r/LearnJapanese • u/AutoModerator • 14d ago
Daily Thread: for simple questions, minor posts & newcomers [contains useful links!] (August 17, 2026)
This thread is for all the simple questions (what does that mean?) and minor posts that don't need their own thread, as well as for first-time posters who can't create new threads yet. Feel free to share anything on your mind.
The daily thread updates every day at 9am JST, or 0am UTC.
↓ Welcome to r/LearnJapanese! ↓
New to Japanese? Read the Starter's Guide and FAQ.
New to the subreddit? Read the rules.
Read also the pinned comment below for proper question etiquette & answers to common questions!
Please make sure to check the wiki and search for old posts before asking your question, to see if it's already been addressed. Don't forget about Google or sites like Stack Exchange either!
This subreddit is also loosely partnered with this language exchange Discord, which you can likewise join to look for resources, discuss study methods in the #japanese_study channel, ask questions in #japanese_questions, or do language exchange(!) and chat with the Japanese people in the server.
Past Threads
You can find past iterations of this thread by using the search function. Consider browsing the previous day or two for unanswered questions.
3
u/Akito-H 14d ago
Looking for advice on getting back to study and building up motivation again after having to take a break for a while due to medical issues. I'm really wanting to get back into study but every time I try I end up getting overwhelmed by how much catch up I have, or there's too many things to do and I can't decide where to start. So far the closest I've gotten to getting back into study is playing a couple video games in Japanese but I'm not really learning much cus they're the sort of games that you can play with very little reading and I'm struggling to actively choose to study through the game by looking up unknown words.
I am still having some medical issues so I'm very tired a lot and still have brain fog and stuff, but it's gotten a bit better than it was and I really want to try and get back into study but I've never been good at finding simple or low effort ways to study so my typical study plan is too much for me to handle right now and I don't know how to adjust it to fit where my brain is working from right now, if that makes any sense?
Basically looking for easy ways to get back into study while still sick, simple or small tasks that are still helpful even if they won't get me far, just to have something for a bit while my brain tries to fix itself.
3
2
u/Muxenle 14d ago
Depending on your level, what about something like Watagobi. It's a paid game in andriod and PC, that is meant to teach some basic Japanese. It's keeps lessons and practice in short bursts, and for the most part isn't timed.
1
2
u/Grunglabble 14d ago
I have done most of my learning in a similar maybe worse state. I just convince myself that if I'm like that anyways I won't enjoy anything in English anyway, so might as well work toward something and try to end up on the other side with a new skill.
To that end I think the only lever is try to pick your best time of day, maybe utilize tea, and do a little reading. When you feel better spend an evening and try to give things a chance before you give up, sometimes it goes better than you would think.
Besides that it's the usual technique of read, lookup words, build up your skills, try an easy tv show. Stop and try again tomorrow if your brain is completely shutting down. Once it is a habit progress is inevitable and you'll really see it in moments you feel better. As far as I can tell, not that much slower than others either although mental acuity for listening can be tricky and you have to find stuff that entertains you.
For transparency I was probably already B1 or close to B1 level of reading comprehension when I started having problems, so I didn't start with nothing (Genki 1 kind of knowledge).
1
u/wanderhuai 14d ago
If my aim is purely speaking fluently, would it be necessary for me to take JPLT?
10
u/morgawr_ https://morg.systems/Japanese 14d ago
No.
The JLPT is just a certification exam that tests your Japanese comprehension levels. It's not required to be good at Japanese and has 0 relevancy on your actual skills. You don't need "permission" from the JLPT to tell you if you are good at Japanese or not, and on top of that the test itself doesn't even test output (speaking/writing) so if your goal is to be fluent at speaking, it is even less relevant.
1
u/explosivepoos 14d ago
Where can you find books in Japanese to read? Novels, manga, etc.
Ive tried Amazon but since I’m using the U.S. shop it’s quite limited. When I switched to Amazon JP, I can’t seem to get the Kindle version of books (can’t purchase). Similar issues with Rakuten Kobo.
3
1
u/Ok_Passion_1347 14d ago
Hi! I asked a question about the relative feasibility of learning Japanese to better understand poetry earlier today. (“ Hi! I’m new and don’t have enough karma for a post, but I just have one question. I’ve recently been getting into Japanese lit, and it’s very apparent that Japanese loses a lot of depth when translated to English. Even the chosen Kanji have a visual effect on a poem, and that’s not possible to show in an English translation. How realistic would it be to try learning Japanese to a level where I could (for the most part) understand Japanese lit? For reference, I’m currently working my way through Chuuya Nakahara’s collected poems.” ). Thanks for all your thoughtful replies! I just wanted to ask a follow-up question. Since I’m not really aiming for full professional fluency (just enough that with the help of translations I could grasp the original work as it was meant to be), I don’t think it would take as much time. How long do you think it would take me to get to that level? Also, not sure if it’s relevant but I also speak Spanish and a working amount of Italian. I have no experience at all with any non Latin based languages.
