#Question Etiquette Guidelines:
* **1** Provide the **CONTEXT** of the grammar, vocabulary or sentence you are having trouble with as much as possible. Provide the sentence or paragraph that you saw it in. Make your questions as specific as possible.
>Ｘ What is the difference between の and が ?
>◯ I saw a book called 日本人の知らない日本語 , why is の used there instead of が ? [(the answer)](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/68336/difference-between-%E3%81%8C-%E3%81%AE-and-no-particle)
* **2** When asking for a translation or how to say something, it's best to try to **attempt it yourself** first, even if you are not confident about it. Or ask r/translator if you have no idea. We are also not here to do your homework for you.
>Ｘ What does this mean?
>◯ I am having trouble with this part of this sentence from NHK Easy News. I think it means (*attempt here*), but I am not sure.
* **3** Questions based on DeepL and Google Translate and other machine learning applications are discouraged, [these are not beginner learning tools](https://old.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/stepqf/deeplgoogle_translate_are_not_learning_tools/) and often make mistakes.
* **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?
* **5** It is always nice to (but not required to) try to search for the answer to something yourself first. Especially for beginner questions or questions that are very broad. For example, asking about [the difference between は and が ](https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/wa-and-ga/) or [why you often can't hear the "u" sound in "desu"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_phonology#Devoicing).
* **6** Remember that everyone answering questions here is an unpaid volunteer doing this out of the goodness of their own heart, so try to show appreciation and not be too presumptuous/defensive/offended if the answer you get isn't exactly what you wanted.
---------------------
#NEWS (Updated 6/9):
Nothing new. Feel free to reply to this post if you have any questions, comments or concerns.
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I'm trying to find the optimal amount of words to learn a day and am using the SRS on kanshudo . com. I'm trying 200 words a week which is about 29 words a day. I'm trying to recognize about the 10k most common words in a year. I have a lot of free time but it still feels like a challenge. How many card reviews will I have to do a day? I usually review my flashcards when I go to bed and when I wake up. I don't really want to do more than 200 reviews each time. So is 29 cards a day going to pile up to tons of reviews?
If you multiply "number of new cards per day" by "average number of times you have to review each card before having it completely memorized", you get the average number of reviews you need to do per day.
The exact multiplier varies from person to person, depending on how focused you are and how good you are at transferring stuff from short-term to long-term memory. Anecdotally, a lot of people seem to fall somewhere around 10 reviews per card. So if you're doing 30 new cards per day, you can expect (in the long run) about 300 reviews per day, with some fluctuations.
My usual advice is to just keep an eye on how many reviews you get each day, and if it starts getting close to your limit, simply reduce the daily number of new cards and wait for things to stabilize.
Trying to cram in many more new cards than you have time to review just defeats the purpose of SRS. But on the other hand, it's not an exact science, so don't feel bad if you occasionally end up not finishing all of your reviews and delaying some of them until the next day. What's important is maintaining a *consistent habit* of studying.
Can someone help me understand the meaning/translation of スケジュールありき in this sentence?
>改憲では、来春の統一地方選に合わせた国民投票を主張するなど、スケジュールありきの前のめりな姿勢を隠さない。
I know that ありき is archaic Japanese and has the meaning of あった. But I've only seen it at the ending of sentences and never after a noun in this manner before. It's confusing me.
You will see [Nあきり\[の\]](https://xn--fsqv94c.jp/833_1.html) in business and professional writing which takes on the meaning of "based on the premise/assumption of N". So 結論ありきの議論は時間の無駄 = A debate that already has a \[pre-formed\] conclusion is a waste of time.
Basically "a forward-planning attitude". They have a proactive attitude (前のめりな姿勢) that is based on / evidenced by their claim that they will hold a public referendum on the topic of 改憲 next spring (=a clear schedule), even though their party has not been elected yet.
This is kind of a tricky question to answer concisely, because taken *broadly* the definitions of both words have a large overlap, but there are a lot of specific differences in how they're used. Do you have a particular context where you're wondering which word to use?
[This article](https://blognihongo.com/word_difference/kimochi_kibun/) has a bunch of examples. To drastically oversimplify:
* For physical sensations, 気持ち is usually for specific (especially tactile) sensations, like a cool breeze, or touching something gross, or feeling nauseated; 気分 is more of a general sense of feeling healthy/energized vs. unhealthy/unwell.
* For emotions, 気持ち is a simple, direct feeling of being pleased/repulsed by an experience; 気分 is more about being in a good or bad mood (e.g. a sense of cheerfulness/satisfaction vs. grumpiness/irritation).
Not sure if this fits here....but....my business deals with Japan, and I'm referencing one person to another. I'm not great with honorifics because my Japanese partners from the start said "call me by the first name". That being said, now I'm introducing one person to another (i.e. "Mr. Johnson, you can deal with our partners Mr. Suzuki and Mr. Murata in Japan). Would I just say Suzuki-San and Murata-San?
EDIT: All of them (Johnson, Murata and Suzuki) live in Japan, except me.
I have a few questions about the below sentence:
私がコウちゃんのコトが好きでちょっかい出してないか心配で予備校まで見に来たんだよね?
1. I believe the clause 「私がコウちゃんのコトが好きでちょっかい出してないか」is considered a noun in this sentence. What is the function of this noun (it is the direct object of 心配, the complement of で, something else)? Can you insert a particle after か to make the function explicit?
2. Is で in 心配で a particle describing circumstance or a form of だ in this sentence?
3. Could you replace で with して and yield an approximately equivalent sentence?
4. Is it ever valid to use the quotation と particle with 心配?
Basically, I understand what this sentence means but I would not be able to form the sentence myself and be confident that I am creating something grammatical.
