32 comments

1. https://preview.redd.it/lq0d8zxwa2ze1.png?width=230&format=png&auto=webp&s=c0052d1ab7532a9a49b6a18c332c70d58fa07646

   This feels like I’m being very dense but I’m having a tough time identifying the character above so some guidance would be much appreciated! It’s part of the CE-156 software for the Sharp PC-1500 which adds support for katakana and some kanji. All of the other characters are very obvious but I can’t figure this one out. As far as character encoding goes, characters &A1 to &DF match Shift-JIS, then characters &E0 onwards are 明, 治, 正, 昭, 和 and then this character is the last one in the character table at &E5. The character on the left is how it appears in the scanned manual, the character in the middle is a simulation of how it would be printed on the computer’s plotter and the character on the right is how it’s displayed on the computer’s LCD.

2. what’s the difference between 握る and 掴む?

3. Is 久しぶり sometimes pronounced さしぶり and if so why e.g. is it an accent thing, or maybe a “euphonic rule” where the ひ is devoiced sometimes (random phonology jargon because I don’t understand this area very well)? Or am I just not perceptive enough?

   [You can listen to people saying it here](https://youglish.com/pronounce/%E4%B9%85%E3%81%97%E3%81%B6%E3%82%8A/japanese)

   Most are clearly articulating the ひ, but with some it seems *very* subtle – I can’t pick it up, but my non-native but Japanese-speaking girlfriend says she can. She has a very good ear, but I’m honestly a bit skeptical because I don’t think my senses are deceiving me. There were some clips where I would argue on my life that I they didn’t enunciate it, and some where it was pronounced as maybe even しゃしぶり.

   I swear in real life I hear さしぶり… lol going crazy over this

   Edit:

   Thanks for the answers guys. I am familiar with Japanese ひ being pronounced çi, but I think the actual confusion comes from the i in çi being devoiced ie the same thing that happens to the u in 好き or です. Personally I find this the most satisfying answer.

   In the more formal clips, or when women are speaking, I can hear the vowel clearly, but when it’s slurred or casual male speech it’s hard for me to distinguish from さしぶり. This is the same thing with the desu/masu and 少し thing, right? 

   Turns out it’s common for learners to not notice devoiced vowels and assume they are ‘deleted’, but it still exists from a mora perspective etc even if it’s basically imperceptible.

   Btw, the IPA for the word is below. Notice the round dot under the first i – this means it’s devoiced aka your vocal cords don’t vibrate when pronouncing it. 

   çi̥sa̠ɕibɯ̟ɾʲi

   And for 少し

   sɨ̥ᵝko̞ɕi

   Both devoiced vowels!

4. [https://youtu.be/-AehyVoXkdk?t=19](https://youtu.be/-AehyVoXkdk?t=19) 「せっかくこんなに天気がいいので、皆さんにもこの鎌倉の美しい様子をお届けしたいなと思って」

   What does “お届けしたい” mean here? Is she metaphorically “delivering” the nice weather to the viewers?

5. I read my first level 0 Tadoku book today and I’m just so incredibly psyched I had to tell someone. The thought of reading in Japanese *really* intimidated me and I had to read out loud and sound it out like my 4 year old who is learning to read English for the first time, but I did it and I felt so good! 

6. Ok I’m working on tweaking the rules due to feedback. The big one is that recommending or using AI as a teaching tool is now explicitly banned, and people wanting to do Self Advertising requests must, after receiving good reception in the materials rec thread, make their request in the Daily Thread and tag a mod (I like the extra transparency and also getting more eyes on these things to look for anything sus). /u/Fagon_Drang if you ever find time could you check that the rules also match in the New Reddit rule spots? In general I’ve noticed ways the rules could be cleaned up and condensed down to around just 7 categories… but that’s a project for another day.

   I’m also cleaning up the sticky. I’m trying to make it leaner and I want the examples to answer very common questions and provide links to highly recommended resources if possible. Here’s one part I want to change:

   > * **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?

   Any thoughts for a more common set of words that beginners get hung up on? A set of four plus words commonly confused by beginners could be good.

7. [https://youtu.be/-AehyVoXkdk?t=100](https://youtu.be/-AehyVoXkdk?t=100) The speaker is explaining the definiton of the term ナンパ：「元々は強い思想だったりとか、信念を掲げない人だったり」

   I interpreted this as ナンパ could refer to both 「思想の強い人」and 「信念を掲げない人」. However these terms are contradictory, and from the English subtitles, it seems that she really means 「強い思想や信念を掲げない人」.

