13 comments

1. Sometimes, when ordering both food and a drink at a restaurant, the staff will ask if you want your drink served with the food, or right away. However, I never truly catch what the staff is saying exactly. Does anyone know what a typical way to ask this is?

2. I have been using a combination of anki/wanikani/duoLinog for about 2 months for learning Japanese.

   I hate anki. It feels like my memory retention for anki is around 20-30% meanwhile on Wanikani its 90%.
   However, any words that I learn in wanikani, further improves my memory when they finally show up on anki cards.

   Everyone talks about how use anki is the best tool if you want to study japanese, but it always feels like a chore. I simply wanted to get an app, get a lesson plan and study. But it’s so customizable that I don’t know if I am using correctly.

   Just by comparison, I look forward to running through reviews/new lessons on WaniKani and then Anki gives me anxiety attacks.

   In wanikani, after getting something right/wrong I feel fine because eventually I will get it right because WaniKani spaces out the repetition for me. However, in anki I have to manually input how I went to space it out and I have no clue how to make work to my advantage.

   I don’t really want to read pages long documents how to use a software, but maybe I will have to eventually.

   It’s frustrating to learn something using a complete new set of new skills that I need to learn.

   I would appreciate any advice how to make anki work in my favor.

   Anki makes me feel like I am stupid and making fake progress, while wanikani just feels right.

   Duolingo, is just supplementary practice. It feels a bit too slow.

3. Dont understand these sentences from quartet 1 chapter 2 dialogue 2. Student is sending a letter to a professor

   1. 桜が終わり、緑が美しい季節になりました。

   Cherry blossoms ended, and the green(?) became a beautiful season?

   2. さて、先日、無事に２か月のインターンシッププログラムがすべて終わりました。その節は、お忙しいところ推薦状を書いてくださって、ありがとうございました。長い期間でしたが、おかげさまで、教科書では学べないすばらしい経験ができました。

   Is the おかげさまで saying “thanks to the internship program” or is it “thanks to the letter of recommendation”?

   3. それに、日本の文化について新しい発見もできました

   Also, i could even discover new (things?) about Japanese culture?

   4. 例えば、国際交流課のイベントで公園にお花見に行った時のことです。

   I only kinda understand half of this sentence (untilイベントで). “For example, the time when on the international culture exchange division… we went to the park to see cherry blossoms”? whats confusing me is the 公園にお花見に part.

   Is this like the “Destination of movement + に + Purpose of movement + に + 行く” grammar from Genki 1 chapter 7?

4. Just wanted to express just how ridiculously powerful filtered deck option of Ankidroid is.

5. Can someone explain why   

   私は食べてほしい is not grammarly correct but 

   食べて欲しい means i want you to eat 

   other than just grammar point ?

6. Just started learning Hiragana, which will turn into learning Katakana, and then on to first grade Kanji.

   Figured learning the alphabet, and being able to (at least) phonetically sound out words was a good starting place. Even if I may not know what the words really mean yet.

   Started looking at kanji, and I have a question(s). Currently going off the list of pronunciations of Kanji on Wikipedia, and they have two categories of “yomi”. Kun and On. The general idea is to write in Hiragana and Katakana next to the Kanji in order to further move my brain away from thinking with English characters while reading the language, but with Kanji sometimes meaning multiple things, some things represented by multiple Kanji, and now several ways to pronounce one character: I’m at a bit of a loss of what best to write next to the characters.

   From my very limited current knowledge of the language: it seems like the On’yomi is what’s usually used currently, and what I would benefit from the most, but it’d be great to get a nudge in the right direction from someone more familiar with the general usage of the language.

   Example:

   一　＝　いち　＝　イチ

7. Hello! I just recently started my learning journey for this beautiful language and culture last week and am currently using Duolingo for help with learning katakana and then hiragana (I know duo uses some strange sentence structures for phrases that natives do not use) am I right that I can supplement this with a core 2k anki deck? From looking at multiple sources on YouTube this seems to be the average deck for a beginner. Any input would be appreciated! Arigato gosaiomasu!

8. I just want to note down somewhere my current Japanese studying routine. Doesn’t deserve its own post, but I still feel compelled to share.