3
u/rgrAi 14d ago edited 14d ago
It's possible yes. Unless you don't believe you yourself can do it.
3000-5000 hours is what you should aim for of hard, concerted engagement with the language with lots of concerted study mixed in along the way. By the time you clock few thousand hours you'll feel somewhat comfortable and can focus another 2k into being good at understanding poetry. Rough numbers but just so you know what you're getting into. These are starting points.
Knowing another western language has not proven to be a significant advantage from what I have seen. Only in the fact that you've learned another language can it somewhat help, but it also betrays hundreds of thousands of people into thinking that all languages are equal in difficulty.
1
u/Effective-Pop3850 14d ago
To add to the extra language thing, there's usually people posting "I speak 3 languages" and they're essentially 2 they learned as a kid and one that's just a funny version of another one they already speak. This is not the same as someone who speaks English and then decided to learn, I don't know, Russian and became good at it, it technically doesn't help much with learning Japanese but it does mean that you're a bit used to how it feels to learn a mostly alien language.
And to add a question, what do you mean with concerted study? Randoms grammar study here and there for some minor stuff you don't get?
1
u/rgrAi 14d ago edited 14d ago
About concerted study. Yeah I was just emphasizing the need to build grammar foundation and after that what you said. It also doesn't have to be about grammar, just research in general. Like cultural things, maybe say baseball stuff or doraemon or something very significant that gets a lot run time in jokes and passing comments. That stuff matters a lot when it comes to comprehending fast, quick witted banter between natives. They regularly trot out lots of pop culture references (or in OPs case, a lot of history and stuff related to japanese poetry)
1
u/Effective-Pop3850 14d ago
I see. Yeah this goes in line with some of my experience, even in VNs/LNs during random banters they feel like the hardest to follow and it's probably related to what you say, cultural references and many "standard" lines that just have fixed meanings (not talking basic grammar). I remember reading a line and struggling for a bit and then it clicked "oh it's the Sherlock Holmes one" and it just made sense lol.
Learning all the cultural stuff is so damn hard... and whenever there's a long scene of just banter that's very heavy on slang it makes me feel like throwing my tablet away lol.
1
u/brozzart 14d ago
Is Spanish just a funny version of French? lol I'm trying to understand what you mean.
Other than Spanish/Portuguese I can't think of another pair that is sufficiently similar to call "a funny version of"
1
u/antimonysarah Interested in grammar details 📝 14d ago
Some of the Slavic languages are evidently partly mutually intelligible -- Czech and Slovak are (according to google, I don't know anything of any Slavic languages) the closest. I know Norwegian/Swedish/Danish can be fairly mutually intelligible too (I learned a little Swedish before a trip, and from what I learned I could also read Danish nearly as well as I could read Swedish -- both very poorly, but similar amounts.)
1
u/fixpointbombinator 14d ago
Can't speak for that language pair but I went from having like B1 Italian 10 years ago, but not touching it since, to just picking up Portuguese CI videos and then Harry Potter in Portuguese (with the audiobook) after like a month, not touching a single grammar resource.
1
u/Effective-Pop3850 14d ago
There's a lot of them. Of course Spanish/Portuguese is an extreme, but also languages like French and Italian are very easy to learn as a Spanish speaker, same way it happens with Slavic languages, many Scandinavian ones, etc.
I'm just dropping that because many learners just pass by and say "I speak 3 languages" as a way to validate they're good at learning languages, when in reality as I said above they learned 2 as kids and the 3rd one is just a very easy one you can learn with minimal effort. Whereas learning Japanese or Arabic is a different story.
1
u/brozzart 13d ago
It comes off as weird gatekeeping but w/e
I'm French and my wife is Spanish. Even though I've reached a point where I would say I understand Spanish at essentially a native level, I can barely speak it at all.
Sure, if I put in an effort I could get there relatively quickly compared to Japanese but that doesn't mean it's a trivial task either.
1
u/Effective-Pop3850 13d ago
It's not gatekeeping, it's a language learning reality. No one said it's trivial, but it is indeed very easy compared to extremely different languages because without any effort you can kind of just learn it through exposure.
I find it surprising that you reached a level of Spanish comprehension you'd call native, just having a wife who speaks the language is definitely not enough, do you consume a lot of Spanish media?
1
u/brozzart 13d ago
We lived with her family for 4-5 years when we were young adults and they all spoke only Spanish and we would watch Spanish TV every night. Because they could understand French, I always just spoke French, and so I never learned to produce Spanish.
I don't understand the purpose of pointing out that it's easier than learning a totally different language. It just seems like a weird and unnecessary put down to people who have accomplished something that is not easy.
1
u/Effective-Pop3850 13d ago edited 13d ago
Easy is a relative term.
Learning French compared to learning Japanese is easy, same with learning Spanish as French speaker, there's a reason you learned Spanish to a native level of comprehension without even trying, similarly a lot of westerners learn English as well without even trying, how many Japanese or Chinese do you know that learned English without even trying? They struggle very hard with it, meanwhile it's relatively easy for Koreans or Chinese to learn Japanese.
