12 comments

1. Hello. So I was an avid JPDB user (150,000 reviews) and through my time using it I learned a lot of the great things about the resource but also some of the shortcomings of it. I also have a less extensive history of sentence mining (approx. 2500 words mined) but I still have a feel for the pros and cons of both methods. I built a site that I think takes the good point from both, and was hoping I could get some feedback here.

   # Link

   [https://blamph.org/](https://blamph.org/)

   # Philosophy

   When encountering a new word, in my experience there are three phases.

   1. Understanding it in your native language. This is simple, the word for mountain is 山, the word for river is 川. For words like this the English translation is generally sufficient, as these are concrete nouns that are essentially the same between languages. However, for many words this is quite insufficient.
   2. Understanding through examples. Words like 掛ける, 取る, 上, 前, 後 can take on many English meanings depending on the context they are found. To solve this, we need to be exposed to them in many contexts to get a more general understanding through the Japanese language rather than relying on just English. This would require several example sentences to build familiarity with these words. This is a solvable issue, which Blamph addresses by offering you many example sentences per word. These example sentences are chosen for you based on your interests (anime, novels etc.). However, even this I believe can often not be sufficient to gain full understanding and comfortabilility with the word as our understanding has yet to be tested in the wild.
   3. Encountering the word through immersion/real-life context. Once you have a baseline understanding of a word, and have seen it used in examples, it does not guarantee you will understand it when encountering it in the wild. This is why the ideal method would allow us to have an understanding of it before we encounter it. This way when we encounter the word in our favourite anime or novel, we are cementing and deepening our knowledge, essentially testing ourselves on whether we really understand it in reviews. This process gives us quite a deep conception of the word, the final step is just remembering it.

   Blamph checks each of these three boxes. If you understand how JPDB or Blamph works, you can skip the next section. But I will explain it to those who do not know.

   # What Blamph Does

   On Blamph, a huge range of media is available or requestable (will be added within 24 hours). A deck is created, like an anki deck, of all the words in a given media (anime, manga, etc.). A breakdown of the frequency of each word, how common that word is across all our decks alongside many other deck specific statistics is then provided. You can then add this deck, and learn the words from it. The exact ordering of these words depends on your Japanese level, your personal interests and your site settings.

   Then, these words will be added to a spaced repetition system like Anki, where we use FSRS scheduling to optimise your reviews. You will be given up to 8 example sentences per word (depends on your settings, default is 2), each of these taken from a variety of media such as real-life, dramas, movies, anime, novels and light novels. These sentences come with both translations and explanations (we are gradually adding these starting from the most frequent words. Rarer words are less likely to have translations and explanations).

   # Unique Features

   * Blamph uses example sentences from real media, tens of thousands of clean, hand-picked sentences have been taken from anime, novels, light novels, live action and real life conversation to give a wide understanding of words in various contexts. These example sentences not only have translations, but explanations too. You can also see the sentences that came before and after the example sentence. What sentences you get is based on what your media interests are. For example, if you like anime, the example sentences you receive will be from anime. Same for novels etc.
   * Blamph allows users to make much better use of frequency lists. Rather than just giving you a general frequency list for the whole database (which you can use if you like), we ask you what media you are interested in. Let’s say you select anime and manga, then we will optimise your reviews such that you receive the most common words from anime and manga. This allows you to remove parts of the database you don’t care about (Aozora bunko, non-fiction, novels for example) and learn words catered to exactly what you actually care about.
   * On Blamph, users can request any deck that hasn’t already been added and it will be added within 24 hours (Usually less depends on what is requested).
   * If a word appears, where you don’t know the kanji, we will break the kanji down into all the smallest pieces that you don’t know, and teach them to you piece by piece, offering the most common mnemonics used by users for that kanji, and options to add your own.
   * Reviews are virtually instant.
   * Blamph hopes to have user based difficulty and quality rankings for each media, similar to sites like learn natively, but on a wider range of media and with a more effective ranking method.
   * Blamph’s current goal is to reach 30000 words where each word has a selection of explanations and translations and each word has sentences with a decent variety of difficulties and different contexts.

