Daily Thread: simple questions, comments that don’t need their own posts, and first time posters go here (July 27, 2023)

11 comments

1. They say learn through sentences, but I can’t piece together sentences for my LIFE. What do I do differently?

   This alone frustrates me beyond belief. I’m learning Kanji through WaniKani, and using JPDB for miscellaneous words, but I can’t piece sentences together for the LIFE of me. I am learning particles and such. JPDB I am using to learn Core 2K, yet it feels useless. I can see the same word 10,000 times and not make sense of it. For example: という, もう, そう, だけ are words i’ve tried learning. Vocabulary without kanji is incredibly hard, and the example sentences make them feel impossible to learn.

   For example, for そう:

   “女の子がそういうこと言うなよ.”

   I can clearly plug the sentence into Google Translate and read the translation as “a girl shouldn’t say such things.” I have learned 女の子 and 言う. I recognize 言う is negative. I recognize こと can modify verbs, but even still: I can’t make sense of sentences. If I can’t make sense of sentences, the vocabulary is useless. I can’t make sense of そう in this context, nor the いう that directly next to it. And こと is modifying いう？ Such a mess..

   What do I do differently with approaching sentences, and I guess… learning in general? My months of learning often feel like a waste when I attempt to read sentences like this and only see a few vocabulary words, and the rest gibberish. I don’t want to quit language learning. I love it, but man this kills me…

   Apologies for how frustrated I am.

2. is this sentence written correctly? any tips on making this sound natural is appreciated 🙂

   CONTEXT: I`m at the zoo and I see a large amazing animal so I go to the nearby employee to ask…

   すみません。。これ動物は何ですか？かっこいいけど飼うのは難しそうです。

   ​

   My Intention : “What kind of animal is this? it looks cool but it seems hard to keep and raise”

3. I’m wondering whether you’d use はず or べき for this type of sentence:

   外が暑い!今プールにいる[はず] / [べき] だ as in “it’s hot out! I should be in a pool right now”

   I’ve seen some resources but still a bit confused so just trying to understand it by crafting my own sentence

   I’m assuming if I should’ve literally been in the pool because it was planned, I’d use はず but if I’m saying that in general I should be in the pool because it’s hot, I’d use べき?

4. I was watching terrace house, and they said, ベイじゃないけど. The translation is in probably bi.

   Without the translation I would have thought he was saying I’m not bi but..

   Can someone explain this construction?
   Maybe I’m not understanding kedo

5. Struggling with larger numbers and counting of all things. Could I get some assistance?

   While counting up to about 10,000 is fine, it’s after that where I’m having some trouble. Larger numbers such as 123,000 or 39,000,000 for example. I kind of understand how numbers are broken down into chunks, but an explanation on how exactly that is done would be awesome. Sorry if my question doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Thank you!

   Also, I just finished Genki 1. Thoughts on my next steps? Should I just move right into Genki 2? Should I continue working through the extra exercises in the back of the textbook and workbook while reviewing what I’ve learned?

6. Recently I started a course to learn japanese, this week would be my second. So I have exams Friday and i just want to know how screwed I am because i cant for the life of me remember well hiragana, katakana and the 6 kanji words. We’re using Marugoto starter A1 Rikai and Katsudoo, for rikai we have gotten up to page 66 and for katsudoo page 50. I have done the work, the conversations with other people and have studied on my own but i just cant remember most of it and im relying a lot on the romaji.

   This Friday my exam will be about those two books up to were we stopped today, and I’m trying, I’m using Learn Hiragana and Kitakana from tofugo and its learn kana quiz. Some apps for flash cards but I just can’t seem to remember most of the words i learn that day or hour. The teacher is really helpful and explains things really well but I cant seem to remember most of the things and it really embarrassing cause i see my other classmates do well and most of them have learned most of hiragana and a little bit of katakana and I feel like I’m stuck and this is kind of a last resort for help.

   Any tips on how you maybe learned and remembered things, I really didn’t study for most of my school life since i just got by, and really only practiced math so self studying is really new to me. Right now I’m just practicing hiragana using youtube videos, memory games and a few work sheets

   Any help would be appreciated, thank you to anyone who took the time to read this

7. How do you make the switch to monolingual dictionaries without just being completely lost trying to read the definitions? Also, do you use it for the anki or just for the look ups while reading?

8. guy talking about the mysterious death of a real estate agent who was selling property to the mafia:

   >俺がそのネタに気付いたのはとある不動産業者が変死した事からだ。あくまで副業の一環でそいつの周辺を洗って最近の取引物件なんかも控えてたんだが。

   副業の一環 – is this the speaker describing his own 副業? like, “I did some investigating on the side…”

   そいつの周辺を洗って – what exactly does this mean? is he talking about looking into the circumstances of the guy’s death? is そいつの周辺 figurative here or is it literally describing the location/surroundings of something?

   控えてた – which meaning is being applied here? is it the speaker “noting down” the recent dealings made by the agent?

9. Is it better to finish minna no nihongo at a rapid pace (3 chapters each week with a tutor meeting 3-4 days a week) or to do some minna no nihongo and some wanikani along the way (maybe 1 level every 2 weeks) and only do 1-2 chapters each week?

10. I am encountering a strange issue with kana input into the Reddit comment box. I am using the Japanese Microsoft IME, and the kana input is working everywhere else (as far as I can tell). However, when I try to enter anything into a Reddit comment (the search bar, for example, does not have this issue) my input…explodes. For example, this is what happens when I input “毎日に勉強する”.

    ｍままいまいｎまいにまいにｃまいにｃｈまいにちまいにちｎまいにちのまいにちのいまいにちのまいにちまいにちｎまいにちにまいにちにｂまいにちにべまいにちにべｎまいにちにべんまいにちにべんｋまいにちにべんｋｙまいにちにべんきょまいにちにべんきょうまいにちにべんきょうｓまいにちにべんきょうｓｈまいにちにべんきょうしまいにちにべんきょうまいにちにべんきょうｓまいにちにべんきょうすまいにちにべんきょうすｒまいにちにべんきょうするまいにちにべんきょうする。まいにちにべんきょうする。

    Is there a Markdown issue that causes this? From a look at the rules/wiki I can’t find any reason why this is happening…

11. About a week later after last post and with 25 days of study under my belt (4-6+ hours per day) i come here to ask some simple manga with furigana to try thing out. Reason is – i am running out of L1 graded readers on Tadoku and i still have 90%+ comprehension on those. not sure if i can do L2, probably not yet. or at least comprehension will fall to ~60 most likely and i’ll have to actually look up stuff (though we will se when i’ll actually ran out of L1 which is tomorrow).

    Or am i being to hasty with this? what level such manga would be at? i have a lot of intuitive vocab from almost 20 years of anime and VNs but grammar is harder even if i am learning stuff – it’s still in n5 grade.