21 comments

1. u/Fagon_Drang u/Moon_Atomizer

   I noticed automod has been cycling out the weekly threads still (e.g. writing practice thread) so it tells me it’s working in some way. Is it just the Daily Thread that’s broken? Also thank you Sir DragonFang for manually posting these. Champion.

2. Hello! 😀

   I’m working on Chapter 15 of Genki 2 and I have two quick questions about grammar.

   1. In this dialogue:

   早く着いたから、ちょっ観光しない？

   うん。どこに行く？

   善光寺はどう？有名なお寺だよ。

   いいね。昼ご飯は何にする？

   長野はそばがおいしいから、ばを食べようよ。

   What is the に doing in 昼ご飯は何にする? I remember Tofugu mentions に is like a pin location, but I’m confused why its used its reference to lunch and する (do)?

   2) In this sentence: 十万円あげましょう。何に使いますか. I’m confused by the あげましょう part of the sentence.

   Doesn’t ましょう translate to Let’s? Genki translate this sentence as “I will give you 100,000 yen. What will you use it for?” How does あげましょう become “I will give you” instead of “Lets give you”?

   Thank you so much for your help in advance! 😀

3. 調子はどう

   調子 is a weird one. I’ve probably been here before for it.

   Can someone help me understand how i’m supposed to use this word? It has innumerable uses that just don’t seem to add up.

4. i was meaning to watch some anime with animelon today , but it seems the site is broken somehow since i keep getting the message that “this series is not available” on pretty much every anime i clicked on , im just wondering if other people are experiencing the same issue or if it’s just a problem on my end , i have asbplayer , ive just been putting off learning how to use it since it seemed a bit daunting but i might cave in if animelon refuses to work

5. Hi,

   I’ve been using lyrics as a way of learning Japanese. But I’m kinda confused about how the japanese pronouns are expressed and hiddened. See the following excerpt from Aimer’s 7月の翼 with my English translation.

   >ただ会いたい, 浮かぶ言葉はいつも弱くて
   I just want to meet you, but the words come to mind are always weak and unchanging

   >変わらず胸を焦がすよ
   It burns inside my chest

   >ねえ もし願いが叶うなら
   Hey, if my wishes could come true

   >夜空も超えて会いに行くよ
   I will cross the night sky just to meet you

   >暗闇の中輝いて
   Shining in the darkness

   >咲き誇る花の様に
   Just like a flower in full blossom

   >何もかもが愛しくて
    Everything (about you) is beloved

   >いつまでも探している
    and I’ve always been searching for it

   >どこかで会えたら また微笑んで
   If we meet somewhere, I’ll smile again.

   何もかもが愛しくて, いつまでも探している. In this sentence, the subject is 何もかも, adjective is 愛しい, following another clause connected with て form, so a word-to-word translation should be something like ***Everything is beloved, and I keep searching for it*****.** However, I think based on the context, it is omitting the pronouns, so it’s actually saying ***Everything (about you) is beloved, and I keep searching for it***

   is my reasoning correct or is the word-to-word translation actually correct? I know that sometimes japanese would ignore the particle が, so the main subject pronoun is hidden, could they do similar things like what I’ve outlined above? Is the context of the conversation the only way to tell what whom they are referring to?

6. Another expression is *sore kara* (それから); it is an adverbial expression that can often be translated as *also,* although it usually means *then* or *after that.* I cant found any relevant to “sorekara” as also. Does anyone have an example for me ? thank you.

7. I just found out about 好む. Is it some kind of verbial way to say ”to like” instead of 好？ Kind of like 必要 and 要る？

8. Will I be able to type Chinese characters after I learn Japanese? I want to start learning Japanese very soon, but I’d like to know if I’ll be able to recognize and type Chinese characters as well. That is, I don’t need to understand the meaning of a character or how it’s pronounced in Chinese, I only need to be able to *copy* it. So, I want to know if written Japanese kanji and Chinese characters are totally the same symbols and whether it’s possible to write both using a keyboard with just knowledge of Japanese. I need this weird skill for my job. I primarily work with Simplified Chinese and occasionally with Traditional Chinese.

9. some questions from N2 listening script please

   男:それから昼休みを挟んで清掃の担当をお願いします。映画が終わり次第、劇場内の座席と床の掃除を始めてください。次の回の開始まであまり時間がないから大急ぎでお願いします。

   “Also, after the lunch break, please be in charge of cleaning. As soon as the movie finishes, start cleaning the seats and the floor inside the theater. There isn’t much time before the next showing starts, so please hurry.”

   昼休みを挟んで

   1) i got a little confused by whether ~を挟んで just want to be sure, did the manager want the cleaning to be done after the lunch break?
   2) my interpretion is, 昼休みを挟んで can also be written differently as 昼休みのあとで. which is simple and direct.