   That is all. I hope you give the site a try for yourself and see if it suits you. The site is entirely free. There are some small benefits for being a patron but the site is perfectly usable to its full capacity completely free of charge. Let me know what you guys think.

2. What’re the nuances/contextual differences between あひる and かも when referring to a duck? 🥺🦆

3. https://preview.redd.it/vtgkf5q3qvxg1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0ac027daa45a78279aa202045d6a74e261f7b42f

   What does this mean? Does this mean that I can stay for 24 hours for 500 yen?

4. 今日の夕方のラテン語講座の予習が全く終わらない。

   人間、そういう時に、本来、やらねばならん勉強をしないで、他のことをやりますね(笑)。私だけではあるまい。

   さて、日本におけるラテン語学習でのあるあるなイメージ（ほんとにそうなの？では実はない。あくまでもイメージ）として、辞書は、羅仏、羅独、羅英を使うのが普通なんだけども、あくまでもイメージなんだけど、以下のようなイメージがある。

   （１）羅仏辞典

   第二外国語でフランス語を学習しておいてから第三外国語としてのラテン語学習に入るという王道中の王道。イメージとしてはfeel the vibe.どゆことかっていうと、くどいけどあくまでもイメージなんだけど、ラテン語の例文あって、同じ状況で、現代のフランス人ならこういうよね、が、訳みたいな。極論したら、単語ベースでは対応してなくてもいい。極論だけど。これ、ある意味、最も実用的とも言えるかも。しかし、それロマンス語が完全に体得されてないと意味ないじゃんも言える。

   （２）羅英辞典

   ひたっすらに用例が大量に列挙。イギリス経験主義。中核的な意義は己で考えよ方式。あくまでもイメージね。ゆうてコーパス・ベースてか。用例みたいなら、これ。日本人、第一外国語で英語は中学校で必修だしね。

   （３）羅独辞典

   コーパスで歴史的事実としてそういう順序なの？っていうと、そうではないかも知れなくて、むしろ、理論的な再構築物かもしんないんだけども、なんてかな、こう大陸哲学的に理論的。くどいけどイメージね、イメージ。Kernbedeutung（中核的意味）、Grundbedeutung（基本義）、Ausgangsbedeutung（出発義）を理論的に再構築。からのBedeutungsentwicklung（意味発展）、Ableitung der Bedeutungen（意味の派生）みたいな…。

   で　pun intended

   日本語のデにも、ドイツ風な論文ってのはあって、

   （1）場所→［場所抽象化］→場

   （2）場所→［動作の抽象化］→限定（範囲・数量限定）

   （3）場所→［場所背景化］→動作主　※註

   （4）場所→［メタファー写像］→時間→［動作抽象化・境界焦点化］→期間・場限定，認識世界に関わるものとして

   （5）場所→［ドメイン主観化］→道具手段→［内在化］→材料・構成要素

   （6）場所→［ドメイン主観化］***→原因→***［主観化］→理由・根拠・動機・目的

   （7）場所→［ドメイン主観化］→様態

   とかっていう学術論文があったりするはず。（6の理由とかのとき、主観化だってのは結構ポイント。）

   プロトタイプである現実世界の場所を起点として，メタファー・メトニミー・イメージスキーマ変換といった認知的動機づけによってカテゴリーが拡張してるんだ説。

   ※　デで動作主ってのわかりにくいんだけど、明らかに単数な人には使えません。そうではなくて、「佐藤と田中で、その仕事、引き受けます」とか、「当社で…」とかのデ。えと組織とかですね。

   [EDIT] (1)～(7)は論文からコピペしてるので、いま、ググってもらえれば、少なくとも、一個は論文がヒットするはず。

5. So this line:
   むかし、むかし、ある山の村に一人の娘がおりました。

   Apparently translates into this:
   Once upon a time, there lived a girl in a mountain village.

