>>40241
Ah I see. Things requiring a phonetic translation for public-understandability (your udon example) is a good usecase I didn't think of. Although that's more of an English problem since it doesn't have an unambiguous way to provide phonetic description. E.g. you could say the same for things like jalapeno (if you hadn't seen the word before and didn't know Spanish, I doubt you'd be able to predict the pronunciation).

Given the context of having just repaired something, I'm assuming that 「特に問題もなく使える」means something along the lines of "Notably, [I] can use the [the recently repaired thing] without issue."
「問題も」seems to function like, say, 「誰も」. Combined with 「なく」, one might infer "no problem" or "without any problem." My reservation is that it seems like there's something like 「で」missing between the verb and "no problem." But if I've learned anything it's that eliding particles and syllables is just the way of life.

Oh, and I've finally made it to the village. It only took five hours.

Given the context of having just repaired something, I'm assuming that 「特に問題もなく使える」means something along the lines of "Notably, [I] can use the [the recently repaired thing] without issue."
「問題も」seems to function like, say, 「誰も」. Combined with 「なく」, one might infer "no problem" or "without any problem." My reservation is that it seems like there's something like 「で」missing between the verb and "no problem." But if I've learned anything it's that eliding particles and syllables is just the way of life.

Oh, and I've finally made it to the village. It only took five hours.

>>40243
"Toku ni, mondai mo naku tsukaeru."
Yes, that souds right. I don't think you need a "de" particle here though.

"Mondai nai" by itself means "without a problem", "mondai naku tsukaeru" means "using without a problem", "mondai mo naku tsukaeru" just adds "mo" for emhasis.

>>40245
So, 「特に問題[も]」becomes part of an adverbial phrase when attached to 「なく」. Because if "problem" was followed by 「無い」, the sentence would be gibberish.

>>40246
I think it's just "mondai [mo]" that's part of the adverbial phrase, "toku ni" outside of it. But yes, "mondai naku" functions as that. I don't follow why "tokuni mondai nai" is considered gibberish – it makes sense to me at least, and means "Particularly, there's no problem." In fact in anime I'm reasonably certain I've heard the phrase "mondai nai" before.

>>40247
>"toku ni" outside of it
Yeah, I didn't mean to include it. I'm running on fumes right now, so apologies for any errors.

>I don't follow why "tokuni mondai nai" is considered gibberish – it makes sense to me at least
I was implying that if it were followed by 「使える」, in this example, then it would be gibberish, since "mondai nai" would seemingly be the object of 「使える」.

>>40222
>The primary thing that's tripping me up is the usage, I assume, the stem of する, i.e. 「し」.
Yes, し here is the 連用形 of する.
>That and the usage of 「進んで」, which I'm interpreting as "at my own pace."
I think it's being used here as a verb as part of the verb construction 進んでいく, not as an adverb. See below for the meaning.
Even if I'm wrong and it's being used here in its adverbial sense, I don't think it's being used to mean "at my own pace." Not sure where you got that from.

>>40236
>I think in this case it's a te-iru construction,
You are mixing up いる and いく. According to 大辞泉 [1], ～ていく has this meaning:
>（補助動詞）動作の継続・進行の意を表す。
That is, it indicates a sense of continuation or advancement/progression of an action.
Or according to [2],
>When ていく doesn't just mean "go and", it means that something is ongoing and will "keep going" at least into the near future.

>te-iru vs te-ita
According to [3], 「進んでいったほうがいい」 is a stronger, more personal recommendation than 「進んでいくほうがいい」, which is more neutral and general. た is used not only to indicate the past but may also or instead be used to indicate completion (see also [4]). By using the former phrase, which indicates completion, the certainty is emphasized and the feelings of the speaker are conveyed.
According to [5], the former is used for warnings and advice, while the latter is used for comparisons. In the case that it's warning/advice involving a comparison, the former is used.
According to [6],
>The meaning of Verb informal nonpast ほうがいい is almost the same as that of Verb informal past ほうがいい if it is used in situations of suggestion. However, Verb informal past ほうがいい may express a stronger suggestion than Verb informal nonpast ほうがいい.
However, if the phrase preceding ほうがいい is to be negated, using た sounds unnatural [6, 7, 8], so you should just plainly negate it. [4, 6, 7, 8]

>>40243
You can think of 特に問題もなく as "without even much issue" or "without even any issue especially". 「特に問題もなくて使える」 to me has more of a nuance of "There isn't even much issue with it, so I can use it."