   The two uses of だったり made me think that 「思想の強い人」(1) and 「信念を掲げない人」(2) were separate thoughts, as in it’s either (1) or (2). Can someone explain why this isn’t the correct interpretation?

8. https://preview.redd.it/im80p0fbx3ze1.jpeg?width=493&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ead56cc0acb6e9a5c087ba07b6e1fe22979d87b0

   Is this the literal translation? “He left a response after a short pause (little interval)”

   Will it makes senses to remove the 置くpart?

9. Recently saw a clip of Deadpool in Japanese. Where Deadpool says, “I’m touching myself tonight,” he says in Japanese, “今夜女にしよう”. I imagine they’re both similarly depraved, but what does this phrase specifically mean?

10. Might be a larger question but: I want to get animelon cast to my TV. I’m guessing the custom player can’t be cast to the TV as it doesn’t actually connect. Any other ways I can cast it. Regular chrome cast image screening has a pretty low quality for image.

11. Not sure if this needs its own thread, so apologies. Just wanted to get some thoughts about my study strategy.

    I’m at a point where I can pick up (and spell out consonants in my brain) 40-70% of what’s being said in the typical JP livestreams that I watch, but I either:

    * focus only on the vocab that I recognize, ignoring grammar points
    * pickup both vocab and grammar but I take time to translate it to English in my head (I know this is a bad habit and I’m trying to ween off it), and it’s 50/50 on whether I understand it or not

    I use Bunpro to learn both grammar and vocab (both pre-made and manually adding words that I hear through immersion). I’ve cleared both N5 and N4 grammar and vocab decks, only just getting started with N3. I ***rarely*** practice output.

    My current strategy is to push through the vocab decks (20 words / day), and 5 grammar points at a time. I move to the next 5 grammar points once the previous 5 have shifted from “Beginner” to “Adept” level.

    Have I just not studied enough? Should I change my approach?

12. [https://imgur.com/a/9OzU6zM](https://imgur.com/a/9OzU6zM)

    For context a cashier thinks her greetings sound weird and she asks them if they agree.

    I am unsure about the meaning of 終わっとんぞ

13. Trying to find this Japanese word based on what I heard. I mostly forgot the context but I believe I heard. 「はりこおさん」or something similar. I tried looking up for similar words but I get the word for paper mache and that doesn’t seem right. Anyone happens to know the word?

14. [https://imgur.com/a/KaqVbLV](https://imgur.com/a/KaqVbLV)

    In 息切らして汗だくってハズ, I wonder if ハズ corresponds to ハズい which means 恥ずかしい.

15. I’m working on some homework today that includes a fill in the blank sample sentences ending in: “っていうことじゃない？”

    I’ve never seen this before and can’t find too much online. Is this just the opposite of “ということだ” (i.e. does it mean, “it doesn’t seem that”)? If it helps, this is the full context of the prompt:

    A: 最近、彼女にメールしても返事が来ないんだ。電話しても出ないし。

    B: それは…。つまり________っていうことじゃない？

16. Super low kaishi 1.5k retention.

    Hi all, I’ve quite recently started the kaishi 1.5k deck but my retention is very low. I knew quite a lot of words from listening and their kana but only in kanji it’s honestly s hassle..

    Any advice/tips? Is it worst in the beginning?

    Doing 3 new kaishi cards and 2 new kanji(different deck) per day

17. 「こ、細かいことはいいじゃないですか」

    is this the same as 細かいこといいから ? “let’s not worry about the details” ?

18. Since Moon brought up rule changes earlier, I’ll keep the momentum going…

    How do we feel about banning duplicate answers in threads? This has been a problem potentially since forever, but it’s been more on my mind since I saw [this post](/r/LearnJapanese/comments/1k0m1np/) last month. Over 200 replies all either memeing about the picture (that’s fine), or repeating the same answer when really just a single link to the Wikipedia page for Yotsugana would’ve sufficed. I actually caught this one the minute it was posted and saw all the comments coming from a mile away. Maybe I should’ve removed it right then and there and added the topic to the FAQ… I just went ahead and did that now.

    Well, at least the replies were correct on that one (the first few dozen that I read, anyway). The real problem is when beginners/low-level people come in on a thread that’s already been answered, don’t read the existing answer, and clutter the place with their own (usu. completely off-mark) “not sure, but I think maybe it’s …” two cents. I’m honestly thinking of maybe locking threads that tend to attract this type of reply after they’ve been answered — though if possible I want to avoid that; I like to leave room for followup questions, corrections and general further discussion.

    This sort of rule is hard to enforce with my (our) level of activity, but, yeah, throwing it out there in concept at least.

