12 comments

1. Deska?

2. Is 50 new cards per day ok on Kaishi 1.5 20 new cards per day on jlab while also doing wanikani with 200 apprentice and bunpro ok

3. In the thread of:

   [https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/1ru0g6a/comment/oai2lk6/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/1ru0g6a/comment/oai2lk6/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)

   u/Grunglabble wrote:

   =======

   Thank you, I really appreciate the extra context and examples.

   I have an overactive imagination and started to wonder if the feeling of attachment runs through the many usages of に. Especially in when it is a determining factor of に being used for a verb, or のに having this feeling like “this should have followed/been attached, but it wasn’t (or positively phrased, a bad result was attached to my hard work). I never really thought about it before and just memorised, but I feel it nicely ties together a lot of meanings it used to feel strange に can do. It’s only my head canon though.

   =======

   One thing that may help here is to separate two different things that are easy to mix up: **case particles** and **conjunctive particles**.

   The particle **に** is most commonly a **case particle**, not a conjunctive one. So before trying to explain special uses “戦士一人に一級魔法使い一人”, it helps to recall what case particles do in Japanese.

   Japanese is often described typologically as an SOV language, but if you look at the language internally, it is more accurate to think of it as **predicate-centric**. A predicate alone can form a complete sentence. Other elements attach to the predicate as its arguments.

   You can imagine the predicate as having “arms” that connect to different roles. In a verb like “give” in English, there are typically three arms which grab three roles: the giver, the receiver, and the thing given. In Japanese, those relationships are expressed by **case particles** attached to noun phrases.

   So particles like **が, を, に** are basically markers showing how a noun phrase is connected to the predicate. They are not conjunctions.

   Among these case particles, **に** is probably the most difficult one, because historically and functionally it covers several different roles. That is why it often feels unusually flexible compared with particles like が or を.

   u/morgawr_

   u/AdrixG

4. [u/Grunglabble](https://www.reddit.com/user/Grunglabble/) [u/morgawr_](https://www.reddit.com/user/morgawr_/) [u/AdrixG](https://www.reddit.com/user/AdrixG/)

   If we look at the Japanese case system more broadly, the core of the structure is the **grammatical cases** **が** and **を**, which mark the main syntactic roles corresponding roughly to subject and object. In that sense they occupy a privileged position in the system.

   Japanese is often described as having relatively free word order, which means the language relies on **case marking rather than position**. This parallel case structure is an important point, especially for learners whose native languages are European languages where word order plays a stronger role.

   At the same time, from another perspective the Japanese case system is **not completely flat**. The various case forms do not all compete with equal syntactic force; there is a kind of hierarchy among them, and this is often noticeable even to learners from European-language backgrounds.

   Around these core grammatical cases we find other groups of particles. There are **spatial cases in a broad sense**, such as **から** (source) and **へ** (direction). There are also **relational cases** expressing more abstract relations such as association, comparison, or reference, represented by particles like **と** and **より**.

   In addition, Japanese has what we might call a **situational case**, **で**, which often forms phrases describing like location of an event, means, materials, etc.. Finally there is something like a **quantitative case** (φ) as in expressions like *一時間* “for one hour” or *３キロメートル* “three kilometers”.

   If we diagram these elements, we get a system in which the core grammatical cases are surrounded by spatial, relational, situational, and quantitative expressions, all interacting with the predicate-centered structure of Japanese.

   https://preview.redd.it/cucyivc4hcpg1.jpeg?width=1123&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a3e4aeff6354c6f066f9ce88d9e33f36327f2cdf

5. I’m traveling to japan in 2 weeks.
   Any good resources you can only buy in Japan?

6. Does anyone have any tips for procrastinating less and getting more immersion? Its so easy for me to waste time on English content when i really want to be immersing in Japanese instead..
   For reference i passed the n1 ages ago and i have since then been working on closing the gap between it and native level while living in japan with a Japanese wife, friends and work, but this of course takes thousands and thousands of hours of input as well. Even though i procrastinate i still do get a decent amount its just i could be getting so much more.