[1] sakura-paris.org/dict/%E5%A4%A7%E8%BE%9E%E6%B3%89/prefix/%E8%A1%8C%E3%81%8F
[2] sakubi.neocities.org/#aspect
[3] www.nhk.or.jp/bunken/research/kotoba/20190301_5.html
[4] detail.chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp/qa/question_detail/q13156317098
[5] detail.chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp/qa/question_detail/q139154308
[6] itazuraneko.neocities.org/grammar/dojg/dojgpages/basic%E3%81%BB%E3%81%86%E3%81%8C%E3%81%84%E3%81%84.html
[7] hinative.com/questions/2451848
[8] hinative.com/questions/15540807

>>40249
>You are mixing up いる and いく
Yes you're right, thanks for pointing this out. I didn't know that ~te-iku has a meaning other than "do x and go". As you noted, it seems the difference between ~te-iru and ~te-iku for this case is that the latter implies the action is starting now and will continue to the future, whereas there's no such implication about the start or end in the former [1, 2. Analogously then, I assume differnce between ~te-ita and ~te-itta is that in the former we're in the resulting state after the activity ended (with no impliciation as to the timespan of the activity other that it was in the past), whereas with the latter the activity itself is implied to have a duration up until shortly before now [3, 4].

There's apparently also a similar timespan-related meaning for ~te-kuru, which seems to imply the action has started at some point in the near past and will continue to the future. And ~te-kita implies the acitivity had a duration up until and including now.

Also thank you for the resources in the citation links.

[1] https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/61315/whats-the-difference-between-%E3%81%A6form%E8%A1%8C%E3%81%8Fand-%E3%81%A6form%E3%81%84%E3%82%8B

[2] https://www.laits.utexas.edu/japanese/joshu/grammar/glist/y1/ch6/gl_y1_ch6_te_ikukuru.php

[3] https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/676/difference-between-%E3%81%A6%E3%81%84%E3%81%8F-and-%E3%81%A6%E3%81%8F%E3%82%8B

[4] https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/25505/whats-the-difference-between-%e6%ad%a9%e3%82%93%e3%81%a7%e3%81%84%e3%81%a3%e3%81%9f-and-%e6%ad%a9%e3%82%93%e3
%81%a7%e3%81%8d%e3%81%9f?noredirect=1&lq=1

>>40249
Thank you for taking the time to post this, and for providing sources at which to look.

>Not sure where you got that from.
I mentioned the reason above, but in short, I made an egregious mis-inference.

>See below for the meaning.
If I may, the sentence「きついと思ったら途中で家に戻ったり村で道具の準備をしながら進んでいったほうがいいわね・・。」might be then interpreted to mean, "Even if (I think) it's difficult, I had better keep advancing while returning home and gathering provisions at the village." Still unsure how to comfortably incorporate「途中で」without it feeling redundant given「ながら」already provides a similar feeling (while).

>You can think of 特に問題もなく as "without even much issue" or "without even any issue especially". 「特に問題もなくて使える」 to me has more of a nuance of "There isn't even much issue with it, so I can use it."
Might you say why you infer this nuance? Not knowing is killing me.
Also, I should say I misstated the context (apologies to the other anon) in which「特に問題もなくて使える」was said. The speaker didn't fix the object ("it"), but rather "started" it for the time in a while. After doing so, she made this remark. So, your interpretation does make more sense.

Made it to the village; killed some orcs; and, most importantly, am becoming more accustomed to reading. Amusingly enough, a lot of the text is fairly simple to read, and it's mostly the protagonist's monologues that are killing me.
That said, a girl said「観ない顔な」to the MC. As far as I can tell, given the context of the MC being new to the village in which this interaction took place, this can be interpreted as describing the MC's expression (or face) as either difficult to read or perhaps confused/unsure. Given that the girl proceeds to inform that one can do some information gathering at the bar, it feels like the latter is more likely to be correct.
Still having fun!

>>40254
Thank you too. That answer with the diagrams was insightful.
What complicates matters regarding >>40222 in particular is that the pages you linked seem to mostly concern what the verb construction means when it's used at the end of a sentence, whereas it's attached to ほうがいい in the sentence in question, in which case ～た doesn't really indicate the past. So the difference between ～ていった and ～ていた if used in this sentence would be equivalent to the difference between ～ていく and ～ている.

