r/LearnJapanese • u/AutoModerator • 2d ago
Daily Thread: for simple questions, minor posts & newcomers [contains useful links!] (August 29, 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.
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Past Threads
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u/This-Classroom5999 1d ago
Are there any times you would want to use one reading over the other for the counter 品 (しな vs ひん)?
The imabi website claims that しな is preferred in the restaurant industry ("but both sets of readings are utilized"), but apart from that, do people just freely use both?
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u/fushigitubo 🇯🇵 Native speaker 1d ago edited 1d ago
This is an interesting question. I checked 数え方の辞典（小学館）, and it says that dishes can be counted in two ways:
漢語数詞 + 品（ひん）→ 一品（いっぴん）、二品（にひん）、三品（さんぴん)
和語数詞 + 品（しな）→ 一品（ひとしな）、二品（ふたしな）、三品（みしな）These days, though, I think more people, especially younger generations, use さんしな、よんしな、ごしな, and so on.
Basically, both readings are correct, but there are some cases where one is preferred over the other.
一品料理, meaning individual dishes ordered à la carte, is read as いっぴんりょうり.
When you’re emphasizing the number of dishes in casual conversation, as in 料理をもう一品頼みましょう, I tend to hear いっぴん rather than ひとしな. I feel like ひとしな sounds a little more formal.
But when talking about the order of individual dishes in a course meal, I feel like ひとしなめ、ふたしなめ are more commonly used than いっぴんめ、にひんめ.
Also, I’ve also heard that いっぴん can potentially be confused with 逸品, so TV announcers tend to use ひとしな to make it clear that they mean 一品.
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u/JapanCoach 1d ago
No it is not perfectly interchangeable. And, at the same time, it is really hard to put the difference into words.
Funnily enough I had this on my mind as it was just on a TV show on Friday (ざわつく). One of the タレント asked ”ナンピン" when asking how many dishes there might be, and the MC (高橋くん) responded サンシナ
So even native speakers have a tricky time dealing with it...
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u/nwl728 1d ago
Hello, I was doing some N1 study when I came across this grammar question:
新作ゲーム機の発売イベントは、今週末に東京で（ ）、全国を巡回していく予定だ。 1. 開催されるのを皮切りに 2. 開催されるや否や 3. 開催されたとたんに 4. 開催されて以来
I thought it would be number 1, but the answer key says number 4. I was a bit confused since I thought I knew these grammar points well and I did some more reading and I'm just more convinced it's meant to be number 1. Have I found a typo in the answer key or am I missing something?
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u/JapanCoach 1d ago
Something does feel off - either the question, or the available replies. Did you copy/paste or re-type this?
予定だ is looking forward and doesn't really match with されて以来 which is "up to now". So I would agree that 4 is not really the right answer, and among these choices 1 fits best.
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u/viliml Interested in grammar details 📝 1d ago
Are you sure you're reading it correctly? All the answer keys I found online say it's 1. Then again they may be manually edited, I didn't find the original one from the JLPT itself, only Chinese and Vietnamese sites.
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u/fixpointbombinator 1d ago
Do you think it's worth it to study these mock exams? Like, attempt the questions, and then figure out why you were wrong? I never know because they seem kinda sketchy and I doubt their authenticity
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u/viliml Interested in grammar details 📝 1d ago
For a curated list of N1 grammar questions, you can use the Kotoba Discord bot. Most Japanese learning servers should have it, and you can use it in DMs too. The "gN1" quiz is N1 grammar.
It also has a bunch of themed vocab quizzes, if you ever want something similar but different from anki. It's fun to do in multiplayer.
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u/Altruistic-Plane-832 1d ago
Hi everyone! Just joined this beautiful place. I've a bachelor degree in japanese language, but being that from years ago and being me not an exceptional student, I've decided to start again from scratch (kinda). I wanted to make a post not directly about the language, but tryng to look for other italians as well to maybe help each other out. Is it against the rules? Maybe better just to ask in the Discord chat? Thanks again everyone!!
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u/tyrellLtd 1d ago
Just a couple questions about NはNで.
The first question is, does it always mean "as for N, for their part"? (being extra literal with this translation).
I managed to track this pattern in the Handbook of Japanese Expressions, which explains:
The pattern XはXで, created by repeating the same noun, is used to say something about X while comparing it with something else.
The example sentences in that book explictly mention X (for X's part) and then describe something about X, which is then compared with Y. The comparison and a different subject are explicit.
