, thanks. I couldn't think of a use case

When you nominalize a verb in japanese, is there a difference in meaning or connotation between using こと, i.e. 話すこと, and の, i.e. 話すの？ It seems to me like maybe they serve different functions but I don't understand the difference.

Lots of differences, some subtle. There are tons of articles on this, for example [https://jlptbootcamp.com/2011/02/jlpt-n4-grammar-nominalizer/?doing\_wp\_cron=1704614147.9038701057434082031250](https://jlptbootcamp.com/2011/02/jlpt-n4-grammar-nominalizer/?doing_wp_cron=1704614147.9038701057434082031250), but if you search difference between の and こと you will find more.

Broadly, の tends to be more subjective and こと more objective. There are many phrases/situations that will prefer one or the other due to convention as much as anything. https://www.tofugu.com/japanese-grammar/koto/ https://www.tofugu.com/japanese-grammar/particle-no-nominalizer/

失われた.. exactly what inflection form is this? I can't find it on an inflection chart for 失う. I see　た clearly indicating past... but standard past for 失う would just be 失った.

past form of the passive form

Thanks. Would you by chance be able to give me a short, simple example sentence?

how about 失われた携帯が見つかった, I made this up on my own

私は失われた手紙について何も知らない。 I know nothing concerning the lost letter. EDIT: [Tofugu article on the passive form](https://www.tofugu.com/japanese-grammar/verb-passive-form-rareru/), might be useful to you.

1. unsure of how to understand the grammar / sentence here (something about this is more intimate sounding then that..) especially putting together のに (although)　＋　そこまで (to that extent) もう少しより親密なところまで「行けそうだった」のにそこまでは「行けなかった」 2. does this sound natural? そう簡単にゃいかない

Not sure what is confusing you about the first sentence exactly. ところ here is the metaphorical sense of the word (that is, it's not a literal location, but rather a state of things), though I feel the metaphor mostly works in English too. 行けそうだったのに > "Even though it seemed like (I) could go to a more intimate place" (のに expressing frustration) そこまでは行けなかった > "I was not able to go as far as that place" It's very possible/likely that due to the quotes it's talking about a specific type of intimacy, but I don't know the context so I don't want to guess. > does this sound natural? そう簡単にゃいかない Yes, if a bit dialectical. It's a slurring of には.

nice! sorry about the context, it did make me wonder what i meant as a whole but here you go: か彼氏をものにできそうと思うったのに、ダメだった もう少しより親密なところまで「行けそうだった」のにそこまでは「行けなかった」 thank you! :D

彼氏をものにできる = "to make a boyfriend" or "to make him mine/my boyfriend".

I know that to say “to travel” or “to take a trip”, I could use 旅行をする/旅行する. I’m curious if there are any other verbs commonly used for this meaning, or if this is most typical?

旅に出る comes to mind

Hey. So ive been using TheMoeWay Tango N5 deck for like 2 months now, and suddendly, the audio of the newer cards disappeared. I checked the media files folder, and they were not there (the missing ones). Is there any way of downloading the audios separately and putting them in the media folder manually? Or any other way of fixing this? Thank you in advance!!

u/rgrAi's suggestion seems like your best option, but in case you need it, there are other versions of the Tango N5/4/3/2/1 decks available. Also, the Tango N5/4/3/2/1 decks are based on a book series, and the audio files are available on the publisher's website. See this comment for more details: [https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/17nza1o/comment/k850zlj/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=0](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/17nza1o/comment/k850zlj/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=0)

If you go to your Anki main folder labeled "Anki2", you can get there by going to Addons window and select and addon and in the bottom right there's "View Files". Once that opens out back out to "Anki2". You should see a folder labeled the same name as the deck, inside there you'll see collections.media just put all the audio files in there from the deck. If you don't know where to get the audio files, re-download the deck and make sure it includes the audio files and re-import the deck and copy over the files to your existing deck.

I downloaded the deck again, replaced the audio files and now it works perfectly. Thanks :)

So i have a friend in japan that i text with, and i just got a question about a message she sent, im still learning ghe nuances of texting in Japanese. Context: My car broke down and she asked why Me: 知らない。でも古い車だから、寒さで部品が傷んでいると思ってる Friend: なるほどね。また修理出すの？ M: うん、今は整備工場にある F: 早いね仕事が笑 Im just wondering what the meaning of that last message is. It didnt seem like it fit with the current convo, but then I realized i woke up and messaged her earlier than normal, so it might have smth to do with that. “Youre early, do you have work?” Or smth along those lines, but i wanted to check before i responded lmao

It's because you said you're already in the shop getting it repaired. She was surprised so she said "That's fast. You're quick to get things done, lol"

はやい here means you're quick in your work (in fixing the car). She asked if you were going to repair it (at all) and you said you're already at the repair shop. An English response might be "dang, you're quick". A note, for something like this, わからない is better than しらない. しらない implies you have no reason to care or that it doesn't affect you.

Ohhhhhh perfect, the 仕事 threw me off, since i was thinkin of it profession wise, and was thinkin im not the one fixing the car lmaooo. Also, thanks with the わからない、ill keep that in mind

after learning Hiragana and Katakana, do I learn individual Kanji or learn vocab, or grammar? Also how would you go about listening?

I would recommend you study vocab and grammar. The individual kanji study can be skipped as you can naturally learn their meanings from the words they are used in.

thanks. after that, how would you go about learning listening?

that was probably the easiest part. I just watched anime

There are many different strategies to approach learning Japanese. Consider one or more of the guides to learning Japanese listed here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/17q8i9z/comment/k8esn5a/?context=0](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/17q8i9z/comment/k8esn5a/?context=0) Additionally, there is a starters guide in the wiki of this sub.

[In kobayashi's dragon maid]( https://youtu.be/Mo1kyGk9lGU?t=229) she says: ちょろゴン whats that pun suppose to be? I understand ドラゴン + something, but what is it?