>>40256
>the sentence[...]might be then interpreted to mean,
"I guess I had better keep proceeding (with the mission) while returning home and preparing provisions at the village along the way when I feel things get (too) tough."
As I understand it, ～たら as a conditional is sometimes used to mean something similar to "when" or "once".
>Might you say why you infer this nuance? Not knowing is killing me.
Try referring to some of the resources mentioned earlier in this thread.
Quoting the 大辞泉 entry for て [1]:

原因・理由を表す。…ので。…ために。「頭が痛く—寝ていた」

In case it's unclear, you read the example sentence by replacing the dash with the headword in question.
Quoting Sakubi:

The て particle of ない, なくて, usually carries a "didn't X, so Y" nuance. But this is just a nuance. There's no literal indication of cause and effect here. It's just one of the possible nuances of なくて and some other uses of the て particle.

And later in the same guide:

When it acts as a conjunction (and not a topic), なくて usually implies that a negative statement is the reason for another statement. It doesn't always imply a reason, though.

Quoting Imabi [2]:

て connects two or more phrases, sometimes implicitly indicating reason.

>>40257
I'm not sure if the different kanji or the dropping of だ makes a difference here, but 「見ない顔だな」 is somewhat of a stock phrase roughly equivalent to "Haven't seen you (around these parts) before." [3]

[1] sakura-paris.org/dict/%E5%A4%A7%E8%BE%9E%E6%B3%89/content/10227_150
[2] www.imabi.net/theparticleteiii.htm
[3] hinative.com/questions/47598

>>40258
>As I understand it, ～たら as a conditional is sometimes used to mean something similar to "when" or "once".
After reading some examples on jisho.org, that seems to very much check out. (Should have done so beforehand.)

>Try referring to some of the resources mentioned earlier in this thread.
My apologies, I will try to be thorough before asking questions in the future. I realize that neither is it beneficial for myself to readily questions that are easily answered elsewhere, nor is it fair to you. Nonetheless, thank you for the clarification, really.

>「見ない顔だな」 is somewhat of a stock phrase roughly equivalent to "Haven't seen you (around these parts) before."
I feel embarrassed for not figuring this out, even if the original quote has different a kanji and doesn't include「だ」. I'm simply incorrigible with this tunnel vision of mine.

>>40258
>What complicates matters
Yes I think one of the answers in the SE thread touched upon the fact that in the context of a story or dialogue, the "narrative present" doesn't always have to match with the "temporal present". But it adds the additional complexity you mentioned. It's fascinating the amount of nuance here that gets lost when translating.

>As I understand it, ～たら as a conditional is sometimes used to mean something similar to "when" or "once".
Ah your parsing makes much more sense, so basically it's "((kitsui to omottara (... ~tari ...)) susundeitta hō) ga ī wa ne..." where the condition applies only to the clauses connected by ~tari and not the entire sentence right? I originally misinterpreted "kitsui to omottara" as applying to the whole thing and mangled the translation to "Even if I think it's difficult" – just to confirm, since "even if X... Y" is no longer a conditional construction (since Y will occur independent of X) it wouldn't map onto any of the usages of ~nara/~tara/~to, right? Instead it'd be translated as "Kitsui de mo"?

>>40258
>returning home and preparing provisions at the village
>and
Maybe "and/or" or "or" would be more appropriate. Unfortunately I can't edit my post.

>>40260
>"Kitsui de mo"
きつくても
きつい→きつく→きつく＋て＋も
But if メリア were to say she should do the opposite of what she actually says, it might be something like, 「きついと思っても途中で家に戻ったり村で道具の準備をしないで進んでいったほうがいいわね・・。」 She should go on in proceeding without going back home or managing her inventory at the village before the mission is over even if she feels the circumstances get tough.

You should take my words with a grain of salt, though. My Japanese language proficiency is still sorely lacking, and I feel like I'm talking out of my arse. That's why I tried to cite others' opinions, especially those of native speakers.

