Daily Thread: simple questions, comments that don’t need their own posts, and first time posters go here (June 29, 2022)

30 comments

1. Do people ever use the -sama honorific for family members in real life? In some anime I hear people say お兄様 or お母様, but do people do that in real life?

   What is a normal real life situation where you would use -sama?

2. Does anyone know how to replicate animelons dual English and Japanese subtitles on other platforms? I’ve seen lots of websites/resources for subtitle downloads but they all see seem to just be for Japanese subtitles.

3. >キラなる者の選んだ手法を再現する者。すなわちキラの後継者こそ、われらの必要とする者なのだ

   What does 〜とする mean here? Also, what does なのだ mean here? Is it emphasis over …者だ

   Is it this grammar point? 〜とする = 〜と判断する・〜と決定する・〜と決める?

4. https://youtu.be/mc8rFAmrKLY

   Can anyone help me parse 5:00?

   I here something like, ペコら(ちゃん?)もね、ぜひどうぞ

5. How important is it to actually draw kanji? I’m not having a terribly awful time memorizing them right now but I seem to get mixed information on this. Mostly since I’m following the Tae Kim guide, but other sources have said it’s not that needed because you can just look it up online.

6. [deleted]

7. what is the difference between してる and している?
   for example 愛してる vs 愛している

8. How would I differentiate between A) “the person who is renting (i.e. living in) the room” and B) “the person who I’m renting the room from” if I’m omitting the subject?

   If I were to include the subject, I think it would be

   A.部屋を借りてる人

   B. 僕が部屋を借りてる人

   But if I drop the subject, to say 部屋を借りてる人, does it become ambiguous? I could imagine clarifying by using 貸す or もらう （C.部屋を貸してもらう人）or the passive (D.部屋を貸される人).

   I’m leaning toward C) but hoping a wise soul can tell me what the most natural way to express this is?

9. So I have difficulty understanding the 先 in this sentence. When the son see his mother come with a supermarket bag he said to her:

   勝手に俺の履歴書使ってパート先のスーパーに出しただろう

   So I understood that he is angry that she send the resume to the super without his permission, but I am confusing what the 先 is doing there.

10. I started learning Japanese on Duolingo before buying any textbooks to have some base in vocabulary and kana and in one of the first lessons you learn colors (red, white and blue). But Duolingo shows two versions of them alternately and doesn’t explain if they’re any different. Then does あお mean blue as for the color and あおい mean that sth is blue?

    Also does おちゃ mean green tea or is it any tea? I watched anime yesterday and it was both translated as just tea and in other scene as green tea.

11. Hi, i know this is not really relevant to learning japanese, but i’m wondering if anyone knows the song in the video which i marked?
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZAunnEufFA&t=336s

12. 慰問公演が終わった後、私は結乃に猛烈なアプローチを受けたのだった。
    両手を握られて、鼻先５センチくらいから見つめられ、熱烈に迫られたのだ。
    「入部する、って言うまで、　手を離してもらえないと思ったもの。　恐怖にも似た感覚だったわ」
    「だって……あの時の郁美は、手を離したら逃げて　しまいそうだったもの」
    確かに……あの時は施設の子供たちのために引き受けたようなもので、その場限りでお役御免だと思っていた。

    So I’m confused on the last part of the last line here particularly on お役御免だとおもっていた。I’m interpreting it as ” Indeed, it felt like I took it for the kids, which is why I would temporarily dismiss myself.” I think the context here is that the speaker was invited to a club that does some performances to ease people’s feelings. So if the speaker took the role of being a club member for the children, why is she saying that she would temporarily dismiss herself from that role. It’s contradicting. I feel that I’m misinterpreting something.

13. I was reading a book of Ebbinghaus, the author of the Forgetting curve. From his experiments with random syllables 1st review after 20 minutes takes 43% of initial learning time, but after 1 day it’s already 69.6% and after 1 month 78.8%. Following such curve 1 year is roughly 82.8%.

    So I got curious about several things. How effective is to review words after learning session? No matter if we use SRS or simply use content, we can somehow mark new words and do a fast review at the end. According to such curve first several hours are the most beneficial. Would that allow people to learn more words, or it’s simply a matter of time. So we will roughly learn the same amount of words, but spending less time?

    Author also made an experiment about excessive attempts to memorize. Increasing sufficient to recall learning time in 4 times reduced review time after 1 day from 69.6% down to 38.3%, which is similar to doing a 2nd review. This excessive attempts look similar to doing 1st review within first 20 minutes. However, the question if we can learn more is still open, because we spend efforts on it. Author and many people noticed that doing such focused studying for prolonged amount of time (like above 40 minutes) leads to headache and significant decrease in efficiency. In other words, just because we can learn some words stronger doesn’t mean we couldn’t learn more other words instead, but more superficially.

    Another question is about reviews intervals, because for me it looks like some SRS programs/services try to mislead a bit. Forgetting curve sounds a bit like you are losing something, so if you won’t do a review withing specific timeframe, then you are wasting your efforts. But it’s actually a bit the opposite, any random bit of information you have memorized once remains in your memory even after 1-5-10 year. We can’t recall it, but it’s there and it’s similar to how people can become rusty, but a very short period of practice is enough to return it back (instead of years of learning again). Accidentally (or not?) 17.2% reduction in 1st review time after 1 year aligns pretty well with how we need 5-7 repetitions to be able to recall freely for prolonged amount of time. So is the a significant difference between doing reviews in a schedule and doing it randomly within a year? I can think about 2 small differences, first, we need to spend a bit more time, because we can’t recall. So we will need to check translation/meaning first, but with modern software it’s usually very fast (literally 1-3 seconds). Another point is that when we do reviews randomly, we drop below recalling threshold, so before we see some word for 5-7 times, we will have intervals of times when we can’t recall it freely. However, is there an ultimate difference in the end? Like if we can learn more words using one method after 2 years of studying? From my experience content is learning with random reviews and by using content we have no problems with learning common and mid-rare words, problem only occurs with very rare words which appear once in 1-3 years. And again, probably it’s not because we forget before we see it again, but simply that seeing such word for 5-7 times would take 5-20 years at average.