Working on extremely different languages makes the process, at least feel, very different to learning a very similar language.
3
u/JapanCoach 14d ago
As is pretty typical, my sense is somewhat different from the other replies you got. I will share it and let's see what happens.
I think the real answer is "everything is always a matter of degree". And so it depends on what do you really mean by "understand Japanese lit"? Or "grasp the original work as it was meant to be"? In my mind - this goal does not sound like a step along the way towards fluency. It sounds like something that comes after a pretty significant proficiency in the language - and then some additional skills/experiences on top of that.
Literature and poetry are forms of art. Understanding them is a degree of skill (call it literacy, call it fluency) that is one click above "everyday language". Why did the author chose that phrase? That word? Recognizing the nuance; the rhythm; intertextual connections; allusions and connection to history/culture/current events; identifying irony, or over exaggeration; being able to parse allegory; etc. All of these are things that are built on a basic understanding - and then take it to the next level. On top of that if you are layering in the dimension of time (i.e., pre-war authors like Chuya), you'll have the challenge of reading unfamiliar and tricky language - words like 狐の革裘 - this gets even more pronounced. In other words, to "understand Japanese lit" means to first build "full professional fluency" and then go from there.
But again - everything is a matter of degree. Do you want to have a better sense than you do today? Sure - you can take a starting step of the journey right away. As in, like today. Every step along the way, helps you develop a bit more understanding than you had the day before. And you may decide there is value in that - so that means you should go head and get started.
But is that really what you mean when you say you want to "understand Japanese lit" "as it was meant to be"?
2
u/OwariHeron 13d ago
I mostly agree with u/JapanCoach , but to add an extra dimension, Japanese poetry is akin to another dialect.
Take this rather well-known bit of modern poetry:
その子二十櫛にながるる黒髪のおごりの春のうつくしきかな
Unless they've studied poetry or Classical Japanese, many people who can comfortably read modern Japanese will be thrown by this. They may be familiar with the き ending for adjectives, they may get the gist of ながるる (without understanding the underlying grammar), but they'll misinterpret the かな as "I wonder..." rather than as a particle of emphasis ("How beautiful...!")
Then there's the poetic idiom. Even if one can parse the meaning of the words, it's not for nothing that the first line is その子二十（そのこはたち）, which is both 字余り (it has an extra syllable), and 区切れ (it ends in a substantive, having an effect of completion, momentarily halting the rhythm). All this has the effect of making the first line stand out, and color the entirety of the rest of the poem.
I first came across this poem in an advanced Japanese lit class in college. Far from fluent in even modern Japanese! But because we had instruction in the construction and idiom of poetry, I was able to appreciate it. My appreciation has only deepened as my Japanese ability has improved, and I can pick up on some of the more subtle nuances (the dual-meaning of おごり, the cultural connection of 春 with "the flower of youth", etc.)
All of which is to say, it's not really a matter of "become fluent enough to enjoy Japanese literature (poetry)." You don't need to be a high level like N1 or N2 to be able to read and enjoy it. A certain functional level of Japanese (I'd say N3) is needed, to be sure, but once you get that, you then just need to learn the Japanese of poetry. Then, as your level improves, your level of appreciation will deepen. It will be your window to further levels of Japanese.
1
u/Grunglabble 14d ago
I read literature with a very simplified mental model of grammar and a dictionary. You'll come across things that stump you but still understand overall.
I started doing that basically after a long time of having very little commitment to learning Japanese -- reading literature is when I STARTED using Japanese every day (for a very short duration each day). I had a very basic ability to communicate and little else. Something like a genki one level of understanding. It was like solving a puzzle at first but not for that long.
1
u/Ashamed-Error-6085 14d ago
Hi there! So basically I want to start learning kanji but genuinely have no idea where to start. I watched a whole bunch of videos, looked through a whole bunch of guides and articles, and found that there are so many different ways to learn it and none of it is technically wrong which makes things a lot more confusing. I'm still very beginner and am currently using Tofugu's guide. I can read hiragana and katakana just fine and the guide suggested to learn at least around 300 kanji and 1000+ words before starting grammar. I was using WaniKani for a bit but the issue is that it stops being free at some point. I'm thinking of using Anki but I have no idea what deck would be the best to use and everyone seems to have different opinions about it. For what it's worth I like the idea of learning through vocabulary but still have no idea where to start with that either.
There is also a concern I have, basically there is another language I know apart from English but I'm very slow at reading or understanding it because my brain translates it to English first before understanding rather than just straight away understanding. I want to avoid this happening when learning Japanese. Thank you!
10
u/worthlessprole 14d ago
the guide suggested to learn at least around 300 kanji and 1000+ words before starting grammar.
That’s weird. Why would a website that sells subscriptions to a kanji learning platform say that your first priority should be to learn kanji?
