Thanks to this post, I got a bit of feedback and motivation to continue this project.

I really like to listen to music, and have previously manually searched every lyric breakdown to learn the vocabulary and grammar. There must be a more convenient way. So I decided to create MuLang, a website like Spotify and YouTube Music that has scrolling lyrics and displays the Japanese translation + breakdown of the lyrics. The link redirects to the GitHub page, where a video demo can be seen.

What's funny is, yesterday, the embedded Spotify player could be used without login and can play the full song. BUT, today, when I had just checked it, I NEEDED TO LOGIN. I'm very sorry and I'm surprised myself about this change, and I promise I'll fix this issue before I make the website public. (spotify is evil)

I want to post here also for some advice:

1. What would be a better website name? "MuLang" was like "Music"+"Language" initially, but right now I feel like the name is a bit boring and not unique haha.
2. What features would you guys want? I'm thinking of playlist importing, turning into a phone app (high priority), customizing website colors, and of course add a goddamn song search feature : D
3. Any other advice like UI design (I SUCK AT DESIGN SORRY LOL)
4. If you guys think this project is worth me continuing to work on and maintain in the long run

The current project needs to be optimized but I think that's too technical and not appropriate in this subreddit.

Thank you everyone! (I'll reply tomorrow it's very late now)

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

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

So I was doing Core6k and I was loving it, but things happened and I stopped doing it like 5 months ago. So now I have all ~4400 cards I learned that time waiting for review. And if I just start reviewing again, the ones I know I will never see again in my life because they get 6months or 1y as their next review; on the other hand, the ones I don’t know I could reset them to 0… but I don’t know, it doesn’t feel like I’m doing the right thing. Answering “hard”kinda solves it but not really.

So yeah, has anyone restarted their study of a particular deck? Also, how do you go about reviewing words that you already know? I was not lacking for those 5 months, so I do know a lot of the words. Do I just eliminate those cards?

Edit: I’ll add some context on why I want to restart the deck. It’s true that immersion is much better now, so I’m prioritizing that and mining words from context is my best bet at the moment. I could ditch the Core6k altogether in favor of this, but there IS a reason why I want to go back to it. And that is, to prepare better for the N2/N1 JLPT. The thing is, my immersion is entirely driven by my interests, and as such, certain vocabulary will pretty much not appear at all. Vocabulary that is still very useful to pass the JLPT, as I could verify myself this past Dec 1st. It’s true, if those words don’t appear in my immersion I’ll always struggle with them, but even then, I can remember them for a test.

Thanks everyone for your responses.

I play with some other people on a sushi restraunt game where we practice our Japanese by serving and ordering in Japanese for fun. I’ve been constantly getting moderated for ‘arigatogozaimashita’ I presume for the ‘shi-ta’ sounding like shit. My only other though is to bump it down to Arigatogozaimasu but that feels a little informal for a ‘waiter’. Someone suggested みたくたありがと but it didn’t sound right either.

Happy Tuesdays!

Every Tuesday, come here to Introduce yourself and find your study group! Share your discords and study plans. Find others at the same point in their journey as you.

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

I saw these characters. My dictionary shows no translation for them, or even a use for them. They don't really seem very kanji like to me either. I'm not really sure why. Too swirly I think.

Has anyone got information on them and their use.

𛀪 𛀩 𛀨 𛀥 𛀧 𛀦 - this one almost looks like a styalized よ 𛁇 𛀉

There are many more but didn't wanna spam a full list of them. Are they maybe old characters that aren't used anymore?

This subject is quite controversial, we all know that Anki is THE BEST, but at the same time we all know that we shouldn't prioritize Anki over immersion.

I feel like I'm spending too much time on Anki (1 hour per day).

I'm on 15 new card per day, 150 reviews per day on average, I mine everyday while consuming native content, I also mine while clearing my daily 30mn of Bunpro sometimes but I don't feel that it's super effective (low retention of the N2 vocab I don't know).

Out of the 150 reviews I do I'd say I know about 80% of them (I press 'good / easy'), besides that it's either very young cards or cards I struggle remembering (I press 'again')

Beside this I'd say I consume 2 hours of native content daily (podcast, youtube, anime, book before bed)

I'm curious if your routine is similar to mine regarding anki, do you also spend about an hour on this ?