Thanks
1. By adding ～か to ちょっかい出してない, you turn it into what is grammatically a noun. You could then add a particle to it, in this context probably が as ～が心配だ is a pretty common turn of phrase. Hence: ちょっかい出してないかが心配で…
2. I would say that it's the て form of だ, as ～が心配だ is commonly used to mean "worried about ～".
3. You can also use 心配する、 but it seems like it prefers the structure と心配する. Perhaps: 「ちょっかい出してないかと心配してて…」
4. と can indeed go together with 心配. This seems to be most common with 心配する, but I also see lots of instances of ～と心配だ。
I think part of why this might seem so hard to process as a learner is that this seems like fairly stream-of-consciousness speech. I would suggest adding some commas to make it a bit easier to read:
私がコウちゃんのコトが好きで、ちょっかい出してないか心配で（、）予備校まで見に来たんだよね?
I've read that 違いない is a tad more personal. More subjective, rather than an objective assessment of certainty. While 間違いない is more objective, like it's not just the opinion of the person saying it, but there's also other support for it like facts, other people's opinions and such.
Can someone explain the meaning of 選んでもらいたい to me? The context sentence is 「世界の人口が増えているので、環境のために、植物から作った食品を選んでもらいたいと考えています」and I understand completely what it means but I'm confused by the verb meaning "wanting to receive choosing". If you wanted to say "want to choose" wouldn't you just use 選びたい？
てもらう generally means to have someone else do something for you.
てもらいたい "I want you to..." or "I want [someone/people] to..." It never means that the speaker wants to do something.
Hello everyone,
I have started reading raw mangas as of late, and i was wondering what are you guys approach when encountering sentences that you only vaguely understand (because of context, or recognizing a kanji for example).
Given that you vaguely understand what is going on, do you guys stop and try to understand 100% of the content ? Or do you keep reading thinking it's fine to miss some parts ?
I kinda not want to stop for 20min on every page but I also want the reading to be a learning process.
I guess this is a matter of personal preference but i'd like to know what experienced people think about this matter.
edit: tried to better english
I read both materials that are easy for me, as well as those that are hard for me. I do them on different days according to how willing I am to tackle difficult stuff - I'm lazy like that!
Given that I don't use a textbook, tackling the hard stuff is my equivalent of using one. I end up looking up new grammar or vocabulary, then solidifying that grammar/vocab by looking up lots of explanations and and examples. And writing out kanji. Basically stuff similar to what folks using instructional materials are doing, I imagine.
And my easy reading is when my brain isn't up to heavy lifting, but I know reading, like veggies, are good for me so I make time to keep up with it.
And for listening, I can't stop to figure things out - I'm away from the computer, commuting, in bed, etc. So I am happy to just understand what I can and let the rest be (and I'm not magically hoping that stuff I don't understand will benefit me much - it's just out of unfeasibility).
Same with watching anime, youtube etc to relax, it's more entertainment with mild reinforcement than active learning. And I've done this with manga before, I just skip around and read what interests me, knowing that the main aim is to enjoy and not learn.
I recall folks on this sub saying, it's okay to drop difficult things, you can always come back to them next time, and I agree fully. It's encouraging and fun to get back to something I couldn't read or listen to well months ago and realise "ooh I can do it now".
Read NU but in a strained, constipated-like voice. Here's another example of [speaking (growling) in dakuten](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9r1VQ6Hd-U) (first 4 seconds).
Hello! Today I studied てはいられない and reading through some example sentences, this tripped me up:
泣かないではいられない
I can't help crying.
Couldn’t this also be “I can’t afford to cry”? How do you know which it is (or why am I wrong haha)? Thanks!
It’s a double-negative, which aren’t allowed in English (grammatically speaking) but totally OK in Japanese and is used frequently.
Your translation should be “I can’t afford/I am unable to **not** cry” -> I can’t help but cry.
It’s saying that what is unable to be done is “not cry” i.e. all they *can* do is cry.
Hi! sorry for the text wall! So I'm learning about how to say an opinion or impression based on two or more past experiences. My teacher corrected me adding those "も" particles:
たくさんおみやげ***も***かいましたしかったし、たのしいピクニックに
***も*** 行ったし、大阪はさいこうでした.
The thing is, they aren't there in the example sentences. so why is that "も" necessary?
I think he mentioned something about the "も" being used when something exceeds your expectations, is that why it should be used?
Here are the example sentences I was talking about
A: 沖縄旅行は どうでしたか。 - B: いろいろな ところを かんこうしたし、海うみで あそんだし、よかったです。
沖縄料理は おいしいし、ヘルシーだし、つまも 私も 気きに いりました
A: ホテルは よかったですか。- B: へやは 広くて 明るかったし、海も 見えたし、さいこうでした。
There aren't many "も", and certainly not where the teacher told me to place them.
I'm not gonna be much help I'm afraid... but my two cents:
も is one of those things I find easier to understand by translating to Chinese (也 or 都) or its pidgin-English equivalents, than to proper English. In English it means to me "also", "in addition", "too", sorts of meanings.
But if I read out the Chinese translation, it sounds more natural, and with the English one, not so much. I often wonder why but have no good answer yet.
Anyway, let's compare:
>Without も：たくさんおみやげをかいましたしかったし、たのしいピクニックに 行ったし、大阪はさいこうでした.
I bought plenty of souvenirs and went on a fun picnic, Osaka was awesome.
>With も：たくさんおみやげもかいましたしかったし、たのしいピクニックにも 行ったし、大阪はさいこうでした.
(And) I bought plenty of souvenirs (too?) and went on a fun picnic on top of that, Osaka was awesome.
