Hi everyone

I just finished my minor in Japanese language at university, and would love to keep on studying and improving. I havent done the jlpt but the course description for the last class I took said that completion would take me to approximately an N3-2 level.

The areas in which I'd like to improve the most are my speaking and listening. Fortunately, I have some Japanese friends but whenever I talk to them I feel like I'm fighting for my life a little bit. Reading and writing I have less issue with, but could obviously still improve heaps.

I would love some recommendations for resources where I can practice my listening skills, expand my vocabulary and learn some new grammatical constructions. For example, movies and tv shows where the characters use 'real-life' spoken Japanese (i.e. less anime-oriented) and a variety of speech styles. Bonus points if I can access them with Japanese subtitles.

Also, if anyone has some tips about self-study for someone who's just spent a while in a highly structured, teacher-led learning environment I'd really appreciate that. Feeling a bit lost on how to progress from here and get over the so-called intermediate plateau.

Thanks!

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Seven Day Archive of previous threads. Consider browsing the previous day or two for unanswered questions.

Make AI song from your example sentences!

So lets say I want to learn the word

貧しい

and you have several example sentences ready as in the example image.

You can then create custom short song with AI:

https://suno.com/song/cb699684-c2ec-4af8-a0b0-f6f71987c736

Listen to this song a few times and I guarantee that you will remember this word forever. You might remember even other words from these sentences.

I will definitely make set of songs for my most difficult vocabulary.

Benefit of such AI usage is that if your input data is correct (essentially your lyrics), then there will be no grammar errors in the song.

These are radicals—the building blocks of kanji. There are a few things to understand:

1.) The Japanese writing system originated in China, and so with that in mind many radicals which once had clear meanings, have been ‘lost in translation.’

2.) As a result, some of the radicals you see have traditional meanings, while others are created for the sake of storytelling.

3.) Radicals are not the same as kanji, which have specific readings and form vocabulary words; radicals do not—they’re just building blocks.

4.) A kanji character can be made up of multiple radicals or be a radical itself. In other words, some radicals can also be kanji, but not all radicals are kanji.

Hello, I have a question about this sentence:

アレンもわしも無類の謎好きだ。

The way I see it there's two interpretations: "Me and Allen also love unrivalled mysteries" or "Me and Allen's love for mysteries is unrivaled. I'm having trouble distinguishing which to use. Please explain why one is correct over the other.

It wasn't as bad at first as I still engage with the language quite often through youtube and video games I play, But nowadays since my interest in japanese media had quite fade, I found myself engaging really minimally. Like it can get as worst as the only japanese I read for a day is just the text on people clothing.

Now I feel really conflicted because I fear that I will lose all things that I've learned but at the same time I don't really feel any need to retain these skills as my goal for the learning was just to consume the media that I interested in.

That's it, appreciate any thougths!

Hi I'm looking for 2 specific resources if they exist.

The first is a real world Kanji Resource. Examples of Kanji taken from the real world, adds a context missing from Anki style apps or kanji books. Signs and store fronts or whatever it might be.

One of the first Kanji I learned was 歯. Pain is a great memory forming tool and removing a wisdom tooth made sure I'd recognise this kanji forever.

The second is something similar to google translates optical character recognition but without the actual translation. I simply want to be able to get the Furigana of unknown kanji easily so I can look them up in Joshi or add to Anki.

Anyone has any tools similar to what's described above please let me know.

I'm back down the rabbit hole sorry guys... Yes I'm aware such sentence monstrosities are best avoided in practice but I'm really curious about the theoretical / edge case scenarios.

I am really good with standard Japanese, can basically understand almost anything I care about without problems. However, I fall flat on my face the moment I hear or read anything that's not standard. I'm looking for stuff to read that's in other dialects, more specifically 京都弁 or 大阪弁.

Are there any mangas you guys recommend that use either of these dialects? I like basically anything so if you know of any I'd like to know about it. Thanks in advance!

My son's name is Robin. This is generally written in katakana as ロビン (such as "Robin Williams" 「ロビン・ウィリアムズ」 or "Robin Hood" 「ロビン・フッド). The katakana spelling makes sense because it maps to RO-BI-N, but the pronunciation is wrong. ロビン being pronounced like ROW-BEE-N. A closer pronunciation to the way we say the name in my country would be ラベン (RABEN, RAH-BEH-N)

I realize the rules to katakana are sometimes very strict and are sometimes totally loose. It seems silly to me to pick a katakana name that is pronounced wrong just because it maps more closely to western letters, but it also feels weird to "change" what is already an established spelling of a name.