I'm trying to figure out the meaning of「そのまま勢いよく腰りだした。」and the usage of 「り」in it. (The context is vulgar, as one might surmise.) I can only imagine this sentence meaning something like, "(And) without pausing, (he) began to vigorously use|shake his hips." The actor (he) was designated as the topic in the preceding sentence.
The reasoning is that I'm inferring「り」to be the stem of 「る」, and thus verbalizing「腰」, and「だした」denotes beginning this action. So, literally, it would be, "to begin the hipping." That said, this is obtuse, so I doubt it's correct.
And maybe one day, orcs won't be rape machines.

>>40284
>"to begin the hipping."
Sorry, that should be, "began the hipping."

>>40284
Yeah I think you're right ~ru is used as a verbalizing suffix here. See https://www.japanesewithanime.com/2022/04/ru-suffix.html for detailed info (really that entire site is a gem, and the author must either be a linguist himself or really into grammar considering how detailed some of the posts get).

>>40287
Thank you for the reference! I will be bookmarking it. (At the end, the tidbit about constructing adjectives will be helpful to know, I'm sure.)
After skimming through, I'm doubting myself more because his examples consist of loanwords or a mixture thereof, and he even states that it's typically these kinds of words that are subject to being concatenated with「る」. That said, I have nothing else to go on.
Tangentially related, but I wonder if there's any nuance to choosing「る」over「する」in this case: 「腰しだした。」Or maybe it's because, since 「腰」already concludes with 「し」, 「り」sounds better.

>>40288
>Thank you for the reference! I will be bookmarking it.
No problem! There's enough reading there to keep one occupied for months, and enough detail in the articles to melt your brain. I'm fairly convinced that the author's doing research in Japanese linguistics or something considering that he consistently cites obscure research papers.

> consist of loanwords or a mixture thereof
Yeah he does state this is usually the case, but I don't see why the same construction couldn't be applied to native JP words as well. I don't know the correct terms to google to find examples of this though.

>>40288
>Thank you for the reference! I will be bookmarking it.
No problem! There's enough reading there to keep one occupied for months, and enough detail in the articles to melt your brain [1]. I'm fairly convinced that the author's doing research in Japanese linguistics or something considering that he consistently cites obscure research papers.

> consist of loanwords or a mixture thereof
Yeah he does state this is _usually_ the case, but I don't see why the same construction couldn't be applied to native JP words as well. I don't know the correct words to google to find examples of this though.

>choosing「る」over「する」
Yeah good question. I think pragmatically it's whatever sounds better, same way words in English organically evolve. For the グーグル case, it makes sense to me that グーグル-suru is simply too long to say. In your case, it's probably the reason you mentioned where koshi-shi-dashita sounds weird.

Also this wasn't a question that was brought up, but I wonder why why ~ru is used for constructing new words (as opposed to one of the other godan or ichidan suffixes). I guess the godan ~ru is more versatile in terms of words that it can be attached to.

[1] https://www.japanesewithanime.com/2020/08/tenses.html

Post edited on 19th Aug 2022, 12:12am

By the way, I hope that I'm not being overly eager in assuming that「だした」means the initiation of an act: "began hipping" in this context. Because I guess it could just mean "was hipping," but then why have「だ」? To make it more masculine?

In other words, is it "(And) without pausing, (he) began to vigorously use|shake his hips," or "(And) without pausing, (he) vigorously used|shook his hips."? In the end, the differing semantics doesn't significantly impact the context.

>>40290
>considering that he consistently cites obscure research papers.
I'm glad he decided to spread his knowledge. Fewer headaches for us.

>Yeah he does state this is _usually_ the case
Indeed, but I'm just weary is all.

>I wonder why why ~ru is used for constructing new words (as opposed to one of the other godan or ichidan suffixes).
Hopefully somebody who knows might chime in as I was considering this too.

>>40291
~dasu is a suffix on its own, meaning roughly to spring into action [1]. Memorable from the rain song in Girls Last Tour "ima sekai ga ugokidashita" - "the world is now beginning to come alive"

[1] https://www.japanesewithanime.com/2019/10/fukugou-doushi.html

>>40290
>native JP words
ボコる comes to mind, as in ボコボコにする. It's also seen with kango, as in 事故る or 告る, but those aren't really native, but they aren't really gairaigo either in the strict sense.