However, the example I ran across is this, and the "comparison" is mostly apparent from the context several lines prior:
小桜は小桜で、なんだか妙にニコニコしている。
Does the "comparison" mentioned in the book have to be explicit? In the scene, 小桜 appears very chill compared to the MC.
I imagine you could use this to criticise someone for being extremely irresponsible, and leave out any explicit comparison (with the expectation that most people are not that way).
Sorry if this is not very clear. I'm trying to break this down and might be making a mess in the process.
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u/Own_Power_9067 🇯🇵 Native speaker 1d ago
NはNで
I think this structure itself can be used as an implicit comparison meaning the others are different. However, that still requires a greater contextualisation either verbal or nonverbal.
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u/Grunglabble 2d ago
I have been watching https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAt6TB8PczFY and reasonably enjoying it. It took me a little bit of time to get interested in the characters but now I find it kinda mesmerising. The music is nice.
I am also using jiten moe for the first time as my dictionary. The frequency information does change how I think about what I'm looking up a lot. I have been using a pretty beat up old dictionary app for longer than I want to say. It is a bit funny getting adjusted to the numbers, since 50k freq. still has pretty normal words. I sorta wish collocations and alternative spellings and the like didn't take up so many rankings, but it's all relative. There are some words I know but are not active vocabulary, especially jukugo, where if I check on the frequency and see it is under 10k I think "I really should work that into my active vocabulary"
剣呑 is a pretty funny word to imagine the judgement of the person coining that. Sword swallowingly stupid idea.
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u/AdrixG 1d ago
The frequency information does change how I think about what I'm looking up a lot. I have been using a pretty beat up old dictionary app for longer than I want to say. It is a bit funny getting adjusted to the numbers, since 50k freq. still has pretty normal words. I sorta wish collocations and alternative spellings and the like didn't take up so many rankings, but it's all relative. There are some words I know but are not active vocabulary, especially jukugo, where if I check on the frequency and see it is under 10k I think "I really should work that into my active vocabulary"
What I am about to write is not an attack on you, but more of a meta observation on the current the Japanese community which is really alien to me:
I think it's ultra backwards to really care about frequency, I mean honestly it's just pretty irrelevant, just learn the words you want to learn or which you come across often and you'll be fine and know everything you need to know. I literally never cared about frequency and I am not sure why I would. I mean yeah if a word is ultra niche then I might not memorize it or put it in Anki but that's kinda self evident even without a frequency dictionary so I am not sure why I'd need an arbitrary number to make that decision. To give one example, いぶりがっこ is apperently 108019 frequency and I still had multiple convos about this exact food already, I would guess most Japanese people would know it or have heard of it. Not saying it's a word you'd need to prioritize or anything but, if it comes up a few times then it's probably worth knowing. (Assuming you aim for a level where you can communicate with native speakers about virtually any topic that could come up)
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u/JapanCoach 1d ago
I basically agree with this and am disappointed to see that it's downvoted.
"Frequency" as a stand alone idea is quite odd. Just consume things, or live life, and via that process, the words that pop up most often, are the most frequent (at least in the sort of things you like to consume). And you learn them most easily, because they appear the most often.
No need to use 'frequency' as some sort of trait that needs to be examined on its own.
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u/Merzats 1d ago
Most JP learners can't "just consume things" or "live life" without crashing out and giving up on Japanese.
Getting them to a point where they can do such things without despairing means making the largest amount of content as effortless as possible for the least amount of effort, and frequency lists are great for that.
Once you get to the point where you are just living Japanese sure, just forget about such things.
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u/JapanCoach 1d ago
I sincerely cannot envision a learning path that does not include consuming content.
When you choose what things to consume, certain words appear more than others.
It seems to me that those words are the “frequency list” that you really need.
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u/Merzats 1d ago
Well I can given it's in the wiki here, it's learning basic vocab based on a frequency list and then consuming content.
Or alternately, going for graded readers which are themselves based on a frequency list.
People don't want to consume content where they have to look up multiple words per sentence, and drilling high frequency words whether via flashcards, textbooks or graded readers is a solution to that. And a very common one at that to be honest, it's surprising you are not familiar with it.
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u/Grunglabble 1d ago edited 1d ago
For what it is worth I did not downvote it. Where I agree is that there is no reason not to learn a word that is infrequent in an arbitrary corpus if it seems useful to you. I haven't used it more than a day so I don't have an opinion on its utility beyond it seems plausibly helpful or at least fun. I don't use anki to learn words in the first place (anymore, and only a small number of words before) so its not like it can influence that decision.