I guess what I'm asking is what would you do? How did you decide to write your name in katakana especially if it's a more common name that has a situation like this, where the katakana doesn't really match the pronunciation.

Thanks!

This thread is for all simple questions, beginner questions, and comments that don't need their own post.

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Please make sure if your post has been addressed by checking the wiki or searching the subreddit before posting or it might get removed.

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Seven Day Archive of previous threads. Consider browsing the previous day or two for unanswered questions.

I had an idea for a simple text based game to practice kanji/vocab. It’s a little bit like word association. You put in a kanji character to start and it spits out a two kanji word with the kanji you put in as the first kanji and a random second kanji that makes a valid word. If you guess the reading(or the meaning maybe) of the word correctly it gives you another 2 kanji word with the last word’s second character in the first position with a new kanji that hasn’t been used yet in the second position and then you guess the reading of it correctly again and repeat the process to until you mess up.

For example you put in 発 and it gives you 発音 You guess hatsuon, so it give you another kanji -> 音楽 -> 楽天 -> 天使 -> 使用 etc.

It might even be interesting to add in longer words and just have it pick between kanji that haven’t been used yet in the words, but there are most likely a lot of two character variations to go through before needing to add in three character words. Any thoughts on this, would this be an effective way to practice kanji/vocab?

I've been considering learning Japanese off and on for quite a while now. Year. But I've finally gotten to the point where I've decided I'm going to take the plunge.

I am going to set a very ambitious goal for myself. I intend to have a grasp of Japanese sufficient to read at least some kinds of novels (i.e. depending on genre) aimed at adults within two years of study. This is an extreme timeline, but I believe it is an achievable one, for a few reasons:

1. I have studied foreign languages for over a decade now. I have an intimate understanding of key linguistic concepts that monolingual speakers, and beginner language learners, generally are not familiar with. I have achieved a minimum of B2 comprehension in languages from a variety of language families, which means that my experience with those linguistic concepts is not only theoretical, but practical, as well.
2. I already have a substantial grasp of Mandarin Chinese, encompassing ~20.000 words. I have read novels aimed at adults in this language, and have a clear understanding of how achieving this level of comprehension in a Category 5 language works compared to a Category 1 language. I have a strong grasp of phonemic tonality, both in listening and in production. I am familiar with upwards of 2k-3k 漢字.
3. I have a strong grasp of Norwegian, including pronunciation, meaning that I have significant prior experience with learning and using pitch accent in speech.
4. I work professionally as an accent coach, which means that I have an intimate knowledge of phonetics.

Despite these advantages, this obviously is not going to be "easy" by any stretch of the imagination. I consider the timeline I have laid out above to be aspirational (i.e. achievable, but I won't necessarily be disappointed in myself if I fail to meet it). I am budgeting 4 hours for study per day. That includes making and reviewing flash cards, supplemental reading, and any practical exercises.

Here are my specific goals:

1. Develop a clear understanding of pitch accent. Be able to pronounce standard pitch accent in isolated words to perfection. Be able to pronounce pitch accent in full phrases and sentences mostly correctly most of the time. My experience with Norwegian was that, while pitch accent was not completely predictable, it did frequently follow predictable patterns. There are many categories of words in Norwegian for which I can guess the correct pitch accent with 100% accuracy, and many others for which I can guess the correct pitch accent maybe 65-80% of the time. The number of words for which pitch accent feels truly random is comparatively small. Every language is different, but what I have heard from e.g. Dogen suggests that Japanese is not necessarily entirely dissimilar in this regard. I will accomplish this goal by memorizing the correct pitch accent for every word I learn, and by studying pitch accent resources to uncover patterns which would not otherwise be obvious to me.
2. Develop an intuitive grasp of Kanji readings. This means that, by the end of two years of study, I would like to be able to accurately guess the correct reading of known kanji in unfamiliar words a significant majority of the time. Plan A is to simply learn the pronunciation of Kanji in the context of full words. I strongly suspect that this will become increasingly intuitive to me after having memorized many thousands of words. If it becomes clear that this is not working, Plan B is to shore up my understanding by studying Kanji individually.
3. Develop a passive vocabulary of no less than 40.000 words. These are the words which I recognize and understand, but may or may not be able to recall and use correctly on my own. I will accomplish this by learning 60 new words every day. I am confident in my ability to do this because I have already consistently met this target in multiple other languages. However, it is possible that I may need to revise this down to 40 words per day. This depends mainly on how much time is spent on making my Anki flashcards. It may take me longer than it has for other languages for me to make flashcards for Japanese. 40.000 words is twice the vocabulary I hold in Mandarin Chinese. The Plan B target of ~30.000 words is 50% larger than my vocabulary in Mandarin Chinese.
4. Be able to read science-fiction novels written, at a minimum, for a middle-school audience. I will accomplish this by reading children's books, and gradually escalating to increasingly difficult books until I reach the desired genre and level of difficulty. I have confidence that this will work, because this is the exact strategy I followed to reach the same goal with Mandarin Chinese.
5. Be able to read and understand definitions in monolingual Japanese dictionaries. I hope to be able to do this for most words by the end of one year of study.