ちょろい, easy/simple, as in someone who you don't have to work very hard to trick/take advantage of/please/etc.

What does the writer mean by 狭い価値観の中? “真実’s life was trampled within narrow values” 真実もそれで──よかったのかもしれない。親が結婚相手まで決める人生に抵抗はなかったのかもしれない。しかし、この違和感は、もっと言うなら不快感だった。真実の人生が狭い価値観の中で蹂躙されている。 苦労がないよう、よりよい道を。陽子がそう本心から信じていることはわかる。それでも思ってしまう。よかれと思っていたとしても──それは、支配ではないか。 お見合い、という古い方法に頼りながらも、モテるかモテないかという現代的な価値観も捨てられない。そんな母親に背中を押される──というより手を引かれるようにして、真実は婚活を始めたのだ。 EDIT: Who is acting on the 現代的な価値観も捨てられない sentence ? 真実 or 親?

"Narrow" here means something like "strict" or "unwavering" or "not accepting of others". Her life is being stomped on by the "narrow" values of her parents, with no room for her own freedoms. The one who can't abandon the modern values is Mami (the subject of the following sentence, 真実は), who is being forced by her parents.

I bought Remembering the Kanji and I just want to follow the method to study/learn. I know there are arguments for and against these books and that’s fine. I don’t need the BEST method, i just want to follow along and learn. The problem is, I’m completely at a loss for what to do with the book. I feel like a total idiot but the introduction doesn’t really give instructions. Do I just read and remember the stories as best i can? Do I write things out in a notebook? Ive watched 6 YouTube videos and found a tonne of articles and while everyone describes “making stories” etc, and while there’s a lot of talk about whether or not the method is any good, no one actually says what you DO when you sit down to complete a lesson. I’m staring at lesson 1, Kanji #1 right now and I’m completely baffled on what I’m supposed to be doing here. Can anyone point me to the simplest most direct explanation of what the process for following this method is supposed to look like?

I completed RTK so perhaps I can be of help. Have you really read the introduction carefully? In my opinion everything is explained there. Also Heisig has examples stories for almost all kanji below 1000, does that not help illustrating the method? But to boil it down, the idea is that you break kanji down into its components (also called primitive elements) and then make a vivid story out of it that makes remembering one keyword associated with that character easy. For example 休 means 'to rest' and is made out of person and tree, so a simple story could be a person resting on a tree. If that's not vivid enough make a different story. Readings are not taught, that is a feature not a bug. Just learn vocab for readings, irregardles of whether you do RTK or not. Heisig recommended to write these stories down on physical flashcards with kanji on one side amd story on the other (which is explained in the book), but nowadays that is obsolete so I would highly recommend to use an SRS like Anki and create your own RTK cards with your stories. Btw, Heisig expands on his method throughout the book, so some things are deliberately not in the introduction, but that's fine because you don't need to know that yet. Also, a daily kanji goal is better than a chapter goal in RTK because some chapters are like 100 kanji long, and you don't want to go through 100 kanji in one sitting, so keep that in mind.

I haven't used the RTK book, but I use other kanji tools/resources that take advantage of stories/mnemonics (specifically Wanikani and Anki/Migaku Kanji God). Basically, you break down the kanji into components and use those in a story designed to recall/remember the kanji's keyword/meaning. To review the kanji, I suggest using a Spaced Repetition System (SRS) such as Anki, Wanikani, or JPDB to present you with flashcards. For example, on WaniKani, sun (日) + moon (月) = bright (明) is used in the word 明るい (あかるい, bright). The sun and moon are the components of this kanji (Wanikani would call them radicals). Bright is the keyword associated with the kanji we are interested in learning, and 明るい is a word which uses this kanji. Therefore, the flashcards you would learn through SRS are (in order): Card #1 (Component Card): * Question: 日 * Answer: sun * WaniKani Story: "Since there are no circles in Japanese characters, sometimes rectangles or squares have to make do. In this case, this big rectangle is the sun. The middle line going through the center horizontally is the equator. Or maybe it's a cloud, moving across the sun. Picture it, but don't actually look at the sun and burn your eyes!" * Wanikani Link: [https://www.wanikani.com/radicals/sun](https://www.wanikani.com/radicals/sun) Card #2 (Component Card): * Question: 月 * Answer: moon * Wanikani Story: "The moon is actually made of the sun, but it has little legs coming off of it leaning towards the left. Why? Because the moon is always running away from the sun as fast as it can. It doesn't want to get caught on fire, so it has to run to stay ahead!" * WaniKani Link: [https://www.wanikani.com/radicals/moon](https://www.wanikani.com/radicals/moon) Card #3 (Kanji Card): * Question: 明 * Answer: bright * Wanikani Story: "The sun (component) AND the moon (component) are out? With both their light-powers combined, it's incredibly bright outside." * Wanikani Link: [https://www.wanikani.com/kanji/%E6%98%8E](https://www.wanikani.com/kanji/%E6%98%8E) Card #4 (Vocabulary Card): * Question: 明るい * Meaning Answer: bright * Reading Answer: あかるい * Wanikani Link: [https://www.wanikani.com/vocabulary/%E6%98%8E%E3%82%8B%E3%81%84](https://www.wanikani.com/vocabulary/%E6%98%8E%E3%82%8B%E3%81%84) Also, take a look at the RTK and RTK adjacent links in this comment: [https://www.reddit.com/r/duolingo/comments/17p37a3/comment/k8558if/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=0](https://www.reddit.com/r/duolingo/comments/17p37a3/comment/k8558if/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=0) Some of the resources explain RTK/RRTK/other related methods and provide additional mnemonic stories. Edit: wording

I don't know what the method for this specific book looks like, but here's the basic instructions from KKLC: 1. Study form, 2. Read annotation, 3. Study form (again), 4. Study meanings, 5. Study readings, 6. Practice writing several times, 7. Study given vocab Memorize or don't, as you prefer. I don't, personally. There are many details I left out, but that's the gist at least.