>why ~ru is used for constructing new words (as opposed to one of the other godan or ichidan suffixes)
This is speculation on my part, but since する is already used to form new verbs, and many verbs (including all ichidan verbs and many godan verbs) end in る, the impression of る as a "generic" verb suffix may have taken root in people's minds. In addition, ichidan verbs all end in iる or eる, so words like テンパる (aる), ググる (uる), or サボる (oる) may not feel right to conjugate as an ichidan verb.
When it comes to 腰る（こしる）, if we were to treat it like an ichidan verb, we'd get 腰だした, which is more liable to be misinterpreted as 腰を出した. Treating it as a godan verb, we get り, which makes it much more obvious that it's being used as a verb, which is important because 腰る isn't exactly a standard word.

What does the "ge" at the end of kēburu-ge mean in the phrase "kēburu-ge aidoru"? It appears "ge" suffix can be used in a similar way to ~sou suffix, and in the context of the comedy sketch "cable-esque idol group" fits, but I'm not sure if there's some other usage of ~ge (like how ~bu is used for clubs), or if the ~ge here isn't a suffix but some actual kana-ized english word (only "game" as in saba-ge comes to mind though).

>>40330
Haven't seen this episode of てっぺんっ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, but a quick search reveals that the phrase is likely supposed to be 「ケーブル系アイドル」. It's the same "kei" as in "iyashikei" (癒し系). You can think of it as meaning "type" [1] or "style" [2].
As for the げ suffix, it does mean something like ～そう or ～らしい [3] as you mentioned. You can see it, for example, in the title 『田中くんはいつもけだるげ』.

Speaking of てっぺんっ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, the title reminds me that っ at the end of a word is often omitted from romanization. Wouldn't something like "Teppenh" be better? But I suppose that might be more unsightly or confusing. Or consider the title 『ああっ女神さまっ』. It's variously romanized as "Aa! Megami-sama!", "Aa! Megami-sama", or "Aa Megami-sama", but none of them quite capture the feel of the actual title. And "Aah Megami-samah" might be mistaken for 『ああー女神さまー』, because "h" is already used by some people for long or doubled vowels as in "Tohno" (とおの). I wonder if there's a better way.

[1] hinative.com/questions/13806270
[2] hinative.com/questions/16636508
[3] sakura-paris.org/dict/%E5%A4%A7%E8%BE%9E%E6%B3%89/content/4602_8

>>40336
>ケーブル系アイドル
Yeah that makes more sense, I need to work on my listening I guess, for some reason I could only hear it as "ge". Thanks as always!

>Wouldn't something like "Teppenh" be better
Nice observation, I've seen the small-tsu at the end phenomenon before but never gave it too much thought. Based on [1]

>Although it represents a glottal stop just like it would in a word, when the small tsu ends a sentence it implies a sense of exclamation and brashness. It doesn't change neither meaning nor grammar of the sentence, but adds nuance. It works like an exclamation point or half of an exclamation point. It's common to even see it used together with exclamation points.

I can see why they used it here, since I guess a dozen exclamation marks wasn't quite enough. The article uses a single apostrophe to denote it in romanized form, which I think works nicely and is apparently similar to how apostrophe functions in some English words (e.g. Qur'ran, which is a function I've honestly never noticed before). So Teppen'!!!!!!1! then.


[1] https://www.japanesewithanime.com/2017/05/small-tsu.html#small-tsu-words

Post edited on 24th Aug 2022, 12:10am

I never thought about it much before, but it's interesting that "... nai desu ka?" can be used in a rhetorical manner similar to English's "... isn't it?". I've been tripped up by this before since it's sometimes hard to distinguish whether it's being used to pose a genuine question or just for rhetorical emphasis. Is there any way to reliable distinguish the two (e.g. intonation, or word choices) or is just purely by context?

I found a paper [1] which provides a more linguistic perspective on this construction:

>[While] the Japanese negative morpheme nai is usually used to negate the semantic information in the sentence, it does not always indicate the negation of propositional information in interactive situations. For example, Yamane (2013) notes that ja nai desu ka is used in situations such as when the speaker is seeking confirmation, making an assertion, and/or introducing a new topic. In those usages of ja nai desu ka, the negative morpheme nai does not indicate that the propositional information in the sentence is negated

They give the example
>Kaigi wa tashika san-ji kara ja nai desu ka
In this situation, how would you tell whether the intended meaning is "The meeting is from 3 o'clock, right?" or "The meeting isn't at 3 o'clock, right?".