All of my goals relate to reading, pronunciation, and listening, because these are the skills that I have proven best at acquiring. I am much less skilled at efficiently developing speaking and writing skills. In languages like Spanish and Italian, I have been able to more or less only learn passive skills and ignore active skills. To this day, I can understand news broadcasts in Spanish, but struggle to compose even a single well-formed sentence. However, I strongly suspect that developing active skills in Japanese will be crucial, simply because of the complexity of Japanese grammar, and because it is so different from any other language I have studied. I believe I likely will not fully understand the grammar that I am reading unless I can use it correctly myself.

I do not feel comfortable setting goals relating to productive skills.

I know from experience that my reading and listening comprehension will vastly outpace my speaking and writing comprehension extremely quickly.

Looking back, it took me 7 years to learn Mandarin Chinese because I didn't have a single clue how to study efficiently. My study methods were extremely inefficient. Since then, I've learned a lot about how to study languages quickly and efficiently. So in many ways, this is a test of just how far I have come in that regard. I will wrap up my current studies of Italian at the end of this month. I will be landing in Japan and staying there for ~6 months starting December 9. Definitely looking forward to eating at Matsuya again.

I believe I can do it. But, famous last words...

I'm finishing the tests with 45 minutes left and I still pass. I have a feeling something isn't quite right.

I read fast, so that may help, but I don't think it's actually possible to finish with 45 minutes left.

It's for the JLPT N2.

Edit: just to clarify, I selected and completed listening, vocab, reading, and grammar in this time. Nothing was skipped.

People may disagree but it works for me so it may work for you. When I went Japan everyone was using an app called "All language translator". I basically had entire conversations at a bar in Kyoto through this app. Before you say, I'm not a shill for the app company. It's just pretty damn good, It looks like a teal box with a yellow audio wave length thing and says "voice translator" on the phone screen when picking apps.

Everytime I think of something I would want to say in Japanese I say it into the app and learn what it says in Japanese and then practice saying it over and over again until it becomes muscle memory and I can just say it off the cuff without even thinking about it.

Hope this helps other people because I personally think it's been great for improving my speaking ability.

So this is the second time im recently seeing the captioned used and getting confused by it. In my head it should be .....から....と言われました。In other words FROM x person i was TOLD whatever (japanese way: x person FROM whatever whatever whatever I was TOLD.).

Instead I have been seeing に being used which feels more like TO x person not FROM. is this typical? Is it a typo? am I misreading? The example below is from a blog a lady was writing about her son:

私は、夫婦喧嘩をしている環境で子どもを育てる事が本当に嫌で、子どもに、大丈夫か、トラウマになっていないか、ついつい聞いてしまい、逆に旦那は子どもには機嫌がいいとき以外ホントに何も言わないのですが、つい最近、高校生長男に、ママは偉そうに分かってるふうに色々言ってくるけど、ウザい。寧ろ考え方はオカシイけど何も言わないパパの方がマシ、と言われました。

Has anyone combined the used of audio and physical books? Originally I was just going to listen to books when driving, but I thought about using in tandem with a physical copy. My idea was to listen; read listen and dictionary; and then read. Has anyone tried this or similar? Any success? in a way I do this with shows that I watch.

This thread is for all simple questions, beginner questions, and comments that don't need their own post.

Welcome to /r/LearnJapanese!