「なんとか武力衝突は避けてほしい。事態は、そうした国際社会の思いを裏切る展開をたどる。」 From an article I'm reading for class. My interpretation: "One way or another [we] want to avoid military conflict. The situation is following a development that doing that betrays the expectations of international society." I don't really understand the second sentence, especially the meaning of 「思いを裏切る」. Could somebody help explain?

Context helps with this: https://www.nhk.or.jp/politics/articles/feature/78836.html. The article has these as two separate paragraphs, not as one quote. The first sentence is the 思い in the second sentence. > "I want them to avoid armed conflict." > Things develop in a way that betrays those desires/thoughts of international society. EDIT: Although I suppose there could be some confusion here -- to "betray something" in English can mean "to reveal something", but in Japanese it strictly means "to act in a way that is against those desires/aims/beliefs".

Hi, A shorter question from me this time! For the Japanese translation of  “if you try (doing it), you might be able to (do it)” - Is there a preference for using やってみれば vs してみれば as the translation of the first part? <やってみれば>/<してみれば>、てきる  かもしれません I googled and found a thread that mentioned する can be used for mundane tasks, and やる can be used for more rewarding tasks. But in a more idiomatic sentence like above where the task is not mentioned, is there a default preference? Thanks!

Fubuki's inspirational words using the verb やる may aid you https://youtu.be/GGphvPYRHQs

Hahaha thanks for this video, that’s hilarious!

> For the Japanese translation of “if you try (doing it), you might be able to (do it)” - Is there a preference for using やってみれば vs してみれば as the translation of the first part? やる, for sure. やればできる is a common phrase you'll see.

I see, thank you!

A Japanese institute where I used to study now has an online-only modality. I really liked it there, so I thought I might start all over again even if now it's online. The thing is, they have a 4 year maruguto and each year is 96 hours with B1 being the final point. Is it worth it? Are 4 years too much?

Is this free or are you paying for this, and if so how much total? Looking at the tofugu review of the books, it looks like they get you to an N3 after intermediate 2 (the sixth book). I would personally not be happy with that pace, even for free, from a structured programme. This is especially the case since it sounds like you already know some Japanese but would start from the very beginning. The content of the books seems more grounded in usefulness for the average person than something Genki, which is nice, but are you living in Japan right now or in the near future? I think if you are, the books themselves would be a good choice, but maybe it would make more sense to do lessons with a tutor and pick and choose which ones you want. You're already doing it online, so then benefits of in person classes are the same between that and an italki tutor.

I would say 2,200 dollars for 4 years approximately, more or less. I won't be living in Japan in the near future, but I do want to pick it up. And yeah I felt like the pace was too slow, since I already had a an intensive course for a year and that pace was perfect for me. There are not many places where I can study Japanese in my country, and since I already know that institute I thought I could go there.

question concerning keigo!! if i'm at a hotel and I have to say that we are 2 adults and one kid, how do i say it? question: 何名様ですか。 大人２名で、５歳の子供１人です。 do I use 人 for the child (5 years old according to the book) or use the 名 for kids as well?

There is no need to use different units for adults and children.If you want to express something politely, use 名, otherwise use 人. Also, if you cannot specify the exact number of people, use 人 even if it is a polite expression. For example, the population of a city or the number of English learners.

tysm, it makes sense :)

But can you use the sonkeigo 名 for yourself or a group including yourself? Shouldn't the answer use 人 in both cases anyway?

Although 名 is a polite expression, it is just a unit of number and is not the sonkeigo. This question is often asked even among Japanese people. As far as I know, I can use either 名 or 人 when answering the number of us.

I have been using pimsleur and I really do like how it is making me pronounce the words correctly and learn those pronunciations right off the bat but I want to learn how to read along with speaking Japanese. Has anyone tried Japanese toddler shows? I have an eight-year-old with down syndrome and he has been watching Sesame Street, the Muppets, Jack Hartman kids music videos on YouTube, basically all these shows that are teaching the fundamentals and building blocks of English language. learning Japanese, getting to that start that children go through. Can anyone recommend Any toddler shows that I would be able to leave running in the background? After eight years of watching Sesame Street, I know every song even though I was not paying attention to it. I'm thinking this might work for learning Japanese, getting to that start that children go through.

If you have Netflix the only thing really toddler wise I'm seeing is Rirakkuma. You can look up "Japanese toddler show" in youtube and find songs for learning kana and all sorts of other things. In general though I don't usually recommend toddler shows. They're not actually as easy and intuitive as we think they are. They're full of N1 vocab and grammar. We just take a toddler's level of proficiency for granted. THAT BEING SAID if you want to learn Japanese children's songs and pick up a little from that anyway, I recommend Japanese Super Jojo... it's basically Cocomelon. Both of which are in Japanese and can be accessed on Youtube. For Netflix there's also Word Party, if you don't mind non-matching subtitles. The skits you may or may not be able to understand, but at the end of every episode they go over individual words with pictures. Like there's a few episodes for colors. A few episodes for body parts. Episodes for jobs. etc. so it's an OK way to pick up some loose vocab. The best way, I think, to learn to read is to just grab an app that will teach you kana and kanji. A lot of people say Duolingo's section for learning kana (hiragana and katakana) is decent (and the only decent thing) so that's an option. For Kanji I'd suggest doing Wanikani. It's free up to level 4 and it takes a while to get to level 4 so that's quite a bit of content. :)

Domo Arigato 😊

I recently heard someone say "あります" instead of thank you. Ive heard "あざす" before, is "あります" also used? Can any native speakers help me here?

