Daily Thread: simple questions, comments that don’t need their own posts, and first time posters go here (December 07, 2022)

7 comments

1. I hope this is an alright place to ask this as a sort of question about restarting – I’ve poked around, but I’m not finding quite what I’m looking for at the moment. Sorry if I’ve missed an obvious thread!

   I spent a while trying to learn Japanese, but in the end I gave up. I felt that for all my time and attempts, I had very lopsided comprehension – often only understanding *after* I saw the English translation, despite *knowing* each component of a sentence – unless it was particularly basic. It was a real motivation killer.

   I’m interested in giving things another try some time in the future. I’m struggling to figure out where exactly I should start from and what I need to review or do over, but I think I’ll get that idea on my own. I’m *more* interested in trying to get over that big block in the road there, that even what seemed like it **should** be comprehensible wasn’t.

   What helped others here get over that if it was a problem for you, especially if you also stopped and restarted? Thanks 🙂

2. Doing some Japanese homework for class , and I started thinking. In class we’ve been trying to get more comfortable with using double particles (には、では, stuff like that). So now I’ve got the question:

   Is でも, when you use it to mean “But,” technically a double particle, or is it it’s own word all together?

3. I was trying to read through Kawabata’s Palm-of-the-Hand stories, when I came across this phrase: 倉ざめ

   Can’t find *anything* about this online. Anyone have any clue?

   Here’s the full sentence: 「十七歳の花嫁は**倉ざめ**、瞼を閉じて濡れた旗のように倒れかかった。」

4. Is ので or んで used a lot in spoken Japanese? I’ve been listening more carefully to anime and jdorama for immersion and noticing these two. The textbooks say that it is used to give something an explanatory feel but it seems like it’s used almost randomly.

5. 「ルカはね 結構 **やりよるタイプ**だと思いますよ」の意味は？

   When i search for やりよるタイプ, dictionary or translation says ‘Do it yourself type’. But it kind of doesn’t make sense (this sentence is from drama).

   The given subtitle is “Ruka is actually a player”.

6. How can I get the greetings introduced in Genki I down? I just can’t seem to remember which is which when it comes to the longer ones and I continuously get them wrong in Anki.

7. Is it just me or are Japanese extremely skilled at…describing food?

   Like, if they eat it they can tell you about its sound, texture, memories associated with it, and more.

   Is this my imagination?

   Does this have a special name?

   Also do foreigners try to learn this or is it considered something impossible to learn?