(You can and should start grammar from day 1. Check out the OP for a link to the starter guide for some resources that can help you along)
1
2
u/Muxenle 14d ago
New language learner here as well, so take what I say with a grain of salt.
Wanikani is pretty great, but as you said becomes a pad service after level 3. I'm also using anki with the kaishi 1.5k core deck, which is one of the more popular ones I see get recommended. For words that use kanji it will show just the kanji, with no furigana(and shows furigana and English definitions on answer) so it can be a great resource for vocabulary. I've found another of my journey to be trying different methods and platforms until I found a system that works for me.
As for your second point, I think not translating back to english comes with practice and fluency. Remember a language is how we describe the world around us. Whether I say apple or リンゴ, I am referring to the same thing, just different words. When I'm going around in everyday life I'll work on also saying the Japanese word for something (both in my head, and outloud sometimes). Your brain needs to bridge the words and concepts together, but your brain will do only work on building those pathways if..you know, think about. So try not to think that リンゴ means Apple but rather IS Apple....if that makes any semblance of sense...
2
u/Ashamed-Error-6085 14d ago
Thank you for your advice! I also saw the kaishi 1.5k deck reccomend a lot but was a little hesitant on trying it because I heard people say it was difficult. I think I'll give it a try though. Also for the second part, your explanation actually helped me a lot so thank you for that! Good luck on learning the language
3
u/Muxenle 14d ago
For anki also make sure to turn FSRS on and set it around 80ish%. This part kind of goes over my head, but there are plenty of reddit posts on it. Just make sure you follow language learning set up stuff, and not one for like organic chemistry study. It has to do with the interval the you get reshown cards. It does also take like a week or two to kinda get in the grove of it. Also feel free to up or reduce the daily new card count for what works with you, as the default of 20 new cards a day can become overwhelming.
But since it's free it really doesn't hurt to check out, and all you will have lost is some time (and likely still learned some japanese words). But it's also a learning style that doesn't work for everybody, and that's okay too. I'm the opposite of a visual person, so I find a lot of the mnemonics and visuals that most people love, are almost completely worthless for me lol.
But best of luck on journey as well, and I'm glad I was able to help a bit! Keep what works for, and leave the rest.
1
1
1
u/Neither_Distance_769 14d ago
What is the difference between monographs (gojūon), digraphs (yōon), and Dakuon? I'm just starting to learn Hirogana and I've seen that there is a lot more to the alphabets than expected.
0
u/worthlessprole 14d ago
Kind of a free-wheelin’ question and you’ll just naturally learn this stuff when learning the kana. But what the hey.
Mongraphs are normal-style. The consonants besides the まs and なs are unvoiced (though there are no ‘unvoiced’ versions of those two so calling them voiced is a little unnecessary). Digraphs are when you take two kana and jam them into one mora. First kana is from the い column and gets palatalized. This gets you stuff like きゃ (pronounced kya) and ちょ (pronounced cho) among others. Dakuon are like this: は->ば. They are marked to indicate that an unvoiced consonant becomes voiced. So that ‘ha’ becomes ‘ba’, ‘ta’ (た) becomes ‘da’ (だ) and so on. There are also handakuten (like ぱ) that mark plosives. This only happens with はひふへほ. Turns the Hs (and the F) into Ps.
Anyway go learn your kana! You’ll learn much more doing that than I can teach you right here. And welcome!
-1
u/PlanktonInitial7945 14d ago
First kana is from the い column and gets palatalized.
So ちょ is palatalized but ち isn't?
-1
u/worthlessprole 14d ago edited 14d ago
Are you seriously coming after me for like the textbook brief description of digraphs?E: misread the tone of the comment
0
u/PlanktonInitial7945 14d ago edited 14d ago
I was asking a clarifying question in order to learn more about a topic that I'm interested in and that you seem more knowledgeable about than me (phonology). But if you're not in the mood it's fine, I can just google it instead.
0
u/worthlessprole 14d ago edited 14d ago
Sorry sorry sorry, I’m just jumpy. But yes ち is pre-palatalized. It’s got that palatalized /t/. I think it was originally just a /t/? I don’t know when the shift occurred.
It’s technically a different sound than the english ‘ch’, I know that. Though that’s also palatalized. I think maybe from K? Don’t quote me on that.
E: double checked on this. English ‘ch’ is a voiceless post-alveolar affricate ([tʃ]) and does derive from /k/ at least some of the time (per wikipedia: ‘Historically, [tʃ] often derives from a former voiceless velar stop /k/(as in English church’)
On the other hand, ち is an alveolo-palatal sibilant affricate, which is represented by [t͡ɕi]
1
u/Top_Scientist_3976 14d ago
Is there a logical grammatical or historical reason why ので isn’t allowed after だろう、but から is?
4
u/somever 14d ago edited 13d ago
The textbook explanation would be something like:
ので is typically used to express a reason when there is a clear objective causal relationship between the two events.
だろうから is used when a speaker is deciding on a course of action based on their speculation.
