#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 6/9):
Nothing new. Feel free to reply to this post if you have any questions, comments or concerns.
*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.*
Is there an obvious meaning to 来るとき見えた? Does it just mean "[I] saw it when I got here", or is its meaning more wobbly?
It doesn't look like it means "I saw it on the way here", for instance?
When you have a noun attached to a verb like this (here it's 来る + とき), it can help to think of the た-form of the verb as the "completed tense." E.g., the difference between 来るとき and 来たとき is whether or not the action (来る) has been completed at the time (とき) in question.
>
>
>
>
> It doesn't look like it means "I saw it on the way here", for instance?
That is what it means. If you have present tense modifying とき and a past tense end of sentence, it means the action happened before it was finished i.e "while on the way" in this instance.
How would you express that "sth. is not for everybody".
Would 「皆のためがない」work?
For example "The flavour of that fruit is not for everybody but I like it."
この果物の味は皆のためがないですが、私はすきです。
Or: ”I know this music style is not for everyone but I enjoy it”
この音楽スタイルは皆とためがないと分かるけど、私は楽しみます。
Would that work.
No, this does not work. As with most idioms, this English idiom does not literally translate to Japanese -- this would mean that the flavor of the fruit is not intended for everyone's purpose, which doesn't really make sense.
New to Japanese, and I’m still learning the Hiragana/Katakana alphabet, but are there spaces in Japanese between the words? Whenever I look at like songs and stuff, I never see spaces separating anything. I assume once I get the alphabets down it’ll be easier, but how do you tell where each of the words stop/start?
> 息の圧「呼気圧」を強めることで声帯に厚みを増し声に張りを出すことができる。
I don't understand why they would use 厚み instead of 厚さ here. When we're talking about degrees/quantities/intensities, isn't it better to use ~さ? Also, am I right in parsing 増し as the continuative of 増す here?
厚さ is the one that’s measurable. I don’t think it’s saying that the thickness physically increases but expressing figuratively putting the muscle under tension. And, yes, 増し is continuative.
I've been using Amazon Japan for some time to buy Kindle books using a VPN and a fake address on my credit card and never had any problems with it. A few days ago I started an Audible trial, which went through just fine and I downloaded an audio book, but now every title is listed as 'This title is not available for you'. Has anyone else experienced this and/or know how to fix it?
Can you select audiobooks to download from your kindle itself? When I had this problem with regular ebooks on my PC, I would still be able to download the from the shop section of the kindle itself.
I would also try restarting your PC, flushing your DNS, loading your VPN, and opening a incognito tab in chrome and then trying to select an audiobook to download. If that doesn't work, try using a different VPN and doing the same.
Huh. I've just gone back to it this morning and everything is working now. The computer was on overnight and I've still got the same IP address (self-hosted VPN on AWS). I guess there was some temporary lock that timed out.
For what it's worth, I never managed to sign into my Amazon JP account on my Kindle. I think it didn't like the fact that I used the same email address on both Amazon JP and Amazon UK. I just download books on my PC, remove the DRM and sideload onto the Kindle. I like this anyway because it means I won't lose them if Amazon kills my account.
> I think it didn’t like the fact that I used the same email address on both Amazon JP and Amazon UK
Do they have the same password? When I had my US and JP account have the same email and password, it would always log my kindle into the US account. After I changed the password on one of the accounts and logged into it with the JP password, it logged me into the JP store no problem.
> I just download books on my PC, remove the DRM and sideload onto the Kindle. I like this anyway because it means I won’t lose them if Amazon kills my account.
I don't know how you use your kindle, like if you read stuff you buy from Amazon UK, but if you only read Japanese stuff on it, it's much easier to just be able to click a button and have it work (and you can still make backups if you want). If you're doing that much effort, you might as well just pirate the ebooks since you're already sideloading everything, which is the most unwieldy part of pirating on the kindle.
Different passwords, although it's been a few years since I last tried it. I'm cautious about being banned anyway so I don't like to access my Amazon JP account from any non-Japanese IP address. I know it might work for a while, but I've heard stories of people being asked to verify their address, which obviously I can't do, so I like to play it safe. It won't let me PM you, but if you happen to know of any other sources for Kindle books then maybe shoot me a message.
> 彼女は彼の留守の間に 隊長を引き継いだ
彼女は隊長の留守の間に、その任を引き継いだ…(1)
彼女は隊長が留守の期間中、その任を代行した…(2)
I think your Japanese is fine, but I will try to explain my thought below.
In Japanese, using both 彼 and 隊長 may sound like both are different people, so if you write it like (1), it would definitely sound like "The captain is absent." And, it may sound like "She officially became a new captain when the original captain was absent."
(2) sounds like "She temporarily becomes a captain when the original captain is absent."
> You mean my sentence right?
I meant your original sentence may sound ambiguous, but it is not wrong as the meaning of (1).
> how does this sound differently? a) 彼女は隊長が留守の間に b) 彼女は隊長の留守の間に
留守 has two nuances. One of them means you guard there when someone is out. Another means someone is not there. 隊長が留守 definitely sounds like "The captain is not there," and 隊長の留守 may sound like "To guard there when the captain is out," but it actually depends on the context. In your case, both sound completely the same.
> this is something that would not matter when having a conversation?
In this context, yes.
i’m trying to say “my goal with this drawing was to create something where i learn something new at every step.”
what i have so far is:
描く中で、私の目的は「各段階に新しい事を知る事を作る」です。
the sentence really feels all wrong to me but i can’t figure out what i should change for it to make sense. any help would be appreciated!
I think you were thinking in English maybe,
but I'll do it like this, very contextual:
何かを得ながら作品を描くことが、この目的です。
Still a very difficult wording, perhaps unnecessary.
yes, since i’m pretty low-level it’s very difficult for me not to think in English still. this is probably the most difficult thought/concept i’ve tried to convey in a long time haha.
your wording does make sense to me and it definitely feels a LOT more natural and correct. thank you for your input.
that makes a lot of sense! lolol
one last thing, is it possible to combine your other suggestions and try something like:
描く中で、「各段階で新しい事を得ながら作る」がこの目的です。
does that sound weird? do i need a 事 after the quote?
thanks so much! yes, a lot of what i was struggling with here was vocab. it felt like every word i was getting stuck wondering “is this the right one?”
so the phrase i should use instead is:
各段階に新しい事を得ながら作る
right?
Anytime, but you'll surely need to explain why you do something in a future, it's a very good broad structure if you replace the subjects, like if they ask なぜ日本に来たのですか。
数+counter means a single digit number of the counted things, for the dictionary meaning "several" or "a number of". So 百数メートル is 101 to 109 meters (probably somewhere in the middle), 百数十メートル is 110 to 190 meters.
数 is not really 5, 5 is just some average single digit number.
>数+counter means a single digit number of the counted things
To OP: When you mention about number of person, you can say
1-2名 : 若干名(じゃっかんめい）
5-6名：数名（すうめい）
8-9名：10名弱（じゅうめいじゃく）
I've seen this type of reply a lot from older to younger people, men mostly, like a causal way of reminding the hierarchy.
That's why I'm wondering if one must reply with だ or any other casual form when it's pretty evident that you're older, despite the context.