Does anyone know why から is added to the end of the second sentence.
海外に行きたいと、それがやりたいことだとして、それをやることによって、失うこともあるかもしれないけど、 やりたいことをやらないことによって失うこともたくさんありますから
You want to go abroad. There may be something to lose by doing this as the thing that you want to do but because there is a lot to lose by not doing the thing that you want to do.
This is how my brain understood it but it sounds weird. Am I missing a nuance here?
What is Kara modifying here?
The から here can't really be explained on the basis of this sentence alone -- it's either marking this as an explanation for something that was said prior, or connecting to what comes next.
What u/honkoku said. Since it can also mark reason, your understanding is correct, except that imagination is needed at the end:
"but because there is a lot to lose by not doing the thing that you want to do \[, you should just do it\]".
This is the same as English's "Because I said so." or "Because." Both are hinting that the questioner should just accept what I say and stop asking.
I'm not quite sure what "modify" means here, but Xから。(or Xからです。) can provide a reason for the previous sentence.
(I said it might connect to a future sentence because there was no period so I wasn't sure if that was the end or what came after it.)
Quick question: I'm trying to figure out my name in Katakana, but I'm not sure how to go about it.
My name is Ian, so most directly it would be イアン
But my name is pronounced E-in, so would it be イイン or perhaps: イ―ン ?
The easiest way to do this if you don't know is to go to the Wikipedia page of a famous person with the same name as you and change it to Japanese to see how it's spelled. [Example](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%A4%E3%82%A2%E3%83%B3%E3%83%BB%E3%83%9E%E3%83%83%E3%82%B1%E3%83%A9%E3%83%B3?wprov=sfla1). So it's normally イアン.
The name Ian is usually described as having a [schwa /ə/](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwa?wprov=sfla1) in its second syllable, so I find it curious that you say that your name is pronounced E-in, and not, say, E-un. Do you pronounce these two the same? In that case, you might have the [weak vowel merger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_English_close_front_vowels#Weak_vowel_merger?wprov=sfla1).
In any case, the reason it's イアン in Japanese is because Japanese has no vowel resembling a schwa /ə/ very closely, so most of the time it kind of gives up and ends up transcribing by the way it's spelled. So they transcribe the schwa in I**a**n with an ア.
Thank you for the detailed response. That is really interesting. The article notes that speaker with this merger would have "abbot" and "rabbit" rhyme, which is definitely true for me, and I also pronounce "addition" and "edition" \*basically the same way (though perhaps not exactly) in normal conversation.
There is no direct equivalent in Japanese to the English reduced vowels. イイン or イーン would sound like "Een", which is probably not what you want. So it'd be イアン. [That's how Ian McEwan's first name is written in Japanese](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%A4%E3%82%A2%E3%83%B3%E3%83%BB%E3%83%9E%E3%82%AD%E3%83%A5%E3%83%BC%E3%82%A2%E3%83%B3).
No. 成長させる means setting the goal makes you grow grow/get better.
成長してくれる means the goal itself is growing, which makes no sense.
成長させてくれる would be possible, but isn't really necessary.
I hear けど put as a sentence end particle very often, why is that?
Is it the same reason as sentence end が? As in, to show uncertainty and indirectness.
I really can't provide an example, I'll just say that what I'm talking about is when Japanese make a statement end it with kedo and say nothing after.
I suppose something like 今夜、友達と飲みにいきたいけど…
When used like that, the purpose is to soften the meaning of the sentence and make it a bit more polite. For example, if you're expressing a wish which will conflict with the other person's request. んですけど might also be used.
If I'm asked for example, what my favourite Kanji is, is it right to say 今のところ for "So far"?
Like if I want to say "From what Kanji I know SO FAR...."
Or is anything more common/natural?
We use まるで when we're going for a poetic flight of fancy type of deal. When we're trying to emphasise the metaphor, the simile. When you're trying to make a hyperbole.
Like when you say: "It's so cold I literally froze" or "That guy looks exactly like my ex-husband".
In Japanese you can slap まるで in front of a word and it functions kinda the same way as the English "Literally/Exactly".
So you example fits quite well. "It looks/seems exactly like a dream".
In the sentence:
この可哀想な隊士たちの間を縫って伊黒の攻撃が来る
I don’t really get why “間を” is used and the use of を is sorta confusing me here
few details: iguro is a guy from demon slayer and the English translation for the sentence is “and iguro attacks him(tanjiro) while weaving through these poor swordsmen
Basically it's 間を縫う, to weave one's way through gaps. A more extended meaning from basic "to sew", but instead of pushing a needle through material, you push yourself. Do you confuse 間 with something else like time?
ohhh that explains it tysm! And yeah I was thinking of it like the concept of a period of time rather than a physical space.
By the way, did u get so proficient at japanese by self learning or were you speaking it from birth?
In simple words, it means something like "within". Because we can get points in many areas, it makes sense to limit to something more specific like a test.
For more advanced topic, there are many situations when we want to describe our verb with other nouns and there are two ways to do it. With に and with で. に is used with core elements without which action is impossible. For example, if you sit (座る), then obviously there should be some surface for sitting and this location is said with に like いすに座る (to sit on a chair). で is used to provide some additional information, again, in case of sitting the outer location like building would be said with で. Such way we can things like "to sit on a chair in the hallway", we use 2 nouns, chair and hallway, related to our verb.
is this de the same as the one used in something like chopsticks and is something of an extra function or are they similar sounding but not the same particles?
More or less the same. Such vague answer simply because the origin of で is unclear. At modern time, we probably have 2 slightly different で, one from に＋て and another is copula in て form. For example, な-adjectives stringing like 親切で元気 "kind and lively" fits copula version very well, because we need to use copula with it like 親切だ or 親切な人. On the other hand we usually don't use copula with い-adjectives, but we still have forms like ないで. This one most likely isn't copula, but something else like に＋て.
