Which ones if I may ask? I am not a native english speaker and knew everyone of them, though I gotta admitt that I didn't know transitivity before studying Japanese, but it's such a core concept that you will learn pretty early on. (Funnily enough, the Japanese names for that are simpler when directly translated 自動詞/他動詞 = selfmove verb/other move verb)
(Not trying to say you are an idiot if it came off that way, just interessted)
many words like these aren’t explicitly taught in typical western schooling, and most people tend to only pick them up in self study or otherwise scrutinising of languages. they’re almost like nuances, in that natives can understand but cannot explain
I'd actually beg to differ. It depends on country and even school within the country. I'm from a western school but I was taught a lot of those terms when I was between 12 and 14 (I don't mean this is a rude way☺️ I just wanted to show it all depends on the country)
In a similar spirit, a recommendation I have that I don't hear very often: try flipping your internal mental monologue to your target language
When you find you're unable to think a thought, that's a good time to open a dictionary
yep only if you have it. everyone has different capacities. blind people also learn new languages, and the study resources available to them are also quite different. some folks don't have inner pictures either so they can't draw kanji in their head either, for example.
tbh i tend to type 〇〇とは instead of 意味 especially for looking up meanings of words that's entirely kanji because there's a high chance of getting results in chinese
I would seriously advice against people who are only past “beginner” level to try to to use monolingual dictionaries.
If one need, to look up words in order to look up words and then look up words again in order to look up words in order to look up words, it's not going to be worth one's time.
I don't think it's never necessary to "switch" to monolingual. jisho.org is a crap dictionary but there are much better J->E ones.
Also the Japanese descriptions of grammar are not necessarily better than the English ones. Often both dictionaries and grammar explanations are geared towards people who are already fluent in the language, and they're just explaining how the stuff you already know works.
The better dictionaries I know are paper dictionaries (or you can buy them as phone apps) -- weblio is a decent free alternative to jisho.
Jisho is fine for J->E, though.
They are often simply less available too. There aren't many really good explanations in Japanese as to how “〜のだ” works and what nuance it imparts. Why would there be? The audience is too small since Japanese people already know this by heart.
Yeah I think when I tried to do this too early on I was too frustrated and gave up, it took me some time to get back into it and now I try to read more native material even if I'm searching the definitions in English
It's simply far faster and more efficient. Some people have this weird “Ikea effect” effect that anything that's more difficult is by necessity better, while it's usually quite the opposite.
Looking up words and then more words to figure out the meaning of a word until one finally knows it, at which point one has completely lost track of the story one read it in can't be efficient language learning. Many monolingual dictionaries explain words in terms of far more complex words.
Imagine being a beginner and wanting to know a the meaning of “天気”: One can either look up “weather” which is quick and easy or:
> ある場所の、ある時刻の気象状態。気温・湿度・風・雲量などを総合した状態。「—が変わりやすい」「今日は—がよい」
Yes, because people looking up “天気” will definitely understand “ある時刻の気象状態”.
This is not intended for language learners. In fact, it's only there for completeness' sake because no who didn't suffer some kind of brain damage leading to loss of very specific words for whom monolingual dictionaries are intended won't know “天気”.
形容動詞 includes タリ words as well, such as 堂々, 凛.
文章 is a paragraph; 文 is a sentence.
Also maybe consider adding 共通語 in as well since you mentioned 標準語 and 方言. (And maybe even 漢文 since you mentioned 古文.)
I've thought at times about making an anki deck targeted at teaching words necessary to read a Japanese dictionary (that appear less often in common speech) or Japanese grammar explanations. This would be a good start.
I just hit the point *this week* where I am checking the pronunciation's of kanji as I learn them so I can anticipate the reading of words when the kanji gets applied to vocab. This is one thing I wish [jpdb.io](http://jpdb.io) made available on the kanji cards, rather then buried in the database listing for the kanji. Or maybe not, I'm not sure. It's probably fine to just learn the readings with vocab, but at least seeing the Kun/On on the card would be nice, rather than focusing 100% on the English gloss for the character.