   I’m probably the only person still using the JALUP app. I’m almost to halfway through the Intermediate 1000 card deck. I really like it because every card at this level introduces a new word and then defines it solely in Japanese. I started and stopped with this deck many times over the last few years, but I’ve finally made it over the hump. I’ve got a ways to go to really being used to J-J definitions, but I can actually almost use a printed J-J dictionary without wanting to slam my head into my desk.

   I also just started again on the JALUP Kanji kingdom deck. I probably “know” around 800 kanji from my time using WaniKani, but I’ve never learned how to write until now. I gave up on Wanikani because I found I knew enough kanji to not feel lost, and I’m slowly building a vocabulary from reading as much as I can. At this point, I just want to learn the meanings and how to write the kanji in the deck.

   I read at least 2 chapters in the Satori deck every day. I find it to be excellent reading and listening practice.

   I’m also watching Japanese videos on YouTube – mostly easy listening videos made by native speakers. With subtitles on, I’m amazed at how much I understand. After watching a couple of times with subtitles on and looking up words that are new to me, I can watch and understand most of them without the subtitles. Finally, I feel like I’m making progress.

   Finally, I use the latest ChatGPT model (4o) to help with just about anything I’m wondering about. It actually does a really good job of not only translating but also breaking down a sentence and showing how it fits together. If there’s a grammar point I’m not sure about, it will also drill in and seems to do a fantastic job of explaining things. A lot of times I’ll use it to help verify whether or not my understanding of a sentence is correct and then to help fill in the gaps when I’m wrong.

9. Hello, could someone explain the difference between たところだった and たところだ?

   「いいわね～ちょうどランクも近いし、みんなでパーティー組まない？」

   「お～いいね。俺もパーティーメンバー探していたところだったからな」

   「うんうん。僕もいいよ。むしろメンバーがいなくて困っていたところだよ」

   I think I understand 探していたところだった (he was about to search for party members, but hasn’t started yet), but I don’t really know how to interpret 困っていたところだ.

10. Near the end of the first episode of Death Note, Light lays out his plans for the notebook to the shinigami:

    まずは地球の掃除と思って、凶悪犯の名前を書き続けた。やがて、誰も悪い事ができなくなるように…そして、罪を受けて当然な悪人が心臓麻痺で死んでいく裏で、道徳のない人間、人に迷惑をかける人間を…病死や事故死で少しずつ消していく…そうすれば、確実に世界はいい方向に進んでいく。

    The use of 当然な　this way in 罪を受けて当然な悪人, I feel it is odd but can’t pinpoint the reason why. Is it nonetheless entirely regular usage? In a [stack exchange answer](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/101078/why-is-%E3%81%A6-form-being-used-in-%E3%81%9D%E3%81%97%E3%81%A6%E7%BD%AA%E3%82%92%E5%8F%97%E3%81%91%E3%81%A6%E5%BD%93%E7%84%B6%E3%81%AA%E6%82%AA%E4%BA%BA%E3%81%8C%E5%BF%83%E8%87%93%E9%BA%BB%E7%97%BA%E3%81%A7%E6%AD%BB%E3%82%93%E3%81%A7%E3%81%84%E3%81%8F%E8%A3%8F%E3%81%A7), someone wrote 「(verb in te-form) + 当然(だ)]. 当然だ helps me with understanding the meaning of the phrase, apart from it can’t be だ before 悪人. I tried searching in [massif](https://massif.la/ja/search?q=%E2%80%9D%E5%BD%93%E7%84%B6%E3%81%AA%E2%80%9D) but didn’t find something similar.

11. At the end of lesson 3 minna no nihongo wants me to write down numbers. I was so confused because I haven’t skipped anything but haven’t yet learned them. Is it me or is there something wrong? 😂

12. I came across this in a manga:

    “でも家族の皆が知ってれば隠す必要もないしあんたのとってはいいかもね”

    I wanted to ask what the “とって” is doing here or what it means. Thank in advance.

13. No question just wanted to say I love the feeling when I read a long string of kanji like this and then double take realizing it had no hiragana/katakana. It wasn’t too long ago I would’ve seen that and skipped it in dread of how long it would take to look everything up. Reading really pays off. (Still including furigana of how I think it’s read in case I got something wrong.)

    [防衛隊員選別 試験二次 西東京会場](#fg “ぼうえいたいいんせんべつ しけんにじ にしとうきょうかいじょう”)

    [東京討伐中学校入学試験合格者](#fg “とうきょうとうばつちゅうがっこうにゅうがくしけんごうかくしゃ”)