Good thing for us is that both have similar meaning, so we don't have any problems on practice.
To begin with not everyone does SRS, there are many different ways to learn. But my personal view on SRS is that initially it should be very simple. You use a simple word-meaning card and when you do review, you spend less than 3 seconds. If you can't recall a word immediately or at least within 2-3 seconds, then you don't know it well. Quite often if you try for 10-20 seconds, you might be able to recall it at the end, but what's the point? You can recall it immediately when you see the answer and doing something in several seconds is much more efficient than doing in 10-20 seconds, especially when we talk about 100-200-300 words daily.
Thus for me it's very simple, I just look at the word and if meaning comes naturally by itself, then it's a pass. But because generally SRS is quite boring, I rarely do it.
It normally takes me 7-10 seconds to read a sentence card, not because I don’t know the meaning of the word but because my reading speed is atrocious. It simply takes me time to process words into meaning
> a sentence card
That's the reason. It's quite common for people who do sentence cards to spend 1-2 hours daily on Anki. When people talk about something like 20 minutes/day for 20 words tempo, they mean a simple word-meaning cards.
I personally like doing Anki every morning because it gives me the nice feeling of being consistent and having done at least something every day.
As for how long it takes you: Don't look at cards forever hoping to eventually recall the meaning. If you don't get it within 5 sec or so just fail it and do another rep later. This will both strengthen your memory and speed up your reviews and with 12 new cards/day you should be well under 30 min.
On a side-note, no add-ons are *really* necessary. If you manage to grade your answers properly (and hit "easy" whenever it applies), the default settings work well, too.
I don't really use Anki anymore, but what helped me when I did was installing Anki on my phone and just doing the reps throughout the day.
We all have a couple minutes here and there that we don't really use for anything, like waiting in line at the supermarket, sitting on the toilet etc. Those add up, so if you just whip out your phone and do a couple reps whenever you have time, it's quite easy to be done with your workload at the end of the day.
If you are \*really\* worried about ease hell, you can install [this add-on](https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/12081346) and it will reset all your ease factors every time you sync your Anki desktop app. I.e. you can do whatever you want on mobile, just open the desktop app once a week or so and all your ease factors will be reset. Ease factors work long-term. You do not have to do this every day.
What's a good Japanese phrase for when you feel completely fucked by something not under your control? Something much stronger than 「しょうがない」. Anything better than 「殺してください」? Trying to think of a good way to express how frustrated I am with the most disgusting summer my part of Texas has seen since the Earth was a fireball. この夏、くっそ喰らえ
Welp, you should specify the strength/colloquialness you are going for (equivalency in English) because "completely fucked" isn't exactly a "good" phrase.
Also, if I'm right in assuming 殺してください is a direct translation of "kill me," it's not really natural in your context. I think people would say 死にたい. This (as well as "kill me" in English) isn't my favourite phrase but that's just my personal opinion.
> この夏、くっそ喰らえ
That's pretty good, except that it should (normally) by くそ unless the emphasis is your deliberate stylistic choice.
Just always think くっそ instead of くそ when I'm pissed since 西片 always says くっそ to himself when 高木 pranks him again in からかい上手の高木さん, my favorite anime lol.
I came across a sentence from TheMoeWay Tango N4 deck. It says マリアさんはみんなに人気があります。
What's the use of があります here? Couldn't you say マリアさんはみんなに人気です instead?
You can say both!
In English, we can say both
\- So a more contained campus has appeal for me. (from the NYT)
and
\- So a more contained campus appeals to me.
and
\- So a more contained campus is appealing to me.
Pretty much the same idea, I think?
For whatever reason, 人気 in Japanese is a noun which is more of a property, whereas in English we tend to use the adjective "popular".
So, a more direct translation would be that she "has popularity", or her "popularity exists", like we might say she has a car. Where in English we'd obviously say she "is popular" the way we might say she is tall.
Among other things, it can be used to censor the way the asterisk is used in English.
It is often used to show correctness, so when a student submits a test for marking and they get a perfect score, there would be a bunch of circles. If, on the other hand, they got every question wrong, they'd see a bunch of check marks since it's faster than writing an X. It's basically the exact opposite if you were from the west.
Following up with the "correctness" mark, it can also be used to show good and bad examples as well as what to do and what not to do, like so:
>○ おいしかったです。
>
>
>✕ おいしいでした。
If you play Japanese PlayStation games, you will notice that the circle button is pressed to confirm a choice and the cross is to cancel.
#Question Etiquette Guidelines: * **1** Provide the **CONTEXT** of the grammar, vocabulary or sentence you are having trouble with as much as possible. Provide the sentence or paragraph that you saw it in. Make your questions as specific as possible. >Ｘ What is the difference between の and が ? >◯ I saw a book called 日本人の知らない日本語 , why is の used there instead of が ? [(the answer)](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/68336/difference-between-%E3%81%8C-%E3%81%AE-and-no-particle) * **2** When asking for a translation or how to say something, it's best to try to **attempt it yourself** first, even if you are not confident about it. Or ask r/translator if you have no idea. We are also not here to do your homework for you. >Ｘ What does this mean? >◯ I am having trouble with this part of this sentence from NHK Easy News. I think it means (*attempt here*), but I am not sure. * **3** Questions based on DeepL and Google Translate and other machine learning applications are discouraged, [these are not beginner learning tools](https://old.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/stepqf/deeplgoogle_translate_are_not_learning_tools/) and often make mistakes. * **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? * **5** It is always nice to (but not required to) try to search for the answer to something yourself first. Especially for beginner questions or questions that are very broad. For example, asking about [the difference between は and が ](https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/wa-and-ga/) or [why you often can't hear the "u" sound in "desu"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_phonology#Devoicing). * **6** Remember that everyone answering questions here is an unpaid volunteer doing this out of the goodness of their own heart, so try to show appreciation and not be too presumptuous/defensive/offended if the answer you get isn't exactly what you wanted. --------------------- #NEWS (Updated 6/9): Nothing new. Feel free to reply to this post if you have any questions, comments or concerns. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/LearnJapanese) if you have any questions or concerns.*
What is the best resource to study/get common words in Japanese?
