Daily Thread: simple questions, comments that don’t need their own posts, and first time posters go here (July 11, 2023)

8 comments

1. I have a question about the following sentence:

   > 自分は見送りの切符しかないため、新幹線に乗る前に終わらせることになる。

   Context: Someone is about to pick someone’s pocket.

   I think it says something like, “Because I only have the departure ticket, I have to finish (picking the pocket) before (the victim) boards the train.”

   I was wondering, why is it using causative form here instead of, IDK, dictionary form?

   EDIT:

   I have a second question with pretty much the same context.

   > 彼のコートの袖のボタンに蛍光灯の光が微かに反射し、視界の隅にすべるように流れた。

   I was wondering what ように does exactly? Can you give me a hint? I think the rest might be, “The buttons on his coat sleeve dimly reflected the florescent light, (???) flowing into the corner of his field of vision.”

2. I’m looking for some suggestions on learning vocab that isn’t anki, including the Kanji. Going through anki vocab decks just aren’t working for me. I can’t get it to stick. I’m trying to read some manga and games in Japanese but I’m having to look up all of the words. I can pick out the grammar which can give me a little skeleton of the sentence. But it’s still useless without the words.

   I don’t own any games with voice acting and furigana and I can’t afford to buy any. I started FF2 which works alright with game2text. It took me over 2 hours of looking up words to get through the beginning cutscene! While it was satisfying to be able to work out the gist of what’s going on, if you showed me any of those lines or kanji right now I couldn’t tell you what they were. I just can’t get it to stick.

   I want to be able to read Japanese to play games and read stories as it’s easier on my dyslexia and would just be a positive impact in my QoL. So as you can probably understand it’s getting very disheartening that I just can remember any words and how to say the kanji. I don’t want to be reliant on furigana because a lot of games and books don’t have it.

3. when it comes to nouns+suru, how come sometimes the noun takes the を particle like I just saw with “仕事をする” and sometimes its simply a compound like “勉強する?” Is it simply for politeness, or more correct to use the particle, or is there another level of nuance?

4. What are some good resources for learning radicals? I’ve been shifting focus to Kanji and have a good 200 or so fully memorized but I’d like to be able to discern similarly written stuff like 地 and 他

5. I want to start learning Japanese but idk the right way to learn it (I know hirigana and katakana should be learnt first but I’m not sure what to do after that and how to actually learn hirigana and katakana

6. So is this sub basically dead now? Haven’t been keeping up.

7. Good Afternoon everyone! It has been a very rainy past few weeks here in Western Japan. I live in Yamaguchi Prefecture. Having already asked the most basic advice for learning Nihongo after reading Tae Kim’s Grammar Guide, my next question and hopefully last one for awhile is for those who live in Japan and more specifically intend to live forever here:

   What are the best ways to master the Japanese language as quickly as possible? My goal is to have at least past the JLPT N2 exam prior to my 40th birthday which as of now is about ten days shy of 3 1/2 years from now. I am very sorry for these broad questions. They are due to feeling overwhelmed at the sheer enormity of resources, methods and advice for mastering the Japanese language. Thank you all very much!

8. 中枢部をもう一度起動することさえできたら、すべてがうまくいっていただろうに。

   would this sentence be natural with the same meaning if it was できていれば instead of できたら