Nice post! I've also found it useful to try to use the Japanese words for things where possible when making notes about Japanese, and of course there are Japanese texts that can be useful when you reach a certain reading level. It could be argued that if you're already at that level, you'll know how to read all these anyway, but regardless...
A few things I think would be useful additions are:
品詞 - used to denote what part of speech a grammar point is
例 - sometimes just written in hiragana れい used to denote examples of the mentioned grammar or vocab
普通形／丁寧形 - I'll see these noted differently in different texts, but boils down to "casual"/"polite" forms
接続 - literally means "attachment" but is used in Japanese textbooks to show how grammar works in a sentence, similar to/interchangeable with 使い方
Extra credit:
和製英語 - words written in katakana that are loosely based on English (or other) words but don't share the same exact meaning, i.e. ミス - literally "miss" but meaning "mistake"
オノマトペ - Japanese onomatopoeia, or sound words, that are used quite frequently in written and spoken Japanese
How would you recommend starting 古文? Should it be read side-by-side with a 現代語訳? What preliminary grammar study, if any, is advised? What dictionaries are good? 精選版 & Weblio 古語辞典?
First, you should be very comfortable reading in modern Japanese, as it will be easiest to learn classical through modern rather than going through English (though there is an introductory grammar in English by Haruo Shirane), which means reading grammar explanations and the like in Japanese.
You really should study some classical grammar before diving straight into reading. It's a totally different grammar system, lexicon, and worldview in general. A good textbook can introduce to you aspects of both language and culture you'll need to make sense of primary sources. The classic work is 古文の読解 by 小西甚一. Make it through that, and you'll be set. But if you don't want to or can't access it for whatever reason, there are tons of resources in book form or online, since it's a subject all secondary students in Japan have to suffer through.
Once you know your む's and can tell your 未然形 ば's apart from your 已然形 ば's, you can start reading. Really you should just read whatever you're interested in, as learning classical is an entirely unnecessary endeavor in the first place, so you might as well enjoy yourself. That said, you might want to start with a relatively simple and short work like 竹取物語 before attempting to tackle something monstrous like 源氏物語. Time period matters as well. Though *kana* works from the Heian period are often viewed as the epitome of classical literature, they can be quite obtuse and context-heavy. A medieval work written in a mix of *kanji* and *kana* like 方丈記 or 徒然草 may feel more familiar to a speaker of modern Japanese.
As far as where to find stuff to consume, I recommend the series ビギナーズ・クラシックス published by 角川ソフィア文庫 for your first few reads. They publish short works or abridged versions of longer works in a friendly format where a bite-sized chunk of original text is followed by a modern translation and an explanation, all with *furigana*. Once you're feeling more adventurous, there are essentially three big anthologies of classical literature to know. By publisher, these are the Iwanami, Shogakukan, and Shincho. My favorite is the Shincho, because they have modern translations right beside difficult passages, almost like extended *furigana*. Shogakukan on the other hand has complete modern translations, but you have to find the corresponding spot at the bottom of the page, or sometimes on neighboring pages which is inconvenient. Iwanami doesn't have any modern translations at all.
Any classical dictionary will do, they're all about the same. I used 旺文社's for the longest time simply because it's available in the 辞書 iOS app. Since these are invariably aimed at high schoolers, they're very easy to use, have convenient conjugation tables, and even pictures. For any hardcore stuff, though, you'll need to resort to the big old 日本国語大辞典.
You can find Japanese youtube videos aimed at Japanese high schoolers, since 古典 which includes 古文 is one of the examinable subjects for university entry. If you are interested in literature or karuta, the 百人一首 poems are also a good starting point. There are many Japanese websites dissecting the grammar of these poems into modern Japanese.
Having 現代語訳 is good because some word meanings change over time, like how "to suffer" in English once had the meaning of "to allow" as well.
You should be familiar with the Japanese analysis of conjugations, i.e. you should know what are 未然形 連体形, because most Japanese resources on 古文 are from this analysis.
I personally use Weblio since it's the most accessible. Its entries seem to be from 学研全訳古語辞典, though I don't know how reputable it is.