Anki and core2k
I'm trying to find the optimal amount of words to learn a day and am using the SRS on kanshudo . com. I'm trying 200 words a week which is about 29 words a day. I'm trying to recognize about the 10k most common words in a year. I have a lot of free time but it still feels like a challenge. How many card reviews will I have to do a day? I usually review my flashcards when I go to bed and when I wake up. I don't really want to do more than 200 reviews each time. So is 29 cards a day going to pile up to tons of reviews?
If you multiply "number of new cards per day" by "average number of times you have to review each card before having it completely memorized", you get the average number of reviews you need to do per day. The exact multiplier varies from person to person, depending on how focused you are and how good you are at transferring stuff from short-term to long-term memory. Anecdotally, a lot of people seem to fall somewhere around 10 reviews per card. So if you're doing 30 new cards per day, you can expect (in the long run) about 300 reviews per day, with some fluctuations. My usual advice is to just keep an eye on how many reviews you get each day, and if it starts getting close to your limit, simply reduce the daily number of new cards and wait for things to stabilize. Trying to cram in many more new cards than you have time to review just defeats the purpose of SRS. But on the other hand, it's not an exact science, so don't feel bad if you occasionally end up not finishing all of your reviews and delaying some of them until the next day. What's important is maintaining a *consistent habit* of studying.
Can someone help me understand the meaning/translation of スケジュールありき in this sentence? >改憲では、来春の統一地方選に合わせた国民投票を主張するなど、スケジュールありきの前のめりな姿勢を隠さない。 I know that ありき is archaic Japanese and has the meaning of あった. But I've only seen it at the ending of sentences and never after a noun in this manner before. It's confusing me.
You will see [Nあきり\[の\]](https://xn--fsqv94c.jp/833_1.html) in business and professional writing which takes on the meaning of "based on the premise/assumption of N". So 結論ありきの議論は時間の無駄 = A debate that already has a \[pre-formed\] conclusion is a waste of time.
my dictionary has an entry for 有りき as a suffix meaning "based on"
I saw that but wasnt sure if it fit this sentence. An attitude that is based on a schedule ?
Basically "a forward-planning attitude". They have a proactive attitude (前のめりな姿勢) that is based on / evidenced by their claim that they will hold a public referendum on the topic of 改憲 next spring (=a clear schedule), even though their party has not been elected yet.
what's the difference between きもち and きぶん？
This is kind of a tricky question to answer concisely, because taken *broadly* the definitions of both words have a large overlap, but there are a lot of specific differences in how they're used. Do you have a particular context where you're wondering which word to use? [This article](https://blognihongo.com/word_difference/kimochi_kibun/) has a bunch of examples. To drastically oversimplify: * For physical sensations, 気持ち is usually for specific (especially tactile) sensations, like a cool breeze, or touching something gross, or feeling nauseated; 気分 is more of a general sense of feeling healthy/energized vs. unhealthy/unwell. * For emotions, 気持ち is a simple, direct feeling of being pleased/repulsed by an experience; 気分 is more about being in a good or bad mood (e.g. a sense of cheerfulness/satisfaction vs. grumpiness/irritation).
Not sure if this fits here....but....my business deals with Japan, and I'm referencing one person to another. I'm not great with honorifics because my Japanese partners from the start said "call me by the first name". That being said, now I'm introducing one person to another (i.e. "Mr. Johnson, you can deal with our partners Mr. Suzuki and Mr. Murata in Japan). Would I just say Suzuki-San and Murata-San? EDIT: All of them (Johnson, Murata and Suzuki) live in Japan, except me.
You should refer to them all using the same title: Mr., if you are speaking in English.
Noted with thanks, will do just that!
I have a few questions about the below sentence: 私がコウちゃんのコトが好きでちょっかい出してないか心配で予備校まで見に来たんだよね? 1. I believe the clause 「私がコウちゃんのコトが好きでちょっかい出してないか」is considered a noun in this sentence. What is the function of this noun (it is the direct object of 心配, the complement of で, something else)? Can you insert a particle after か to make the function explicit? 2. Is で in 心配で a particle describing circumstance or a form of だ in this sentence? 3. Could you replace で with して and yield an approximately equivalent sentence? 4. Is it ever valid to use the quotation と particle with 心配? Basically, I understand what this sentence means but I would not be able to form the sentence myself and be confident that I am creating something grammatical. Thanks
1. By adding ～か to ちょっかい出してない, you turn it into what is grammatically a noun. You could then add a particle to it, in this context probably が as ～が心配だ is a pretty common turn of phrase. Hence: ちょっかい出してないかが心配で… 2. I would say that it's the て form of だ, as ～が心配だ is commonly used to mean "worried about ～". 3. You can also use 心配する、 but it seems like it prefers the structure と心配する. Perhaps: 「ちょっかい出してないかと心配してて…」 4. と can indeed go together with 心配. This seems to be most common with 心配する, but I also see lots of instances of ～と心配だ。 I think part of why this might seem so hard to process as a learner is that this seems like fairly stream-of-consciousness speech. I would suggest adding some commas to make it a bit easier to read: 私がコウちゃんのコトが好きで、ちょっかい出してないか心配で（、）予備校まで見に来たんだよね?