>As shown in the English translation, the negative morpheme nai does not negate the semantic information in the sentence in (13). In addition, as McGloin (2002) argues, ja nai in Japanese has a function as a rhetorical question marker that is strongly expressive, as well as its function as a marker of a tag-question similar to the sentence-final right? in English. From the perspective of Conversation Analysis, Hayashi (2010) calls ja nai used as a sentence-final expression a “grammaticalized negative expression” (p. 2989), which can function as a sentence extension seeking agreement/confirmation from the addressee rather than contributing to the propositional content of the sentence to which it is attached

One concrete examples from shows in which I remember seeing this:
* Akebi-chan's Sailor Fuku, e6 03:45 "Ashita no doyōbi oyasumi ja nai desu ka" – I assume the clue that the intention is rhetorical is from context; she's nervous and just making smalltalk.

Maybe the rhetorical usage might also be related to how "... ja nai." can function either as a genuine negation or as exclamatory emphasis. E.g. from the OP of GA Art club:
* Pastel wa ika ga? / Crayon ja nai!

Where the intended meaning is "these [pastels] are just crayons!" as opposed to "these [pastels] aren't crayons"

[1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317337310_Consecutive_n_desu_Structures_in_Japanese_Communicative_Effects_Resulting_from_n_ja_nai_n_desu_in_Discourse

Post edited on 3rd Sep 2022, 10:33pm

>>40386
These should help answer your question. I recommend at least reading the first one.
www.imabi.net/theparticlekaii.htm
core6000.neocities.org/hjgp/entries/417.htm
core6000.neocities.org/hjgp/entries/418.htm
core6000.neocities.org/hjgp/entries/219.htm
core6000.neocities.org/hjgp/entries/220.htm
core6000.neocities.org/hjgp/entries/221.htm
core6000.neocities.org/hjgp/entries/961.htm
core6000.neocities.org/hjgp/entries/962.htm

Context definitely helps, but pitch can also help determine the meaning. In standard (Tokyo) Japanese, a significant downstep on the ない (from a high な to a low い) [1] typically indicates negation, whereas if the じゃない is roughly flat [1] (in practice, gradually descending), it often means it's rhetorical or has some other meaning. However, the standard pitch accent for the ない in negated verbs differs depending on which group the verb belongs to and which context the verb is used in [2]. And if the character speaks Kansai-ben or something, it may sound completely different.

>* Akebi-chan's Sailor Fuku, e6
Some examples of the former 「じゃない」 in the same episode:
04:58「でもそんなかっこいいのじゃないよ」
16:23「傘じゃないの？」
Some examples of the latter 「じゃない」:
03:33「ウソ、今見てたじゃない」
03:45
04:00「当然、直すべきじゃないかしら」
And at 04:39, you can even hear Kizaki use both consecutively, the latter one being rhetorical:
「やっぱり全然それだけじゃないじゃない」

>* Pastel wa ika ga? / Crayon ja nai!
I'm not sure if there are any other clues here, but since it's sung, pitch doesn't help here, but at least context does. These lyrics likely allude to a scene from the manga (vol. 1, pg. 42) where Tomokane brings crayons while everyone else brings pastels, so I agree that it is indeed the latter 「じゃない」.

[1] hinative.com/questions/3150#answer-7203
[2] www.gavo.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ojad/eng/kouzokugo/index

>>40389
Thank you for the meticulous detail as always.

I've switched my rules to adding 20 cards if the number due is below 200, 5 otherwise. Some nice progression I think. Reading is still very much a challenge, so I've started dipping my toes in IMABI, which at least claims to be an all-encompassing guide for grammar at every level.

I stopped using Anki, barely watched any japanese tv or movies, read no books, and basically did not use the language for the last 6 months. I can only imagine how good I would be if I could just commit to something in earnest. I spin my wheels because I stop and start which doesn't lead to much progress you just stay in the same level. Been doing this for over 4 years now. I believe I should learn the language well because I always get pulled back to it and my interest gets revived and it's fun for a while, but the problem is I inevitably just stop caring after a while and go back to all english...

How is everyone's study going?

>>41234
>How is everyone's study going?
I lost data again, so I started back from around 700 cards. Now I'm at over 1300, which is probably higher than ever before. I'm also slowly going through Tae Kim. It's not solid progress since I haven't been reading, but it's something...