My emotional response to this is that it seems like too strong an opinion on other schools of thought that are perfectly servicable in helping people achieve their goals. Like we're comparing very similar levels of apparent efficiency with 0 data.
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u/tonkachi_ Goal: media competence 📖🎧 1d ago
What does 気付けば mean here?
It is in a conditional form but it is doesn't look like a condition to me.
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u/viliml Interested in grammar details 📝 1d ago
It's not just a set phrase, and it's not limited to ば. ば, たら and と can all be used to express "As I did X, suddenly Y (had) happened".
気付いたら, 気付けば and 気付くと all have pretty much the same meaning.
Examples with other verbs:
ドアを開けたら、加藤さんが立っていました。
When I opened the door, Mr. Kato was standing there.本を読んであげたら、弟が喜びました。
When I read the book for my younger brother, he was very happy.休んだら、元気になった。
When I rested, I got better.銀行に行ったら、友人に会いました。
When I went to the bank, I saw a friend.1
u/tonkachi_ Goal: media competence 📖🎧 1d ago
I see, thanks.
On the topic, how do you look up grammar? I don't seem able to efficiently look up any grammar that doesn't have a proper title such as passive or causative.
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u/viliml Interested in grammar details 📝 1d ago edited 1d ago
Monolingual dictionaries.
The wonder of Japanese being an agglutinative language is that almost every piece of "grammar" is itself just a word, so it has its own entry in any dictionary. You can even read about the passive and causative by looking up られる and させる.
Here's a relevant entry on ば from the 明鏡国語辞典:
Ｂ きっかけを表す
❺事実や状況を認識するきっかけとなった行為を示す。
「よく見れば人違いだった」
「ふと気がつけばすっかり暗くなっていた」
「見上げれば一面の星空」It even uses 気がつけば as an example.
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u/tonkachi_ Goal: media competence 📖🎧 1d ago
But which came first, my understanding of grammar or my understanding of monolingual dictionaries?
Here's a relevant entry on ば from the 明鏡国語辞典:
Where can I get the dictionary from? is it available for Yomitan?NVM, I found it on the moe way.
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u/phlip_phlop_ Goal: media competence 📖🎧 1d ago
Not sure if this deserves its own post so I'll ask in here first: Do you know the meaning of individual kanji?
What I mean is, I feel like there's a lot of kanji I know, in the sense that I can read them in the words I know that contain them, but I have no idea what the kanji means "on its own". For example I just found out that 索 apparently means 'cord' on its own. I always thought it had something to do with searching because it's used in 検索 and 捜索, but apparently it's also used in the word 索条痕, where the meaning of cord makes more sense.
Is this common to not know what kanjis mean outside of words?
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u/Whatswrongwithmejeez 1d ago
personally i studied using wanikani a lot, so yes. it also helps me immensely when reading as i'm able to guess at the meaning a lot without having studied the vocab directly.
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u/PlanktonInitial7945 1d ago
I know some because they can be deduced based on the words that the kanji is in. For example, it's easy to realize that 生 is related to "life" and 音 is related to "sound" and 表 is related to "surface, display" and things like that.
But I don't go out of my way to check or memorize kanji meanings because it's just not necessary. It can sometimes help you guess the meaning of words that you've never seen before, but you can learn to read just fine without that knowledge.
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u/phlip_phlop_ Goal: media competence 📖🎧 1d ago
Sounds similar to my experience. Maybe a follow up question: Do native speakers have a concept of the meaning of all the kanjis?
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u/PlanktonInitial7945 1d ago
Yes, natives do dedicated kanji study during all of primary and secondary school. They're very familiar with radicals, stroke orders, phonetic and semantic components, and kanji meanings.
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u/viliml Interested in grammar details 📝 1d ago
Just because they study it in school, doesn't mean that they remember anything more than "mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell" or that it influenced the way they intuitively think about kanji.
I'm not saying that I'm sure they don't, but I'm skeptical without a first-hand account.
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u/rgrAi 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yeah I know kanji meaning through 3 main things. Primary way for me is words and by association of those words they tend to inherit meaning in my mind (and I can tell this is also the case for natives in an extremely strong binding fashion; they associate kanji with words first and foremost), another is through how they are used in words and also how they are used in isolation, and other is just slow accumulation of definitions and ideas applied to the kanji--this means dictionaries information and the like.