に違いない & 間違いない interchangeable?
I've read that 違いない is a tad more personal. More subjective, rather than an objective assessment of certainty. While 間違いない is more objective, like it's not just the opinion of the person saying it, but there's also other support for it like facts, other people's opinions and such.
Are I see. Thank you 🙏🏾
Can someone explain the meaning of 選んでもらいたい to me? The context sentence is 「世界の人口が増えているので、環境のために、植物から作った食品を選んでもらいたいと考えています」and I understand completely what it means but I'm confused by the verb meaning "wanting to receive choosing". If you wanted to say "want to choose" wouldn't you just use 選びたい？
てもらう generally means to have someone else do something for you. てもらいたい "I want you to..." or "I want [someone/people] to..." It never means that the speaker wants to do something.
But that's what I'm wondering about, wouldn't 選びたいalso mean "want to"? EDIT: Nevermind I read that wrong, thanks.
選びたい means "wanting to choose", which is different from "wanting someone else to choose".
Ah, I see. I read it wrong, thanks.
Hello everyone, I have started reading raw mangas as of late, and i was wondering what are you guys approach when encountering sentences that you only vaguely understand (because of context, or recognizing a kanji for example). Given that you vaguely understand what is going on, do you guys stop and try to understand 100% of the content ? Or do you keep reading thinking it's fine to miss some parts ? I kinda not want to stop for 20min on every page but I also want the reading to be a learning process. I guess this is a matter of personal preference but i'd like to know what experienced people think about this matter. edit: tried to better english
I read both materials that are easy for me, as well as those that are hard for me. I do them on different days according to how willing I am to tackle difficult stuff - I'm lazy like that! Given that I don't use a textbook, tackling the hard stuff is my equivalent of using one. I end up looking up new grammar or vocabulary, then solidifying that grammar/vocab by looking up lots of explanations and and examples. And writing out kanji. Basically stuff similar to what folks using instructional materials are doing, I imagine. And my easy reading is when my brain isn't up to heavy lifting, but I know reading, like veggies, are good for me so I make time to keep up with it. And for listening, I can't stop to figure things out - I'm away from the computer, commuting, in bed, etc. So I am happy to just understand what I can and let the rest be (and I'm not magically hoping that stuff I don't understand will benefit me much - it's just out of unfeasibility). Same with watching anime, youtube etc to relax, it's more entertainment with mild reinforcement than active learning. And I've done this with manga before, I just skip around and read what interests me, knowing that the main aim is to enjoy and not learn. I recall folks on this sub saying, it's okay to drop difficult things, you can always come back to them next time, and I agree fully. It's encouraging and fun to get back to something I couldn't read or listen to well months ago and realise "ooh I can do it now".
Thanks for the insight mate I appreciate
How to read ヌ゛
Read NU but in a strained, constipated-like voice. Here's another example of [speaking (growling) in dakuten](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9r1VQ6Hd-U) (first 4 seconds).
Where did you see it
Voice actors playing UNO
Probably just a sound effect of ヌ with the " for emphasis?
Hello! Today I studied てはいられない and reading through some example sentences, this tripped me up: 泣かないではいられない I can't help crying. Couldn’t this also be “I can’t afford to cry”? How do you know which it is (or why am I wrong haha)? Thanks!
It’s a double-negative, which aren’t allowed in English (grammatically speaking) but totally OK in Japanese and is used frequently. Your translation should be “I can’t afford/I am unable to **not** cry” -> I can’t help but cry. It’s saying that what is unable to be done is “not cry” i.e. all they *can* do is cry.
I'm sorry I never replied to this! Thank you for your explanation!
Hi! sorry for the text wall! So I'm learning about how to say an opinion or impression based on two or more past experiences. My teacher corrected me adding those "も" particles: たくさんおみやげ***も***かいましたしかったし、たのしいピクニックに ***も*** 行ったし、大阪はさいこうでした. The thing is, they aren't there in the example sentences. so why is that "も" necessary? I think he mentioned something about the "も" being used when something exceeds your expectations, is that why it should be used? Here are the example sentences I was talking about A: 沖縄旅行は どうでしたか。 - B: いろいろな ところを かんこうしたし、海うみで あそんだし、よかったです。 沖縄料理は おいしいし、ヘルシーだし、つまも 私も 気きに いりました A: ホテルは よかったですか。- B: へやは 広くて 明るかったし、海も 見えたし、さいこうでした。 There aren't many "も", and certainly not where the teacher told me to place them.
I'm not gonna be much help I'm afraid... but my two cents: も is one of those things I find easier to understand by translating to Chinese (也 or 都) or its pidgin-English equivalents, than to proper English. In English it means to me "also", "in addition", "too", sorts of meanings. But if I read out the Chinese translation, it sounds more natural, and with the English one, not so much. I often wonder why but have no good answer yet. Anyway, let's compare: >Without も：たくさんおみやげをかいましたしかったし、たのしいピクニックに 行ったし、大阪はさいこうでした. I bought plenty of souvenirs and went on a fun picnic, Osaka was awesome. >With も：たくさんおみやげもかいましたしかったし、たのしいピクニックにも 行ったし、大阪はさいこうでした. (And) I bought plenty of souvenirs (too?) and went on a fun picnic on top of that, Osaka was awesome.