Do you also rate your card the same way (is it okay to have a 80% score on review ?)

Sometimes I spend more than 30s remembering the reading and exact meaning of a card I was thinking it should be good to add a timer to spend maximum 20s per card and past this delay the card is submitted as 'again'.

Thank you so much !

I've been using Kaishi 1.5k for a while now and I'm at around 45% "done" with new words (710ish words). I use it daily throughout the day, while going to and back from work, on the toilet etc. I've been using green and red buttons in a majority of cases. If I can recall the kanji's meaning and reading correctly I press green, if I need help from the example sentence I press white, if I can't recall regardless I press red. MOST of my presses throughout the day are red and I get to around 300-400 seen cards. If I focus only on doing it I can go through it in roughly 40 minutes. If I spread it throughout the day it takes probably a bit over an hour. For a while now I've had roughly 100 to 120 cards to review alongside 10 new ones. From what I've read it's supposed to take a lot less time so I wanted to check with others. Am I "slow"? Am I doing something wrong?

My Anki stats: https://pdfupload.io/docs/07ca63ad

Protyped an app

It's pretty generic and the arrows could be anything from conjugation to being related to being opposite. It's not a learning tool per se, it's sort of a mechanical bunny (reference to kaufman's usage) where it is a nice subgoal (populate this with new words and new connections) whenever you feel tired.

typical usage would be:

1. read or listen to japanese, then try to write sentences (the app doesn't check grammar, rather it does make words you used together, appear together).

2. Zoom in and get exposed to related words, you can make new sentences (clicking a node helps) or just review related words together

3. practice conjugation

idk, if this would be helpful to anyone, but me, but sharing it just in case. (I also use PKM notes app, hence why i like this format)

Thanks for reading :D

I have a lot of dvds and blu rays that I love and they are mostly all English. There are a few I know which are popular in Japan such as the Friends TV series, Disney and Pixar movies, Marvel movies among other stuff. Now I know there is Netflix and Disney+ which offer Japanese language options, but I like to give these things a watch in Japanese.

Is there a place that just has the Japanese audio of these things? Cause, I use VLC on my computer and that overlays audio on stuff. So, if I had, say a copy of Lion King of mine I ripped on my PC I could put the audio over it. So like is there anything like that around?

Hello!

My friend wants to get a Japanese tattoo saying something like "self improvement" so of course he found 改善.

I told him it was not the right word to use. It sounds like he's getting a tattoo saying the Toyota method" or something like that.

Am I right?

And if someone knows, is there a word he could use that would make more sense?

I'm not very good in Japanese yet, but I don't want him to get a dumb tattoo and look like a dumb 外人 lol.

「いや…　君はゲーマーじゃない…

いや…　お前はゲーマーじゃねー。

ゲーマー気取りの連中にはうんざりだよ。 そんなことはねー。君方のほとんどはゲーマーとは程遠い。「このゲームに100時間費やしたが、最高だ！」と言われ続けている。 それは 何もねー。俺たちのほとんどは、すべてのゲームに300時間以上は簡単に費やせる。ニンテンドースイッチしか持っていないのにゲーマーだと主張する人を見かける。PS4のコントローラーを手に取ったら、僕に話しかけてね。

また、すべての女性に。 ポケモンは本物のゲームじゃねー どうぶつの森は本物のゲームじゃねー マリオは本物のゲームじゃねー スターデューヴァリーは本物のゲームじゃねー モバゲ。は。本物。の。ゲーム。じゃねー。 赤ちゃん用のゲームを置いて、一度くらいはチャレンジとスキルが必要な遊びをしろ。

誠心誠意、本物のゲーマーのみんな。」

English Origin: "No... You are not a gamer...

No, you are NOT a gamer.

I’m so sick of all these people that think they’re gamers. No, you’re not. Most of you are not even close to being gamers. I see these people saying “I put well over 100 hours in this game, it’s great!” that’s nothing, most of us can easily put 300+ hours in all our games. I see people who only have a Nintendo Switch and claim to be gamers. Come talk to me when you pick up a PS4 controller, then we'll be friends.