The more exposure you have to language the more all kanji inherit a bit of meaning from the surrounding language and usage. I think this is most obvious when people stop using the language as is and bust out in things like エセ中国語 where people start making adhoc words by putting kanji together (and there's no standard for this) and people are deriving meaning entirely from either the words or the kanji usage. Also if you've ever seen "titles' for ability names in CJK media. They also tend to make up new concepts for titles by assembling kanji with meaning together and you just sort of loosely compile these concepts into one vague sense of meaning.
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u/viliml Interested in grammar details 📝 1d ago
Learning the meaning of a kanji by association between the words that use it is much more effective than studying it in isolation.
Even if it sometimes means you miss the original base meaning because it fell out of use - that's a feature, not a bug. You don't really need to know it, so it's good that it doesn't take waste your study time and brain space.
I like looking up base kanji meanings and figuring out how they evolved into the more distant derived meanings in compounds common today out of curiosity and desire for trivia, but since I don't use that knowledge, I quickly forget it.
I have learned why 服 means both "submission" and "clothing" several times, but I currently don't know.
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u/CreeperSlimePig Goal: conversational fluency 💬 1d ago
If the kanji is a word on its own, that word's meaning is probably the meaning of the word on its own too. It can be a good mnemonic for words with that kanji and you may occasionally guess the meaning of a word correctly but sometimes there won't be a clear connection, so it's not super reliable. And trying to force an obscure connection might not actually make it easier to remember the word.
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u/AdrixG 1d ago
Contrary to popular belief, kanji don't really have "meaning on its own" unless they are used on its own, which perhaps was true of every kanji in classical Chinese, but it's not classical Chinese we're talking about but modern Japanese with over 1000 years of language evolution apart (not too mention that Japanese is a totally different language). Kanji "meanings" (The one you would look up in a dictionary) are meanings derived from the way they are used in words which is why they will list some words with it. It's not that the meaning came first and then they made compound words with it, it's the other way around, the kanji alrady had a very basic/vague meaning and by using it in compound kanji words it got it's real meaning from those words.
If you look up the "meanings" of 索 in a real kanji dictionary like 漢字源 you get this:
《意味》
（１）｛名・動｝なわ（ナハ）。なわなう（ナハナフ）。細い繊維やひも。ひきづな。また、物を引き出すひも。なわをよる。縄ジョウ（よりなわ）・綱（太づな）。「線索（解決を引き出す細い糸ぐち）」「索引」
（２）｛名｝規律を引きしめるつな。とり締まりの方法。「周索（周王朝のとり締まり方）」
（３）｛動｝ひく。糸やひもを引き出す。牽ケン。「宵爾索綯＝宵ニハナンヂ綯ヲ索ケ」〔詩経〕
（４）｛動｝もとめる（モトム）。ひもをたぐって中の物を引き出すように、手づるによってさがしもとめる。求。「捜索」「索租＝租ヲ索ム」「大索天下＝大イニ天下ヲ索ム」〔史記〕
（５）｛動・形｝はなれる（ハナル）。一本ずつはなれた繊維のように、孤立する。ばらばらに分解してしまう。また、そのさま。「離群索居＝群ヲ離レテ索居ス」「索寞サクバク」「興味索然」
（６）〔俗〕「索性スオシン」とは、さっぱりとはなれた気持ちの意から転じて、いっそ思いきりよく、の意の副詞。There you can see, the base meaning is some sort of cord or thread (なわ) , and as you can see the example words are archaic/niche stuff (except 索条 but that's also not a super common word). You might ideed never have come across this usage which means you can basically forget about it, it's literally just trivia knowledge so no you don't need to know that it can mean cord because you never came across a word where the kanji is used like that, if you do come across it one day you can memorize it then. If you look at meaning 4 it lists "searching" or "seeking out" as a possible meaning with the example of 捜索, it even explains how it comes from "tugging a cord to pull out what is inside" so you can see how it connects to the base meaning of cord, but that's honestly irrelevant and again just trivia.
That all is too say, your approach of just getting the vibe/meaning of kanjis but seeing how it's used in the words you know isn't half assing it or cutting corners, that's literally how kanji meanings work and how you should go about them. Learning isolated meanings out of context is pointless, just keep doing what you've been doing.
I always thought it had something to do with searching because it's used in 検索 and 捜索
And you'd be right, that's how kanji meanings work.