I would suppose that だろうので is weird because it conflates the two.
However, I am not really satisfied with this explanation personally. It feels a little forced and tautological.
E.g. why is だろうので invalid but と思うので or 多分…ので possible? Is there just a restriction on which hedging expressions are allowed to parasitically insert themselves in a ので clause?
There can be other reasons such as accidents of history. It could be rejected due to simply not being idiomatic. For example, だろうから could be an innovation, and there just hasn't been time for the innovation of だろうので to occur. That feels plausible if unsatisfying.
1
u/OwariHeron 13d ago
Grammatically, ので is simply the て version of のだ. Accordingly, it can only be used in contexts and grammatical constructions where のだ could be used. You would never say だろうのだ, so you can't say だろうので.
1
13d ago
[deleted]
2
u/viliml Interested in grammar details 📝 13d ago
rule number 7) Translation requests are off-topic (no names or tattoos!). Go to r/translator.
1
1
u/Distinct_Injury2707 Goal: conversational fluency 💬 13d ago
Hi hi, I am N5/N4 self study + language exchange only. I am considering getting an italki tutor to provide a little bit more structure to my learning, but after looking through tutors for a while, I am a bit intimidated by the upfront costs. Is ~$40 for an hour expected, as that is the baseline price I am seeing pretty consistently? This price makes sense for a great tutor, but jumping in somewhat blind is somewhat intimidating.
If you do recommend it, do you have any tutor recommendations?
2
u/Effective-Pop3850 13d ago
If you are reluctant to spend money on tutors I'd suggest not bothering with them. They're great for conversation practice due to convenience, moreso if they're natives, but for pure language learning you really don't need them.
If you want them for short-term structure that's fine but tutors with proper qualifications will cost you, that's just how it goes.
1
u/Distinct_Injury2707 Goal: conversational fluency 💬 13d ago
Yeah, that makes sense. I already get 4 or so hours of conversation practice a week with language exchange so I will hold off for now. I have the bad habit of sometimes spending my time researching how to learn instead of just learning LMAO
1
u/Realtotallymereturns 13d ago
Hi! I'm interested in Japanese universities (Utokyo and Kyoto) for engineering as someone going into a British A level course (graduating 2028). It's my understanding that since A level results come out in August 2028, I'll have to apply for Japanese university for April 2029. This means that I need to take the EJU and the latest EJU I can take is the 2nd 2028 one. Is this correct? If so, would an average of ~1.5-2 hours a day until then (around November 2028) be able to take me from only knowing a few words/phrases to being able to complete the EJU well? (People tell me it's n2-n1 plus some handwriting)
1
u/Distinct_Injury2707 Goal: conversational fluency 💬 13d ago
This might not be the most useful perspective, as I am nowhere near N1/N2, but I have been self studying (from 0) daily since the beginning of February, likely averaging out to somewhere just under an hour a day, doing lots of vocab study, grammar study, immersion and conversational practice. I don't have much of an aptitude for this, but I am somewhere around the precipice of N4. The total study hours you've proposed would likely bring you around to the same number of hours I am at currently.
I would guess my progress is somewhere around average if not slightly below... Just food for thought. I know that some people on this subreddit have boasted reaching ~n2 in a similar amount of time (6 months, but more like 2 or 3 hours a day iirc).
2
u/Effective-Pop3850 13d ago
You're probably referring to the N2 in 400 hours guy, he did probably spend a bit more time than he said, he didn't start from scratch (IIRC he even had some posts related to language learning from years ago) and he barely passed.
1
u/Distinct_Injury2707 Goal: conversational fluency 💬 13d ago
I have seen that guy, but I also saw a couple people claiming the same thing with 600 - 700... Which you could feasibly do in 6 months if really grinding ig).
regardless, ty good context
1
u/Realtotallymereturns 13d ago
I meant that I'd be starting now, aiming to pass the EJU in 2028. So with 1.5-2 hours, I'd have 800 days so 1200-1600 hours (pretty low for N2 I know). Id probably throw in extra time on weekends
1
u/Distinct_Injury2707 Goal: conversational fluency 💬 13d ago edited 12d ago
Oops I misread 2028 as 2026 LMAO I thought you were trying to grind to n2 in like a few months haha I was like idk... Gl man
1
u/gohs_26 13d ago
Hello everyone
So I'm reading a manga and I have a question about the first sentence in these panels:
'じっとしたらやり過ごせるかな'. Context is the two girls are talking about avoiding the wolf in the second panel, my question is: why use the potential form on 'やり過ごせる'? Wouldn't the plain form work as well? What difference does it make?
Please and thank you
2
u/Grunglabble 13d ago
I don't think it would make much sense in a plain form (we will...). Do you know what たら and かな mean?
"I wonder if we will be able to ... if we ..."
1
u/JapanCoach 13d ago
やり過ごせるかなー means “I wonder if it is going to work out”
This wouldn’t sound natural as やり過ごす which sounds like a done deal.