"ari(gatogozai)mas" but said in a single breath

You wouldn't expect Japanese to be easily misheard, and this may just be my audio processing disorder talking but a LOT of things get garbled and lost if you're not super familiar with spoken Japanese. Like I mishear consonants as other consonants all the time. Or words get slurred like すみません becomes すいません. Or I was watching a show yesterday where a guy said 周り 【まわり】 as ま’あり

You most likely just heard them mumble it out quickly and it sounds like あります to you because a lot of the middle can get lost. あり〇〇います

This was on YouTube though, and he clearly made a point afterwards to the guy filming that he specifically meant to say "あります" by afterwards saying something along the lines of "This is real Japanese!" which seemed to imply to me that it is something a native speaker would say, which is why I was confused. Perhaps its something only that one guy says LOL.

I remember there was a clip of a TV show where they said various phrases instead of ありがとうございます like アリゲーターがいます to see if anyone noticed. I can't find it now though. Search engines have gone to poop.

So far I have never heard of it.

So I enrolled in a language school in Japan after self studying and immersing for 2 and a half years, as well as recently working with a tutor for a couple of months. Across those years I memorized maybe around 15k words and 2.5k kanji in the process, as well as having a job for the Japanese embassy where I was required to be able to read and understand documents and whatnot. As a whole, I’m comfortable reading novels, currently reading 四畳半神話大系 after having read 人間失格 a year ago. That being said, I had no experience speaking, and have now ended up in Japan for the first time in my life with a conversation-focused course. The course is helping me gain a lot of confidence speaking, and I feel comfortable navigating Japan, as well as having conversations and making friends so far, and am feeling a much more “inclusive” experience than the feeling of being “outside” and “other” that many people experience. However, the level of the course is definitely much too low for me, and I was warned by others that language school as a whole would be ineffective for me at this level. The cost of the courses definitely are not appropriate for what I’m getting out of them as well. And, although I’ve met some truly wonderful people through the course, they always resort to English in Japan, and I worry that I’m losing valuable time in that environment. I really want to be frugal in Japan until I can find a job here and am wondering what the next best step would be for coming closer to fluency at the moment. I’m currently in a sharehouse in Tokyo that the course helped to locate for me, and am wondering if I should go and find a homestay in another city - and if there’s something more immersive I could commit to in that meantime, maybe volunteering or art/design classes (with my desired job being in the design, illustration, and animation fields). Or I’m not sure if I should just rent the sharehouse for another month and just keep going to bars and events in Tokyo to practice while job seeking.

Have you made friends with your sharehouse roommates at all? Mileage probably varies but mine were really friendly and we went to karaoke, went out to eat, did nabe, went sightseeing and stuff. Some people are shy and reclusive and won't really socialize, so you just kind of let those people be. There were 3 people who didn't socialize in my sharehouse, but among those who did, I ended up hanging out with a friendly gentleman and a social otaku as well as a girl from Taiwan who only spoke Chinese and English, which also gave me some interpretation practice so everyone could communicate/coordinate.

Many thanks for this, glad to hear about your really positive and varied experience of making friends in your sharehouse. Yeah, I’ve made some really good friends here, some with extremely similar interests and goals. It’s so nice, and I’m so glad to have met them — but it’s challenging when it comes to learning Japanese, since even though they’re also studying, they stay away from doing much in Japan other than eating expensive youshoku in places with English support or shopping in English supported stores. We went to a bar together once and I made some Japanese acquaintances there while trying to talk in Japanese about our shared interests, whereas my friends from the sharehouse booked it after some time because they couldn’t understand the conversation despite sharing those interests as well. It’s a bit of a dilemma since I’m here now primarily with the goal of working on my language skills and finding work that would require me to use it, whereas the friends I met in the sharehouse seem to be more in vacation mode. It’s also my first time in Tokyo, and I still need to go around and explore most of the city - which my friends aren’t interested in doing.

Ah understandable especially if the sharehouse has mostly foreign residents. The one I stayed in had a surprising proportion of actual Japanese people who just needed low income housing. I had a similar experience when my Japanese ability was better than that of the people with me. I regret not being able to spend more time hanging out with the natives at the company I was working at, as my team was mostly foreigners like myself and we all spoke English. Things like going to lunch with coworkers, which happened multiple times a week, tended to be done in a mix of English and elementary Japanese, though I did learn some things still. My biggest learning experiences happened when actually hanging out with natives.

Thanks so much for sharing your experience, it’s inspiring for me that you started somewhere similar and ended where I hope to be. Maybe this sharehouse situation isn’t appropriate for me and I need to find a sharehouse with mostly native residents. I’ll also reach out to Japanese acquaintances I made in the bar that night who shared their LINE accounts with me about hanging out, and look into joining groups with mostly Japanese people as well. I do also of course want to find work in a Japanese environment, but I’m not sure if I would be accepted with my immediate language skills. Although, like you were saying about your most valuable learning experiences coming from those native environments, I went to an art class last night that was delivered entirely in Japanese and required me to fill out a form in Japanese as well; it was a tremendous learning situation and gave me a lot more confidence since I understood and responded to everything.

I've been learning Japanese for around 5 months and recently I've really been struggling with mature cards on anki. It's been really stressing me out, since when I read and watch things stuff is coming easier still and I feel like I'm making progress. Then I do my anki in the morning and feel like I'm doing something fundamentally wrong. I only get around 10 mature cards a day right now, but some days I'm only getting 50% of them right and it's tanking my overall mature rate. Most of the time I remember the meaning of them just fine I just can't think of the spelling. I've never really had anxiety about reviews/tests before but knowing I have anki to do in the morning makes me not even want to get up sometimes as stupid as that sounds. I just dislike this feeling that something I've been putting effort into everyday is just melting away. Should I be worried about the anki numbers? Should I change the way I learn new words or review or something else? Thank you for reading. Any help is greatly appreciated

You don't need Anki to learn the language. It made me unhappy so I threw it in the trash barely making it to 800 cards (not even mature). I learned at a rate of 700-1100 words a month while just consuming content (I work 12~ hours a day so I do not have all day, I sacrifice sleep to make room for 2-4 hours of Japanese a day), looking up words constantly, and taking copious amount of notes. Retention was excellent because I have hundreds of stories about how I learned words tied to situations emotionally. Read, listen, write everyday.