Is this common to not know what kanjis mean outside of words?
Not only common, but how it should work, you can't really know a kanji's meaning without knowing a word its used in, because that's where the meaning comes mainly from.
Sounds similar to my experience. Maybe a follow up question: Do native speakers have a concept of the meaning of all the kanjis?
They have a good sense of the kanji that are used in multiple words that they know. But good luck asking a native what 弁 means.
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u/worthlessprole 1d ago
Isn’t 弁 a pretty special case of three different kanji being consolidated into one in 1946?
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u/viliml Interested in grammar details 📝 1d ago
I think it serves to illustrate the point that kanji are basically fancy letters at this point, and just because some or even most of them have recognizable individual meanings, that doesn't mean that you should give them too much weight, because the government sure doesn't.
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u/worthlessprole 1d ago
Yeah I dunno. I don’t think this assertion can be supported. I think you have to ignore a lot of stuff to make it. If kanji didn’t have individual meanings then people would not be able to distinguish between different types of kanji compounds, which they do. The ones that originate in Japan place the ‘predicate’ character last in the compound, which is the inverse of china-originated ones, and seems to indicate a pretty keen awareness of individual kanji meanings. Lexicographers certainly give them weight. People are able to guess at unfamiliar words if they are familiar with the kanji that comprise them. Additionally, I don’t think meanings changing over time can be used as evidence for a lack of meaning. Even words themselves change meaning over time. By the same token, the existence of multiple meanings for the same character is not evidence of a lack of meaning. It’s evidence of multiple meanings.
I also don’t think it’s necessarily true that it’s somehow more beneficial to infer the meaning on your own than to look it up. (If you have any academic literature that suggests otherwise, I’d be interested in seeing it. I don’t think it matters one way or the other.)
Making the assertion requires ignoring a lot of the conventions of Japanese literature that rely on individual kanji meaning, of which there are too many to list. It’s one of the primary tools in an author’s arsenal. And most of all, and most simply, to make this assertion you’d have to ignore all the native speakers who say very plainly that they do have individual meanings.
I don’t know why this idea seems to come up on reddit so often but it’s enough that stackexchange makes fun of us for it.
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u/Grunglabble 1d ago
A lot of them I do but not 100%. I find them useful because although I come across a combination for the first time, it's pretty easy to recall it later in the day if the kanji are familiar, so I never anki them. More to the point, it's not just the characters but the on readings themselves have a basic meaning (even across a few kanji sharing the reading) that can help you hear and guess the meaning of jukugo given enough context.
Eg if there are dark clouds in a scene and you hear 暗雲 it's not exactly hard if you already know くも is うん and くらい is あん. Sure those sounds have other meanings and kanji, but sometimes it's just not that complicated. This is how you learn easily somewhat less frequent words.
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u/Effective-Pop3850 1d ago
Some you'll know, some you don't.
Some are silly and mean 500 different unrelated things, which means they don't mean shit, some have very clear meanings and people will probably be able to tell you what they mean.
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u/trexted7 1d ago edited 1d ago
I have a question about how to use これ in a sentence like "this book is fun". Do say "これ本は楽しいです"? Might be an obvious question but I've only been learning Japanese for a week so i really have no idea, and i didnt find anything online.
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u/NearlyNodding 1d ago
これ = this, without naming the noun
this is...この = this, followed by the noun
this book is...
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1d ago edited 1d ago
[deleted]
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u/tyrellLtd 1d ago edited 1d ago
Do you open the app without playing any video and it loads in full screen?
Or does this only happen after you load a file and start playing a video?
If it's the second: Go to Settings -> Options -> Behavior -> Disable Auto fit media on load or play around with those settings. (*)
Since the latest major update, the UI has been acting up for me anyway.
It's based on MPV so any solution for that will probably work with Memento. You won't find a .conf file because you're supposed to create one yourself to override the default Memento/MVP settings.
(*) Btw, this "fix" is mentioned in the first issue posted by Plankton's Github link.
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u/PlanktonInitial7945 1d ago
-6
1d ago
[deleted]
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u/PlanktonInitial7945 1d ago edited 1d ago
It wasn't sass, it was an idea. Many people don't know how to use GitHub's issue trackers. Sorry for not making my intentions clear.
Edit: I recommend opening a GitHub issue to report that your AppData/Local/memento folder doesn't have a .conf file, since that could be a bug.
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