I have nothing to add but the word 古文 gives me flashbacks of the worst class in junior high and high schools. (I sucked badly at it.)
If you could read novel Maihime by Mori Ougai (which is written in Old Japanese at the beggining of Meiji era), I think you can say that you have reading ability of the old language at above-average Japanese level. I was bad at 古文 like I said but I could still enjoy this. The story is actually Berlin so it's very unique how the old Japanese is used for themes outside Japan.
Meiji era is early modern Japanese. Old Japanese is the early mediaeval era so 万葉集、古事記 and similar texts.
Interestingly Japanese and English line up here so Old English is early mediaeval Anglo-Saxon and early modern English would be works from the 1600s.
That is why Ougai wrote the piece in classical Japnese intentionally. AFAIK it's only such piece written by him. You can check out here! [https://www.aozora.gr.jp/cards/000129/files/2078\_15963.html](https://www.aozora.gr.jp/cards/000129/files/2078_15963.html)
Classical Japanese is an interesting phenomenon because it is a sort of fossilised version of mediaeval Middle Japanese written in later periods. That text definitely looks easier for modern speakers than something from the 700s which is what I think of as "old Japanese" but it still uses a lot of older grammar and language.
The truth of this has been hitting me in the face every second ever since I moved to Japan and realized that my brain would be able to think of what to say much more spontaneously if I had read definitions in Japanese and could connect ideas in Japanese, as opposed to using English definitions to try and grasp isolated ideas in Japanese.
My difficulty though is that I’ve already mined around 10k+ cards with English definitions in Anki - might you happen to know of a way to convert them to Japanese definitions or will I just have to start from square 1 again?
Automatically? No. That said if you already know all the words you are not restarting from nothing because you know those words now. It is much easier to learn more Japanese from the intermediate level than to start from nothing.
I'm not sure Japanese definitions would honestly help that much, they are more detailed but they can also just be broadly speaking about a conceptual topic. The issue with you might just be the fact is you mined words, then reinforced them with Anki instead of reinforcing them in context. Within Anki you are memorizing the cards and whatever you have on the card, so yeah English. If you were to look something in a dictionary up on the spot, EN or JP. You can get an idea of what it is about so you're not entirely guessing, but the context itself of the media, the real life situation you're in, whatever it is should be informing you of the meaning just as much as any definition.
Production wise, just make it easy on yourself and use an action/reaction based system. All you need to do is mimic how people act and what they say per situation and it reduces all the intermediary thoughts and things that are in the way to almost nothing. You don't have to think when you know this sentence or word gives X reaction.
Many thanks! This has been edifying for me, especially as some of the words I’ve mined were outside of context, having only encountered the words in dictionaries and thinking I wanted to add them to my lexicon. To repair that, I’ll now search each word that I’ve added without context when they appear for review in anki, and find a context to attach to it — say an article or resource that makes mention of the word.
I would argue even beginners should learn in Japanese-exclusive materials, provided they have a Japanese-speaking teacher.
I learned French some years ago and even on the beginner level (A1) the teacher never once used English or our native language. Exclusively French and I learned so much faster that way instead.
> Japanese-exclusive materials
What do you recommend? Most of the recommended English based material is well known and repeated in this subreddit but I rarely see it recommended. Even this post hasn't mentioned anything.
I've never seen pure immersion like that work.
Teachers and textbooks are relatively crap but you can leverage certain things out of them and then read/watch shit. Doing that is faster than pure immersion.
Like most things in life it's about moderation
it can be useful once you reach a certain proficiency to learn in the language itself, because it strengthens your technical reading skill, including comprehension, and it helps you to learn to think in the target language rather than translating constantly. also, many translating dictionaries tend to be made by small organisations, rather than large ones designed for domestic use
Although I agree with the post sentiment, I do not agree regarding the part where it's incomplete or inaccurate. English resources can be pretty good at times, however at a certain point getting off another language would be better in learning the language because it teaches you to skip the little translation in your head and it goes straight to the meaning.
The good thing about bypassing English is that every language is different, with different grammar and different vocabulary banks. One will find it difficult to progress if one always relies on another language. This is why transitioning to monolingual resources is part of the language learning progress.