    —

    To preemptively address an issue/ambiguity with this:

    For top-level comments that are *mostly* redundant but offer some new details, my idea is to remove them and encourage the user to gather just the new bits and post them as additions to the main answer in the form of a reply. But I also intend to err on the side of caution here. I mostly just want to give myself more grounds to remove obviously wrong/unnecessary answers. For fear of my own incompetence and lack of knowledge, I don’t want to be too tyrannical about it. ^^;

    —

    意見、聞かせてくださーい！

19. What’s the difference between “歌いっちえあばいい” and “歌いましょう” I was familiar with the second but my friend told me the first means the same thing

20. 「女の子は、このくらい率直なほうがくらっとくるんだもん」

    what’s くらっとくる in this case? dizzingly?

21. I’m trying to write some kind of heinous Japanese learning aid page (have to be an app eventually but I hate the small screen area on mobile so I’ll burn that bridge when I come to it), and I’m looking for some openly available source of the most common jukugo for each kanji, like you’d find in character dictionaries. I realize I could get selections of them from chatgpt etc., but I’d prefer something human-curated if possible. Would anyone know of anything like that?

22. https://preview.redd.it/umvfd3uof6ze1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9a332ffdc8476228f69dd8d00a440eff4bf3261e

    I can’t figure out what this says/means on this knife. I don’t know if this is the right place for it though

23. after Duolingo announced it was shifting even further into relying on Al i have been wanting to find another app to learn Japanese on.

    i was still in the middle of learning hiragana on Duolingo and am very much a novice still. i know that there are websites that are good versus apps but are there any learning apps you like?

    the convenience of being able to do my lessons on my phone is pretty important to me since i’m learning for leisure and not really for anything super pressing or important.

    thanks in advance!

24. I am not a native speaker of english, So when I sometimes see translations of japanese words in my anki deck. For example なる= become, come to and result in. I dont understand the 2nd and 3rd definition, Because in my native language, (Dutch) the 2nd and the 3rd definition aren’t used the same as in english. Should i still learn the 2nd and 3rd definition or should i skip them. Thanks in advance.

25. I just learned my first Kanji!! It was by accident on Duolingo, I’ve been focusing on learning Katakana and Hirigana while throwing in a few Duo lessons to practice my reading and they introduced me to 人.

    As someone who has been TERRIFIED of Kanji because of how complex it looks to learn/remember, this has been so inspiring for me. It’s simple and I highly doubt I’ll ever forget it.

    I’m more motivated than ever after approximately 10 days of struggling.

    Moral of the story, keep trying even when it’s hard. A breakthrough might be coming!

26. 今年1月、埼玉県八潮市の道に大きい穴があきました。走っていたトラックが落ちました。

    What does あきました mean here?

27. How does someone find out if kanji are separate or at least 2 making a word when reading something they don’t know (using furigana)

28. I saw 俺を含め四人 meaning including me somewhere and it doesn’t make sense and I can’t find an answer online, why is 含め in the imperative form the fuck? 😭 And if it wasn’t in the imperative it’s in the continuative which doesn’t make sense either as 四人 is after it

29. I’ve been thinking that you should learn radicals through kangxi list, but for some reasons websites like [jisho.org](http://jisho.org) are using different radical meanings, and I’m not even sure where did they find them. For example as far as I know 又 is “again” radical, but jisho says it’s “right hand”. Which one should I use to be able to talk about kanji and radicals with other Japanese learners or natives more easily?

30. What is it with the te form, what i mean is why do I for example see 寝ていた instead of 寝た, the first is I am sleep, the second is ??? I slept? Next why do I see for example adjectives like 可愛い、 turned into 可愛く and then the word comes without it being かわいくて so just 可愛く本を読んだ for example do I need to remove the i at the end if it’s another word after it and turn it into a く? Last question what is ていて even for if I said 寝ていく and 寝ていていく what is even the difference

31. I’ve recently started sentence mining while reading a VN. I am currently using Yomitan + Japanese-English dictionary for the mining. I’ve heard some people say Japanese to English dictionaries are bad and some say they’re fine. I’ve heard a lot of people using J-J dictionaries since the definitions are more accurate. I was worried about using one since I might not understand the definition of some words in the definition of a word.
    How do you do it? Do you use an J-E dictionary, does it work? Or did you first use one and later switched to J-J dictionaries? Please let me know!

    Edit: just to add, I think a J-E might be fine as well since I can learn the specifics of the words more from immersion. Although please let me know what you think!

32. I’m using Yomitan with the Jisho dictionary and AnkiConnect. Does anyone understand these form tables on the Anki cards? (See img)
    [https://imgur.com/a/d7vFKmV](https://imgur.com/a/d7vFKmV)