After finishing Tae Kim, I'll go through this. Can't be too familiar with the basics after all.
https://sakubi.neocities.org/

Post edited on 27th Feb 2023, 11:47am

>>41235
That’s good. All about doing it consistently. I think you should be reading books, even if all you can manage is kid's manga; that's where the gains are made. Lots of reading.

>>41234
I don't really study anymore but I've managed to more or less cut translations out of my life, barring one that I started long ago and am intending to finish that way. It feels nice even if I am looking up words quite often.

>>41234
I once tried to memorize the Hiragana when I was in college, but stopped doing so because it was too much for me to study for college and Hiragana at the same time. Since then I didn't try to learn it again.
Lately I have been noticing that the subs for anime gets worse and worse though, I am watching since a decade and half and seem to have picked up some very common phrases and words.

>>41237
May I ask how you achieved that? I am very interested to throw out translations. Now that I understand a little bit and notice something wrong now and then it really makes me question how good the subs nowadays are. My guess is that they are rather bad, especially in the last few years. Maybe I am just nostalgic for fansubs, but I feel like they actually cared and translated carefully and truthfully.

>>41238
> memorize the Hiragana
Not person you are replying to, but if you are only interested in it for anime subs, you can skip all the kanji and kana entirely. You'll pick up bits and pieces anyway, but really OCR is good enough that it actually doesn't matter, you could transliterate things to romaji if you really wanted. Really the only thing you need is vocab, and then the ability to lex individual words from speech (these are synergistic).

Also for that matter, machine translate is getting good enough now that if you're really in a pinch, interpreting text is not as big an issue as it once was. It's a little-publicized fact that large language models are state-of-the-art translators. I'm waiting for someone to put gpt et al. through BLEU. The real issue remains listening, since Japanese speech-to-text is not very good yet [at least the models you have access to and can run in real-time].

>>41238
If you have time to eat, and sleep, and bathe, you have time to memorize less than 100 characters(hiragana + katakana).
>May I ask how you achieved that?
First, he learned the hiragana and katakana.
>>41239
>you could transliterate things to romaji if you really wanted
The only thing romaji is good for, for language learners, is learning the kana. What you're suggesting, is incredibly inefficient for an adult who knows how to read in one language. It's better to leverage those skills rather than pretend you're some kind of infant.

>>41234
学習の結果はまだ実っている。
読解が徐々に磨きます。
それでも進行感がない。
うちは日々基本的な文法や文例を読んでるの。ウィキペディアの記事の一部とか漫画原作の最初のページを読むの。意味ない、そんなこと。
今は漫画とアニメとゲームの好きな日本の制作に飛び込んで没頭します。
まあ、やる気があればいつかやるぞ。

March progress. I add cards regularly, but don't review consistently enough. My daily amount has been mounting.

Tried graded readers, and will continue to do so, but the ones I can understand are kinda boring.

Jap a little rusty but knew enough to order for the specials on the blackboard. The english translation was a little broken. Heh.

After not doing anything for about a year, I once again got back into flashcards. Although I'm finally near the 2k mark, I don't want to keep going with this. It's too time consuming and my progress over nearly 5 years has been abysmal. All I have to show for it is some vocab and bits and pieces of grammar, but I can't read anything real for shit. This isn't the way. I'll try switching to Anki and seriously thinking about how I allocate my learning time.

Post edited on 15th Jun 2024, 11:54pm

I was reading a visual novel, and "天邪鬼" was translated as "backwards," which came off as odd. When something is "backwards," usually you're denoting it as archaic or old-fashioned in a demagoguery manner. Rather, the remark to which "天邪鬼" was applied seems like it could have been better translated in a more literal sense, i.e. "perverse," although not in a sexual way.

>>42938
contrary/wayward?