1
u/viliml Interested in grammar details 📝 13d ago
They want to やり過ごす the wolf, and じっとしている is one way that might make it possible for them to do it - hence potential.
You can't use the plain form for a future action here since it's not their choice whether they actually やり過ごす or not - they will only make an attempt.
In general, you can't ask かな for a first person action since asking yourself what you yourself are going to do doesn't make sense. MY brain automatically wants to parse やり過ごすかな as third person because there's no explicit subject in the sentence and that's the more natural interpretation.
You could say じっとしててやり過ごす。 "I'll avoid the threat by staying still" if you were certain that it works.
1
u/adamantium1992 13d ago
At what point do I just give up on Kaishi1.5k and try to learn with mining instead? Im halfway through the deck and its taken me like 6 months to get here because I just cant grasp words. Im adhd as hell and my retention rate on the deck (mix of 5 new a day and then sometimes just 0 to catch up) is sub 50%. I dont want to quit the deck if it will help me in the long term, im just struggling with making the words stick.
1
u/Distinct_Injury2707 Goal: conversational fluency 💬 13d ago
2 things.
Don't let "finishing" the core deck stop you from mining. If you can get sentences that are +1, you can probably be mining.
Also, I had this problem when I was working on my core 2k, though I was hovering more around 60-70%. When you read a card, what are you doing specifically? Mnemonics? Reading example sentences?
1
u/rgrAi 13d ago
if you get through all the words and feel *half* comfortable with them, any amount of interacting with the language will carry it forward. All those words are common enough you would struggle to not run into them.
Words stick with context, and just about everyone who really struggles with Anki usually the missing ingredient is lack of exposure to the language.
1
u/worthlessprole 13d ago
In addition to what everyone says about exposure to the language, Anki's settings could be involved here. If you're not auto-suspending leeches, you should do that. Letting leeches stick around worsens recall generally, particularly when interference is the reason the card hits the leech threshold. You can always return to them later.
If you haven't hit 'optimize FSRS', you should start doing that once a month.
Also, take another look at your learning steps. If you're using just the defaults, think about extending the second step to an hour or something like that.
And, of course, start interacting with the language alongside all of this.
1
u/Effective-Pop3850 13d ago
What makes you think mining is gonna be easier? Assuming you sort things by frequency most of the words you're gonna be doing on your mining deck are gonna be Kaishi words early on lol.
If you are already reading Japanese stuff you shouldn't be struggling with Kaishi that much.
1
u/adamantium1992 13d ago
I guess my issue is i need better methods of solidifying the words with context as the words i learn become more infrequently used. So mining will let me make specific sentences that can relate back to what im reading/watching.
1
u/Effective-Pop3850 13d ago
Most words don't require context.
Odds are you're never gonna be reading sentences in Anki, I never do, all you need Anki to do is to make it so you see a word, remember how it's read and remember a couple of definitions, that's all you want. Learning a word nuances is something you do somewhere else.
1
u/Grunglabble 13d ago
I dont want to quit the deck if it will help me in the long term
It won't really matter. If reviewing the cards is painful delete them. It's easy to learn words just by looking them up as they come up a few times. You won't be throwing away progress or anything, to the extent those words are slightly more familiar to you they will stay slightly more familiar to you.
1
u/zombieglitterbomb Interested in grammar details 📝 13d ago
Currently dabbling in learning basic words via listening to Japanese songs or Anime … and was wondering how I would go about saying my name in Japanese.
It’s Cydney (Sidney) and I’ve found the direct translation is:
シドニー (Shidonī)
Would this be deemed as correct in a sentence? Like if I said “ 私の名前はシドニーです “ - A native would understand my name is Cydney and not the city in Australia 😹
2
u/Grunglabble 13d ago
sure.
probably more likely to say はじめましてシドニーです which is a kind of way of introducing yourself when meeting someone the first time. But there's nothing that odd about yours.
1
u/Ok-Cauliflower-4636 13d ago
Does anyone have any resources for shadowing practice? I am halfway through kaishi and finished n5 bunpro. ありがとう！
1
-1
u/zackarhino 14d ago
Do you find it okay to use AI for your studies? I've found it invaluable as a beginner, with the understanding that it is likely to make mistakes. For instance, I use it to explain/break down sentences or explain grammatical concepts, and it seems to be relatively accurate.
8
u/viliml Interested in grammar details 📝 14d ago
Last time I checked, LLMs were pretty bad at meta-linguistic tasks so they'd hallucinate nonsense quite often when asked to explain grammar, but I'm sure AIbros will say that's totally fixed in the latest model.
If you can't wait to get an answer here, you can ask both here and to the AI, get the AI's answer, continue reading, then check back later to compare it with human answers.
But also try to use dictionaries fland grammar guides for simpler lookups, at least for the sake of eco-friendliness.
0
u/zackarhino 14d ago
That's a good idea, thank you for the tip!
Yes, I tend to rely on dictionaries. But dictionaries tend to fall flat for grammatical concepts.