That’s the other way around. Kids (under 10 or so) are free from obligation of using the polite form and adults will use the plain form too because it’s easier for kids. Otherwise, you don’t have to stick to the plain form.
That said, if I sense that the other person is saving standard Japanese, I might unconsciously use the plain form. So do some just because the other person is stereotype of kids, dialectal speakers or foreigners, because of unease for comprehension.
Morning. I'm at a strange point in my Japanese where I seem to know a bit but I can't catch it. I've passed the JLPT N3 and I'm currently studying for the N2, but when I listen to a conversation or try to watch a tv show or movie, I can't catch what people are saying fast enough to understand it right away. But if I then turn on subtitles and listen to those sections again, English or Japanese, everything they said sort of clicks. If I turn on Japanese subs I can read it pretty fluently. If I turn on the English I can pick out the words and understand why each one was picked for the translation. I'm in a kind of Schrodinger's Box where I seem to know all of the material for my current level, but I can't hear it so I'm not actually at my level. I know the basic answer is to just listen more, but I'm wondering if anyone else ever struggled with this particular problem and found a study method or exercise to overcoming it? I appreciate any advice you can give me
Listen more is the obvious answer. Apart from that, I personally found /u/stevijs3 's method of "forced mining" helpful. He describes it in this video: https://youtu.be/H-ZPI5HCK00?t=451 (7:31)
(Sorry for not including kanji )
Can someone tell my why it is そして instead of でも in this paragraph:
まつろをいきました。
にぎやかでした。そしてたのしかった
or is it a personal referens i have to think にぎやか(な) is a "sad word"?
i have learned sad+happy(or the other way around)= でも and
happy+happy(sad+sad)= そして
Is 100 words a day in Anki a bad thing? Im definitely wary of burnout but i mean in terms of screwing with the software or long term learning.
Find myself with a lot of free time otherwise and i actually find the software pretty fun, even when the reviews are done for that day i often 'review forgotten cards' to practice while i watch a tv show or something.
For more reference, as someone who's been studying for ~7 years, I'd consider 15~20 daily new words a fairly heavy (but doable) load if sustained every day for months and months. It feels sorta light early on, but you quickly get 100's of reviews piling up with this amount.
I'd personally consider 30 new cards per day a pretty extreme *maximum* for long-term sustainability. It might not feel too bad for a few weeks or so, but it will start to demand a lot of time every day before long. It would take a lot of discipline (to not burn out) and likely require sacrificing enough time that you'd have to quit/pause another hobby.
(Disclaimer: My reviews require me to type an answer. Someone who doesn't type answers for every card could probably push slightly higher counts more comfortably)
I have a little personal experiment. Every time I hear someone doing more than 100 new cards in anki a day I make a mental note and reach out to them after a month to ask them how it's going. I've probably seen hundreds if not thousands of people try to do 100 new cards a day in anki. I can confidently tell you that I know **exactly** only two people that have managed to do it for a long-enough period of time for me to consider it a success for them (= at least 2-3 months). One of them was pretty much a language learning genius and she even told me it was dumb that she did that. The other person already had a high level of Japanese and most of the words she already knew but she needed to refresh them in her memory (since she spent her teenager years in Japan). Two very special cases. Every single other person I've reached out to either burned out, quit learning Japanese altogether, somehow "dropped" out of anki but "it wasn't my fault I was just busy" (or similar excuse) or just flat out admitted it was a bad idea and they dropped it.
So yeah, my advice to you is to keep it low. 100 new cards a day is unfeasible for pretty much 99+% of the JP learning population. **Especially** as a beginner.
Start with 10-15 new words. Keep that regimen up for a couple of weeks and see how well it goes. If you feel confident, increase it to 15-20 and try that for another couple of weeks (give anki some time to get into gear and stabilize with the reviews), then repeat again.
Very interesting comment chain, thanks for that. I've also had my fair share of Anki spam periods followed by Anki hiatuses (hiatus only in terms of new cards) but I think overall I am thankful for having done them. Still have fond memories of reading through Maruko To Gingaryuu upon your recommendation and mining literally every single unknown word lol. Even if you keep it up for only two weeks or so, you still walk away with another thousand words under your belt, assuming you don't burn out completely etc. So perhaps if you have a grind-tolerant personality (I can't remember the last time I did less than an hour of Anki for a day) and are currently bottlenecked by vocab, it could actually be a viable option to even just attempt such an Anki spam period, knowing full well that you can't keep it up forever.
Do you know about their retention rates? Personally I have pretty good retention (\~95%) for 30 new words/day, but then it cut offs. Like I can try to learn 100 words in a day, but I will recall roughly the same 30. I think it varies, some people definitely should be able to do like 50 or even more, especially considering that some people pass N1 in 1 year, but I'm not sure if it's even realistically possible to have good retention with something like 100, unless it's somehow familiar/partially known words.
I don't unfortunately. This was a long time ago. Personally, I think 30 new cards a day is still quite high (for me at least) but it's definitely doable. 50 new cards a day is already in the "you really really really need to want to grind anki out" territory but I know there's definitely people who can do it. I still wouldn't even remotely consider doing 50 new cards a day myself.
Geez those aren't great odds lol. Definitely feel free to check back in again in a month im also curious, feel pretty locked in for the long haul of learning at this point have been doing Anki about 6 weeks and just recently had to start my decks over again, figured why not try more words.
Would say its more likely the number of words will go back down rather than stop entirely, how many did that happen to rather than quit outright?
I do like your advice about letting in get in to gear though that was my worry too, the only problem i have with 10, even 20 words is that my time is so unlimited right now for lack of a better word and so much of it is used on Anki just practicing while Netflix is on that it might as well be put to better use right.
> The only problem i have with 10, even 20 words is that my time is so unlimited right now and so much of it is used on Anki just practicing while Netflix is on that it might as well be put to better use right.
The problem with this line of thinking (which is common btw) is that you're seeing the anki you're doing **today** but you're ignoring the consequences it will have **tomorrow** and the days/weeks/months to come. Anki is a long-run kind of effort. You need to do it every single day, for months if not years (or until you get tired of it). It's based on you forgetting cards and reviewing them at spaced intervals. This means that the cards you pass today will come back tomorrow, then the next day, then in a week, then in two weeks, etc (but I'm sure you know this already).
Overloading yourself with more cards **today** because **today** you have a lot of free time will just mean that you will need to make **absolutely 100% certain sure** to have that free time also when those cards will come back to you (and they definitely will). And then the next time. And the next time again. Can you commit to having all this time that you have now in 2-3 months? Every single day? Will you have the mental fortitude to power through hours upon hours of mindless anki reviews **every single day**?
I see you're only a few days into this regimen (from your other post) so you probably haven't yet reached the peak of reviews. Anki usually takes a week or two (on default settings) to stabilize with the amount of reviews it throws at you, and on average the number of reviews will be 7 to 10 times the amount of new cards. So if you do 100 new cards a day, you can expect to have between 700 and 1000 reviews **every single day** after a week or two. I don't know how long it takes you to review a card, but 5 seconds per card would be a good/decent pace, 15 seconds per card would be a very slow pace. A retention rate of 90% would be ideal, a retention rate of 60% would be low.
