Daily Thread: simple questions, comments that don’t need their own posts, and first time posters go here (February 21, 2023)

11 comments

1. Small question: Is there a difference between 絶対 and 絶対に?

2. A recommended JP-JP dictionary with shorts definitions to copy it in Anki? Something like “Sanseido”
   Right now I am using one with yomichan but it has pretty long definitions so takes too much space in the card .

3. Whats the difference between を, が and は when used with potential form?

   For the most part, I understand that は implies contrast. Such as
   英語は話せる: I can speak English, but I can’t do anything else, in regards to english. Please correct me if I’m wrong

   So my main problem is with が and を. When should I use either? I’ve seen so much contrasting information as well.
   So, I’ve read that が can be used to express a neutral statement, but also exhaustive listing.

   But I thought that を also could be used for neutral statement?? Can someone explain this for me.

4. I’m about a year into my self-study at this point using the Genki textbook, and I have an issue that I haven’t found any resources on: the *initial* difficulty of *recalling* new vocabulary.

   I don’t mean ongoing memorization one I can remember it for more than a day (Anki works fine for that) or vocab recognition (Japanese->English). I mean encountering a word for the first time and trying to remember the kana/pronunciation for it. I can usually remember the J->E translation after seeing the card a few times in Anki, but E->J feels like it takes about a week of seeing the card multiple times a day before it sticks. I’m only studying 10 new words per day at most. Even then, I have trouble remembering the kana after 30 seconds or 2 other cards. My Anki stats show I’m almost twice as likely to answer “again” on them compared to E->J.

   It’s not too surprising that it’s harder to do what’s effectively output rather than input, but it feels harder to the point that there is probably a better method than brute-forcing my way through it. I usually wait until I can mostly recall all the vocabulary before starting on the grammar and exercises for a chapter, but would it be better to do the exercises and hope I recall everything by the time I get to the next chapter? Do I need to suck it up and dedicate some time to rote memorization?

5. How do you start counting after the third son (三男; 三郎)? I’m confused becaused these don’t exactly follow the “いち, ひ; に, ふ; さん, み” convenient formula, so I don’t exactly know how to continue counting.

6. this shit is so hard

7. Question about Spy Family:

   In episode 1, someone says 「外務大臣がヅラだという証拠写真」。Based on my knowledge of how the subject particle works, I would think this sentence must unambiguously mean „The photo evidence that the foreign minister *is* a hairpiece“, but obviously that doesn’t make any sense. The foreign minister seems like the topic rather than the subject, so why isn’t it 外務大臣「は」ヅラだ？I asked my Japanese friend why and he said は　turns into が because it is a relative sentence, but he could not explain any further. I would appreciate if someone could explain the logic to me.

8. Hello! I am trying to learn Japanese for the second time. I finally feel like I am making some progress. I had two questions to ask.

   First, for those who have learned Japanese by immersing in anime (no subtitles) what are some titles that are easy to keep up with for a beginner? (Perhaps having Japanese subtitles is more appropriate?)

   For native speakers or experts, would anyone be down for a friend to play some multiplayer video games and maybe learn some Japanese at the same time? I need to practice listening and speaking in a real scenario but also would like to make a friend.

9. I’m going through the tango n5 deck and I’m worried that I’m just learning the phrases instead of the individual words. This feels especially so for words comprised of multiple visually complex kanji. Is this normal or is there anything I can do to correct the habit?

10. I am confused about 持ってない

    Why do all online conjugators (all based on the same algorithm it seems) say that 持って いる is the continuous form of 持つ but they left an empty space where 持ってない should be.

    Example : [ here] (https://www.japaneseverbconjugator.com/VerbDetails.asp?txtVerb=%E6%8C%81%E3%81%A4 ).

    My original sentence is 弾、食べ物、俺たちは何も持ってないんだ.

    Thanks in advance

11. Hello all. I have a question today about Kanji stroke order. I have no problem memorizing the stroke order for each Kanji individually, but I am having a lot of trouble understanding the general rules that determine stroke order. I want to understand how the stroke order rules work so I don’t have to go and check the stroke order every single to time I write a Kanji. There seem to be a lot of exceptions/cases where it isn’t clear cut which stroke to make first without consulting a diagram. For example the first two strokes for https://jlptsensei.com/learn-japanese-kanji/%e5%b7%a6-sa-hidari-left/ and https://jlptsensei.com/learn-japanese-kanji/%e5%8f%8b-yuu-tomo-friend/ both make sense to me, because you are supposed to start from left to right, then top to bottom. But why do I start from top to bottom with https://jlptsensei.com/learn-japanese-kanji/%e5%8f%b3-yuu-migi-right/ instead of left to right? There seem to be many other exceptions like this that don’t make a lot of sense to me. Are there any in depth guides that explain the stroke order rules with great clarity and detail? Thank you for your time.