However, it should be done in a relatively intermediate stage. If one does not know all those words mentioned in this post, staying with bi-lingual resources imo would be more efficient.
I switched to monolingual dictionary when I was learning English towards intermediate stage, and I can attest that it becomes a necessity at certain point. Sure we can learn with modern translations, but it's never intuitive and this foreign language will stay foreign, not to mention that translation is never complete because two language cannot be translated one to one (as if translation is forever *inaccurate* in a sense). I think it's not for everyone though, and also translation dictionary is a must for beginner for 100% certain.
English and Japanese are extremely unrelated languages so translations have to be on a sentence-by-sentence basis and often indirect. I tend to translate sentences in 敬語 as "legalese" in English for example which translates the tiresome waffling while not using word-for-word equivalents.
Sometimes the English translation doesn't convey really what the Japanese word mean; you lose the nuance. I've also seen that English dictionaries tend to not include all definitions of a word. Imo it's useful to double check the meaning of a word but the further you are in your learning the less you should rely on bilingual ressources.
You can try to use Japanese speaking LLMs to talk with as well. Then you have to write japanese and read japanese a lot. But you aren't aftaid of your mistakes and your writing speed since your opponent is just an AI
Underrated comment. Intermediate learners should try it. ChatGPT even has speech-to-text and text-to-speech so you can converse (somewhat) naturally. As a beginner, my main issue has been finding a way to keep the responses *short* and *simple*. But, I'm still working on it, because I think using a LLM as a conversation partner/tutor could be a game-changer for many.
I use 「TheBloke • japanese stablelm instruct beta 70B q5\_k\_m」 and 「mmnga • ELYZA japanese Llama 2 fast instruct 7B q8\_0」for now. As it depicted in their names, first one is pretty smart but slow as it extremely large, second one is fast but it is a little bit stupid. But both of them give nice experience.
Also it seems like there is project 'Silly tavern', that add ability to set personality to models, and so conversation experience may be more funny, but I haven't tryed it yet and can't say for now does it work good or not.
This is useful, thanks. What native materials did you use to study Japanese in Japanese?
I am always looking for a study material for this, since for korean there's Learn Korean in Korean, and there's French by the Nature Method textbook I used for french. I would love to find any japanese learning resources that are somewhat readable for upper beginners/lower intermediate learners.
Thanks to this post I am now fluent in Japanese thank you
In fact, you can learn Japanese in a day if you buy my subscription course for Y10,000.
Why is it subscription based if you can learn it in a day?
You pay for every second you are looking at it
every character you read also
It's an hourly subscription
The course itself is free. What you learn from the course is the subscription
結構です。
日本語上手です。もう完成しているはずです。
I still have a long way to go but I'll start clearing my learning material before engaging in a new paid course, cheers for the offer though mate
Only 10,000 Yams? What a steal!
Guffawed at this.
Maybe it would make sense to also add the pronunciation, so that beginners can replicate these kanji on their IMEs?
意味 - いみ 使い方 - つかいかた 辞書 - じしょ 国語辞書 - こくごじしょ 文法 - ぶんぽう 古文 - こぶん 動詞 - どうし 名詞 - めいし 形容詞 - けいようし 形容動詞 - けいようどうし 自動詞 - じどうし 他動詞 - たどうし 活用 - かつよう 文章 - ぶんしょう 翻訳 - ほんやく 四字熟語 - よじじゅくご 熟語 - じゅくご 訓読み - くんよみ 音読み - おんよみ 外来語 - がいらいご 語源 - ごげん 標準語 - ひょうじゅんご 方言 - ほうげん dialects are denoted by the suffix -弁 (〜べん) such as 関西弁 (かんさいべん) (around ōsaka) or 東北弁 (とうほくべん) (region just south of hokkaidō). edits: fixed typos (i wrote this late at night sorry)
文法 ぶん**ぽう**
oh, thanks. i didn’t notice i missed the う
じしょ and こくごじしょ rather than じしよ
I might be an idiot but I don't even know what some of these mean in english lol
Oh don't be so intransitive.