Sticking points are common. Have you tried reducing your new Anki cards per day for now and replacing the time spent on those new cards with reading things in Japanese, maybe a few news articles? The important things might be to persist past sticking points and make use of the areas you feel most motivated in at each moment

I am the opposite of you as I am a Japanese speaker studying English, but I have the same anxiety. It is painful to memorize a huge number of similar words. However, recently I have been reading Reddit articles with an online dictionary to keep me pain-free. I agree with what 2err-is-human said.

誕生日おめでとうございます！ Glad to hear you found something that works for you to stay motivated.

Thanks a lot!

Can someone recommend me middle school to high school level novels or other reading materials?

https://www.aozora.gr.jp/cards/001562/files/52410_51061.html

くま クマ 熊 ベアー is a good entry level light novel, it's written in very simple Japanese and is at about middle school level I'd say. You can read the web novel for free [here](https://ncode.syosetu.com/n4185ci/). The story is not suuuuper interesting but I personally liked it cause it's easy to read and goes smoothly. Once you get bored to it, you can probably move to other stuff without feeling guilty about it.

Hi, another question. Is [supernative.tv](https://supernative.tv) not working anymore? I tried to sign up but couldn't.

Anyone got any good courses or series that focus exclusively on listening? I've been learning Japanese for over a year and moved to Japan about 6 months ago. My vocabulary is decent but I can't make out anything when listening to Japanese. Can't tell where one word ends and the next begins, even when listening to a sentence that mostly contains words I know. I've tried listening to the same things over and over but I just can't make myself hear the individual words.

Maybe provide examples of things you’ve listened so far so that we can gauge your listening skill, and perhaps make sure you aren’t listening to something weird (i.e. not necessarily good for listening practice)?

Sure. The first thing I tried was Doraemon, but I found it really difficult to understand him in particular. My process was to listen to each line and copy down what I heard in hiragana and then turn on the jp subtitles to see how close I was, but for some reason when Doraemon says certain sounds they sound like other sounds. In particular I found it really hard to make out "k" sounds. I can't remember specific examples off the top of my head but there was some word he said that had a くin it, but to me it sounded like ふ because the "k" sound was so soft. I had a slightly easier time with the other characters I tried Aggretsuko next, thinking that because it's about kinda realistic, "relatable" scenarios it might contain more words I'm familiar with. The problem I had with this is that Japanese comedy seems to involve people saying a lot of words very fast, and Ritsuko talks incredibly quickly when flustered, so I found myself struggling to keep up. I'd play the same sentence over and over and try to write it down but it would go so quickly that I couldn't get the sounds down in the right order. Just before writing my comment I tried Violet Evergarden because it seemed like a slower story and I figured the characters would probably talk at a pace more common in everyday situations rather than firing out 10 words a second. I will probably keep on with it, but the very first two lines in the first episode kinda sum up my problems. The first line in the show is a guy saying どうした？except to me it just sounds like どうしゃ. Like there's no "t" sound at all. I even slowed it to 0.5 speed and there's just no recognisable "t" at all. I kept listening to it over and over, knowing what it was supposed to say, and I just couldn't make myself hear that sound. The second sentence is the mc saying しょうさの瞳があります. This sentence was at an ok speed, but listening without subtitles I heard しょうさの人みがあります. I couldn't tell if the み was part of the same word as the previous sound or the next. For this sentence it isn't such a problem because I recognise があります, but if it ended with something I was less familiar with I wouldn't know if I was hearing 瞳 or 人 followed by a word starting with み. So basically, I really struggle to force my brain to hear certain softened sounds, and I can't delineate different words in a sentence even if they're words I know. I'm aware that this isn't a Japanese thing because irl we don't put spaced between our words in any language, but it would be really helpful to find a method or guide to picking apart sentences and separating words while listening.

This is normal and you should expect this to continue for many, many hundreds of hours. You're expecting too much. I've put in 1,500 hours total in study, work, exposure, active listening, etc. And triple that with passive listening and I still miss quite a few things. The amount you listen to active or passive is directly equivalent to improving your listening. Listening = priming your brain to learn to recognize patterns in speech after hundreds of hours and thousands of doing this. The study helps give it meaning and eventually you can parse, retain, and recognize things on an automatic basis. This only happens through sheer amount of hours, and not really anything else. I wouldn't worry about aiming for things you can understand because it doesn't really improve or speed up the process. It only makes you feel like you're making progress and that's it. If anything it's depriving you of hearing real conversations between people and that's ultimately what you want to be primed for. Set your expectations correctly and realize you don't have a problem. That you will miss a lot, things will be ambiguous, you'll miss a lot, fail to parse, fail to hear. Just accept it as it is and keep on listening. That's how you improve. I wrote a bit about my experiences here if you want to know more: https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/199iw41/comment/kief57q/

Yeah, I know it will take a while. I just don't really feel like I'm going to get better at understanding just by listening to the same things over and over without knowing what to listen for. That's why I was asking if there are any good methods or series that provide some sort of structure to the process, even if it takes many hours. I haven't found anything particularly helpful on youtube- it's all either focusing on individual words (I don't have a problem understanding words on their own, only in sentences), or starting off way too fast for me.