(Picture contains a 3D person but it's relevant)
>>33794
I began over two years ago. I was following the meme guides (The 〇〇 Way, Tatsu〇〇, et al) -- did the JLPT Anki decks, then started "mining" from anime, etc. But Anki is quite mind-numbing and after a day or two of not doing it all the reviews piled up and that was very discouraging and made me go on a hiatus. Then I would return a few months later and go on a hiatus again. That went on for almost two years, until I gave the middle finger to Anki and just enjoyed anime/manga/games/VNs while looking up words, without worrying about "mining" them or doing Ankis. Also I quit translations and converted my time spent on translated Japanese media to untranslated. Right now I'm at a point where I have at least like 95% understanding of common Japanese both written and spoken, and if I had to write/speak I could probably at least get my point across. Funnily enough the only thing dragging me back is that despite spending all my day in my room, my Internet/imageboard addiction replaces hours and hours that I could've spent on media (was a problem even before I started learning Japanese), otherwise I probably would manage to reach fluency by 2025 (笑).
Maybe I'm still not in the position to give advice, but if I had to give some:
- JAPANESE IS A NORMAL FUCKING LANGUAGE SPOKEN AND WRITTEN BY OVER 100 MILLION PEOPLE, DON'T TREAT IT AS SOME ALIEN LANGUAGE THAT NEEDS SPECIALIZED LEARNING METHODS COMPARED TO OTHER LANGUAGES -- the only thing that makes it difficult compared to other languages is that it's just completely different, not that it's inherently hard (case in point, Japanese people also have a hard time learning English, does that make it a hard language?) (also as a side note, CIA literally calls Japanese the hardest language in the world in the same breath that it claims that terrorists did 9/11; do you really trust glowniggers with all your heart?)
- "Immersion" is the only true way of learning languages in general, the benefit of "formal study" exponentially decreases the better you get, and if you do still want to memorize things et al, don't make it your primary vehicle for "learning" the language, you don't want to become the man on this picture.
- Also if you're going to do some formal study and memorizing, DON'T BOTHER WITH INDIVIDUAL KANJI STUDY. It's a waste of time and doesn't reflect in actual Japanese. Kanji are just a script, not THE language itself, and they're used quite inconsistently. Just learn words along with how they're written in kanji -- as a bonus you do learn kanji meanings and readings, but in a more natural way. If you want to be able to handwrite Japanese you're going to need to manually memorize how kanji are written (and it may marginally help you with reading), but I wouldn't recommend doing that until you have decent reading ability.
- It's more efficient to learn the overall language from reading than from listening, but obviously you can only develop your listening comprehension from listening. There are rumors that focusing too much on reading in the beginning is going to mess up your listening ability and give you a bad accent which may be hard to reverse... I don't know if that's true, so take that as you will.
- Restrict your time spent on language learning "communities" and become less conscious of the fact that you're studying the language -- you're not "immersing" in a raw anime or VN, you're just enjoying an anime or VN while looking up words and magically becoming better at the language.

PS: Sorry if my post read a bit insufferable, I was a bit drunk.

>>42953
>memorizing dictionaries
I wish I had the skill...

>>42953
That's how I learnt to understand English. And also reading dictionairies (not studying or trying to memorise them).
Formal study on set times drawn out over several years is a horrible way to learn. My understanding of my native language and English was always so far ahead I never bothered to care in school, the teachers and their classes were piss poor anyway. Much of it was just memorising a bunch of words every week, not much grammar or anything. Or watching shitty movies when the teachers didn't want to work. (笑)
I've looked into several languages but the only ones I've tried to actually study have been French and Japanese. French as a forced third language in school, which was mind-numbingly boring. The only thing I learnt was that je ne parle pas français.
Japanese on my own several times in the past, but I always just stopped, in the beginning mostly because of limited resources, later because I get bored. What little I know of Japanese I've picked up through immersion, not studying. I've wanted to learn this language for 20+ years, I need to get going and do more than just listen to it.

>CIA literally calls Japanese the hardest language in the world in the same breath that it claims that terrorists did 9/11; do you really trust glowniggers with all your heart?
lol. The only hard thing is kanji readings. It's a language I know I can get a basic understanding of if I only tried.

An example of your point is how my understanding of English was a rarity among people who had travel dictionary level of understanding at best, and just a generation later it's the prefered language of kids and zoomers who are all fluent with perfect pronounciation (well, "fluent" in "perfect" Internet American). They didn't learn through studying, they learnt by aping what they immerse themselves in all day, what they hear on Youtube/tiktok/netflix, and read on twitter/discord.

Is it feasible at all to get non-negligible amounts of money by translating doujinshi or web novels or whatever and doing Patreon paywall stuff? Would I need to participate in weird Discord cliques?

>>43293
Try translating content and posting them to sites like Mangadex or E-Hentai, imo just having a credit page where you list where to contact you for paid work would do just fine. There's plenty of scanlations I've read where the person translating doesn't have a Discord account.