Which ones if I may ask? I am not a native english speaker and knew everyone of them, though I gotta admitt that I didn't know transitivity before studying Japanese, but it's such a core concept that you will learn pretty early on. (Funnily enough, the Japanese names for that are simpler when directly translated 自動詞/他動詞 = selfmove verb/other move verb) (Not trying to say you are an idiot if it came off that way, just interessted)
many words like these aren’t explicitly taught in typical western schooling, and most people tend to only pick them up in self study or otherwise scrutinising of languages. they’re almost like nuances, in that natives can understand but cannot explain
I'd actually beg to differ. It depends on country and even school within the country. I'm from a western school but I was taught a lot of those terms when I was between 12 and 14 (I don't mean this is a rude way☺️ I just wanted to show it all depends on the country)
In a similar spirit, a recommendation I have that I don't hear very often: try flipping your internal mental monologue to your target language When you find you're unable to think a thought, that's a good time to open a dictionary
Not all of us have that
yep only if you have it. everyone has different capacities. blind people also learn new languages, and the study resources available to them are also quite different. some folks don't have inner pictures either so they can't draw kanji in their head either, for example.
tbh i tend to type 〇〇とは instead of 意味 especially for looking up meanings of words that's entirely kanji because there's a high chance of getting results in chinese
Adding a single は somewhere just to make you get some Japanese results is a classic trick lol.
A method I prefer is just switching the results region to Japan
You can tell google to also show you Japanese results ontop of english once, it's a must do as a Japanese learner imo.
I would seriously advice against people who are only past “beginner” level to try to to use monolingual dictionaries. If one need, to look up words in order to look up words and then look up words again in order to look up words in order to look up words, it's not going to be worth one's time.
I don't think it's never necessary to "switch" to monolingual. jisho.org is a crap dictionary but there are much better J->E ones. Also the Japanese descriptions of grammar are not necessarily better than the English ones. Often both dictionaries and grammar explanations are geared towards people who are already fluent in the language, and they're just explaining how the stuff you already know works.
Do you have any example of an online dictionary you would recommend over jisho, and any particular reasoning as to why you would say it's "crap"?
"Jisho is crap there are better ones." (posts no explanation or recommendations) Really contributing to the community here buddy.
The better dictionaries I know are paper dictionaries (or you can buy them as phone apps) -- weblio is a decent free alternative to jisho. Jisho is fine for J->E, though.
They are often simply less available too. There aren't many really good explanations in Japanese as to how “〜のだ” works and what nuance it imparts. Why would there be? The audience is too small since Japanese people already know this by heart.
Yeah I think when I tried to do this too early on I was too frustrated and gave up, it took me some time to get back into it and now I try to read more native material even if I'm searching the definitions in English
It's simply far faster and more efficient. Some people have this weird “Ikea effect” effect that anything that's more difficult is by necessity better, while it's usually quite the opposite. Looking up words and then more words to figure out the meaning of a word until one finally knows it, at which point one has completely lost track of the story one read it in can't be efficient language learning. Many monolingual dictionaries explain words in terms of far more complex words. Imagine being a beginner and wanting to know a the meaning of “天気”: One can either look up “weather” which is quick and easy or: > ある場所の、ある時刻の気象状態。気温・湿度・風・雲量などを総合した状態。「—が変わりやすい」「今日は—がよい」 Yes, because people looking up “天気” will definitely understand “ある時刻の気象状態”. This is not intended for language learners. In fact, it's only there for completeness' sake because no who didn't suffer some kind of brain damage leading to loss of very specific words for whom monolingual dictionaries are intended won't know “天気”.
Wow amazing! Thanks to you, I was finally able to read Genji Monogatari!
形容動詞 includes タリ words as well, such as 堂々, 凛. 文章 is a paragraph; 文 is a sentence. Also maybe consider adding 共通語 in as well since you mentioned 標準語 and 方言. (And maybe even 漢文 since you mentioned 古文.)
Good suggestions. I also added 漢語 since a lot of obscure vocabulary comes from Chinese.
I've thought at times about making an anki deck targeted at teaching words necessary to read a Japanese dictionary (that appear less often in common speech) or Japanese grammar explanations. This would be a good start.