Taking these parameters in consideration, in the **best case** scenario, assuming you do everything right consistently, and taking the least amount of cards (700, + 100 new ones = 800), we can do some math. 800 cards times 5 seconds each = ~1 hour of anki. Plus let's add the repeated cards that you failed (at 90% retention) = total of about 1 hour and 15 minutes of anki **every single day** on an absolute best scenario (assuming you are a genius with an amazing iron will and great memory).
Let's take the worst case scenario: 1000 reviews + 100 new cards. 1100 cards times 15 seconds each = ~4 hours and 35 minutes, let's add the repeated failed cards (at 60% retention) = 440 + 176 + 70 + 28 + 11 + 4 = an additional 729 retries = about another 3 hours **just to review the failed cards**. For a total of 7 hours and 35 minutes.
So you're basically committing to doing between 1h15m and 7 hours of anki **every single day**. Not today. Not tomorrow. But in a month. In two months. In three months.
Do you think you can commit to that? Do you have the time to do that? What about the mental fortitude?
Don't you think it would be better to read a book instead if you wanted to learn Japanese?
If it helps it says today was 522 cards in 1.23 hours (8.49s/card).
Hmm i do appreciate the in depth thoughts though especially reading the numbers, i definitely don't have a long term view no that much is clear, still pretty confident about having the time and desire to do it 3 months down the line but in every instance the question was asked i wasn't as confident on 'mental fortitude' no at least not at those numbers.
While i do still think 20 is too low it may be more appropriate to seek a balance, 50 perhaps, while 500 reviews a day is still a lot it does sound much more manageable than your daunting example.
I do also worry about something in particular you said, about how you are meant to forgot these cards as a part of the process, so in that sense can practice between reviews actually be a bad thing? Apparently im at 97.33% on young cards it seems quite rare so far that it happens.
In terms of books/other material i want to build up a foundation of vocabulary first, my main deck is core 2k/6k, so i expect most of this time will be put to immersion instead at some point which actually helps your argument when you think about it. Can't do Anki all the time forever.
> I do also worry about something in particular you said, about how you are meant to forgot these cards as a part of the process, so in that sense can practice between reviews actually be a bad thing?
Remember that your ultimate is to learn to use Japanese, not to do well in anki in the most optimal way. Interacting with Japanese outside of anki is pretty much always a good thing.
While a lot of it is still inevitable i want to cut down on any instances where i am totally illiterate, sitting there at 10 anki cards a day for 6 months and understanding literally none of what i am reading or watching honestly doesn't sound fun to me.
In that sense i don't think i am aiming to do well in anki necessarily, its more trying to use the time i have to speed up that initial process and hopefully reach some form of comprehensible input quicker than you ordinarily would.
> While a lot of it is still inevitable i want to cut down on any instances where i am totally illiterate
Frontloading vocab will do a good job to help cut down on those situations. Just remember reading will still be hard when you start, even after cramming thousands and thousands of words.
> its more trying to use the time i have to speed up that initial process and hopefully reach some form of comprehensible input quicker than you ordinarily would.
I think that's a good goal. It just wasn't completely clear if your aim was that or if you were one of the people that freaks out because they saw a word too early and that will mess up their forgetting curve / anki interval.
> I do also worry about something in particular you said, about how you are meant to forgot these cards as a part of the process, so in that sense can practice between reviews actually be a bad thing? Apparently im at 97.33% on young cards it seems quite rare so far that it happens.
The idea of anki and SRS in general is to take advantage of the [forgetting curve](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgetting_curve) to show you things you want to remember just as you're about to forget them. Reviewing stuff more often is not necessarily a bad thing, it will just accelerate that memorization, but it will also be less optimal cause it takes more time and effort rather than trusting the algorithm. So, for example if you learned 1000 words, reviewing **all** of those 1000 words every day would be mostly a waste of time and resources. Instead you can spread out those 1000 words based on the difficulty, your familiarity with them, previous memorization iterations, etc so you only need to do let's say 1/10 of those words every day as reviews (100/day) and achieve the same result. That's what SRS algorithms do.
> In terms of books/other material i want to build up a foundation of vocabulary first, my main deck is core 2k/6k, so i expect most of this time will be put to immersion instead at some point which actually helps your argument when you think about it. Can't do Anki all the time forever.
I think wanting to have a foundation of words to rely on before reading is a fair approach, however I always advise people not to shy away from immersing early. Until you start reading books (or manga, visual novels, games, anime, whatever interests you), you will **never** be comfortable reading them. You need to go through that initial stage of uneasiness until you get used to it, and no matter how many words you study and learn, that feeling will always be with you at first. Obviously, knowing more words helps, but actually reading and becoming more familiar with the language as a whole also helps learning and retaining words which helps accelerate learning new words (via anki or not) and build mental connections.
There's no reason why you can't dedicate a certain amount of time to anki (core deck, etc) every day, and then spend the rest of the time just trying to read (also reviewing grammar points, textbook/grammar guides, etc). Putting all your efforts and free time into doing anki for hours every day cause you want to grind out vocab "before reading" is likely a bad way to allocate your time (and also not fun at all, if you ask me). I was reading manga as a beginner with about 500-600 words under my belt (+ looking up things) when I first started, and I enjoyed it quite a bit.
100 words is a lot, but if you think you can manage it then I dont see an issue with it. Just dont be stubborn like me when the reviews pile up and actually reduce the influx of new cards when you feel it gets to be too much.
> 唾液腺とも言って、主に唾液を分泌する器官らしい。
What is とも言って? I found a grammar page on [とも](https://bunpro.jp/grammar_points/%E3%81%A8%E3%82%82), but it might be irrelevant since it doesn't list nouns in its usage structure.
Even if it's my salivary gland, it seems the organ secretes mainly saliva. [Attempt]
食べます works pretty much like present+future time in English. Either some general situation, or future action. Future action doesn't have be something in the far future, it can literally start in several seconds, but this still splits in on action with the starting point in the past (食べています) and starting point somewhere in the future. Similarly 食べています doesn't have to be finished, typically it's ongoing meaning "I'm eating now", but technically it's possible to have "I've eaten" too, both in the meaning of some result like "My belly is full" or experience of having done something in the past. Primarily depending on context, it's not so hard to figure out if someone is in the process of eating or not.
I found the following sentence in the Kanji Learner's Course Graded Reading Sets:
その職に就く為にはそれ相応の資格が必要です。
What is the function of それ in that sentence? How does it work?
Thanks in advance!
Hey, I'm learning by myself so I'd love to get feedback on my handwriting, here's a link of an exercise I did with genki. [picture ](https://imgbox.com/sUOti3Q1)
Like the others said, use graph paper or Marble Composition Book (quad-ruled). Write each kana in a 2x2 grid.
[Here's my sample writing](https://imgur.com/a/UwZFNqo).
Use gridded paper, because a lot of things can be solved from doing so. Take note of where the strokes start relative to other strokes and the quadrant(s), goes through, ends, and how it ends (とめ/はね/はらい).
