Keeping words that start with 何 straight is impossible

11 comments

1. How do you remember the pronunciation of any character in English? E can be pronounced multiple different ways, you usually remember how it is pronounced because you know how the entire word it is in is pronounced. When you see a new word, you might not know.

   Same with basically any language

2. 何処 isn’t the only ど word btw.

   何の(どの)、何れ(どれ)、何方(どちら、どなた)、何奴(どいつ)、etc

   The only way to keep them all straight is to practice. There is no other solution.

3. * Don’t try to learn too many similar words at once.
   * Leave it up to immersion. After seeing these words over and over it will be much easier to get a feeling for them.
   * No need trying to force understanding, its not gonna work and just frustrate you.

   As a general rule, you can remember that it is pronounced なん when the word that follows starts with a T, D or N. Tied to a counter, also なん. But honestly, you don’t even need to remember that. After seeing/hearing them a bunch, you will get a feeling for it.

4. I was familiar with all these words/phrases before I learned reading, so by looking at the ending kanas, I know what word it is and therefore I know the corresponding 何 reading. 

   I know that this is probably not very helpful to you though 😅

5. Read read read read and then read some more

6. Are you trying to grind through these at the same time on Anki or something? It’s not that confusing when reading/hearing real Japanese. I never really associated most of these with eachother, and most of them I don’t even see written in kanji which is what’s making me think you just picked them from a list rather than in the wild. Words get a lot more confusing when you try to learn similar ones at the same time.

7. Don’t learn them together. Research shows it doesn’t work very well.

8. Pronunciations: Generally なん before R/T/D/N (all pronounced with your tongue in about the same place as n, so skipping the -i saves a trip) and なに elsewhere 

   Distinguishing meanings:

   1. understand the grammar behind some of them (ie 何とかなる “it’ll become SOMETHING” 何とかして “doing SOMETHING”)

   2. Learn them one at a time in sentences or grammar lessons instead of from a vocab list or anki deck. All words on flashcards have the same context and usage (it’s alone on the front of a card, you use it to guess what’s on the back), so it’s a little unfair to expect yourself to learn the different usages from that.

9. I think your problem is that you can’t just translate to English. You have to develop your core understanding of grammar so it becomes intuitive and you know what the suffix kana actually do/represent intrinsically rather than just trying to memorize an English approximation of it.

   Basically stop focusing on the 何 part of the phrase, the reading will come with time as your understanding of the grammar grows.

10. Heh, I have trouble learning too many like words at once, like I get MESSED up with words like: akeru kakeru ireru kariru oriru abiru, being recent ones off the top of my head. Actually it caused my last major break because I just couldn’t get passed them.
    Coming back again learning them a bit more independently has helped, as well as quantity.

11. If you are trying to review these as single words on flash cards, I would suggest trying to add example sentences as a hint field.  It’s generally easy to remember meaning from a whole sentence vs. isolated word.

    The sentence should just be training wheels to get you started, eventually you want to get the meaning without help of the sentence.  But it really helps to have the initial starter sentence to help you get the words to stick in your memory at all.