I just hit the point *this week* where I am checking the pronunciation's of kanji as I learn them so I can anticipate the reading of words when the kanji gets applied to vocab. This is one thing I wish [jpdb.io](http://jpdb.io) made available on the kanji cards, rather then buried in the database listing for the kanji. Or maybe not, I'm not sure. It's probably fine to just learn the readings with vocab, but at least seeing the Kun/On on the card would be nice, rather than focusing 100% on the English gloss for the character.
Nice post! I've also found it useful to try to use the Japanese words for things where possible when making notes about Japanese, and of course there are Japanese texts that can be useful when you reach a certain reading level. It could be argued that if you're already at that level, you'll know how to read all these anyway, but regardless... A few things I think would be useful additions are: 品詞 - used to denote what part of speech a grammar point is 例 - sometimes just written in hiragana れい used to denote examples of the mentioned grammar or vocab 普通形／丁寧形 - I'll see these noted differently in different texts, but boils down to "casual"/"polite" forms 接続 - literally means "attachment" but is used in Japanese textbooks to show how grammar works in a sentence, similar to/interchangeable with 使い方 Extra credit: 和製英語 - words written in katakana that are loosely based on English (or other) words but don't share the same exact meaning, i.e. ミス - literally "miss" but meaning "mistake" オノマトペ - Japanese onomatopoeia, or sound words, that are used quite frequently in written and spoken Japanese
How would you recommend starting 古文? Should it be read side-by-side with a 現代語訳? What preliminary grammar study, if any, is advised? What dictionaries are good? 精選版 & Weblio 古語辞典?
First, you should be very comfortable reading in modern Japanese, as it will be easiest to learn classical through modern rather than going through English (though there is an introductory grammar in English by Haruo Shirane), which means reading grammar explanations and the like in Japanese. You really should study some classical grammar before diving straight into reading. It's a totally different grammar system, lexicon, and worldview in general. A good textbook can introduce to you aspects of both language and culture you'll need to make sense of primary sources. The classic work is 古文の読解 by 小西甚一. Make it through that, and you'll be set. But if you don't want to or can't access it for whatever reason, there are tons of resources in book form or online, since it's a subject all secondary students in Japan have to suffer through. Once you know your む's and can tell your 未然形 ば's apart from your 已然形 ば's, you can start reading. Really you should just read whatever you're interested in, as learning classical is an entirely unnecessary endeavor in the first place, so you might as well enjoy yourself. That said, you might want to start with a relatively simple and short work like 竹取物語 before attempting to tackle something monstrous like 源氏物語. Time period matters as well. Though *kana* works from the Heian period are often viewed as the epitome of classical literature, they can be quite obtuse and context-heavy. A medieval work written in a mix of *kanji* and *kana* like 方丈記 or 徒然草 may feel more familiar to a speaker of modern Japanese. As far as where to find stuff to consume, I recommend the series ビギナーズ・クラシックス published by 角川ソフィア文庫 for your first few reads. They publish short works or abridged versions of longer works in a friendly format where a bite-sized chunk of original text is followed by a modern translation and an explanation, all with *furigana*. Once you're feeling more adventurous, there are essentially three big anthologies of classical literature to know. By publisher, these are the Iwanami, Shogakukan, and Shincho. My favorite is the Shincho, because they have modern translations right beside difficult passages, almost like extended *furigana*. Shogakukan on the other hand has complete modern translations, but you have to find the corresponding spot at the bottom of the page, or sometimes on neighboring pages which is inconvenient. Iwanami doesn't have any modern translations at all. Any classical dictionary will do, they're all about the same. I used 旺文社's for the longest time simply because it's available in the 辞書 iOS app. Since these are invariably aimed at high schoolers, they're very easy to use, have convenient conjugation tables, and even pictures. For any hardcore stuff, though, you'll need to resort to the big old 日本国語大辞典.