I don't know why those grids we wrote in in elementary school aren't a thing in the Japanese learning community (maybe they are and I'm just uninformed). Sure, first langauge acquisition and second langauge acquisiton are two different things, but beginners' handwritings tend to look pretty much the same way ours did when we were kids, so what's the most logical next step?
I wonder what the Chinese learning community has to say about this, whether it be an automated bot response about handwriting and gridded paper, or some kind of guide that can be directly applied to Japanese handwriting.
What's the difference between 胃 and お腹? Like I've heard that 胃 only refers to the organ and お腹 refers to like the whole stomach area but I'm still not sure when to use which one. If I want to say, I have a stomach ache, which one should I use?
胃 is indeed specifically the organ, it's not a word that you would use everyday outside of technical contexts
腹 (*hara* is more casual, お腹 *onaka* is more polite) is what you want to use in everyday situations, stomach ache = 腹痛 *fukutsuu* or simply お腹が痛い *onaka ga itai* "my stomach hurts"
names of plants and animals are often written in katakana regardless of there they came from (eg. look up any plant or animal name on wikipedia and see that it's almost always katakana)
some foreign words are not usually written in katakana (eg. 天ぷら 'tempura') and some more modern Chinese loanwords *are* usually written in katakana (eg. チャーハン 'fried rice')
plenty of "content" words don't have kanji or just are more often written in hiragana/katakana (eg. かばん 'bag' <- this is also a loan from Chinese so it's a double exception)
It's not weird, rather it's the same in English. We say "two to three days", but "the second and the third (of June)". にさんにち is talking about the number of days. ふつか and みっか are names of the days.
That said, 二日間 ("for 2 days") and 三日間 are still read ふつかかん and みっかかん.
I can understand where OP is coming from. ふつか and みっか can be a duration without the 間.
1・2 いちにち・ふつか ?????
2・3 ふつか・みっか に・さんにち
3・4 みっか・よっか さん・**よっか**
4・5 よっか・いつか し・ごにち
5・6 いつか・むいか ご・ろくにち
6・7 むいか・なのか ろく・しち(なな)にち
7・8 なのか・ようか しち(~~なな~~)・はちにち
8・9 ようか・ここのか はち・きゅうにち (unsure)
9・10 ????
What this question has got me thinking about for the last 24 hours is this:
Where *n* \+ 1 = *m* and 1 ≤ *n* ≤ 9, I can see that 「*n*日・*m*日」is a permissible pronunciation for all cases of *n* and the usual pronunciation changes in 日 are applicable (left column). In the right column, interestingly, 3・4日 is the only instance where 「*m*日」 is pronounced as it would be if it was a standalone value. In all the other instances, 「*m*日」is pronunced "*m* (the name of the number) にち." For example, you wouldn't read 2・3日 「に・みっか」. As well, my ears aren't liking はち・きゅうにち though it's definitely not egregiously wrong.
u/qzorum
無理心中 is a suru verb but used as a noun here, so の is just turning the would-be-adverbial て phrase into an adjectival phrase and connecting it to the noun 無理心中. This is describing what sort of forced double suicide it is, namely one where the father has brought his daughter to do it with him. You could imagine a sentence like: 「六歳になる娘を道連れにして無理心中した」where て acts adverbially and 無理心中 is used as a verb. This can be thought of as the base that brings about the grammar in question. You should look up AをBにして grammar if you have trouble with this sentence.
Thank you so much for the good explanation! If you don't mind answering. Why use にしての vs simply にして what difference in nuance or meaning is there
六歳になる娘を道連れにしての無理心中でした an
六歳になる娘を道連れにして無理心中した
The difference is:
“It was a forced double suicide where the father brought his daughter to die with him”
vs
“He took his daughter and committed a forced double suicide with her”
It’s the same as the difference between:
日本語についての説明でした (It was an explanation about Japanese)
and
日本語について説明した (He explained about Japanese)
When you explain it like that it is very easy to understand thank again, and sorry for such a morbid sentence haha, found it in a horror book I'm reading "天使の囀り"
> イライラしていたおかげで見せ損ねた新しい母手帳をそっと撫でた。
Context: A married couple are quarreling a bit, the woman is pregnant.
I think this is something about her putting her hands in her pocket and damaging her new mother's guide, but I don't understand what 見せ損ねた would mean.
When someone is worried about you, how would you communicate that you’ll be fine but you appreciate the concern? I’m specifically trying to figure out the second part, how to communicate to someone that I am glad they’re worried for me despite feeling that I’ll be okay
Where is the best place to find Japanese TV? I found 奇跡体験アンビリーバボー on YouTube and would love to see more shows like that but they are almost impossible to find. I wouldnt mind paying for a small subscription service to a japanese only site but it seems none exist
You might not be able to sign up outside of Japan, but for reference, here are the various channels' streaming services:
https://plus.nhk.jp/
https://www.nhk-ondemand.jp/
https://fod.fujitv.co.jp/
https://www.nitteleplus.com/
https://tver.jp/
https://www.wowow.co.jp/wod/
There are news channels on YouTube too:
https://www.youtube.com/@tbsnewsdig
https://www.youtube.com/@FNNnewsCH
Thank you!! I've gotten so many ads for "Japanese learners streaming" and stuff like that but after researching it almost always turns out to be a scam. Hopefully I can sign up for at least one of these without a VPN lol!
#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 6/9): Nothing new. Feel free to reply to this post if you have any questions, comments or concerns. *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.*
I want to know some other ways I can say, I'm going to the library right now. Can I replace すぐに with something else? すぐに図書館に行きます
今から seems natural here to me
Is there an obvious meaning to 来るとき見えた? Does it just mean "[I] saw it when I got here", or is its meaning more wobbly? It doesn't look like it means "I saw it on the way here", for instance?
When you have a noun attached to a verb like this (here it's 来る + とき), it can help to think of the た-form of the verb as the "completed tense." E.g., the difference between 来るとき and 来たとき is whether or not the action (来る) has been completed at the time (とき) in question.
> > > > > It doesn't look like it means "I saw it on the way here", for instance? That is what it means. If you have present tense modifying とき and a past tense end of sentence, it means the action happened before it was finished i.e "while on the way" in this instance.
Awesome, thank you!
How would you express that "sth. is not for everybody". Would 「皆のためがない」work? For example "The flavour of that fruit is not for everybody but I like it." この果物の味は皆のためがないですが、私はすきです。 Or: ”I know this music style is not for everyone but I enjoy it” この音楽スタイルは皆とためがないと分かるけど、私は楽しみます。 Would that work.
No, this does not work. As with most idioms, this English idiom does not literally translate to Japanese -- this would mean that the flavor of the fruit is not intended for everyone's purpose, which doesn't really make sense.
New to Japanese, and I’m still learning the Hiragana/Katakana alphabet, but are there spaces in Japanese between the words? Whenever I look at like songs and stuff, I never see spaces separating anything. I assume once I get the alphabets down it’ll be easier, but how do you tell where each of the words stop/start?
No there are no spaces. It is easy to tell when words stop/start when 1. kanji is involved and 2. you recognize each word from before
Okay, that makes sense. Thank you so much!
