Daily Thread: simple questions, comments that don’t need their own posts, and first time posters go here (July 08, 2023)

11 comments

1. I’m currently having a bit of a language crisis… I’m in Japan and have been drowning in my inability to communicate. I thought I could get by because I was reading NHKEasy articles with the help of a dictionary (with some effort) but it is not nearly enough for me to be successful over here.

   Any tips? I was thinking of grabbing some slice of life manga so I could at least try to improve my daily conversation skills, but I’m being fucked hard by the huge mountain of vocabulary I don’t know.

2. [deleted]

3. Man the really shitty translations of the tango “N” decks are proper throwing me off. Love how its beginner reading practice but that doesn’t matter if it misleads you i mean look at almost two example sentences that are very close to each other in the deck;

   山田さんは日本語学校の先生です。

   ヒエンさんは日本語学校の学生です。

   To my brain it should be “As for Yamada san japanese school teacher is” and “As for Hien san Japanese school student is” etc.

   In other words they should be basically the same sentence but what do they give you as answers? “Yamada-san is a Japanese teacher.” and “Hien-san is a student at the Japanese language school”.

   Where its making the specific distinction of a “Japanese language school” in one case and not the other throws me right off, like the creator just wanted perfectly sounding natural English, which doesn’t make any fucking sense its already hard enough for beginners to translate.

4. I know about desu and masu forms for polite speech, but what about when it comes to actual words, for example, なぜ vs なんで , is there a way to work out which word is more polite then the other? or is it just case by case? it feels like a big hill to overcome.

5. Hello everyone! I want to learn Japanese but there are too many resources.

   Is there any ultimate website/app (preferably) that covers all aspects(listening, vocabulary, speaking, writing, grammar and etc). I need 2-3 sources maximum. I know that learning a language requires a multiple sources but I just want to start somewhere.

6. Every one of you moderators at r/LearnJapanese are awful people and I hope you know that. I don’t care if no user of the sub sees this as long as you guys see it it’s all I care about as I’m speaking on the behalf of the community at large. Let the up/downvotes speak for themselves, no replies necessary.

   The pr0tests ended a week ago. Changes went through … Reddit, unsurprisingly, completely unchanged moderation wise. Of course corporate greed stinks but it’s over. I know you guys are still here because you’re deleting other peoples rude, albeit critical comments about the situation.

   There’s no established Reddit alternative. Going scorched earth like this and restricting the sun like this when there are NO (GOOD) alternatives to date is so remarkably idiotic. Instead of coasting on the site until you guys make your own site (or improve the discord so it isn’t a discord with a barren forum attached) we have to take it to 11 and remove the largest user source for Japanese knowledge on the internet. Feel free to bask in that it’s a genuine compliment and makes this flat idiotic decision even worse in theory. Discord isn’t available to people who use public computers. Daily threads quickly lose steam after several hours because no one cares at that point and instead just wait for the next one. Discord itself is not a Reddit replacement because I’m not joining 100 different discords for every “community” I need answers for and the forum on the current discord does not get nearly at all attention as they do on here. Responses are no where near in depth nor get nearly as much traffic

7. I’m trying to translate the lyrics of a part of a song that goes like this “いつでもそう　今だけ大切にして　生きてゆく”.
   Can a thing like “So always, cherish only the present and go on living” be accetable?

   The song
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RSx9UKiStk

8. woman running a noodle shop says:

   >私ほどになると麺の食べ方で大物だってわかるよ！

   what’s the best way to understand 私ほどになると?

9. How often do you study? When you first started, what was your routine like?

10. I’m learning about なら in Genki 2 Textbook Chapter 13, and was doing the 6 なら exercises from page 40(48 in PDF), and got all 6 answers wrong because i used other particles instead of は… does this mean that if i use なら i NEED to use は all the time?

    For example, this is exercise 1
    1) ロバートさんはバイクに乗れますか。

    [O] bicycle [X] motorbike

    My answer:自転車なら乗れますが、バイクに乗れません
    Answer Key answer:自転車なら乗れますが、バイクは乗れません

11. 3 questions

    1. 絶好調: according to JMdict is “in perfect form” id probably omit this from the sentence but what does it mean down here?
    2. not sure about とした?
    3. 喋れないのかしら。かしら＝かな but more fem. BUT why add the の there?

    attempt translation: ive achieved fame but (絶好調?) that was no where near how good a i feel now

    名声を手に入れが　これほどまでに　絶好調の　ハレバレとした気分はなかった