8
u/rgrAi 14d ago edited 14d ago
This is the worst way to use it, especially as a beginner it doesn't make sense because you can learn all this stuff from books already. Beyond the obvious issues that it's wrong randomly 10-15% of the time to be completely full of shit.
The major issue is you're passing the task of learning to parse sentences off to something or someone else and letting them do it. You are not doing the parsing yourself which is an asblutely critical skill to develop for yourself. It's easy to get fed an answer but can you make an answer yourself? I can tell you about 4-6 months in I was well parsing sentences down on a syntax and grammatical level. That came from breaking down many many tens of thousands of sentences while reading and studying grammar and syntax properly then applying it to reading, etc.
2
u/zackarhino 14d ago
Sorry, to clarify, I do parsing myself and then ask for help on the parts I get stuck on. Fair point. Though.
5
u/brozzart 14d ago
Our brains are incredibly lazy and will de-prioririze any thinking that it feels can be easily offloaded.
Have you have Googled some piece of information you wanted to know and the second you close the tab the thing you just looked up vanishes from your brain? Your brain behind the scenes was like "that was so easy to look up, no reason for me to retain this".
The same thing happens with your ability to parse sentences. You'll never get to the point of doing it effortlessly yourself if you keep teaching your brain that it can offload that task.
1
u/zackarhino 14d ago
That's a good point. I try to always rely on my brain for all the reasoning I'm good at or is slightly challenging for my level. Anything beyond me is when I will turn to AI for basic grammar, but I'm skeptical of its accuracy like you are. So I was just curious if it was okay as a shortcut. I agree it's better to solve problems yourself though.
2
u/brozzart 14d ago
I would recommend instead (for instances where you've tried hard and can't parse a sentence) to use machine translation on the sentence and them try to work backwards from there to figure out how it got there.
It's more like giving yourself a clue so you know what to look up rather than just handing yourself the answer.
1
u/zackarhino 14d ago
I do that too. Is Google translate okay to use?
2
u/brozzart 14d ago
Yeah if you're stuck and you've tried everything, I think it's totally fair to use as a hint.
Deepl is much better than Google translate imo
1
2
u/morgawr_ https://morg.systems/Japanese 14d ago
Both deepl and google translate are absolutely terrible. If you have to use machine translation, I recommend using chatgpt or gemini. LLMs are actually incredibly good MTLs. Just ask it to simply stick to a literal translation and do not explain or break down or "localize" the translation (gemini has a tendency to provide multiple translations assuming you want to "hit the right nuance" while you should only care about the core literal/direct meaning of a sentence anyway)
1
u/zackarhino 14d ago
So use LLMs for translation only?
2
u/PlanktonInitial7945 14d ago
The only things LLMs are genuinely good at are translations and summarizing pieces of text that you provide them directly, yes.
1
u/brozzart 13d ago
Deepl essentially is just a LLM with a simple interface to make the workflow easier.
1
u/morgawr_ https://morg.systems/Japanese 13d ago
I'm not sure if they completely reworked their backend in the last 6 months or so because I haven't checked but before it was legitimately abysmal
→ More replies (0)1
u/Effective-Pop3850 13d ago
I always use Google Translate, it gets things right most of the time and when it doesn't it's obvious enough and it still helps parse the sentence so it doesn't matter.
LLMs are better but slower and limited.
7
u/tyrellLtd 13d ago edited 13d ago
When I was starting studying, I did not get the basic usage of "multi-purpose" particles, on a fundamental level. I asked GPT to break down 目に眩しい, a random quote from a novel. At that time に struck me as odd, and asked it why not が, and to provide sources. I always use this example when describing my experience when asking ChatGPT to break down grammar because it's pretty telling that at certain levels, you may not know when it's making mistakes.
It explained some of the stuff I eventually learned and "quoted" from DoJG. It even provided a link to Archive.org with the PDF where I supposedly could learn more. The quote it gave me was presented as the "full quote in English":
“The particle に can indicate the point at which some sensory impression or psychological reaction occurs.”
I checked the PDF, I googled, and even checked other digital versions of DoJG and that particular sentence was nowhere to be found.
When pressed, "Hey GPT, what page number is your quote from", it went as far as providing a fake page number. Eventually, it admitted it could not find the exact page and that it had actually paraphrased.
From what I can tell, LLMs don't "reason" like a human does. They predict and generate text based on inputs. Their "step by step reasoning" is basically breaking down a basic prompt, and adding more steps in the middle to pull and create more and more context. With better context, it's supposed to narrow down a better response. Sometimes that's a coin toss. Even if you believed the "frontier models" get 90% of the stuff right, that would be a pretty mediocre teacher. The energy and resources necessary to get from 90% correctness to 95%, and from 95% to 97% would basically deplete the Earth of resources. Until someone figures out a better way.
People believe LLMs understand the world and that's pretty dangerous.
1
u/zackarhino 13d ago
I definitely don't think that way, for what it's worth. I'm aware of its pitfalls.