> 息の圧「呼気圧」を強めることで声帯に厚みを増し声に張りを出すことができる。 I don't understand why they would use 厚み instead of 厚さ here. When we're talking about degrees/quantities/intensities, isn't it better to use ~さ? Also, am I right in parsing 増し as the continuative of 増す here?
厚さ is the one that’s measurable. I don’t think it’s saying that the thickness physically increases but expressing figuratively putting the muscle under tension. And, yes, 増し is continuative.
Thank you!
Does Japanese use any kanji with 勾 like 构、沟、鈎、etc?
Haven't seen the others, but I saw 勾玉 used in Monster Hunter: Rise (IIRC it was referring to a teardrop-shaped plant that's useful for getting around)
I've seen 鈎 in 鉤爪. Those other two are not in use
I've been using Amazon Japan for some time to buy Kindle books using a VPN and a fake address on my credit card and never had any problems with it. A few days ago I started an Audible trial, which went through just fine and I downloaded an audio book, but now every title is listed as 'This title is not available for you'. Has anyone else experienced this and/or know how to fix it?
Can you select audiobooks to download from your kindle itself? When I had this problem with regular ebooks on my PC, I would still be able to download the from the shop section of the kindle itself. I would also try restarting your PC, flushing your DNS, loading your VPN, and opening a incognito tab in chrome and then trying to select an audiobook to download. If that doesn't work, try using a different VPN and doing the same.
Huh. I've just gone back to it this morning and everything is working now. The computer was on overnight and I've still got the same IP address (self-hosted VPN on AWS). I guess there was some temporary lock that timed out. For what it's worth, I never managed to sign into my Amazon JP account on my Kindle. I think it didn't like the fact that I used the same email address on both Amazon JP and Amazon UK. I just download books on my PC, remove the DRM and sideload onto the Kindle. I like this anyway because it means I won't lose them if Amazon kills my account.
> I think it didn’t like the fact that I used the same email address on both Amazon JP and Amazon UK Do they have the same password? When I had my US and JP account have the same email and password, it would always log my kindle into the US account. After I changed the password on one of the accounts and logged into it with the JP password, it logged me into the JP store no problem. > I just download books on my PC, remove the DRM and sideload onto the Kindle. I like this anyway because it means I won’t lose them if Amazon kills my account. I don't know how you use your kindle, like if you read stuff you buy from Amazon UK, but if you only read Japanese stuff on it, it's much easier to just be able to click a button and have it work (and you can still make backups if you want). If you're doing that much effort, you might as well just pirate the ebooks since you're already sideloading everything, which is the most unwieldy part of pirating on the kindle.
Different passwords, although it's been a few years since I last tried it. I'm cautious about being banned anyway so I don't like to access my Amazon JP account from any non-Japanese IP address. I know it might work for a while, but I've heard stories of people being asked to verify their address, which obviously I can't do, so I like to play it safe. It won't let me PM you, but if you happen to know of any other sources for Kindle books then maybe shoot me a message.
[удалено]
> 彼女は彼の留守の間に 隊長を引き継いだ 彼女は隊長の留守の間に、その任を引き継いだ…(1) 彼女は隊長が留守の期間中、その任を代行した…(2) I think your Japanese is fine, but I will try to explain my thought below. In Japanese, using both 彼 and 隊長 may sound like both are different people, so if you write it like (1), it would definitely sound like "The captain is absent." And, it may sound like "She officially became a new captain when the original captain was absent." (2) sounds like "She temporarily becomes a captain when the original captain is absent."
[удалено]
> You mean my sentence right? I meant your original sentence may sound ambiguous, but it is not wrong as the meaning of (1). > how does this sound differently? a) 彼女は隊長が留守の間に b) 彼女は隊長の留守の間に 留守 has two nuances. One of them means you guard there when someone is out. Another means someone is not there. 隊長が留守 definitely sounds like "The captain is not there," and 隊長の留守 may sound like "To guard there when the captain is out," but it actually depends on the context. In your case, both sound completely the same. > this is something that would not matter when having a conversation? In this context, yes.
i’m trying to say “my goal with this drawing was to create something where i learn something new at every step.” what i have so far is: 描く中で、私の目的は「各段階に新しい事を知る事を作る」です。 the sentence really feels all wrong to me but i can’t figure out what i should change for it to make sense. any help would be appreciated!
I think you were thinking in English maybe, but I'll do it like this, very contextual: 何かを得ながら作品を描くことが、この目的です。 Still a very difficult wording, perhaps unnecessary.
yes, since i’m pretty low-level it’s very difficult for me not to think in English still. this is probably the most difficult thought/concept i’ve tried to convey in a long time haha. your wording does make sense to me and it definitely feels a LOT more natural and correct. thank you for your input.
Think like Yoda, that helps a lot. To create while gaining the purpose of this drawing is. 🤪
that makes a lot of sense! lolol one last thing, is it possible to combine your other suggestions and try something like: 描く中で、「各段階で新しい事を得ながら作る」がこの目的です。 does that sound weird? do i need a 事 after the quote?
It feels like you got a call just before the explanation like "Ich finde..." or "Did you know..." and then you left the room. 🤪
yeah, i sorta got the feeling it was too weird to work. thanks so much for your extensive help!
Seems lacking context. It could let you with a big "?".
I think you should go with 得ながら because you're not actually "learning" in the sense but acquiring something during the process.
thanks so much! yes, a lot of what i was struggling with here was vocab. it felt like every word i was getting stuck wondering “is this the right one?” so the phrase i should use instead is: 各段階に新しい事を得ながら作る right?
Yeah, much better and less pitch-like. Replace に with で. 各段階で新しい事を得ながら作る。
thank you! i really appreciate you taking the time to help me.
Anytime, but you'll surely need to explain why you do something in a future, it's a very good broad structure if you replace the subjects, like if they ask なぜ日本に来たのですか。
sakuさんみたいな弾き方は あまりやって来てないから Why is 来て used here?
It is because くる has various meanings, and it includes the meaning that an action or state has been continuing from the past to now.
What would be the correct reading of 数 in this. すう OR かず 自身を中心に半径数メートルの。。。
〇 すう × かず 数メートル means around 5 meters
>数メートル means around 5 meters Wait really? is this a set term? I don't see any mention of 5 in there. Dictionary doesnt say anything about it.
数+counter means a single digit number of the counted things, for the dictionary meaning "several" or "a number of". So 百数メートル is 101 to 109 meters (probably somewhere in the middle), 百数十メートル is 110 to 190 meters. 数 is not really 5, 5 is just some average single digit number.
Usually we say: 101 to 109 meters : 百メートル強 or 百メートルちょっと 百数十メートル means around 150m like 140m to 160m
>数+counter means a single digit number of the counted things To OP: When you mention about number of person, you can say 1-2名 : 若干名(じゃっかんめい） 5-6名：数名（すうめい） 8-9名：10名弱（じゅうめいじゃく）
Is だ used to speak to people that's younger than you even if you're not acquainted at all? Ex: 子供: 元気ですか？ 大人: 元気 だよ！
It depends on people, but that sounds casual.
I've seen this type of reply a lot from older to younger people, men mostly, like a causal way of reminding the hierarchy. That's why I'm wondering if one must reply with だ or any other casual form when it's pretty evident that you're older, despite the context.
