I’ve always dreaded reading practice. It would start out well at first, but then I’d hit a sentence where I’m unsure of the meaning even after looking up every single word and grammar point. Every time, it made reading a chore, and I avoided it, limiting my growth in the language.
But one day, after deciding to recommit to learning, I hit upon something that took all the confusion out of reading. It was a simple GPT-4 prompt that goes as follows:
>Explain the grammar of this Japanese sentence in detail, but do not tell me the full meaning of the sentence and do not provide a translation at the end. Indicate the pronunciation of all Japanese words with kana; do not use rōmaji for the pronunciations at all.
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>\~\~\~\~\~
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>(sentence)
Here’s some sample output, with the sentence 「2008年に初開催し、毎年たくさんの参加者を集め、真冬の富士スピードウェイでアツいレースが繰り広げられている。」
>Certainly, I’ll break down the grammar of the sentence without providing its full meaning or a direct translation.
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>1. **2008年**に (にせんはちねんに) – The phrase “2008年” (にせんはちねん) refers to the year 2008. The particle “に” (に) is used here to indicate a specific point in time, similar to “in” in English.
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>2. **初開催し** (はつかいさいし) – “初” (はつ) means “first,” and “開催” (かいさい) means “holding (an event).” The verb “し” is the informal, present tense form of “する” (する), which means “to do.” Combined, “初開催し” (はつかいさいし) refers to the action of holding an event for the first time.
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>3. **毎年** (まいとし) – This word means “every year” or “annually.”
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>4. **たくさんの** (たくさんの) – “たくさん” means “a lot,” and the particle “の” is a possessive or descriptive marker, indicating that the following noun is characterized by “a lot.”
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>5. **参加者を** (さんかしゃを) – “参加者” (さんかしゃ) means “participants.” The particle “を” (を) is an object marker, indicating that the participants are the direct object of the action mentioned.
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>6. **集め** (あつめ) – This is the stem form of “集める” (あつめる), which means “to gather” or “to collect.”
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>7. **真冬の** (まふゆの) – “真冬” (まふゆ) means “midwinter.” The particle “の” is used here for description, akin to an adjective in English, modifying the noun that follows.
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>8. **富士スピードウェイで** (ふじスピードウェイで) – “富士スピードウェイ” (ふじスピードウェイ) is a proper noun, referring to the Fuji Speedway. The particle “で” (で) is used to indicate the location where an action takes place.
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>9. **アツい** (あつい) – This adjective means “hot” or “intense.”
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>10. **レースが** (レースが) – “レース” (レース) means “race.” The particle “が” (が) is the subject marker, indicating that the race is the subject of the sentence.
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>11. **繰り広げられている** (くりひろげられている) – This is the passive form of “繰り広げる” (くりひろげる), which means “to unfold” or “to carry out.” The “られている” (られている) part indicates a passive and continuous state, meaning the action is ongoing or habitually occurring.
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>Each part of the sentence contributes to its overall structure, describing a series of events or states, their frequency, location, and characteristics.
(The output you get may vary in formatting. Also, I recommend always erasing the concluding remarks, because GPT-4 tries to sneak a translation in there sometimes.)
This gives you what you need to piece the sentence’s meaning together yourself, without relying on a translation. It’s more efficient than searching multiple dictionaries and grammar websites. And if you think GPT-4 hallucinated, you know what word or grammar point to look up.
This has taken all the pain out of reading practice. There’s no more guessing and no more frustration — I learn how to understand a sentence on its own terms. And best of all, I retain what I read; this is important because it makes reading unfamiliar material easier, since you’ll remember how sentences are patterned. This has not happened before; using all my old methods, I could never remember what I read. But now, the process is so smooth it’s trivial.
This is such a big help; it blows my mind that this wasn’t even possible until just last year. I hope this helps anyone who feels like they’re stuck.
**EDIT:** As pointed out by u/smoemossu, the し in 開催し is the stem form of する, not the informal form. This highlights the importance of having the basics under your belt when using this method; this is not a good approach for beginners, since it will be harder for them to spot the mistakes.
**EDIT 2:** If you encounter a word or grammar point for the first time, verify it. The AI can be helpful, but it does make errors sometimes.
6 comments
I briefly used chatgpt to help with reading but I relied on it too much and didn’t learn anything.
I highly recommend Nihonno Neko on YouTube especially her reading JP books and advanced sentences videos really helped me break down longer sentences.
I realized Japanese grammar is quite reversed to English.
You’re probably gonna get a lot of downvotes, but Chat-GPT (and AI in general) is getting more and more useful for things like this. It can be incredibly useful in breaking down sentences or explaining why certain things are used in a sentence. There will undoubtedly be mistakes or mistranslations here and there, but it’s really a great tool to add to anyone’s arsenal, especially for beginning and intermediate Japanese.
I think you can do pretty much same thing with browser plugins like 10ten Reader and YomiTan, but it’s actually easier and faster just to stick to reading things in browser and while using 10ten Reader or YomiTan. You’re gonna get enough heat for using ChatGPT and I fully endorse those comments, so I’ll just stick to pragmatic suggestion as you get more experienced in the language.
When reading you actually don’t need to look up every word or grammar point but if you want to the above plugins can do that in-flight as you read. When you read you don’t need to piece together the whole sentence but get an idea, it’s perfectly okay to leave things ambiguous and unanswered as long as you have the underlying idea of the sentence and a working model of what it can potentially mean in your head. It’s extremely similar to “skimming” articles in English where you highlight key ideas and fill in the rest of the information from contextual cues or prior knowledge. As you progress in reading new information will appear and you can do historical revision on your previous model of meanings and keep doing this as you move forward in any reading.
I notice it calls し the “informal, present tense form of する”. Wouldn’t it be more accurate to call it the stem form, the same as what it later calls 集め? And pretty sure this form is not informal, it’s considered a more formal written-only form of the て form.
Have you tried the Yomichan extension? It’s probably faster that pasting text to chat gpt, and will give you dictionary definitions and automatically deduce the grammatical form of verbs. (Granted, it doesn’t give you an explanation in natural language…)
> And if you think GPT-4 hallucinated, you know what word or grammar point to look up.
How do you know what part is hallucinated if you’re just learning? For example, what word or grammar would you look up to figure out the error contained in the example you provided? Did you notice there was an error?
Chat gpt is so wrong so much, I really advise no one to use them for anything involving language learning, honestly. It will confidently tell you very very incorrect information. Unless you’re fluent, don’t use it. And if you’re fluent, why use it at all? DeepL is decent if you want native sounding translations, but it doesn’t translate word for word. Going word by word with a dictionary or asking a native is the gold standard. If you can’t understand a sentence, move on for now. You will encounter it again and you will have more clarity each time.