7. 俺は この力を改めて—
   我が糧の二つ名を冠し こう名付けた
   “影狼(かげろう)”

   he was talking about calling this spell 影狼(かげろう)

   I don’t get the usage of 冠し since he’s already using 名付ける

   as far as I understand 冠する means:

   〔かぶせる〕 crown; cap; 〔名称を〕 name; call; designate; entitle; give a name to….

   or “to prefix with, to start with”

   in the anime he said it as if it was 1 sentence , but is it like 2 different sentences?

8. I’ve been learning for a few weeks now, but I’d love a native Japanese person to help clarify what the です in, for example, 私は日本人です, is actually doing. I’ve been told conflicting things about it. In textbooks it’s just a copula verb, like *is, am, are, be,* etc. In English a copula like “am” has two functions: it links *and* affirms, like “I **am** Japanese.” The sentence “I Japanese” is wrong— it needs “am” to make sense. Is this also how だ and です work? Do they link 私 and 日本人 *and* affirm it? So something like “As for me: am Japanese.”

   On the other hand, I’ve also heard that the sentence structure itself is linking 私 and 日本人. So 私は日本人 is already a functional sentence with the words linked, unlike English’s “I Japanese”. Since Japanese uses particles, we should know that what comes before は is the topic and what comes after is the comment (I was taught that Japanese is a topic-comment language). Shouldn’t that arrangement itself already establish the link between 私 and 日本人? And then です is like a stamp on the end *only* affirming it. So something like “As for me: Japanese. That’s so.”

   Which one is correct? How do native Japanese speakers process sentences? I’d love to know!

9. [u/Grunglabble](https://www.reddit.com/user/Grunglabble/) 

   [u/morgawr_](https://www.reddit.com/user/morgawr_/) [u/AdrixG](https://www.reddit.com/user/AdrixG/)

   Now, getting to the main point.

   It is true that the particle **に** can sometimes function as a coordinating particle that links nouns. However, when we actually look at how **に** appears in real usage, it seems much more common to encounter it as a **case particle** rather than as a coordinating one.

   For that reason, when we try to think about what **に** really is, it may be more useful to start from its role as a **case particle**, rather than from the coordinating usage, which is comparatively less frequent.

   In other words, the coordinating use of **に** certainly exists, but it is probably not the best starting point for understanding the particle as a whole. If we begin from the case-particle side, the overall picture of how **に** works in Japanese becomes much clearer.

   https://preview.redd.it/7t4l8zx1sepg1.jpeg?width=1123&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cae2104c4fa4224f845d7ce38915d8446785ff7f

   As shown in the diagram, when **に** functions as a case particle, it occupies a position that spans three major domains: **grammatical cases, locative cases, and relational cases**.

   For example:

   * **Grammatical case (dative)**: *弟に渡す* “to give (something) to one’s younger brother.”
   * **Locative case**: *船が港{に／へ}向かう* “The ship heads toward the harbor.”
   * **Relational case**: 体格*が大人{に／より}まさる* “physically superior to an adult.” *友達{に／と}話す* “to talk with a friend.”

   In other words, the case particle **に** sits at the intersection of these three groups, which helps explain why it appears in such a wide variety of constructions in Japanese.

10. Hello guys, I am working on a Japanese learning app that sort of combining Wanikani, Heisig, Anki and Duolingo together. Wondering if anyone can help me do the beta test! 😭

11. Is there an actual reason why 歳 gets a simplified alternate 漢字 (才）, but other ones (that are sometimes even more complex) don’t? Curious if there’s a practical or historical reason for this.

    Also, I’m a learner, but even so, I barely ever see the simplified version anyway. To fluent speakers, how would you estimate the frequency of the variations you see?

12. 「『絶対に負けん！』『長きに渡る因縁にケリをつける！』みたいなことを」

    「お前ら、因縁なんてあったっけ？」

    「無いですよ。雄真さんがノリで言ってるだけですって、それ」

    「仲違いをしてるわけじゃないならいいんだが。それに競い合うのはいいことだ」

    do you interpret 因縁 as relationship in this context?

    they were saying it sarcastically, cause they gonna do a concert together

    I know it can mean pretext or justification to pick up a fight 因縁をつける

    but in this case it wouldn’t make much sense if 因縁 is like “the pretext” , but since they are fighting figuratively I was trying to understand the usage in this context better.

    can 因縁 be interpreted as “the fight” itself?

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