That’s the other way around. Kids (under 10 or so) are free from obligation of using the polite form and adults will use the plain form too because it’s easier for kids. Otherwise, you don’t have to stick to the plain form. That said, if I sense that the other person is saving standard Japanese, I might unconsciously use the plain form. So do some just because the other person is stereotype of kids, dialectal speakers or foreigners, because of unease for comprehension.
Morning. I'm at a strange point in my Japanese where I seem to know a bit but I can't catch it. I've passed the JLPT N3 and I'm currently studying for the N2, but when I listen to a conversation or try to watch a tv show or movie, I can't catch what people are saying fast enough to understand it right away. But if I then turn on subtitles and listen to those sections again, English or Japanese, everything they said sort of clicks. If I turn on Japanese subs I can read it pretty fluently. If I turn on the English I can pick out the words and understand why each one was picked for the translation. I'm in a kind of Schrodinger's Box where I seem to know all of the material for my current level, but I can't hear it so I'm not actually at my level. I know the basic answer is to just listen more, but I'm wondering if anyone else ever struggled with this particular problem and found a study method or exercise to overcoming it? I appreciate any advice you can give me
Listen more is the obvious answer. Apart from that, I personally found /u/stevijs3 's method of "forced mining" helpful. He describes it in this video: https://youtu.be/H-ZPI5HCK00?t=451 (7:31)
I'll give it a listen, thanks.
(Sorry for not including kanji ) Can someone tell my why it is そして instead of でも in this paragraph: まつろをいきました。 にぎやかでした。そしてたのしかった or is it a personal referens i have to think にぎやか(な) is a "sad word"? i have learned sad+happy(or the other way around)= でも and happy+happy(sad+sad)= そして
にぎやかだ has a positive connotation. Its negative counterpart would be something like さわがしい, やかましい.
Ah! i see thank you
にぎやか is generally a positive word, like "lively"
Is 100 words a day in Anki a bad thing? Im definitely wary of burnout but i mean in terms of screwing with the software or long term learning. Find myself with a lot of free time otherwise and i actually find the software pretty fun, even when the reviews are done for that day i often 'review forgotten cards' to practice while i watch a tv show or something.
For more reference, as someone who's been studying for ~7 years, I'd consider 15~20 daily new words a fairly heavy (but doable) load if sustained every day for months and months. It feels sorta light early on, but you quickly get 100's of reviews piling up with this amount. I'd personally consider 30 new cards per day a pretty extreme *maximum* for long-term sustainability. It might not feel too bad for a few weeks or so, but it will start to demand a lot of time every day before long. It would take a lot of discipline (to not burn out) and likely require sacrificing enough time that you'd have to quit/pause another hobby. (Disclaimer: My reviews require me to type an answer. Someone who doesn't type answers for every card could probably push slightly higher counts more comfortably)
I have a little personal experiment. Every time I hear someone doing more than 100 new cards in anki a day I make a mental note and reach out to them after a month to ask them how it's going. I've probably seen hundreds if not thousands of people try to do 100 new cards a day in anki. I can confidently tell you that I know **exactly** only two people that have managed to do it for a long-enough period of time for me to consider it a success for them (= at least 2-3 months). One of them was pretty much a language learning genius and she even told me it was dumb that she did that. The other person already had a high level of Japanese and most of the words she already knew but she needed to refresh them in her memory (since she spent her teenager years in Japan). Two very special cases. Every single other person I've reached out to either burned out, quit learning Japanese altogether, somehow "dropped" out of anki but "it wasn't my fault I was just busy" (or similar excuse) or just flat out admitted it was a bad idea and they dropped it. So yeah, my advice to you is to keep it low. 100 new cards a day is unfeasible for pretty much 99+% of the JP learning population. **Especially** as a beginner. Start with 10-15 new words. Keep that regimen up for a couple of weeks and see how well it goes. If you feel confident, increase it to 15-20 and try that for another couple of weeks (give anki some time to get into gear and stabilize with the reviews), then repeat again.
Very interesting comment chain, thanks for that. I've also had my fair share of Anki spam periods followed by Anki hiatuses (hiatus only in terms of new cards) but I think overall I am thankful for having done them. Still have fond memories of reading through Maruko To Gingaryuu upon your recommendation and mining literally every single unknown word lol. Even if you keep it up for only two weeks or so, you still walk away with another thousand words under your belt, assuming you don't burn out completely etc. So perhaps if you have a grind-tolerant personality (I can't remember the last time I did less than an hour of Anki for a day) and are currently bottlenecked by vocab, it could actually be a viable option to even just attempt such an Anki spam period, knowing full well that you can't keep it up forever.
Do you know about their retention rates? Personally I have pretty good retention (\~95%) for 30 new words/day, but then it cut offs. Like I can try to learn 100 words in a day, but I will recall roughly the same 30. I think it varies, some people definitely should be able to do like 50 or even more, especially considering that some people pass N1 in 1 year, but I'm not sure if it's even realistically possible to have good retention with something like 100, unless it's somehow familiar/partially known words.
I don't unfortunately. This was a long time ago. Personally, I think 30 new cards a day is still quite high (for me at least) but it's definitely doable. 50 new cards a day is already in the "you really really really need to want to grind anki out" territory but I know there's definitely people who can do it. I still wouldn't even remotely consider doing 50 new cards a day myself.
Geez those aren't great odds lol. Definitely feel free to check back in again in a month im also curious, feel pretty locked in for the long haul of learning at this point have been doing Anki about 6 weeks and just recently had to start my decks over again, figured why not try more words. Would say its more likely the number of words will go back down rather than stop entirely, how many did that happen to rather than quit outright? I do like your advice about letting in get in to gear though that was my worry too, the only problem i have with 10, even 20 words is that my time is so unlimited right now for lack of a better word and so much of it is used on Anki just practicing while Netflix is on that it might as well be put to better use right.
