Daily Thread: for simple questions, minor posts & newcomers [contains useful links!] (April 24, 2026)

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.

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by AutoModerator

8 comments
  1. I know that the verb きづく(気づく)is based on the phrase きがつく(気がつく)which makes sense to me in the way of “attention sticks to” to roughly translated to “to notice”, but what about other -づく verbs like もとづく(基づく)and ちかづく(近づく)? Do these stem from a similar ーがつく base with meanings to do with anything along the lines of “to stick”? I know that it’s best not to worry too much about the origins of the words rather than their meanings/contextual use, but it’s a curiosity I’ve wondered about for a while now.

  2. I’ll be in a formal context — specifically an academic interview — in which I may need to mention by name one of Japan’s prime ministers as well as Osamu Tezuka (long story). Should I just not use honorific titles (like one does in academic papers) at all, or should I use [prime-minister’s name]**首相** and 治手塚**先生** or other alternatives?

  3. If you had a lot of time in a day, lets say 6-8 hours, how would you study? I currently dont have much to do throughout the week and I am not sure how to effectively use all of that time to study japanese.

  4. Is somebody here who learnt first Japanese and afterwards Korean? If so, how was your process?

  5. Anyone know some books on the same level as 注文の多い料理店? I got so much motivation from reading that.

  6. Is studying Radicals worth it?

    Hello, I’m 3-ish months into my Japanese journey and I’ve always learned kanji in a per-word basis up until now, because I heard that was the way to do it as memorizing hundreds of kanji with all of their meanings and readings was near impossible. I wouldn’t know the meanings or the readings of the individiual kanji and just memorize them as whole words. For example, the 3 kanji in 会社員 were 3 totally unrelated magical pictures with unknown meanings in my head and once all 3 of them got together, they suddenly became “office worker”. If I saw the 社 kanji some other place in a word I didn’t know, I’d not be able to neither guess its meaning or the reading.

    I just downloaded Renshuu the other day and the dedicated kanji section caught my attention the most: I’ve learned SO much in the last 3 days. I learned so much about the kanji _in_ the words I already knew and everything started to make so much more sense, the mnemonics feature of the app is also incredibly helpful.

    I then realized something when looking at the mnemonics, most of them were using the individiual radicals to form the mnemonics even if the kanji was compounded by other compound kanji. For example, 場 technically is just 土 (radical) + 易 (compound kanji) but the menmonics even broke down the compound kanji to its core radicals as well. I then looked up how many radicals there were and were surprised to see that there was only 214. I already know about 500-ish kanji by now so its definitely a doable task.

    The most exciting moment for me after downloading Renshuu was the first time I managed to guess the meaning and the reading of a word I’ve never seen before, 社長. After learning the meaning of 社 was “company” and also its onyomi reading, and also learning that 長 meant “leader” and its onyomi reading, I guessed that 社長 meant “company president” and its reading was しゃちょう, and it was correct! Felt like a big milestone in kanji literacy.

    All of those points combined gave me an incredible motivation and desire to focus on learning radicals and their meanings + readings, which would take some time but I feel like it can help making memorizing kanji a way easier process, make writing kanji a lot easier and just overall be beneficial/save me time in the long run, but I’m still an inexperienced rando at this, thats why I’m asking you guys… Is it worth learning radicals at the point im at right now, or is it ever worth it? Is it wise to devote most of my practice time for radicals? Just for clarification, by “devoting” I dont mean I’m going to spend ALL my practice time on radicals, I’ll still be studying phrases, grammar and words, but I’ll shift my focus on kanji from “learn as many kanji as possible” to “complete learning radicals before moving on”

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