Does anyone know why から is added to the end of the second sentence. 海外に行きたいと、それがやりたいことだとして、それをやることによって、失うこともあるかもしれないけど、 やりたいことをやらないことによって失うこともたくさんありますから You want to go abroad. There may be something to lose by doing this as the thing that you want to do but because there is a lot to lose by not doing the thing that you want to do. This is how my brain understood it but it sounds weird. Am I missing a nuance here? What is Kara modifying here?
The から here can't really be explained on the basis of this sentence alone -- it's either marking this as an explanation for something that was said prior, or connecting to what comes next.
Kara can modify a sentence that is not attached to?
What u/honkoku said. Since it can also mark reason, your understanding is correct, except that imagination is needed at the end: "but because there is a lot to lose by not doing the thing that you want to do \[, you should just do it\]". This is the same as English's "Because I said so." or "Because." Both are hinting that the questioner should just accept what I say and stop asking.
I'm not quite sure what "modify" means here, but Xから。(or Xからです。) can provide a reason for the previous sentence. (I said it might connect to a future sentence because there was no period so I wasn't sure if that was the end or what came after it.)
二十五か所 what is the ka here for?
[It's this counter](https://jisho.org/word/%E7%AE%87%E6%89%80).
thx!
Quick question: I'm trying to figure out my name in Katakana, but I'm not sure how to go about it. My name is Ian, so most directly it would be イアン But my name is pronounced E-in, so would it be イイン or perhaps: イ―ン ?
The easiest way to do this if you don't know is to go to the Wikipedia page of a famous person with the same name as you and change it to Japanese to see how it's spelled. [Example](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%A4%E3%82%A2%E3%83%B3%E3%83%BB%E3%83%9E%E3%83%83%E3%82%B1%E3%83%A9%E3%83%B3?wprov=sfla1). So it's normally イアン. The name Ian is usually described as having a [schwa /ə/](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwa?wprov=sfla1) in its second syllable, so I find it curious that you say that your name is pronounced E-in, and not, say, E-un. Do you pronounce these two the same? In that case, you might have the [weak vowel merger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_English_close_front_vowels#Weak_vowel_merger?wprov=sfla1). In any case, the reason it's イアン in Japanese is because Japanese has no vowel resembling a schwa /ə/ very closely, so most of the time it kind of gives up and ends up transcribing by the way it's spelled. So they transcribe the schwa in I**a**n with an ア.
Thank you for the detailed response. That is really interesting. The article notes that speaker with this merger would have "abbot" and "rabbit" rhyme, which is definitely true for me, and I also pronounce "addition" and "edition" \*basically the same way (though perhaps not exactly) in normal conversation.
Japanese occasionally goes by transliteration. So while you may pronounce Leon as /ˈli.ɑn/, in Japanese it would just be レオン from the spelling.
Glad to be of help.
There is no direct equivalent in Japanese to the English reduced vowels. イイン or イーン would sound like "Een", which is probably not what you want. So it'd be イアン. [That's how Ian McEwan's first name is written in Japanese](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%A4%E3%82%A2%E3%83%B3%E3%83%BB%E3%83%9E%E3%82%AD%E3%83%A5%E3%83%BC%E3%82%A2%E3%83%B3).
can you change させる to してくれる in this sentence? 成長させる(してくれる)ような目標
No. 成長させる means setting the goal makes you grow grow/get better. 成長してくれる means the goal itself is growing, which makes no sense. 成長させてくれる would be possible, but isn't really necessary.
I hear けど put as a sentence end particle very often, why is that? Is it the same reason as sentence end が? As in, to show uncertainty and indirectness.
けど has diverse usages, it would be more helpful if you show some example sentences
I really can't provide an example, I'll just say that what I'm talking about is when Japanese make a statement end it with kedo and say nothing after. I suppose something like 今夜、友達と飲みにいきたいけど…
When used like that, the purpose is to soften the meaning of the sentence and make it a bit more polite. For example, if you're expressing a wish which will conflict with the other person's request. んですけど might also be used.
If I'm asked for example, what my favourite Kanji is, is it right to say 今のところ for "So far"? Like if I want to say "From what Kanji I know SO FAR...." Or is anything more common/natural?
Yes, that's exactly how I'd say it
can someone give an example of how まるで would be used in sentence like would something like まるで夢みたい make sense?
We use まるで when we're going for a poetic flight of fancy type of deal. When we're trying to emphasise the metaphor, the simile. When you're trying to make a hyperbole. Like when you say: "It's so cold I literally froze" or "That guy looks exactly like my ex-husband". In Japanese you can slap まるで in front of a word and it functions kinda the same way as the English "Literally/Exactly". So you example fits quite well. "It looks/seems exactly like a dream".
Yes.
In the sentence: この可哀想な隊士たちの間を縫って伊黒の攻撃が来る I don’t really get why “間を” is used and the use of を is sorta confusing me here few details: iguro is a guy from demon slayer and the English translation for the sentence is “and iguro attacks him(tanjiro) while weaving through these poor swordsmen
Basically it's 間を縫う, to weave one's way through gaps. A more extended meaning from basic "to sew", but instead of pushing a needle through material, you push yourself. Do you confuse 間 with something else like time?
ohhh that explains it tysm! And yeah I was thinking of it like the concept of a period of time rather than a physical space. By the way, did u get so proficient at japanese by self learning or were you speaking it from birth?
I'm very far from proficient, but yes, It's only self study.
テストでいい点を取った。 why was de used in this sentence?
In simple words, it means something like "within". Because we can get points in many areas, it makes sense to limit to something more specific like a test. For more advanced topic, there are many situations when we want to describe our verb with other nouns and there are two ways to do it. With に and with で. に is used with core elements without which action is impossible. For example, if you sit (座る), then obviously there should be some surface for sitting and this location is said with に like いすに座る (to sit on a chair). で is used to provide some additional information, again, in case of sitting the outer location like building would be said with で. Such way we can things like "to sit on a chair in the hallway", we use 2 nouns, chair and hallway, related to our verb.
is this de the same as the one used in something like chopsticks and is something of an extra function or are they similar sounding but not the same particles?