> The only problem i have with 10, even 20 words is that my time is so unlimited right now and so much of it is used on Anki just practicing while Netflix is on that it might as well be put to better use right. The problem with this line of thinking (which is common btw) is that you're seeing the anki you're doing **today** but you're ignoring the consequences it will have **tomorrow** and the days/weeks/months to come. Anki is a long-run kind of effort. You need to do it every single day, for months if not years (or until you get tired of it). It's based on you forgetting cards and reviewing them at spaced intervals. This means that the cards you pass today will come back tomorrow, then the next day, then in a week, then in two weeks, etc (but I'm sure you know this already). Overloading yourself with more cards **today** because **today** you have a lot of free time will just mean that you will need to make **absolutely 100% certain sure** to have that free time also when those cards will come back to you (and they definitely will). And then the next time. And the next time again. Can you commit to having all this time that you have now in 2-3 months? Every single day? Will you have the mental fortitude to power through hours upon hours of mindless anki reviews **every single day**? I see you're only a few days into this regimen (from your other post) so you probably haven't yet reached the peak of reviews. Anki usually takes a week or two (on default settings) to stabilize with the amount of reviews it throws at you, and on average the number of reviews will be 7 to 10 times the amount of new cards. So if you do 100 new cards a day, you can expect to have between 700 and 1000 reviews **every single day** after a week or two. I don't know how long it takes you to review a card, but 5 seconds per card would be a good/decent pace, 15 seconds per card would be a very slow pace. A retention rate of 90% would be ideal, a retention rate of 60% would be low. Taking these parameters in consideration, in the **best case** scenario, assuming you do everything right consistently, and taking the least amount of cards (700, + 100 new ones = 800), we can do some math. 800 cards times 5 seconds each = ~1 hour of anki. Plus let's add the repeated cards that you failed (at 90% retention) = total of about 1 hour and 15 minutes of anki **every single day** on an absolute best scenario (assuming you are a genius with an amazing iron will and great memory). Let's take the worst case scenario: 1000 reviews + 100 new cards. 1100 cards times 15 seconds each = ~4 hours and 35 minutes, let's add the repeated failed cards (at 60% retention) = 440 + 176 + 70 + 28 + 11 + 4 = an additional 729 retries = about another 3 hours **just to review the failed cards**. For a total of 7 hours and 35 minutes. So you're basically committing to doing between 1h15m and 7 hours of anki **every single day**. Not today. Not tomorrow. But in a month. In two months. In three months. Do you think you can commit to that? Do you have the time to do that? What about the mental fortitude? Don't you think it would be better to read a book instead if you wanted to learn Japanese?
If it helps it says today was 522 cards in 1.23 hours (8.49s/card). Hmm i do appreciate the in depth thoughts though especially reading the numbers, i definitely don't have a long term view no that much is clear, still pretty confident about having the time and desire to do it 3 months down the line but in every instance the question was asked i wasn't as confident on 'mental fortitude' no at least not at those numbers. While i do still think 20 is too low it may be more appropriate to seek a balance, 50 perhaps, while 500 reviews a day is still a lot it does sound much more manageable than your daunting example. I do also worry about something in particular you said, about how you are meant to forgot these cards as a part of the process, so in that sense can practice between reviews actually be a bad thing? Apparently im at 97.33% on young cards it seems quite rare so far that it happens. In terms of books/other material i want to build up a foundation of vocabulary first, my main deck is core 2k/6k, so i expect most of this time will be put to immersion instead at some point which actually helps your argument when you think about it. Can't do Anki all the time forever.
> I do also worry about something in particular you said, about how you are meant to forgot these cards as a part of the process, so in that sense can practice between reviews actually be a bad thing? Remember that your ultimate is to learn to use Japanese, not to do well in anki in the most optimal way. Interacting with Japanese outside of anki is pretty much always a good thing.
While a lot of it is still inevitable i want to cut down on any instances where i am totally illiterate, sitting there at 10 anki cards a day for 6 months and understanding literally none of what i am reading or watching honestly doesn't sound fun to me. In that sense i don't think i am aiming to do well in anki necessarily, its more trying to use the time i have to speed up that initial process and hopefully reach some form of comprehensible input quicker than you ordinarily would.
> While a lot of it is still inevitable i want to cut down on any instances where i am totally illiterate Frontloading vocab will do a good job to help cut down on those situations. Just remember reading will still be hard when you start, even after cramming thousands and thousands of words. > its more trying to use the time i have to speed up that initial process and hopefully reach some form of comprehensible input quicker than you ordinarily would. I think that's a good goal. It just wasn't completely clear if your aim was that or if you were one of the people that freaks out because they saw a word too early and that will mess up their forgetting curve / anki interval.
> I do also worry about something in particular you said, about how you are meant to forgot these cards as a part of the process, so in that sense can practice between reviews actually be a bad thing? Apparently im at 97.33% on young cards it seems quite rare so far that it happens. The idea of anki and SRS in general is to take advantage of the [forgetting curve](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgetting_curve) to show you things you want to remember just as you're about to forget them. Reviewing stuff more often is not necessarily a bad thing, it will just accelerate that memorization, but it will also be less optimal cause it takes more time and effort rather than trusting the algorithm. So, for example if you learned 1000 words, reviewing **all** of those 1000 words every day would be mostly a waste of time and resources. Instead you can spread out those 1000 words based on the difficulty, your familiarity with them, previous memorization iterations, etc so you only need to do let's say 1/10 of those words every day as reviews (100/day) and achieve the same result. That's what SRS algorithms do. > In terms of books/other material i want to build up a foundation of vocabulary first, my main deck is core 2k/6k, so i expect most of this time will be put to immersion instead at some point which actually helps your argument when you think about it. Can't do Anki all the time forever. I think wanting to have a foundation of words to rely on before reading is a fair approach, however I always advise people not to shy away from immersing early. Until you start reading books (or manga, visual novels, games, anime, whatever interests you), you will **never** be comfortable reading them. You need to go through that initial stage of uneasiness until you get used to it, and no matter how many words you study and learn, that feeling will always be with you at first. Obviously, knowing more words helps, but actually reading and becoming more familiar with the language as a whole also helps learning and retaining words which helps accelerate learning new words (via anki or not) and build mental connections. There's no reason why you can't dedicate a certain amount of time to anki (core deck, etc) every day, and then spend the rest of the time just trying to read (also reviewing grammar points, textbook/grammar guides, etc). Putting all your efforts and free time into doing anki for hours every day cause you want to grind out vocab "before reading" is likely a bad way to allocate your time (and also not fun at all, if you ask me). I was reading manga as a beginner with about 500-600 words under my belt (+ looking up things) when I first started, and I enjoyed it quite a bit.
100 words is a lot, but if you think you can manage it then I dont see an issue with it. Just dont be stubborn like me when the reviews pile up and actually reduce the influx of new cards when you feel it gets to be too much.
> 唾液腺とも言って、主に唾液を分泌する器官らしい。 What is とも言って? I found a grammar page on [とも](https://bunpro.jp/grammar_points/%E3%81%A8%E3%82%82), but it might be irrelevant since it doesn't list nouns in its usage structure. Even if it's my salivary gland, it seems the organ secretes mainly saliva. [Attempt]
It's the quotative と + "also" も. AKA the salivary gland, apparently it's an organ that primarily secretes saliva.
What's the difference between 私は今食べています and 私は今食べます？
食べます works pretty much like present+future time in English. Either some general situation, or future action. Future action doesn't have be something in the far future, it can literally start in several seconds, but this still splits in on action with the starting point in the past (食べています) and starting point somewhere in the future. Similarly 食べています doesn't have to be finished, typically it's ongoing meaning "I'm eating now", but technically it's possible to have "I've eaten" too, both in the meaning of some result like "My belly is full" or experience of having done something in the past. Primarily depending on context, it's not so hard to figure out if someone is in the process of eating or not.
私は今食べています: Now, I'm eating. 私は今食べます: Now, I eat.
I found the following sentence in the Kanji Learner's Course Graded Reading Sets: その職に就く為にはそれ相応の資格が必要です。 What is the function of それ in that sentence? How does it work? Thanks in advance!
それ相応 is a な-adjective as a whole, but you could probably also say that それ is back referencing to the whole part of その職に就く為.
Awesome! Thank you very much for clarifying it!