   I can see for the most part how they got that. The only thing I don’t fully get is how 一人の is factored into the translation.

   一人 means one person, to be alone, to be single, etc. The only thing I can think of, is that particle の is being used in combination with 一人 to essentially emphasize that 娘 (girl/daughter) is singular, that there’s only one girl instead of multiple.

   Is this correct? Or am I missing something here?

6. Advanced commercial/corporate Japanese brushup in the UK, spoken and (more importantly) written – is a custom course through SOAS still my best option?

7. Just took an official practice Kanji Kentei level 2 exam they gave me when I went to the Kanji Kentei museum in Kyoto. The exam is from Heisei 29 (2017). I scored 160/200. Just exactly passing. But I have a whole month and a half to bring that score up though. What a relief this is. I really have some breathing room.

   Any suggestions? Just continue to work on the weakest sections I guess.

8. Can anybody vouch for the renshuu+Genki combo for learning? I’ve been working through renshuu for a couple weeks now and have the Genki textbook and workbook on their way to me as I write this but I keep worrying that the combination of resources I’m planning to use will leave me with a blind spot in terms of early learning.

   I know neither of these will help much with speaking or listening on their own but I’m thinking more in terms of grammar, vocab, or kanji?

9. Should I learn hiragana and katakana separately or together? I’m trying to learn both reading and writing, so far I’ve done the vowels in both alphabets, but now I’m wondering if doing both in parallel is the right choice. Do you think this can create confusion?

   Edit: also, whenever I look at a sentence in Japanese I always look for characters I know to see if I can recognize them quickly, but a lot of the time a miss them or take longer to recognize them than I expect. Is this normal or should I see them right away?

   I’m starting to sound paranoid asf

10. Hi hi! I did learned a bit of Japanese when I was young through apps like Duolingo, Lingodeer, Buusuu, Kana Town…
    And I noticed how after a few years without practice I was unable to even read hiragana!

    So I wanted to go back to Japanese learning by memorize Hiragana and Katana and a bit of Duolingo before paying Buusuu subscription again or going to language school.

    And when I already managed to remember all Hiragana, I opened a manga and realized I couldn’t read the first word!
    Not because I didn’t know the word, not because it had a Kanji, I was just not used to read all the characters together on a vertical writing and the typography caused me confusions like い andり looking similar.

    But I couldn’t find an app to practice reading long lines on different orientations and different typographies, [so I made one](https://www.mabl.icu/jp/practicejp.html), and I didn’t expected to work so well. I went back to Duolingo and I was able to read in Japanese without needing the romanji, I just needed to practice it but didn’t had the right tool for it.

    I thought it might be useful for other starters so I hosted it on my personal domain, even posted the code [on GitHub](https://GitHub.com/Marcopole11/practicaLecturaJapo/tree/main).

    I made it for my own practice for this specific training that I wanted, so I wasn’t thinking on an app for everyone’s use, but if this helps someone else on their first steps then I’m glad to hear that!

    **EDIT:**
    I initially made this tool for my own training but I decided to share with all my good intentions, I did expected some kind of feedback, even if was negative feedback like “this isn’t useful because of this” it would be very helpful since I can improve it and that would be useful for me too.
    But all the reaction I got is one Downvote for who knows what reason…
    Anyway, usual Reddit behaviour I guess, kinda sad 🙁

11. Looking around it seems the difference between taraii and baii is that baii is more dismissive/straightforward? Like you’d use it to give advice that is more obvious. Like in a sentence “If youre tired you should go to sleep”.

    Where as taraii is for giving actual (maybe more thought out) advice and is softer. And then toii is just for hopes/wishes rather than advice

    Does that seem to be accurate?

12. Anyone been having issues with Unagibun? I took a JLPT practice test there this afternoon. The result link was sent to me, but when I click the link (or paste it into my browser) it just goes to a 404 page lol

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