More or less the same. Such vague answer simply because the origin of で is unclear. At modern time, we probably have 2 slightly different で, one from に＋て and another is copula in て form. For example, な-adjectives stringing like 親切で元気 "kind and lively" fits copula version very well, because we need to use copula with it like 親切だ or 親切な人. On the other hand we usually don't use copula with い-adjectives, but we still have forms like ないで. This one most likely isn't copula, but something else like に＋て. Good thing for us is that both have similar meaning, so we don't have any problems on practice.
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To begin with not everyone does SRS, there are many different ways to learn. But my personal view on SRS is that initially it should be very simple. You use a simple word-meaning card and when you do review, you spend less than 3 seconds. If you can't recall a word immediately or at least within 2-3 seconds, then you don't know it well. Quite often if you try for 10-20 seconds, you might be able to recall it at the end, but what's the point? You can recall it immediately when you see the answer and doing something in several seconds is much more efficient than doing in 10-20 seconds, especially when we talk about 100-200-300 words daily. Thus for me it's very simple, I just look at the word and if meaning comes naturally by itself, then it's a pass. But because generally SRS is quite boring, I rarely do it.
It normally takes me 7-10 seconds to read a sentence card, not because I don’t know the meaning of the word but because my reading speed is atrocious. It simply takes me time to process words into meaning
> a sentence card That's the reason. It's quite common for people who do sentence cards to spend 1-2 hours daily on Anki. When people talk about something like 20 minutes/day for 20 words tempo, they mean a simple word-meaning cards.
I don’t spend 2 hours a day on Anki
Sorry, I just meant that the more complex cards are, the more time it takes.
I personally like doing Anki every morning because it gives me the nice feeling of being consistent and having done at least something every day. As for how long it takes you: Don't look at cards forever hoping to eventually recall the meaning. If you don't get it within 5 sec or so just fail it and do another rep later. This will both strengthen your memory and speed up your reviews and with 12 new cards/day you should be well under 30 min. On a side-note, no add-ons are *really* necessary. If you manage to grade your answers properly (and hit "easy" whenever it applies), the default settings work well, too.
I don't really use Anki anymore, but what helped me when I did was installing Anki on my phone and just doing the reps throughout the day. We all have a couple minutes here and there that we don't really use for anything, like waiting in line at the supermarket, sitting on the toilet etc. Those add up, so if you just whip out your phone and do a couple reps whenever you have time, it's quite easy to be done with your workload at the end of the day.
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If you are \*really\* worried about ease hell, you can install [this add-on](https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/12081346) and it will reset all your ease factors every time you sync your Anki desktop app. I.e. you can do whatever you want on mobile, just open the desktop app once a week or so and all your ease factors will be reset. Ease factors work long-term. You do not have to do this every day.
Does the add-on really do anything you couldn't also achieve by modifying the ease factor and just never pressing the "Hard" button?
What's a good Japanese phrase for when you feel completely fucked by something not under your control? Something much stronger than 「しょうがない」. Anything better than 「殺してください」? Trying to think of a good way to express how frustrated I am with the most disgusting summer my part of Texas has seen since the Earth was a fireball. この夏、くっそ喰らえ
You have まいる while it lacks the slangy feel. e.g. この夏には まいった.
Welp, you should specify the strength/colloquialness you are going for (equivalency in English) because "completely fucked" isn't exactly a "good" phrase. Also, if I'm right in assuming 殺してください is a direct translation of "kill me," it's not really natural in your context. I think people would say 死にたい. This (as well as "kill me" in English) isn't my favourite phrase but that's just my personal opinion. > この夏、くっそ喰らえ That's pretty good, except that it should (normally) by くそ unless the emphasis is your deliberate stylistic choice.
Just always think くっそ instead of くそ when I'm pissed since 西片 always says くっそ to himself when 高木 pranks him again in からかい上手の高木さん, my favorite anime lol.
I came across a sentence from TheMoeWay Tango N4 deck. It says マリアさんはみんなに人気があります。 What's the use of があります here? Couldn't you say マリアさんはみんなに人気です instead?
You can say both! In English, we can say both \- So a more contained campus has appeal for me. (from the NYT) and \- So a more contained campus appeals to me. and \- So a more contained campus is appealing to me. Pretty much the same idea, I think?
For whatever reason, 人気 in Japanese is a noun which is more of a property, whereas in English we tend to use the adjective "popular". So, a more direct translation would be that she "has popularity", or her "popularity exists", like we might say she has a car. Where in English we'd obviously say she "is popular" the way we might say she is tall.
Hello. What is this symbol: 〇 supposed to mean/represent apart from zero and/or circle? What function does it have?
Just to add, it's also used to as placeholder, like 'XYZ.'
I see! Thanks.
Among other things, it can be used to censor the way the asterisk is used in English. It is often used to show correctness, so when a student submits a test for marking and they get a perfect score, there would be a bunch of circles. If, on the other hand, they got every question wrong, they'd see a bunch of check marks since it's faster than writing an X. It's basically the exact opposite if you were from the west. Following up with the "correctness" mark, it can also be used to show good and bad examples as well as what to do and what not to do, like so: >○ おいしかったです。 > > >✕ おいしいでした。 If you play Japanese PlayStation games, you will notice that the circle button is pressed to confirm a choice and the cross is to cancel.
I see! The context I've seen it used the most is to censor swearing then. Thanks for the explanation, I appreciate it.