Daily Thread: simple questions, comments that don’t need their own posts, and first time posters go here (April 18, 2023)

23 comments

1. The word ピカピカ on [jisho.org](https://jisho.org) has many possible types listed (Adverb taking the ‘to’ particle, Adverb (fukushi), Noun which may take the genitive case particle ‘no’, Na-adjective (keiyodoshi), Suru verb). Q1. Can a word having many possible types (listed in the dict) such as this be classified in more than one type for a single occurrence in a sentence? Q2. In the sentence これはピカピカです, what type of word is ピカピカ? Thank you.

2. So I’ve come across something, near as I can tell it’s the same but there’s always a subtle difference, so, what’s the difference between 奶茶 and 牛乳茶?

3. Why in this NHK headline did they not use “昨日” rather than きのう. The kanji form would be shorter and more headline-like:

   陸自ヘリ事故 きのう引きあげた隊員とみられる2人の死亡確認

4. A question mostly out of curiosity than anything, but why are there so many (at least beginner level) kanji with the onyomi reading こう? I started WaniKani a few months ago, currently Lv 8 and it feels like every level I get a new こう or two. It’s gotten to the point where if I’m completely blanking on a reading my default gurss is こう and I surprise myself how often that ends up being correct (though maybe them all being the same is why I blank in the first place)! Is it just a very commom sound in Chinese?

5. 2) メールとレポートを送りました. why is the correct answer で between mail and report?
   4) 私は昨日彼女で手紙を書きました。 Why is the correct answer に between girlfriend and letter? I thought when there’s an action verb being done to someone or something, で is used with the object.

6. context: walking my dog, and I say to him: “a happy dog is good dog” then I thought about how it would be said in japanese.

   嬉しい犬はいいこ犬だねー

   is this correct in terms of connotation and context?

7. Hi, I am trying to understand a conjugation:
   告げらせる

   告げる is a る-verb, so causative should be 告げさせる. So, please tell me what is this conjugation!

   Thank you!

8. How do I say “What was I talking about again?”. Like when your mind wanders off while speaking and you suddenly think “Um, what was I talking about again?”

   My uneducated attempt: 何について話していたんかな。

9. I feel somewhat discouraged after reading so many people say that after 3 or 4 years of daily studying they are only beginning to be able to watch tv shows with no english subs. I knew that learning japanese was going to take a while since I have learned languages to a very good level before (not a native english speaker) but I did not expect “a while” to be “4 years to be able to understand half of what’s said on a tv show” 😭still, I must keep on trucking lol

10. TIL that 厶 and 私 are bot personal pronouns, is the difference けいご vs informal or something else?

11. I have a serious problem. I keep dropping LNs after 4 to 5 pages but for those 4 to 5 pages I remember the vacab and kanji perfectly. Doing this with a few LNs and manga has netted me a a couple hundred words and 100+ addtional kanji (already knew ~600). I just get bored after 5 pages and want to taste something different. Novels and Manga I have tried
    触らないで小手指くん – Manga – 15 pages
    やはり俺の青春ラブコメはまちがっている – Manga – 2 pages lol
    空き缶 – LN – 6 pages
    お隣の天使様にいつの間にか駄目人間にされていた件 – LN – 4 pages
    回復術しのやり直し – LN – 5 pages

    Should I just keep doing this?

12. Where can I start learning kanji from the basics? I’ve got hiragana and katakana down perfectly I just don’t know how to approach kanji. Preferably an app or website that you may know of that isn’t paid and starts at N1 level?

13. I need help reviewing a poem I translated from English to Japanese, I don’t want a step by step correction but I just want to know how close it sounds to the source text, and of course point out if there’s any grammatical error so I can study more. Is this kind of thing allowed in here?

14. 5) 午後メールでレポートを送りました。松本さんに電話をかけました。 why can’t で be used after matsumoto？
    6) 夜学校で日本人の先生に日本語を習いました。 why can’t と be used between sensei and nihongo?

15. i-adjectives don’t actually have a teiru-form do they? As in for na-adjectives “綺麗でいる” seems possible in principle but is rare, but “美しくている” isn’t possible at all is it?

16. I have a question when it comes to asking what something means in Japanese.

    Like, I know you could say ○○は何, but could you also say something like 「○○」とは何?

    I learned the use of と as a particle to signify that what came before was a “quote”.

    So, instead of meaning “What is ○○?”, would it be more like saying “What is (this thing you call) ‘○○’?”

    It’s a subtle difference, but I wanna know if this difference is also present in Japanese, and how you would correctly say it, if I indeed said it wrong.

17. Is there a Japanese social media site equivalent to Reddit? Where people tend to write longer, more thoughtful answers (not like Twitter lool)

18. I feel a little stuck.

    I’ve managed to keep up daily kanji study with Anki, but it’s been a struggle. I’ve kept up the habit for over six months at this point, but I sometimes procrastinate on it so hard that I only end up doing my review at like 1:30 AM. I’m proud of having been able to stay on top of it, but I’m barely accomplishing that. I’ve had a basic ラノベ open in a tab for a few months now, and it’s at the perfect difficulty where it’s a struggle to read but I can still go several sentences without needing to outright look stuff up, but I haven’t read a chapter in over a month.

    I feel like I’m missing a goal. I have the nebulous target of being able to confidently understand Japanese without concentrating super hard and slowly picking out individual words like I currently have to, but there’s no Japanese media I’m specifically gunning for. Reading the ラノベ requires a lot of mental effort/strain, and it just feels like “reading, but sucky”. I have to push through it to get better, I’ll have to consume a lot of Japanese media to get to where I want to be, but it just feels mentally taxing and not-at-all rewarding to do so.

    I’m just not sure how to dig up more motivation. I don’t know what to do.

19. More of an etymological question rather than a learning question, but trying to google this just returns results explaining how kana are read instead of why.

    Anyone know why ha is connected to both ba and pa? The formula for the other sounds are taking a voiceless consonant and turning it into a voiced consonant. With that in mind, pa should be the base consonant and a dakuten should change it to ba. Ha isn’t said with the same shape as either and “should” be its own kana.

    Obviously it’s a historical quirk, but I’m just curious what makes this set different since it involves using a [currently, mostly] bespoke diacritic to get pa.

20. Okay this is gonna be a dumb question but I was reading random stuff and suddenly 18日 appears and I was like do I pronunce it じゅうはじにち or じゅうようか ?

    So basically the question are these pronunciations like ふつか、みっか、よっか, only used for single digits or are there also used for numbers higher than ten.
    So would let’s say 23日 be にじゅうさんにち or にじゅうみっか or would both work maybe?

21. I have a couple Anki questions as I just started using it and downloading some person’s Japanese From Zero! Book 1 set.

    Is there a way to just review cards and not learn any new words?

    Also, if I select the top-most “deck”, which is broken down into dozens and dozens of sub-decks, will it teach me random new words from the whole entire set or will it teach me new words from the next deck I haven’t reviewed yet, essentially going top-to-bottom?

22. To those who use **JPDB** instead of Anki

    how many times a day do you review cards? I say this because in Anki I’m used to you know, make the entire review in a day and be done with it, where as in JPDB later on the same day some cards keep popping up as “due”.

23. Found this lyric [その手はもう離さない].From what i know it translates to “that hand i won’t let go” but I don’t get what the もう part adds to the sentence.