• New to Japanese? Read our Starter's Guide and FAQ

• New to the subreddit? Read the rules!

Please make sure if your post has been addressed by checking the wiki or searching the subreddit before posting or it might get removed.

If you have any simple questions, please comment them here instead of making a post.

This does not include translation requests, which belong in /r/translator.

If you are looking for a study buddy or would just like to introduce yourself, please join and use the # introductions channel in the Discord here!

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Seven Day Archive of previous threads. Consider browsing the previous day or two for unanswered questions.

I swear to gods my weebness levels were totally under control just before I started to learn Japanese. Granted, I occasionally watched some anime, played some Japanese video games but that's probably it.

1.5 year into learning Japanese I caught myself becoming a massive weeb:

• from movies/series I watch almost exclusively anime
• 90% of new song added to my Spotify list are in Japanese
• I have not read a single book that was neither some form of textbook nor manga
• I am up to date with Japanese (easy) news
• I even started to eat ramen and cook some Japanese cuisine myself

The only thing left is severe allergies to deodorant and showering! (good that I already have wife and kids, probably would own waifu pillow by now otherwise.)
This post is only half joke, please send help.

Happy Friday!

Every Friday, share your memes! Your funny videos! Have some Fun! Posts don't need to be so academic while this is in effect. It's recommended you put [Weekend Meme] in the title of your post though. Enjoy your weekend!

(rules applying to hostility, slurs etc. are still in effect... keep it light hearted)

Weekly Thread changes daily at 9:00 EST:

Mondays - Writing Practice

Tuesdays - Study Buddy and Self-Intros

Wednesdays - Materials and Self-Promotions

Thursdays - Victory day, Share your achievements

Fridays - Memes, videos, free talk

This thread is for all simple questions, beginner questions, and comments that don't need their own post.

Welcome to /r/LearnJapanese!

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Please make sure if your post has been addressed by checking the wiki or searching the subreddit before posting or it might get removed.

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Seven Day Archive of previous threads. Consider browsing the previous day or two for unanswered questions.

Up until yesterday, I listened to a lot of political streamers (in English) passively in an earbud while i was working, going around town or whatever. I want to replace this with some sort of method to improve my Japanese. One of the benefits of listening too streamers or VODs was the fact that they were 8 hour forms of content so i didnt need to manage my device during this time.

I know that active studying is much more effective, but i want to replace this gap in my media consumption with something to help improve my Japanese. If theres some sort of long form or playlist of content i could listen to to even improve my language skills a little bit, it would be better than just music.

Open to any recommendations! Thank you

Context:

• Went through all of Genki --> Half of Tobira in university classes (classes were pointless for measuring my actual Japanese skill but mentioning to mention what textbooks I have and went through)
• idk what JLPT level I am but I can go through the N2 practice questions online with ease (N1 is a whole different story but I'm breaking in with WaniKani and Anki immersion)

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Genki is a classic for breaking into Japanese grammar. I really like Tobira because it's in Japanese.

I feel like my Japanese grammar is really bad though. I stopped "studying" grammar a while ago.

Bunpro has been a super good reference for me. I like how it explains nuances of each grammar point - not just "here's how to say this". And I really like how it dileneates the form of grammar points (plug and play with specific word type / particles), as well as how it uses actual Japanese grammatical terms (連用形, etc.,) in the English explanations with plenty of examples. I feel like going through a Japanese grammar textbook for Japanese would be really good for me.

You see, the thing is, textbooks are kind of boring now. I've been brute forcing just learning the words in games I want to play / things I see online, and when I see something related to grammar I want to look up, I look it up on bunpro and/or ask an LLM. And I think it's kind of working.

I'm a big SRS believer so I've been wondering if I should pick up a Bunpro subscription, but I am already doing WaniKani and immersion Anki. To be honest, I'm not too scared of overloading myself, but I'm scared it might not be worth the marginal benefit. If I start from N2, I'm worried about not reaping the benefit because I lack a solid foundation. If I start from N5, I'm worried I might get bored and stop because I already know everything.

I am leaning toward just dropping the $150 (I think spending the money for WK actually helped me stay invested and want to finish the program) and just self-pacing myself, and then any time where I would look up something in bunpro when consuming native content, I also just add it to my SRS queue (or whatever term the use in bunpro - it's been a while 🙂).

Has anyone else been in my position? What did you do?