Daily Thread: simple questions, comments that don’t need their own posts, and first time posters go here (July 25, 2023)

9 comments

1. Is this sentence written correctly? Let me know if theres anything I can adjust/change to make this sound more natural.

   CONTEXT: I`m a university student exhausted from studying Japanese, so I decide to take a break and text my friend (who is also studying japanese) to say …

   日本語を勉強するのは大変から休まなければいけない。

   ​

   My intention: “I need a break because studying Japanese is painful”

2. Why does Yomichan have a small button that says “add reading” when I hover it? I can’t seem to figure out what it does. I’ve accidentally pressed it plenty but it doesn’t seem to change anything compared to the usual “add expression” button that I press.

3. I just found the JLPT practice exams and took the one for N5; I got 11/14 correct. On one of them, I got it wrong because I heard _okuniwa_ and incorrectly parsed it as 奥庭 when it turns out it was supposed to be お国は. Not sure how to prevent slips like this, other than memorizing more vocabulary. Pitch accent? But my addon shows those two having the same pitch pattern.

   Does it make sense to try and start at N5 testing then work my way up, or since it’s only once a year in the US should I skip straight to N4 if I think I might be able to pass that?

4. I read this sentence:

   > 石川は、足音を殺す歩き方に慣れていた。

   I think it’s “Ishikawa was used to the method of walking where he kills the sound of his footsteps (he’s used to walking silently).”

   But anyway, I was thinking, if I tried to produce a sentence like this, I’d probably use the を particle instead of に. This would be a mistake though. I was wondering is there a special reason you use に here or is that just something to memorize?

5. Just checking

   「食器の片付けは、麻衣**に**なすの**と**遊んでもらっている間に咲太がひとりでやった。」

   に is for 麻衣、咲太、もらう

   と is for 麻衣、 なすの、遊ぶ

   yeah?

6. How does one say ” Please no spicy sauce or spicy food?” My friends translated the spicy part wrong a miserable lol or “tsurai”

   And also how do I say ” I would like a room with 2 beds please?”

7. Which of the following expressions the greatest degree of “certainty” and “confidence” that X is the case ? Could you rank them from “highest certainty” to lowest

   それが何なのかは 地下室に答えがあると踏んでいる

   それが何なのかは 地下室に答えがあるだろう

   それが何なのかは 地下室に答えがあるはずだ

   それが何なのかは 地下室に答えがあると確信している

   それが何なのかは 地下室に答えがあるではないか

   それが何なのかは 地下室に答えがあるのではないか

   それが何なのかは 地下室に答えがあるのではないだろうか？

   それが何なのかは 地下室に答えがあるじゃん

   EDIT: The OG sentence was …と踏んでいる but I just wanted know how the nuance of the other expressions compared to it in terms of the speaker’s “certainty” and “confidence”. In this example, how certain is the speaker that the answer is in the basement?

8. I’m learning hiragana with flash cards mostly, I’m almost done with diacritics, I’m planning on starting genii 1 once I finish, however I was wondering if it would also be a good idea to memorize katakana as well before starting? This is probably a dumb question, but if you have an answer then thanks!

9. I want to read Murakami in JP, but I’m finding it impossible to find things online.

   Archive.org has it, but I can’t copy the text and I’d rather not use an OCR. I can’t purchase the kindle versions of any books on Amazon because there’s an issue with being in a different region. I looked through this subreddit and a few others but none of the links were helpful.

   I am NOT asking to pirate, I’m okay with paying (which I assume is what rule 4 is about)