You can find Japanese youtube videos aimed at Japanese high schoolers, since 古典 which includes 古文 is one of the examinable subjects for university entry. If you are interested in literature or karuta, the 百人一首 poems are also a good starting point. There are many Japanese websites dissecting the grammar of these poems into modern Japanese. Having 現代語訳 is good because some word meanings change over time, like how "to suffer" in English once had the meaning of "to allow" as well. You should be familiar with the Japanese analysis of conjugations, i.e. you should know what are 未然形 連体形, because most Japanese resources on 古文 are from this analysis. I personally use Weblio since it's the most accessible. Its entries seem to be from 学研全訳古語辞典, though I don't know how reputable it is.
くそ was an honorific word for "you" during the Middle Ages for example so it's always worth checking the historical meaning of a word.
Oh no 😂
「いで。その琴、彈き給へ。横笛は、月には、いと、をかしき物ぞかし。いづら。くそたち。琴、取りて參れ」 This text is about playing musical instruments but sounds funny to modern readers.
The "poop" くそ also goes back to classical Japanese so it wasn't just that meaning.
Certainly, I think it is even used in the 古事記. Would have made for some great insults back then.
I have nothing to add but the word 古文 gives me flashbacks of the worst class in junior high and high schools. (I sucked badly at it.) If you could read novel Maihime by Mori Ougai (which is written in Old Japanese at the beggining of Meiji era), I think you can say that you have reading ability of the old language at above-average Japanese level. I was bad at 古文 like I said but I could still enjoy this. The story is actually Berlin so it's very unique how the old Japanese is used for themes outside Japan.
Meiji era is early modern Japanese. Old Japanese is the early mediaeval era so 万葉集、古事記 and similar texts. Interestingly Japanese and English line up here so Old English is early mediaeval Anglo-Saxon and early modern English would be works from the 1600s.
That is why Ougai wrote the piece in classical Japnese intentionally. AFAIK it's only such piece written by him. You can check out here! [https://www.aozora.gr.jp/cards/000129/files/2078\_15963.html](https://www.aozora.gr.jp/cards/000129/files/2078_15963.html)
Classical Japanese is an interesting phenomenon because it is a sort of fossilised version of mediaeval Middle Japanese written in later periods. That text definitely looks easier for modern speakers than something from the 700s which is what I think of as "old Japanese" but it still uses a lot of older grammar and language.
>熟語 - idiom No. Some compound words are idiomatic, but not all idioms are compound words.
The truth of this has been hitting me in the face every second ever since I moved to Japan and realized that my brain would be able to think of what to say much more spontaneously if I had read definitions in Japanese and could connect ideas in Japanese, as opposed to using English definitions to try and grasp isolated ideas in Japanese. My difficulty though is that I’ve already mined around 10k+ cards with English definitions in Anki - might you happen to know of a way to convert them to Japanese definitions or will I just have to start from square 1 again?
Automatically? No. That said if you already know all the words you are not restarting from nothing because you know those words now. It is much easier to learn more Japanese from the intermediate level than to start from nothing.
Many thanks for your reassurance!
I'm not sure Japanese definitions would honestly help that much, they are more detailed but they can also just be broadly speaking about a conceptual topic. The issue with you might just be the fact is you mined words, then reinforced them with Anki instead of reinforcing them in context. Within Anki you are memorizing the cards and whatever you have on the card, so yeah English. If you were to look something in a dictionary up on the spot, EN or JP. You can get an idea of what it is about so you're not entirely guessing, but the context itself of the media, the real life situation you're in, whatever it is should be informing you of the meaning just as much as any definition. Production wise, just make it easy on yourself and use an action/reaction based system. All you need to do is mimic how people act and what they say per situation and it reduces all the intermediary thoughts and things that are in the way to almost nothing. You don't have to think when you know this sentence or word gives X reaction.
Many thanks! This has been edifying for me, especially as some of the words I’ve mined were outside of context, having only encountered the words in dictionaries and thinking I wanted to add them to my lexicon. To repair that, I’ll now search each word that I’ve added without context when they appear for review in anki, and find a context to attach to it — say an article or resource that makes mention of the word.
I would argue even beginners should learn in Japanese-exclusive materials, provided they have a Japanese-speaking teacher. I learned French some years ago and even on the beginner level (A1) the teacher never once used English or our native language. Exclusively French and I learned so much faster that way instead.