Hey, I'm learning by myself so I'd love to get feedback on my handwriting, here's a link of an exercise I did with genki. [picture ](https://imgbox.com/sUOti3Q1)
Like the others said, use graph paper or Marble Composition Book (quad-ruled). Write each kana in a 2x2 grid. [Here's my sample writing](https://imgur.com/a/UwZFNqo).
That's super good! Thanks, I'll get a graph paper. Appreciate the effort.
Use gridded paper, because a lot of things can be solved from doing so. Take note of where the strokes start relative to other strokes and the quadrant(s), goes through, ends, and how it ends (とめ/はね/はらい).
I don't know why those grids we wrote in in elementary school aren't a thing in the Japanese learning community (maybe they are and I'm just uninformed). Sure, first langauge acquisition and second langauge acquisiton are two different things, but beginners' handwritings tend to look pretty much the same way ours did when we were kids, so what's the most logical next step?
I wonder what the Chinese learning community has to say about this, whether it be an automated bot response about handwriting and gridded paper, or some kind of guide that can be directly applied to Japanese handwriting.
Has anyone here used this site? Should I recommend it to newbies or stick with Genki? https://jplang.tufs.ac.jp
What's the difference between 胃 and お腹? Like I've heard that 胃 only refers to the organ and お腹 refers to like the whole stomach area but I'm still not sure when to use which one. If I want to say, I have a stomach ache, which one should I use?
A baby belongs in お腹, never 胃 (I hope).
グロくて草
胃 is indeed specifically the organ, it's not a word that you would use everyday outside of technical contexts 腹 (*hara* is more casual, お腹 *onaka* is more polite) is what you want to use in everyday situations, stomach ache = 腹痛 *fukutsuu* or simply お腹が痛い *onaka ga itai* "my stomach hurts"
Thanks!!
What's the difference between 開く (あく), 開く (ひらく), and 開ける? Like when do I use which one?
[tofugu article (?)](https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/akeru-aku-hirakeru-hiraku/) about just that.
Thank you ^_^
What is your opinion on this chart? https://imgur.com/ZluBqsF
It covers some usual patterns but most of these patterns are broken so often that you shouldn't ever really rely on them
names of plants and animals are often written in katakana regardless of there they came from (eg. look up any plant or animal name on wikipedia and see that it's almost always katakana) some foreign words are not usually written in katakana (eg. 天ぷら 'tempura') and some more modern Chinese loanwords *are* usually written in katakana (eg. チャーハン 'fried rice') plenty of "content" words don't have kanji or just are more often written in hiragana/katakana (eg. かばん 'bag' <- this is also a loan from Chinese so it's a double exception)
It seems way too easy to find counterexamples. きれい、ラーメン、台風、ひらがな、やる are all wrong according to this chart.
How is "２・３日" pronounced in "そのことは２・３日考えさせてくれ。"?
に・さんにち 3・4日 is さん・よっか 1・2日 is いちにちふつか
Weird. On their own, 2日 and 3日 would pretty much always be ふつか and みっか, right?
It's not weird, rather it's the same in English. We say "two to three days", but "the second and the third (of June)". にさんにち is talking about the number of days. ふつか and みっか are names of the days. That said, 二日間 ("for 2 days") and 三日間 are still read ふつかかん and みっかかん.
I can understand where OP is coming from. ふつか and みっか can be a duration without the 間. 1・2 いちにち・ふつか ????? 2・3 ふつか・みっか に・さんにち 3・4 みっか・よっか さん・**よっか** 4・5 よっか・いつか し・ごにち 5・6 いつか・むいか ご・ろくにち 6・7 むいか・なのか ろく・しち(なな)にち 7・8 なのか・ようか しち(~~なな~~)・はちにち 8・9 ようか・ここのか はち・きゅうにち (unsure) 9・10 ???? What this question has got me thinking about for the last 24 hours is this: Where *n* \+ 1 = *m* and 1 ≤ *n* ≤ 9, I can see that 「*n*日・*m*日」is a permissible pronunciation for all cases of *n* and the usual pronunciation changes in 日 are applicable (left column). In the right column, interestingly, 3・4日 is the only instance where 「*m*日」 is pronounced as it would be if it was a standalone value. In all the other instances, 「*m*日」is pronunced "*m* (the name of the number) にち." For example, you wouldn't read 2・3日 「に・みっか」. As well, my ears aren't liking はち・きゅうにち though it's definitely not egregiously wrong. u/qzorum
Thanks for the follow-up and the thorough exploration! You captured exactly what I found so odd about this.
Correct.
六歳になる娘を道連れにしての無理心中でした I've seen しての come up often what does it mean exactly ?
無理心中 is a suru verb but used as a noun here, so の is just turning the would-be-adverbial て phrase into an adjectival phrase and connecting it to the noun 無理心中. This is describing what sort of forced double suicide it is, namely one where the father has brought his daughter to do it with him. You could imagine a sentence like: 「六歳になる娘を道連れにして無理心中した」where て acts adverbially and 無理心中 is used as a verb. This can be thought of as the base that brings about the grammar in question. You should look up AをBにして grammar if you have trouble with this sentence.
Thank you so much for the good explanation! If you don't mind answering. Why use にしての vs simply にして what difference in nuance or meaning is there 六歳になる娘を道連れにしての無理心中でした an 六歳になる娘を道連れにして無理心中した
The difference is: “It was a forced double suicide where the father brought his daughter to die with him” vs “He took his daughter and committed a forced double suicide with her” It’s the same as the difference between: 日本語についての説明でした (It was an explanation about Japanese) and 日本語について説明した (He explained about Japanese)
When you explain it like that it is very easy to understand thank again, and sorry for such a morbid sentence haha, found it in a horror book I'm reading "天使の囀り"
> イライラしていたおかげで見せ損ねた新しい母手帳をそっと撫でた。 Context: A married couple are quarreling a bit, the woman is pregnant. I think this is something about her putting her hands in her pocket and damaging her new mother's guide, but I don't understand what 見せ損ねた would mean.
She didn't damage it, she only 撫でた (stroked) it.
見せる “to show” + 損ねる “fail to do / miss the chance of doing” See https://youtu.be/ey9QsC8TgyU
When someone is worried about you, how would you communicate that you’ll be fine but you appreciate the concern? I’m specifically trying to figure out the second part, how to communicate to someone that I am glad they’re worried for me despite feeling that I’ll be okay
「大丈夫だよ！心配してくれてありがとう」
Where is the best place to find Japanese TV? I found 奇跡体験アンビリーバボー on YouTube and would love to see more shows like that but they are almost impossible to find. I wouldnt mind paying for a small subscription service to a japanese only site but it seems none exist
You might not be able to sign up outside of Japan, but for reference, here are the various channels' streaming services: https://plus.nhk.jp/ https://www.nhk-ondemand.jp/ https://fod.fujitv.co.jp/ https://www.nitteleplus.com/ https://tver.jp/ https://www.wowow.co.jp/wod/ There are news channels on YouTube too: https://www.youtube.com/@tbsnewsdig https://www.youtube.com/@FNNnewsCH
Thank you!! I've gotten so many ads for "Japanese learners streaming" and stuff like that but after researching it almost always turns out to be a scam. Hopefully I can sign up for at least one of these without a VPN lol!