I mean, the internet won’t tell me, and I’m curious, I know there are 188 particles but I’m assuming you do not need all of them, so how many to I really need to be fluent in Japanese? And a bonus question, how many particles does the average native speaker know?
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You’ll find most of that is just the same like 6 particles and a few others that serve a huge number of different uses and you’ll eventually find need for all of them. It’s useless to try and optimize for “how many do I need” and just learn the different uses as they come up.
I don’t even know where to begin with responding to this.
well according to my favorite search engine there are 150 prepositions in english https://www.englishclub.com/grammar/prepositions-list.htm
you probably know all of those right?
therefore japanese is not that different(assuming you are willing to see particles as postpositions)
If we’re looking at the same list, then I’m seeing a ton of repeats, and I’m willing to bet both nutsacks all fluent Japanese people know all of these, even if they aren’t all qualified to, say, teach Japanese.
If you don’t know all of them, you can’t claim that you’re fluent.
https://nihongoichiban.com/home/japanese-grammar-particles/
I found this list which is what I assume you’re talking about (since it also has 188 listings). I’m not fluent, somewhere above N1, and know all of these. I’m certain any native adult would also understand all of them.
Stuff like すら or たりとも not in that list are they not particles?
Most questions on this sub revolve around the particle に, so if you master that one particle you’ll be doing better than most.
Advice, no need to memorize a list of particles, it’s not really helpful anyway since you need to look at sample sentences. Just memorize grammar points and you will learn the particles as you go. I knew like 95% of the list at a grammar level approaching N2, and I never studied any formal list. You’ll just get the hang of it as you learn phrases
To try to answer this as honestly and non-judgmentally as possible: there are nowhere near 188 particles in Japanese unless you count literally anything and everything that could be considered a grammatical unit and all their variations as individual “particles”, and probably not even then.
The average Japanese native or fluent speaker could not tell you exactly how many particles there are in Japanese, but the answer is not “188 of them”.
As for how many you need to know to be “fluent”, yes, you need to know all of them. Native and “fluent” speakers can effectively use the whole language, not just part of it.
You will need to know all of them to be fluent.