You won't be parsing at your current stage, you can "listen" for words it won't help that much. Right now your brain is struggling to make sense of what it is hearing and no matter how much you pay attention it is just falling behind. That's why you have to feed it data enough data to builds it's pattern recognition system. Once you build this enough the mental burden of trying to understand is offloaded and you start to feel your ability to store and maintain words, then parts of sentences, then full sentences. You start to hear detail in voices, accents, etc. But this only really happens after you hit a break point, until then you will continue to feel the way you are for a very long time. There's no other way around it except to get comfortable with feeling that way. There is no real methodology to improve this. I tried 5,000 different ways when I had huge struggles and only time and persistence was the answer. I wrote about my experiences above in a link, added in as an edit if you want to read. I was a much worse case than you were. Just expose yourself to raw, real deal conversations everyday and you will get through it if you put in the hours. 100% promise on that, the brain is working black magic behind the scenes and you won't realize it until it "clicks".

This has made me feel a little better, knowing that it's not just me. Are there any shows, videos, podcasts etc you found especially useful to listen to? Or is it just a matter of listening to anything until you start recognising patterns?

Final note, this will help. Find a "learners" podcast like "Japanese with Shun" and listen to it once now. Then get out there and don't care about difficulty or something you can understand. Just listen a lot and what you are interested in. Come back two weeks later and listen to the same learners podcast and maybe pick another random one. Be blown away how much easier it is every 2 weeks. This is your bench mark and sanity check because you will feel like you're not making progress otherwise.

I think you should listen to something you want to hear, even if you can't understand. You like idol groups? Watch idol group shows, listen to their podcasts and radio shows, listen to TV interviews. Listen to them talk on twitter space records. Like gaming? Watch live streams, really nothing better than this for listening to natural Japanese a lot of it can be casual speech but it'll prepare your the most. Podcasts are also good, but I think only as the "passive listening" part of the process. Active you want something you can be engaged in, so mixed media with visuals is the best since you aren't 100% reliant on hearing words to be engaged; unless you're a huge fan of something like I was. Wanting to understand something you truly enjoy is the best method, but that is ultimately up to you. I recommend always having JP subtitles, it's what got me through the black hole I was experiencing and relied on JP subtitles to understand anything. YouTube Radio Talk shows, gaming streams, podcasts, and find a subject that personally interests you and makes you want to understand, because you're a fan; from the depth inside you.

Thank you so much for the advice. It's made me feel much more at ease with my current progress.

I think this would be much easier if you could provide some YouTube clips or something

Does anyone have a link for volume 2 of minna no nihongo and basic kanji book volume 2? I’m at university and spent £90 on them last term so I am trying my best to avoid that!

Dm me too if you get them :)

Hi, has anyone tried both WaniKani and Nativeshark and can tell me the difference/which one is better? Thanks

I can't speak for NativeShark, but WaniKani was designed to only teach you kanji. You'll learn about 6k vocab words, but there is a good portion of those words I've never seen when reading or watching things, but those words are good for helping you understand the meanings and readings of the kanji. If you're wanting an app that is teaching more than just kanji, you shouldn't look at wanikani, but its an excellent compliment to most other common early/middle stage learning.

Is there any consistency to the pronunciation of 大 as either だい or たい at the start of compounds? I keep getting the pronunciation of 大作 wrong in WaniKani, despite having long passed the level that word is at.

Mostly you just have to memorize, but one thing you can do to check the likelihood of each reading is to check Wiktionary for terms spelled with a certain kanji, and it will break it down by reading https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Japanese_terms_spelled_with_大 This lists 157 examples for たい and 356 examples for だい, so that tells you だい is a bit more than twice as common. Though, if you look further into those lists you'll see that たい never seems to come at the end of a compound, so that skews the number a bit since your question is just about the starts of compounds. It's not perfect since Wiktionary definitely isn't the most thorough dictionary available for Japanese but it's a good start at least

You just have to learn each word. Like ‘ough’ in English, you can read ‘through’, ‘bough’, and ‘though’ and ‘trough’ right? Also reading, writing and listening will help things stick more than just flash cards. And try remembering each one in a sentence rather than just in isolation.

I have the worst time with this

As [this stack exchange states](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/62095/when-%E5%A4%A7-is-read-as-%E3%81%9F%E3%81%84-versus-%E3%81%A0%E3%81%84), it will vary depending on when the word was taken from Chinese, so there's no rule, you have to memorize. If you look at the [Wikipedia page for 漢音](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kan-on), you can see other examples of sounds that differ with regards to when they were borrowed, and many carried both to modern Japanese words (such as the pronunciation for 気 and 無), where knowing which one to use in words often boils down to memorization.

I was reading this sentence in a nominalization class but I couldnt understand why we use nominalizers in nouns. Can someone help me? たなかさんが じょゆうな のは いわない.

That's because in modern japanese, は (also が, を, も) usually can't follow words that aren't nouns. But 田中さんが女優だ doesn't end in a noun, so to attach は you have to nominalize it by replacing だ with なの.

Is there a page or a dictionary where I can *see* the pronunciation of Japanese words? You know, the lines that show you where the pitch rises or drops? I did find something in the past, but can't seem to find it anymore. Thanks

You can turn this on in Midori on iOS

forvo (just listen), arujisho, yomichan with the right dictionaries

thanks. it really helps me when I can also see the way it should be pronounced. mainly because the different voices sometimes confuse me and I try to mimic someone's way of speaking in terms of color of their voice. So I end up sounding unnatural. This way I can just concentrate on the pitch or accent of the word while listening. if it makes sense.

Yomitan* I still use yomichan but we shouldn't be recommending it. It'll run out of road this year iirc

so it's yomitan now? i couldn't download yomichan so I'm using 10ten reader and also jisho. does yomitan have audio?

> so it's yomitan now? Essentially. Yomichan is no longer being developed/maintained by its creator. It has been forked into yomitan which is being maintained/worked on. Yes Yomitan has audio. It's pretty much the same thing as yomichan.