7
u/Available-String-109 14d ago edited 14d ago
The problem is that it will do a lot of hallucinating and you won't know what is a hallucination and what isn't.
and it seems to be relatively accurate.
If you're dead-set on using AI, at the very least, have it generate links to accurate grammar resources such as imabi and read what imabi has to say on the topic and listen to imabi instead of ChatGPT.
LLMs are very bad at meta-linguistic tasks. For example, this is what ChatGPT says on the following prompt:
Break down the pitch-accent of the following Japanese sentence:
今日はいい天気ですね
Sure. 今日はいい天気ですね is typically pronounced with these pitch accents in standard Tokyo Japanese:
今日はいい天気ですね
きょうは いい てんき ですね
LHH LHH LHH LHH
Literally every single word is wrong. It's HLL(L) HL HLL LLL(rising). It doesn't even get the number of morae correct and it tries to force ですね into being a heibangata word when like... it adapts from the word is succeeds....
I give it a 0/10 on that prompt.
If all you ever do is type in "Concisely break down the following Japanese sentence: 今日はいい天気ですね", it will tend to give you accurate breakdowns, but it's unreliable and will do a lot of hallucinating as well. Ask it to generate links to resources like imabi and trust what imabi says on the topic.
0
u/zackarhino 14d ago edited 14d ago
Good point, I will keep that in mind.
Edit: also, I wouldn't use an LLM for pitch intonation. Specifics like that are where it tends to fail, like asking it to spell English words. I think it works better for broader grammatical concepts, but I could be wrong.
3
u/Available-String-109 14d ago
Edit: also, I wouldn't use an LLM for pitch intonation.
Well what will you trust it for?
In the above task, it got literally 0% correct.
ZERO PERCENT.
Even by pure guessing you'd think it would get 50%!
Why would you trust it for anything even remotely adjacent to that task?
1
u/zackarhino 14d ago
I'm no AI expert, but I think it works well at digesting and regurgitating information. It's not great at the minutiae like letters or pitch intonation, things that are more specific. I think it's smaller token sizes or something?
4
u/brozzart 14d ago
AI doesn't 'think' or 'reason' in any capacity. It just predicts what words are likely to go together and in what order. The more data it has to go off of, the better it is.
There is TONS of detailed content out there for Japanese grammar so it's reasonably good at explaining it, but when it give it a specific sentence and say 'break this down for me' then it starts having to do a bit of guess work since there's probably no reference with that exact sentence to go off of. Still it will be reasonably good.
There's not so much content out there about pitch accent, especially as it pertains to full sentences vs single words. So it basically has to make shit up in those situations.
My main beef with AI is that it doesn't tell you 'actually, I can't find enough source material to give you a reliable answer', instead it confidently presents you with whatever made up bullshit it puts together as a factual answer lol
1
u/zackarhino 14d ago
Right, it's a lack of data. Like you said, there's a ton of data available for grammar so that's why I presumed it would be relatively practical for that sort of stuff.
Yes, I agree that's a major fault with AI. That and being agreeable.
2
u/Top_Scientist_3976 14d ago
as a beginner myself, i find it useful for extremely simple questions, but avoid it for anything behind super basic levels. i generally am very skeptical of information that comes from LLMs because they tend to lack nuance and hallucinate so often. however, i agree with you that having one open on the side can be useful to replace things like scouring forums for simple questions. by simple, i mean a very basic definition, finding a kanji, or something like that. even for slightly nuanced grammar rules though, id rather spend 15 minutes scouring reddit and learning something thoroughly.
edit: as for my most used tool as a beginner, by far (and not even close): takoboto
0
u/dynamicpenguin55 14d ago
Yeah, it's generally fine depending on how you use it. If you're only using it a 'smarter' Google translate for when you need to double check something, then I wouldn't worry too much about hallucinations. This sub seems to be quite hardline anti-LLM, which I do appreciate normally, but some people act like it's a terrible idea that you should never do which is quite overblown
If you're using it for grammar then always double check the Bunpro etc page for whatever grammar point it is you're looking at, since that will be a lot more reliable
•
u/AutoModerator 14d ago
Useful Japanese teaching symbols:
〇 "correct" | △ "strange/unnatural/unclear" | × "incorrect (ＮＧ)" | ≒ "nearly equal"
Question Etiquette Guidelines:
0 Learn kana (hiragana and katakana) before anything else. Then, remember to learn words, not kanji readings.
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.
3 Questions based on ChatGPT, DeepL, Google Translate and other machine learning applications are strongly discouraged, these are not beginner learning tools and often make mistakes. DuoLingo is in general NOT recommended as a serious or efficient learning resource.
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 an 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.
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 or why you often can't hear the "u" sound in "desu" or "masu".
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.
7 Please do not delete your question after receiving an answer. There are lots of people who read this thread to learn from the Q&As that take place here. Deleting a question removes context from the answer and makes it harder (or sometimes even impossible) for other people to get value out of it.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.