Daily Thread: simple questions, comments that don’t need their own posts, and first time posters go here (May 10, 2023)

13 comments

1. > ソファーの影のところから、緑の小さな顔がにやにやと笑っているのが、一瞬見えた気がしたのだ。

   I think it says “From the shadow of the sofa, I had a feeling I could see a small green face smiling at me for a moment” or something like that

   I was wondering what’s the difference if we take のだ off the end there. I can’t figure it would be much different.

2. Dreaded は v が question, sorry. I wrote “「きみのことが好きじゃない」と言った途端、彼が泣きだした。

   The “彼が” has a (は) written in parenthesis by sensei (same sensei isn’t here today so I can’t ask her)— is this completely wrong, or just a suggestion? If it’s totally wrong (and frankly, even as a suggestion lol), why? It sounded ok to me haha

3. Bracketed items are showing up on the front/back of my JPT Tango N5 MIA Anki deck. Is this supposed to happen/what’s the fix?

   For example:

   土曜日[どようび;n2] に アルバイト[;n3] を しま[,]す [る;h] 。
   Displays as:

   土曜日にアルバイトをします[る;h]。

   This is another example where the [る;h] shows up.

   毎日[まいにち;a] 、 日本語[にほんご;h] を 勉強[べんきょう;h] しま[,]す [る;h] 。

4. Can someone kindly recommend a good, accurate, specialized(target at English to Japanese or Japanese to English, not general translator like Good Translate) translator? I want to use it as my Japanese self-studying tool or even use it for travel translation in the future. Thanks!

5. I’m one of those “pitch from day 1” beginners: I did the perception trainer thing for a while, I have pitch info on my cards and I pay conscious attention to it in my immersion from time to time. I think it has already paid dividends in some respects but my pitch is still lacking. I actually think Matt vs. Japan was onto something when he said “how you learn the language the first time around impacts how it is structured inside your brain long-term” (not verbatim):

   I started out very listening-heavy and have since transitioned to being very reading-heavy which made me notice a stark difference in the way the words are stored within my brain. For words that I’ve learned through listening, I can almost always “play a native sound clip” in my head with the correct pitch which I usually cannot do for words I picked up through reading. I have a pitch accent dictionary installed in my yomichan and I often listen to unknown words I encounter while reading but these things don’t suffice I feel like (not even close); they’re after-the-fact band-aids in a way.

   The fundamental difference for me seems to be that words I’ve learned through reading are kind of stored like maths formulas in my head (i.e. “this and this kanji together give rise to that reading and meaning”) whereas words I’ve learned through listening are actually just stored as sound files more or less. This is corroborated by the fact that I, along with many others, have to train being able to pick out newly learned words (only words learned through reading though!) in my listening. At any rate, no matter what I do (apart from learning words through listening), the pitch feels “tacked-on” after the fact which is why I think what Matt has said has some merit. (I also want to add that my pitch accuracy is still pretty good for word I learn through reading but it isn’t 100% which is what I get for those I learned through listening)

   What do others think about this what I perceive to be an essential difference in how words are fundamentally stored inside one’s brain?

   Among the potential ways to make myself memorize words in terms of their sound first and foremost, I considered:

   – Switching back to being listening-heavy – slows down my overall progress and is less enjoyable for me

   – Switching over to audio perception cards – it may be annoying to learn to read these words then though

   – Additionally grading myself on correct pitch production while doing normal reading cards – I would be doing a lot more Anki then because my retention would naturally drop

   Ideas?

6. I have a hard time remembering verbs.

   Anybody have advice?

   Thanks!

7. I had been reading the gripes about Duolingo here and thought because I restarted fairly recently that maybe I was already on the new course and found it to be ok.

   But no. I’m shunted back from Section 2 to Section 1 unit 3. There is no kanji, and now it’s hard for me to read.

   The content seems ok, but having no kanji anymore is just going to stunt my learning.

   /rant

8. I’ve tried to find online an article explaining the grammar point 何も〜ても but to no avail – can someone help me out?

   The sentence I spotted it in is 「何も今日じゃなくても」
   And it translates to “Why’d it have to be today?” (the speaker is speaking to herself)

9. If you are saying something scared you would you say 脅かした or 脅かさせた

   「動画は突然に変わったの脅かしました」
   「動画は突然に変わったの脅かさせました」

10. I have a really simple question, but i guess, that’s what this thread is for:
    What particle is needed for あそぶ to say “to play playstation” ? My best guesses are で, as in “playing by way of playstation” or を, as in “playing the playstation”.
    Is there a general way to get an idea of what particle to use with certain verbs?

11. I have a question regarding the use of 感じ in a sentence. The Sentence is: こんな感じの材料. What exactly is the use of 感じ in this sentence? As i understood it, the sentence means something like “Ingredients like this”. But i thought, that こんな材料 would already convey this meaning, because “こんな-X” can be translated als “such-X” or “X-like this”. Would be great if anybody has an idea how to fit the 感じ in there.

12. Lately I’m feeling like more prolonged exposure to Japanese is the way to go. I work through genki, kanjikoohi and anki and all that, but I’m still torn on going further like setting my games languages to japanese, reading manga, etc… Even though I’ve only been studying for about a month.

    When I do play a game on my switch (botw) in Japanese it does take me ages to go through and translate everything, I’m not sure if it’s actually teaching me or it’s just work to no end.

    Would love to know anyone else’s thoughts!

13. The Zombielang Saga song “Fantastic Lovers” contains two verb forms, しちゃったみたい and しちゃってみたい, which I have not yet encountered in my Japanese learning experience.

    Two exmaples are 恋しちゃったみたい and キスしちゃってみたい

    What is the precise difference in meaning between ちゃった and ちゃって, and is this youth language or kind of official?