Daily Thread: simple questions, comments that don’t need their own posts, and first time posters go here (October 14, 2023)

5 comments

1. Hey guys,

   So I was learning volitional form (行こう、食べよう）and Takoboto said the negative form would end in a まい (行くまい、食べまい).

   However, this is the first I’ve ever heard of it. My friend (native speaker) says it’s ok, but it’s weird.

   Anyone know more about this form?

2. I’m heading to Japan next month and figured I’d visit the Suntory Yamazaki distillery in Kyoto. The distillery is now using a lottery system to secure reservations, and I managed to luck my way into a timeslot for the tour & tasting. There’s only one problem: I didn’t get picked for any of the English tours I requested, but rather the one Japanese timeslot I picked as my bottom choice.

   So my question for all the whisky drinkers on /r/LearnJapanese — any must-know whisky and distilling-related vocabulary I should brush up on before my trip?

3. So I’m doing some work in the quartet workbook and write “「お子様メニュー」はフライドチキンしかていない。”

   ​

   I don’t believe any verb is suitable for the end there besides ある, but is it しかていない or しかない? ある doesn’t use て form, so I wasn’t sure if it would be OK here since I’m writing the negative form of ある (ない)。I feel like the て form would be necessary to convey the current state of fried chicken being the only thing on the kid’s menu, but the whole thing with aru not using te form had me wondering.

4. Could someone check my understanding here? I kept seeing this Xの多くは… pattern in my reading until I finally today looked it up and found out that 多く actually has a [proper 名詞 definition](https://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/word/%E5%A4%9A%E3%81%8F/#jn-28463) and can be a subject *as well as* an adverbial definition. However, if I’m not mistaken, this is rather rare.

   I remember at one point reading a sentence starting with ”面白かったのは…” and I interpreted it as translating to something like “What I found interesting was…” and I think it is typical that you need こと, の, とき, or similar words to nounify an adjective to become a subject. However, in something “あんまり面白くはない”, I think I want to read this as “It’s ***not*** very interesting.” with the は serving to emphasize the ない, rather than as a contrast “It’s not very ***interesting*** (it’s something else).” (To be clear, I mean I think it’s the [third definition on goo](https://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/word/%E3%81%AF/#jn-172815), “強調して明示する意を表す”.)

   So I think when I see adjectives in their 連用形 form, most of the time, even if fallowed by a は, I should think of them as adverbs–is that right? Are there many cases other than 多く that would surprise me? Also, what about in this sentence?

   PCゲームは、多くは、価格が高いです。

   Do you interpret this 多く as adverbial (thinking of it as meaning “the price being high is the typical, general case”) or as a proper noun (thinking of it as meaning “For *most* PC games, the price is high.”)? Personally, I wrote it with the adverbial meaning in mind and I think the test is that the meaning doesn’t change if the は is removed.

   EDIT: I just realized 近く also has a noun definition, but instead of 長く, you’d use 長さ if you needed a noun… right?

5. Hi all, its my first time posting here on this sub and I’m looking for some advice because I don’t know what to do anymore.

   So, first things first, I started learning japanese because I’m tired of relying on bad localization of anime and games to understand them, and also because I always wanted to watch my favourite Vtubers and understand what they are talking about.

   I started my journey approximately 1 year ago, learned all the hiragana/katakana in 1 week, that was the easy part.

   Then I hit my first wall, grammar, I struggled to learn what the particles meant and how a sentence was structured because its completely different from my native language (portuguese brazillian) and from english.

   But after sometime things started clicking and I was understanding simple senteces, and started making sense of basic japanese structure. But then, I hit the second wall, and I’m stuck on it since then.

   Kanji/Vocab. I can’t for the life of me remember complex kanji compounds or even single kanji with too many strokes. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong, **I don’t have any problems remembering other stuff**, its just kanji.

   I just can’t remember them, they just look like a bunch of squiggles for me no matter how much I read them in native content I’m always having to look up how it’s read and what it means.

   I’ve tried everything, from mnemonics, flashcards through anki, writing them on paper a bunch of times, even duolingo. It just doesn’t stick in my brain. I’m tired of trying to read native stuff and having to look up almost every word I encounter… Even words that I already saw 5 minutes ago.

   This is the reason I gave up on learning this language for 2 months, but now I’m looking for a different approach, that’s why I’m making this long ass post, to see if someone can show me the light on how can I make this process less painful. Thanks in advance for anyone willing to help.