I’m trying to remember these
To eat: tabemas
To drink: nomimas
To watch: Mimas
To buy：kaimas
To make: tsukurimas
To study: benkyo simas
To listen: kikimas
To speak: hanasimas
To read: yomimas
(sorry for formatting, pasted it from evernote)
What’s the best way to retain information, I’m also finding it hard to remember imas, and other phrases or way’s of sentence structure.
Thank you.
6 comments
The hell is up with those forms?
ending without the ‘u’, though you really shouldn’t, I still understand because it often gets devoiced.
But then why is ‘します’ written as ‘***si***masu’ if it’s meant to be phonetic?
forget revision, you should check if the information you’ve been given is even accurate.
Though honestly, there’s not much that can be said on that front anyway. Simple polite form is ‘-imasu’. This is a simple statement beyond the level of needing special revision techniques. For simple vocab, there’s nothing you can do that’s quicker than rote memorisation at this point.
If there is one thing I *would* advise, it’s to get off romaji and get onto kana and kanji as quick as you can. Believe me, it is easier to remember.
Use numonic devices. For example for たべます, imagine yourself sitting at a dinner table eating (tabe sounds kind of like table). Make sense?
I’m not very far in my Japanese journey, and my memory is frankly atrocious. I found mnemonics help me out quite a bit. For example: To make: tsukurimasu. You make something that is ‘tsu kool’ (too cool) to show people. That gets me close enough to remember tsukurimasu.
Wanikani has been a good source of these mnemonics for me. It has most of the words you will encounter in early Japanese. Its mainly for learning Kanji, but I’ve put that part of my learning on hold until I can make general conversation. I recommend it, but some others on here seem to hate so do your own research!
I also have a habbit of adding actions to the verbs which adds a physical component to remembering. I’m still terrible with all this, so take my advice with a pinch of salt.
You should definitely learn kana. It doesn’t take long and the ROI is very very very high.
Even before learning vocab.
https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/learn-hiragana/
you should not drop the last ‘u’ which is pronounced lightly usually but you can also emphasize on it to change a bit your expression (I think it sound more polite). Also remember the plain form which is shorter and let you understand better the conjugation. After that I think remembering word is based on repeat them again and again. Anki could be a good tool. You should definitely learn kana to better understand the pronunciation.
I would try to make them into a sentence with a noun or two that I’m confident with.
コーヒーをのみます。I drink coffee
ケーキを食べます。I eat cake
自転車を買います。I buy a bicycle