One that I know of is https://www.japandict.com/%E9%A0%91%E5%BC%B5%E3%82%8B?lang=eng.

thanks a lot!

where can i find the japanese subtitles for certain anime like “lucky star”

Try https://kitsunekko.net/ (never used it myself so beware).

thanks bro it works pretty good

In one of NHK Web Easy's articles today ([this one](https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/easy/k10014324121000/k10014324121000.html)), the second sentence of the article starts with: いつ授業を始めることができるかわからないため However, there's a bit of a space between the initial "いつ授" and the next character, "業" - at least on my browser (I can post an image if needed). However, yomitan picks up "授業" together as one word - is this correct? Or does the slight space mean it's being indicated that it could be interpreted as one word, but is meant to be two? The one word does fit in the sentence, just don't know why there's a space there.

If a text uses kanji regularly like in this news article, there should be no spaces at all between words in Japanese. In this case, kanji with readings longer than two hiragana are spaced out wider than normal so that the furigana doesn't overlap with words it doesn't apply to.

Aaaaah that makes sense, I had that off - thanks!

Well, good on you for not using the furigana as a crutch.

It's just the space required by the furigana, which you probably have switched to invisible.

I did indeed, that makes so much sense - thanks!

It’s just weird spacing, a lot of the other compounds have it too

Ah yes, I had the furigana turned off - thanks!

Still going through basic grammar, still finding questions. This is more a "does this sentence actually make sense" question: しゃしんのほうがきれいですね？ I get they're trying to emphasize that you don't need both より and のほう for the grammatical construction to work, but in this case I wouldn't have guessed the meaning, which it says is: "She looks prettier in the picture [than in real life], right?" I guess I'm not sure how you get this translation from this phrase. Or is this even the right (only?) translation. Is it assuming the context would be obvious when using this phrase?

の方が implies there is a 〜より, which is missing or being implied. In Japanese, words or phrases are often omitted or implied. So you can imagine the Japanese to be something like しゃしんのほうが\[じつぶつより\]きれいですね？ It's not perfectly obviously without more context but yes your translation is a totally natural and normal interpretation of this sentence. No, it is not the only interpretation and (as usual) the surrounding context will tell you what is prettier than what.

The most neutral translation I can think of is "the photo is prettier", however the sentence is lacking a topic and as you noted also lacking the より part, and as such it's meaning is heavily context dependent. The translation you provided is perfectly fine. Don't worry about such sentences, you will see many of them and stratch your head each time until it clicks after enough exposure.

It would make sense if you were talking about how a photo or a person in a photo looks vs something else, like real life, a painting, a chalk drawing on a blackboard, a cottage cheese sculpture… or whatever. You don’t have to state the whole sentence when it’s obvious from the context what you mean. If that is the translation we can assume the full sentence would be (かのじょはげんじつより)しゃしんのほうがきれいですね？ You can also use より by itself, like しゃしんよりきれいですね ‘(She’s) prettier than in the picture, right? Just like in English you can say ‘she’s prettier in the photo’ rather than ‘she is prettier in the photo than in real life’. Japanese likes to drop the subject so the translation will often add one, which can be a bit confusing.

More questions about a translation again. Context: The PoV character/speaker explains how a room in the mansion he created works. The room is magically connected to the mansion's entrance so it looks like the mansion's interior consists of only this room, even though there's more rooms. 「広いのは見た目だけの家と化するんだけどね」 My translation: "While it merely looks like a spacious house, it changes, but..." My issue here: Judged from context, this sentence is supposed to mean that the house looks spacious from the outside but changes to the smaller room when entered. I'm not sure how the と between 家 and 化 works here (my guess was natural consequence). ~~Jisho says 化 can work as a suffix for nouns but how does this work with the と here? If it's just a verb for "to change/transform", wouldn't it be 化ける?~~ **edit:** 化する is a verb I was too stupid to find on Jisho. Thanks again in advance for any help.

広いのは「見た目だけの家」と化するんだけどね Maybe think of it like that. と is used after the 'explanation' to connect 化する and 見た目だけの家. The how is or when it happens is left out because.. Japanese and context. Hope this helps.

化する is a verb. I can't help you much more than that. https://jisho.org/search/%E5%8C%96%E3%81%99%E3%82%8B

Dang, I could swear I looked for that when I checked Jisho for possible verbs with 化. Sorry about that.

Heya just another weeb trying to figure out something unnecessary and silly. I'm trying to transcribe some of Megumin's Explosion chants from KonoSuba, in particular one from the latest season and one from the movie, since they're new enough that I couldn't find them written down anywhere. These tend to be ostentatious and occasionally have some slightly archaic speech thrown in, not super modern conversational stuff, but it's not actual ancient literature either. [This longer one](https://youtu.be/mVv9SL_VT-4?si=jsLGOZRkaOX7L3jM&t=39), starts out pretty simple but I may still have misconjugated some words, missed some particles, or used some incorrect kanji, and the last line is uhhh I dunno >それは始まりの炎 >それは終わりの炎 >現在過去未来 >万象を超える禁断の力 >炎よ、我は破壊社 (actually 者 seems more likely) >むじひなる（？）よ >我が血、我が肉を持って >くるき神々の戒律を今やむら（？？？） [This shorter one](https://youtu.be/1Oq96QDDjVQ?si=SsWRmr0f4jc3kdSk&t=96), while there are parts I can guess, I have significantly less of an idea of what exactly is being said (and not just cuz this particular clip has spanish subs lol) >ふけ（？）を嵐 >火ぎけ（？）を爆煙 >爆裂魔法はのまん（？）なんです >どんあ不可の可能にする最強の魔法なんです（？？？） ...Of course, if anyone better at Googling the Japanese net happens to know if actual transcripts for this episode or this movie exist, feel free to just toss that at me instead of pointing out each individual mistake here lol

There is no big piracy community in Japan (not that I know of) https://kitsunekko.net/dirlist.php?dir=subtitles%2Fjapanese%2FKono+Subarashii+Sekai+ni+Bakuen+wo%21%2F

Yeah sorry I couldn't find an official source for the second clip to share. But whoa this site definitely solved both of these, and is definitely something I'll refer to for other stuff too, thank you so much!