10. What does とする mean when it comes after the past form of a verb, like in [this news article](https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/easy/ne2025062311520/ne2025062311520.html)?
    >トランプ大統領はSNSで、核を研究する建物が大きく壊れた**としています**。

11. New confusion は and が with ある/いる

    Hey, so for some context, 
    In class, we aksways learnt that nound subjects of ある/いる were with the particle が. Until there, no problem. 

    は is what i would call theme of the sentence, you can only have one per verbal proposition
    が ist the specific topic, can be plural. 
    And then, yesterday in class we had the sentence: 
    シャワーはある、部屋もけつこう広い。

    And this breaks the rule we learnt of ある must be completed with a が particle. Is it not a rule ? The teacher aaid it was because of the context of the sentence, but I’m not sure I understand what that means. Can anyone explain why はある works here ? Is the がある rule absolute fiction ??
    Thank you in advance !

12. What should I be reading for my immersion? I’m still new and my vocab is really small, and my I’m still learning the basics of grammar, so I’m not sure what to do.

    I want to read manga, but looking up words takes so much more effort because I can’t use yomitan. So I hope you guys can recommend me stuff.

    Thanks in advance!

13. My kanji memorization depends heavily on getting an explanation of each component and some notes how they ended up in the kanji in question. Is there a good convenient source to find this information?

    I’ve been using chatGPT asking simply like this “explain kanji 犬”, which works great most of the time, but not always.

14. I see numbers written as 121百万円 in business context. How are numbers like this read?

    Do I say ひゃくにじゅういちひゃくまんえん　or mentally calculate the number and say (1億2,100万円)

15. Hello all. Recently I’ve been slacking quite a bit bit in learning Japanese. I hate that its been happening and am trying to break out of this slump, but I don’t know how. Anyone have suggestions, tips or advice to break out of this slump?

16. I have a question for people who have been using Anki for 1 year or more.

    My level is N3 workings towards N2, I know 5kish words now.

    I don’t spend a lot of time on Anki, it’s usually around 30mins, but it’s not the most enjoyable activity. When I began I used to limit my Anki time to 15mins at most and I think that was the sweet spot. I think I just feel like it’s a boring chore now and it’s not helping me as much anymore. I have been doing 25 new words on average per day, every weekday, since I began. For some periods I had remembering and recall cards, so that meant 50 new cards per day. Right now I’m doing 20 new remembering only cards per day. It’s been around 8 months now.

    The problem is, at this stage I have finished around 7 2k cards decks and each one of them has around 30 reviews per day, even with FSRS. The cards that I’m shown now, if I press good their intervals become years, some even fucking 33 years (!).

    Because of that I’m considering just stopping reviews altogether in those past decks. Has anyone here had experience with that? I’m afraid I’ll regress in my learning journey if I do so.

17. I really struggle learning the name and pronunciation of Japanese proper names of cities, surnames, proper names….

    I can’t draw an “inner logic” between the individual kanjis and the overall meaning and pronunciation of the name like I do with regular words, and they appear infrequently enough on texts I read that I cant learn them by repetition

18. Is there a way that japanese people easily distinguish between 科学 and 化学? For instance, if I said かがく　が好きです。Is there a way to make that less ambiguous?

19. https://preview.redd.it/lyz7gbq4jv8f1.jpeg?width=2046&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a7c5ecad2fb23f9dcd1b815e9516d1f9af389030

    Why are 1 and 2 furiganas in katakana here ? It is the title of a One Piece episode

20. What does ﾇ with dakuten mean? I thought that it was supposed to be gibberish, but Ive seen it a few times in YouTube titles while randomly scrolling.

21. Something interesting I’m kinda experiencing.

    We can go with the “the more you read, the more you slowly start understanding” line, but…

    Well, let me be clear first: to give myself a set goal, I’m trying to aim fro N2. I’ve been told more than once to aim for N1 or beyond if I REALLY want to learn Japanese, and I can finally put in words why I don’t aim for N1: not only is that learning another 1000 kanji (yet my goal is also the 常用漢字), plus grammar points that you might not encounter so often… the reality is this: getting past N3 (self- guessing) and nearing N2 has taken me about 6 years, from start. If the gap from N2 to N1 is the same as from N5 to N2, that means another 6 years of study to get to N1. Sorry, but life continues and if N2 means I can do many things that N1 gets (mostly for jobs)… then better to have something I’m within ballpark of than have to worry about another 6 years of studying while also living life.

    HOWEVER, and the whole point of this… I decided to start the N1 material on an app I have, mostly because of gamification and continuing streaks. As I continue the stuff that’s supposedly in N1… the stuff in N2 is becoming clearer and I’m getting better at reading native japanese (though i suppose that’s the point of SRS). Above I said that it feels like it’ll take another 6 years to get to N1… but I’m starting to wonder if rather than being a linear path, the language starts compounding on itself? Yes, there’s still a TON of material to learn… but it feels like learning it becomes faster compared to when first starting out.