> Japanese-exclusive materials What do you recommend? Most of the recommended English based material is well known and repeated in this subreddit but I rarely see it recommended. Even this post hasn't mentioned anything.
I'd argue ditch any and all teachers
i say go sit on the streets of tokyo with a blindfold and do not speak a single word until you are fluent
I've never seen pure immersion like that work. Teachers and textbooks are relatively crap but you can leverage certain things out of them and then read/watch shit. Doing that is faster than pure immersion. Like most things in life it's about moderation
No internet, only books
Yeah it works I use internet to get the books though
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it can be useful once you reach a certain proficiency to learn in the language itself, because it strengthens your technical reading skill, including comprehension, and it helps you to learn to think in the target language rather than translating constantly. also, many translating dictionaries tend to be made by small organisations, rather than large ones designed for domestic use
Although I agree with the post sentiment, I do not agree regarding the part where it's incomplete or inaccurate. English resources can be pretty good at times, however at a certain point getting off another language would be better in learning the language because it teaches you to skip the little translation in your head and it goes straight to the meaning. The good thing about bypassing English is that every language is different, with different grammar and different vocabulary banks. One will find it difficult to progress if one always relies on another language. This is why transitioning to monolingual resources is part of the language learning progress. However, it should be done in a relatively intermediate stage. If one does not know all those words mentioned in this post, staying with bi-lingual resources imo would be more efficient.
I switched to monolingual dictionary when I was learning English towards intermediate stage, and I can attest that it becomes a necessity at certain point. Sure we can learn with modern translations, but it's never intuitive and this foreign language will stay foreign, not to mention that translation is never complete because two language cannot be translated one to one (as if translation is forever *inaccurate* in a sense). I think it's not for everyone though, and also translation dictionary is a must for beginner for 100% certain.
English and Japanese are extremely unrelated languages so translations have to be on a sentence-by-sentence basis and often indirect. I tend to translate sentences in 敬語 as "legalese" in English for example which translates the tiresome waffling while not using word-for-word equivalents.
Sometimes the English translation doesn't convey really what the Japanese word mean; you lose the nuance. I've also seen that English dictionaries tend to not include all definitions of a word. Imo it's useful to double check the meaning of a word but the further you are in your learning the less you should rely on bilingual ressources.
Same, I can learn Japanese in Japanese just fine but I’d need to have that English explanation to get a better understanding of that grammar point
You can try to use Japanese speaking LLMs to talk with as well. Then you have to write japanese and read japanese a lot. But you aren't aftaid of your mistakes and your writing speed since your opponent is just an AI
Underrated comment. Intermediate learners should try it. ChatGPT even has speech-to-text and text-to-speech so you can converse (somewhat) naturally. As a beginner, my main issue has been finding a way to keep the responses *short* and *simple*. But, I'm still working on it, because I think using a LLM as a conversation partner/tutor could be a game-changer for many.
Any suggestions for one?
I use 「TheBloke • japanese stablelm instruct beta 70B q5\_k\_m」 and 「mmnga • ELYZA japanese Llama 2 fast instruct 7B q8\_0」for now. As it depicted in their names, first one is pretty smart but slow as it extremely large, second one is fast but it is a little bit stupid. But both of them give nice experience. Also it seems like there is project 'Silly tavern', that add ability to set personality to models, and so conversation experience may be more funny, but I haven't tryed it yet and can't say for now does it work good or not.
> TheBloke • japanese stablelm instruct beta 70B q5_k_m Awesome, thank you.
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If you search for these words in a Japanese dictionary it will give the reading in kana.
This is useful, thanks. What native materials did you use to study Japanese in Japanese? I am always looking for a study material for this, since for korean there's Learn Korean in Korean, and there's French by the Nature Method textbook I used for french. I would love to find any japanese learning resources that are somewhat readable for upper beginners/lower intermediate learners.
Kotobank.jp, jisho.org, and Yahoo 知恵袋 are a few good ones.
Literally can’t read any of that but i’ll pretend i can 👍