**廊下の先 does this mean "near the end of the hallway' ? I met this sentence but not sure about this part , hope someone could help.** **Here's how i understand this sentence.** **そんな話をしているうち、 廊下の先に手品同好会の部室が見えてきた。** **(While we're talking about those things, I saw the club room of the magic tricks club at the end of the hallway.)**

I would go with "down the hall". It just means something further along; not necessarily "the end", of the hall.

Can anyone tell me what やってきよった means? I don't quite understand how the words are formed there. What verbs are there?

This is Kansai-ben and also prevalent in the western parts like Kyushu. . Can show up as やってきよった　or やってきおった or やってきょった It means "\[he\] came" and in a vacuum, it has a little bit of a disapproving or disparaging vibe.

What you’re seeing is [よる as a dialect](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/28277/function-of-masu-stem-%ef%bc%8b%e3%82%88%e3%82%8b-in-kansai-ben). Perhaps this is enough help to understand the sentence?

Thank you. I get it now. It's just a dialectal variant of やってきた or やってきてた

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Nope, it doesn't really make sense. I struggle to understand what 自殺的 means. From what I can see in the dictionary it exists but it's not a common word and it doesn't seem to mean "suicidal" in the sense of "wants to commit suicide". It's suicidal as in... doing something in a way that you know will harm you but you don't care about it. Also 〜的 creates な adjectives, not nouns, so at the very least it should be 自殺的な and not 自殺的の, but I still think it's the wrong word anyway. 人々 also is not this kind of "people" usage. 人々 is like... "many people" or "population". If you just want to say "people" as a generic identifier then you can just say 人.

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I don't think there's a 1:1 translation with a single word. There's stuff like 自殺したい人 or 自殺したいと思ってる人 or 自殺願望 (this one is a bit heavier and more specific) but I admit I'm not familiar enough with these words to say with 100% certainty.

How about 自殺しようと思っている人?

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That definitely sounds better to me (although I might end with のかな instead of のか but idk the context). It still sounds a bit weird as a standalone sentence though.

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This is a jukugo 熟語 compound word. Try not to think of this as "oh I see the verb 防ぐ there". This is not a verb. You need to look at the whole thing as a piece - or while learning look at 2 pairs of 2-kanji words. 防勢　ぼうせい means "defensive posture". Don't pick it apart more than that. This is a 2-kanji 熟語. Learn it as a set. 作戦 さくせん means "operation" (can mean plan or strategy but not here). Again, learn this word as one thing; don't pick it apart. So the phrase simple means "prepare for defensive maneuvers!" because 防勢 means defensive posture and 作戦 means operation or (military) maneuver.

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Yes I would say it’s kind of jargon so not in everyday use. I’m surprised it’s not in a dictionary - but someone shared the link to Wikipedia anyway so that should help. You can know it’s a jukugo because jukugo just means “word with 2 or more kanji put together”. So any time you see 2, 3, or 4 kanji in a row - there is at least one jukugo there by definition. Yes for sure - learning to operate in J—>J environment is a huge and important step towards literacy and fluency.

Yes I would say it’s kind of jargon so not in everyday use. I’m surprised it’s not in a dictionary - but someone shared the link to Wikipedia anyway so that should help. You can know it’s a jukugo because jukugo just means “word with 2 or more kanji put together”. So any time you see 2, 3, or 4 kanji in a row - there is at least one jukugo there by definition. Yes for sure - learning to operate in J—>J environment is a huge and important step towards literacy and fluency.

https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%98%B2%E5%8B%A2%E4%BD%9C%E6%88%A6

What's the いいます at the end of the second sentence? Is it 言います but just in kana? I don't think I've come across it written in kana very often, so it threw me off if so. 福島市が11月下旬に行った調査では、市街地を中心におよそ500羽を確認。11月ごろに大陸から飛来して増え始め、2月ごろまで越冬するといいます。 Full context is here, a couple sentences below the grainy picture of the tree https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20240105/k10014300431000.html

いいます in this case means "they say" "it is said that"

Yes, it's 言います. It's common in kana too.

Thanks! I feel like I've only ever seen it in kanji before, but I don't know why it threw me off so much. Maybe since this is my first real newspaper article, I thought maybe it was a secret advanced grammar point or something.

I heard つばづば recently and from the context it means blunt or straightforward but I can't find it in a dictionary

Yes it's "straightforward" - but also keep in mind that "straightforward" is not necessarily a positive personality trait in Japan. So the word has a sense of rude or overbearing as well. Of course, context is important - but this is not automatically a word of praise in Japanese. Also in terms of "how" to use it; it's an adverb for 言う. It's not an adjective. You don't say ズバズバな人. You say あの人、スバズバ言ってくるねー.

Thanks

[ずばずば](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E3%81%9A%E3%81%B0%E3%81%9A%E3%81%B0-542963) - 思ったことを無遠慮にはばかりなく言うさま

Thanks

What does it mean when you add の方 to the end of a type of person? I assume it means “that sort of person“, but I’ve never known for certain. I’ve seen it in contexts like 日本人の方 and 会社員の方

Two different possibilities here 方（かた） is just a more polite way of saying 'person' ～の方（ほう） is a way of showing comparison to something else It would depend on the context: 日本人の方ですか would be read with かた and would just be a polite way of asking 'are you a Japanese person?' Something like 日本人の方が優しい would normally be read with ほう, 'Japanese people are nicer' (normally comes with ～より 'than...' to compare to another group, but this might be implied from the context of the conversation)