Daily Thread: simple questions, comments that don’t need their own posts, and first time posters go here (March 23, 2024)

11 comments

1. Is it just me or does ファ tend to be pronounced labiodentally?

2. So I’m starting genki 1 and in the beginning of the textbook they have かった for the word won and I’m using Google translate to make sure I’m pronouncing stuff correctly but saying katta comes as 買った / bought. A video I found said to use pitch accent to for かった and doing that works for google translate but people are telling me that there is no pitch accent for them and it’s based on context of the sentence.

3. [deleted]

4. what are some ways you can use Japanese when you reach 60 years old?

5. So I just started to use Genki I and I’m kinda confused on how it’s supposed to work, there doesn’t seem to be a logic way of teaching (or I’m maybe understanding it very badly?). I’m also only confident about 70% of the hiragana, so should I memorize the hiragana and katakana first before diving into the book or can I do it at the same time?

6. I seriously have no idea where to start with Anki. Everyone talks about it but I’m not sure what to do or even how it works, really. Can someone help?

7. For reading (text) I am getting close to N3 level, but I can’t speak at all because I can’t construct grammatically correct sentences.

   I do want to try to power up my speaking abilities as much as I can for a trip in a month-ish. Any recommendations? Should I grab a phrasebook and just practice?

8. I’m about to start anki. Would setting 35 ish new cards daily for the first month be a bad idea? My goal is 1000 words in a month, but I don’t know if there’s a risk of anki taking 2 hours+ daily if i were to do that.

   I plan on leaving the Kaishi 1.5k deck after I hit 1000 and instead mining native content, changing to 20 or even 10 words a day.

9. More of a funny experience and also a **small question** in the mix. I’ve had my phone in Japanese for a while and I really haven’t had the need to navigate anywhere for a bit since I only go to local places I know the location of. Today was the first time I navigated to an unknown part of town, when inputting the address and navigating. I did notice a number of new terms and also more interestingly it converted a lot of the street names into katakana which also had their native English names besides them when you zoomed close enough. It did feel weird to read a lot of familiar street names as their katakana versions, I guess it makes sense Google Maps would do that. The next thing is starting the navigation then start the car and pulling out into the street, and I genuinely didn’t expect this:

   「南へまっすぐ方向進みます」

   I honestly didn’t expect the navigation to start speaking in Japanese, but it did, and also noticed how damn robotic the voice was, I almost didn’t recognize words at first.

   I will also say there’s something to physically having to bind concepts such as 南、東、右、左、方向 to an actual sense of direction and head towards instructions given. It’s completely different from studying what it means in something like Anki or a textbook and having to first hand experience what it means. I ended up not looking at my phone at all and just listening to the audio instructions to navigate my way there. Also distances were stated using マイル, which I thought was interesting.

   「続いて、三マイル出口に出ます」

   「おそ寄れます」**++++ This is the question part, I kept hearing this when approaching certain spots, and I concluded it was probably 寄る but I don’t know if I misheard or didn’t understand what it was saying , but I kept on hearing おそよれます. Looking it up didn’t reveal so I’m wondering if there’s anyone who uses Google Maps can fill in what this was saying. ++++**

   I was able to navigate to my destination using audio only and at the final stretch I was hit with two unexpected things. First is U-Turn being in the common driving vernacular, which I didn’t understand it at first but the second time I heard it at the stop sign, I did a U-Turn.

   「Uターンをします、この先右側目的地です」 I pull up and park on the curb. 「目的地です」 This is the last thing I did not expect at all, but ended up making me laugh and put a smile on my face. I guess I should’ve expected it, but I did not expect the navigation to say: 「お疲れ様です。」I guess compared to the English version which is only, “You have arrived at your destination.” it felt quite a bit different.”

   That’s all, dumb post (with an embedded question) but I’m also writing about it to commit it to my own memory. I may navigate to bunch of known places until the novelty wears off.

10. I use *Becky!* at work, an old email client. Does anyone know why the refresh button is labeled 巡回？

11. am a beginner trying to learn hiragana, and have a problem telling apart the character for sa and chi since they’re the same thing, just flipped

    has anyone else had this problem, and if yes, how have you overcome it?

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