14. How do you learn the subtleties of similar grammar points? For example I just read about how にかけて and にわたって differ in when they can and cannot be used. Understanding the differences in usage in this one scenario was hard enough, but there is a 1000 similar scenarios where you have similar grammar points but only one is correct in a given scenario. I don’t think that is something I can just learn from consuming media and at the same time when reading about it in a grammar dictionary I will have forgotten in a day or two. Any tricks?

15. [deleted]

16. What does ピキィ mean? I assume it’s a slang or an onomatopoeia but couldn’t find an exact match when I tried to look up the word

17. I want to say, “I am fasting today.” after being asked “Have you had lunch yet?”

    Would the correct translation for “I am fasting today.” be ”今日は断食でいます” or ”今日は断食しています”？

    〜でいます　would be for an action or current state?

    〜しています　would be for emphasizing the appearance of a shape or body?

18. I’m not sure if this is a simple enough question for simple questions, but I’m having trouble remembering particles and grammar points. I’m not sure why, I’ve reread tae kim twice now, and I’ve been doing SRS with grammar through bunpro, but I always end up mixing up my grammar and having to double check other every paragraph I read. Is there any other resource you would recommend for someone struggling with this like me? Or is it a sort of teething process every learner has to deal with?

19. Anyone knows where I can find free mock tests for N5?

20. I’m using Bunpro. One of the answers I put one was incorrect.

    I put in アイスクリームをたべ**すぎでした**からお腹が痛い。
    the correct answer was アイスクリームをた**べすぎた**からお腹が痛い。

    So it had to be _ta_ instead of _deshita_.
    Why is this? Is _deshita_ actually incorrect?
    Or is it because the sentence is already in casual form because there is no desu at the end of 痛い? Or maybe Bunpro just being picky.

21. Any dictionaries/lists with introductory or connective words? Like “of course”, “firstly”, “moreover”, etc.

22. Hi, in this sentence “何度も嘘を言う男の子を誰も信じようとはしなかったのです。” i don’t quite understand the grammar of the second part of the sentence.

    “誰も信じよう（why よう form?）/ とは　(is this a quotation grammar ?) / しなかったのです。”
    I guess this sentence means something like: “No one believed the boy who lied many times”. Is that correct ? Could anyone briefly explain me why 信じる becomes 信じよう here and the use of とは after it ? Thanks!

23. In this sentence:

    お困りでしょうか？

    Why is お necessary here?

24. That is a bento box that was sold by that store over there, right?

    それは、あの店が売ったお弁当でしょう。

    それは、あの店が売っていたお弁当でしょう。

    Why is the 2nd sentence wrong?

25. Is it normal to see a word and know how to read it but not remember it’s meaning? I was reading a manga today and could read all the kana and kanji but when I thought about what I just read I realized I didn’t understand what was going on. I can’t tell if I actually don’t know what the sentence is saying or if I don’t know how to translate the sentence in English.

26. Newbie here. After 2-3 months worth of studying (with large gaps between), I’m wondering if it’s good to make Anki cards about vocabulary, kanji or both.

    I’m also planning to play videogames in japanese to get some vocabulary/grammar when possible. My first thought was 真・女神転生 (first one, which lacks most of the kanji in dialogues due to being NES/SNES game), but I’ve already spent 1h getting through my character name. I’m also tempted to try out とびだせどうぶつの森 as I’ve watched a video and it had both kanji and furigana, but my previous experience stated makes me wonder if it would be alright to do it. Now for the question, would it be fine if I play and try reading a few kanjis/words instead of translating everything? I tend to learn more by experience and not studying, aka making relations between definitions. Of course I know I would be missing a lot of stuff, but I think that taking small steps would be better than trying to get everything at once (also that with time, I guess I’ll understand more and say “oh, so this meant this thing”). If anyone has any experince with this, please I’ll be glad to know how it was. Thank you 🙂

27. This sentence appeared in my Japanese class:「話を聞いているかどうか相手に確かめる」. If I understood correctly, this means “to make sure the person you are talking to is listening”. However, I’m having trouble understanding the use the particle に in 相手に. What I would expect is something like 「相手が話を聞いているかどうか確かめる」. Could somebody please help me understand this? Thanks a lot.

28. I have been trying for YEARS to learn Japanese and am constantly getting stuck on the basics. I have ADHD and am effectively allergic to “grinding” or rote learning, and as such have only learned a handful of the kana, let alone kanji.

    So I’m wondering if anyone else has gotten around this particular roadblock. I suspect I may be able to do better with a more task-oriented approach, bit I don’t know where to even begin looking for something like that.

    Thanks in advance!

29. In a house or building layout plan, the first floor is 1F, the second floor is 2F, etc. But I am wondering what 中2F means. A hidden floor in second floor? See this for example https://imgur.com/a/e0Wogwu

30. How does one use counters (such as ひとつ, ふたつ, etc.) for numbers beyond 10? I’ve looked in multiple places but everywhere only lists 1-10, and I also read somewhere that this system (called the hitotsu system?) only goes up to 10? So, how would one say, for example, “11 things” or “45 things”?