Daily Thread: simple questions, comments that don’t need their own posts, and first time posters go here (January 15, 2024)

4 comments

1. Hi, first time poster!
   I’m taking a trip to Japan over the summer and I want to learn Japanese. I don’t use flashcards because that’s not the way I learn best. I want to become fluent by the time I go, and I can pick up things quickly.

   Any advice? Thank you so much

2. I keep forgetting what I had told myself would be my preferred studying order before.

   1.) Complete Recognition Remember the Kanji (at least 500 kanji) –>
   2.) Do Genki 1 and 2 along with corresponding workbooks (many years ago I got up to about chapter 5 in Genki 1, then just stopped).–>
   3.) Watch/study all Cure Dolly lessons–>
   4.) Complete an Integrated Course to Intermediate Japanese–>
   5.) Start on Tobira book?

   *When would it be best to do that Anki Japanese Core 2000 words? Before, during, or after completing Genki?

   **Based off of the order seen above, when would it be best to begin trying to use resources like NHK Easy, before, during, or after which step?

   ***Should I switch any order around based on your experiences? For example, should Cure Dolly come before Genki? Will there be moments when Cure Dolly and Genki contradict each other on grammar points?

   As for input and output, I guess I’ll just keep watching a native materials and trying to see what’s the most effective way for me to incorporate them.

   I currently live in the USA, and if I even do make it back to Japan this year, it wouldn’t be anytime soon.

   Any suggestions are appreciated.

3. > そんなことすると思われてたのか

   Grammar resources are translating と思われる like “it appears/seems/etc.”, where the source of the thought isn’t a specific subject of the conversation, so I’m having a bit of trouble wrapping my head around how to interpret it when the source isn’t vague. The above sentence comes from a conversation between 2 people where the source of the thought is one of them. That being the case, can the sentence be interpreted as literally: “I will do something like that, was thought by you?” Or alternatively, sticking more closely with how J-E grammar resources describe it: “did it appear/seem like I would do that”? Or are both these interpretations close enough, and I’m just overcomplicating it?

4. Is a second は to mark the topic in an adverbial clause allowed? I saw the sentence “幸夫は来年は家が買えると大変喜んでいる。” and the は doesn’t seem to be contrastive marker. I thought only が is allowed inside adverbial clauses?