LLearn Japanese

Daily Thread: for simple questions, minor posts & newcomers [contains useful links!] (July 28, 2025)

This thread is for all the simple questions (what does that mean?) and minor posts that don't need their own thread, as well as for first-time posters who can't create new threads yet. Feel free to share anything on your mind.

The daily thread updates every day at 9am JST, or 0am UTC.

↓ Welcome to r/LearnJapanese! ↓

  • New to Japanese? Read the Starter's Guide and FAQ.

  • New to the subreddit? Read the rules.

  • Read also the pinned comment below for proper question etiquette & answers to common questions!

Please make sure to check the wiki and search for old posts before asking your question, to see if it's already been addressed. Don't forget about Google or sites like Stack Exchange either!

This subreddit is also loosely partnered with this language exchange Discord, which you can likewise join to look for resources, discuss study methods in the #japanese_study channel, ask questions in #japanese_questions, or do language exchange(!) and chat with the Japanese people in the server.

Past Threads

You can find past iterations of this thread by using the search function. Consider browsing the previous day or two for unanswered questions.

by AutoModerator

15 comments

  1. > 七年ぶりに再会した、初恋の相手。
    >
    > 俺がフラワーアクセに出会ったきっかけは、この子に綺麗な花を届けるためだった。そして信じられないことに、彼女もまた、俺のことを覚えていてくれた。その上、ずっと強い気持ちを持って。
    >
    > でも、俺の気持ちはすでに日葵にあった。

    Why ずっと強い気持ちを持って ends in て-form?

  3. Is it just more natural to just use まで in most cases where you are initially taught to use に for a destination? I’ve noticed this a lot.

    For example, the question I saw was “Excuse me. Where is the bookstore?” And the response was エレベーターで 四かいまで 上がって下さい. It seems like in Japanese, they use まで to mean you go “up to” a place than just “to” a place. Does this seem like an accurate observation?

  4. Recent small victories (N5 level):

    * Ordered my meal in a Japanese-owned restaurant.
    * Recognized a word, a phrase or a whole sentence in many scenes of an anime I watched recently.
    * I have to yet to hear my first 上手, but I wrote a small note to a Japanese friend and she said 日本語、どんどんうまくなっていますね。

    These small milestones keep me going!

    What about you?

  5. > 何故大体のアニメって12話で終わるのでしょうか？一期(12話)二期(12話)のように, 多くても一期(24話)ぐらいですよね？そう言うルール的なものがあるのでしょうか？

    Does 12話で終わる mean “end with 12 episodes” or “end with episode 12”?

    What does the second sentence mean? “Anime will have at most 1 season consisting of 24 episodes, through breaking down into two seasons, each with 12 episodes”?

  6. Is Bunpro on iOS good? The last time I used it, it was still in testing phase. Didnt really have much problem with it but havent used it for a year until I learned they already released it officially in app store

  7. I’m struggling a lot with when ん is used in verbs, and whether it makes them negative or not. For example, I just read a bit in a manga where 辞めん is used to mean that the character IS quitting, but I’ve also seen ん used in 取れん where it’s used to mean they AREN’T contacting someone. I’m not sure how I go about distinguishing whether it means to do the verb or to not do the verb; do I really have to go solely based off of context? And this isn’t even really getting into the ん as negative slang in godan verbs. Any explanation on what I might be missing here would be super helpful.

  8. Thoughts on using chatgpt for questions?

    Asked chatgpt for a comparison between two example sentences, specifically the difference between が and は. It broke them down really well and gave me a better grasp on the two particles.

  9. I wonder if この漫画は100話で終わる translates to “this manga ends at chapter 100” or “this manga ends with 100 chapters in total.”

  10. u/Moon_Atomizer wrote:

    >Do you consider keigo passive to be a subcategory of the indirect passive, or its own separate thing?

    This question actually leads to a deeper inquiry: why does honorific forms exist in Japanese? In other words, why is keigo a syntactically indispensable element in Japanese, not merely a matter of modality, but a necessary component for clarifying propositions, and therefore not redundant?

    There’s a singer named Mariya Takeuchi, and one of her songs has the lyric: “わたしだけ愛してたことも”. This verb phrase lacks case particles. “だけ” and “も” aren’t case particles, meaning the nominative “が” and accusative “を” are absent.

    A Japanese teacher asked students learning Japanese as a foreign language to interpret this phrase. 95% of the students interpreted it as “the fact that I was the only one you loved” (which is correct based on the unquoted lyrical context). However, 5% of the students interpreted it as “the fact that the only one who loved was me, meaning I loved you, but you didn’t love me.” Theoretically, the latter interpretation is possible because of the absence of case particles.

    How can such misunderstandings be avoided? Historically, Japanese didn’t originally use case particles as much. While it gradually incorporated them, transforming from a language that merely expresses emotion to one that also conveys propositions more clearly, overusing case particles isn’t considered elegant Japanese. It might be unavoidable if it’s a natural science textbook or a direct translation from a Western language.

    Yes, that’s right. In such cases, you can use the passive with -レル/-ラレル.

    〇　わたしだけ愛してくれていたことも　Natural.

    △　あなたがわたしだけを愛していたことも　While not grammatically incorrect, it’s unnatural Japanese, or at least not elegant Japanese.

    I won’t go into a lengthy explanation of the underlying logic, but if you follow this line of thinking, you’ll understand why honorific forms in Japanese aren’t necessarily redundant or merely a matter of modality. Instead, they can actually be considered as a syntactically indispensable element for the clarity of a proposition. It’s often said that the Japanese language doesn’t have a subject, no such thing, but if that were truly the case, it should not mean propositions become unclear. Even without a subject, a proposition should still be clear to some reasonable extent.

  11. At what point did you stop translating everything in your head/did you start thinking in Japanese?

  12. i’m currently learning second year japanese, and weakest point is listening. recently my teacher told me i have so much trouble is because i confuse the pronunciation in my head while listening like “つ” and “す” and other such mistakes. so, i tried things to work on my listening such as podcast and music, but i get too bored with them too quickly. does anyone have any alternatives on how to improve?

  14. 気分がめりこむ日は故郷の島影が見たくなる.

    キヨは気がむしゃくしゃすると島の海を目にやってくる.

    生活が苦しくなっているせいかこのごろ気分がふさいでいけない.

    What does 目にやってくる mean here?

    Also why is でいけない attached to 鬱ぐ here?

  15. What are the best listening resources for ~JLPT3.5? Looking for some gamified apps
    p.s. I am very bad at listening, but know vocab and grammar much better

Leave a Reply