So I’ve been learning Japanese for the last 3 or 4 weeks, and I’m really enjoying it! This is my first foreign language (not counting my coworkers code …) so I honestly had zero expectations about what the process would look like, but I’m surprised how naturally it’s been coming to me so far.
Err, maybe it’s better to say I’ve been surprised how fast I’m picking it up, because I’ve found that as an English native, a lot sentences I’ve encountered thus far are easier to interpret by reading them **backwards** lol. For example, my brain parses the following:
明日, 学校へ行きます
as:
1. 明日 – Tomorro,
2. 行きます – (I will) go
3. 学校へ – in the direction of school
= Tomorrow, I will go to school.
Do other English speakers do this lol?
Edit: made a dumb mistake
19 comments
For beginners it is sometimes recommended to read は/が then the sentence backwards. It also works well because conjunctions are also reversed in japanese ex: 買いに行きます
Japanese and English somewhat work backwards, so this is a thing. Yeah. I’ve done this in the past while I was still beginning.
I will admit….to doing this…sometimes….
I mean no I never do that
I’ve never seen this done before lol, but if it works it works
The backwards method will be particularly useful when you start learning relative/subordinate clauses until your brain gets properly rewired and can use that type of syntax without hesitation.
For example,
English: The old man **that** I saw yesterday was actually my neighbor.
Japanese: Yesterday saw old man, actually my neighbor was.
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Off-topic but, has that type of mistake really crept in native speech already or was it just a slip-up? You wrote ”**how** the process would look like”, when it should be ”**what** the process would look like.”
If the sensory verb has *like* at the end, the pronoun is *what*. This is mainly a mistake I’ve seen non-natives make since it’s pretty common to use ”how” in their languages. It’s funny to see a native make it.
I do this all the time. When I get stuck trying to understand a Japanese sentence, I will try to read it backwards and oftentimes I will understand. Japanese word order does feel like it’s almost exactly the opposite of English word order.
I’m at a similarly early point in my studies. I’ve found it easier to abandon trying to translate 1:1 in my head & just.. embrace the syntax. It just works better in my head so far – difficult to explain it.
This is what I always tell people about the grammar of Japanese. It’s basically the reverse of English, except for the topic particle.
私は３時に映画館で映画を観ます
“I at 3pm at the theater a movie will watch.”
It’s almost like Yoda is talking!
Versus “I, will watch a movie at the theater at 3pm”
I did the exact same thing in the beginning. First step to learning is comprehensible input, so breaking a sentence down and rearranging to mimic a sentence in english to make it understandable helped a lot.
Now for simple sentences I don’t have to do that, but when a sentence gets complex, I’ll break it down and rearrange it.
The moment you stop thinking in english is the moment that your language learning process will improve
Fun translation tip, but that’s one of the basics for JP to EN translating! 🙂
So it’s neat that you picked up on that as a way of making the English sentence sound more natural
I already knew that some japanese sentence is backwards but I do not rely on that technique it will become more hard for your brain to process on translating the meaning of a sentence.
I rely on their particles to explain what it is about but sometimes particles are often omited by natives.
How are you going to read speech backwards though? This fine as a beginner, especially when you’re just trying to understand what the heck you’re reading. But ultimately if you keep doing this it’s only going to slow you down and make it harder for you to transition your brain into understanding Japanese without having to rely on the English language for translation.
This is a technique I’ve seen Japanese people use when reading English as well. It’s an especially useful tool for when you first start out reading longer sentences. As you get more used to reading Japanese it stops being necessary
This is completely normal since English is a subject-verb-object (SVO) ordered language and Japanese is a subject-object-verb (SOV) ordered language, so if you reorder to your native it will be easier to understand. It is important though to break that habit and understand it as it’s ordered because you’ll need that speed for listening.
I do this basically all the time without even thinking.
My process: Yoda is Japanese.
I was told to not mess up the English when reading Japanese. I still ending up reading it backwards tho half the time lol.
Yea