Also DEAR ALL WOMEN: Pokémon is not a real game. Animal Crossing is not a real game. The Sims is not a real game. Mario is not a real game. Stardew valley is not a real game. Mobile games are NOT.REAL.GAMES. Put down the baby games, and play something that requires challenge and skill for once.

Sincerely, all of the ACTUAL gamers."

Please let me know if I made any grammatical errors with my translation.

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.

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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.

It's been 1 year since we've released Yomitan stable, and since our last 6 month update we've done even more work to make Yomitan awesome for language learners. Here are some of the major development features we've shipped and talk about where Yomitan is heading next.

First, the numbers:

• 60,000+ installs across Chrome, Firefox, and Edge
• We've merged over 275 pull requests encompassing 48,000 lines of code
• We've resolved 175 Github Issues
• We've crossed 1000+ commits past our original fork of yomichan. Over 20% of commits are post-fork now

Major enhancements:

• Clicking the deinflection rule now shows a small toaster with information about the conjugation rule (example img). Lyroxi painstakingly added robust descriptions for all the Japanese conjugation rules.
• Yomitan now works with Microsoft Edge! Download it here
• We created a documentation page for users at https://yomitan.wiki/
• Added updatable dictionaries to receive updates to your favorite dictionaries (Jitendex supports this!)
• Added recommended dictionaries for all languages that are installable on the Yomitan settings page without navigating away to download dictionary files (only properly sourced and licensed dictionaries included).
• Added much more multi-language support, including support for languages with spaces, increased coverage of native audio, and a bunch of language-specific de-inflection logic.
• Added support for aliasing your dictionaries, which allows you to rename your dictionaries on the popup.
• Added full support for dark mode with option to align with system or browser settings.
• Redid the action popup (popup that shows up when you click on the extension button) to be more user-friendly and indicate the active modifier key required for scanning.
• Dozens of bug fixes 👐

With these changes we've made huge strides in goals 6 months ago: making yomitan more user-friendly in more languages.

Here's our hope for the next 6 months:

• Reach 120k users of Yomitan. Having a large user base improves the chances that we have power users who can surface feedback to us, who can contribute to the Yomitan ecosystem (by creating dictionaries or improving our language-specific functionality), and who can ensure Yomitan continues to thrive in the forseeable future. We're already seeing some encouraging signs from people who are using Yomitan for non-Japanese languages and building tooling and dictionaries for those languages.
• Continue to increase support for more languages and foster communities in these languages.
• Improve the flashcard experience in Yomitan. Having the ability to add individual definitions, simplify the onboarding for setting up Anki, and potentially other features would make Yomitan even more powerful.
• ???: Let us know where you would like Yomitan to be by filing a Github Issue or posting something here or in the Yomitan discord

Here's how you can help Yomitan succeed:

• Install and use Yomitan (chrome, firefox, edge). We have a setup guide in yomitan.wiki. The more users who use Yomitan, the more feedback we get to decide what the bugs the community experiences and what to build next.
• Share your experience using Yomitan with friends and internet friends. Yomitan is one of the most powerful pop-up dictionaries available, but its customizability s quite intimidating to many users. Helping other users discover and use Yomitan is what helped Yomitan get to where it is today.
• File bug reports, UI/UX paper cuts, and feature requests in Github Issues or in the Yomitan discord server.
• If you're a native or expert in a language, consider lending us your expertise by adding support to a particular language. We have a guide for contributing language features to Yomitan.
• Read our CONTRIBUTING.md doc on how to contribute code to Yomitan.

I and other maintainers will be around the next couple of days to answer any questions in the comment section here.

Happy Monday!

Every Monday, come here to practice your writing! Post a comment in Japanese and let others correct it. Read others' comments for reading practice.

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

I have a question regarding nominalization with this sentence from Satori Reader in mind:

もしかして、地震が起きて、 津波が来るということだろうか。

When I read a sentence like this, I do understand the general meaning, but it’s difficult to fully understand the choice of ということ. It comes up a lot, and of course, a literal translation doesn’t of ということ doesn’t make sense.

The translation from SR is «Could it be that an earthquake will occur and a tsunami will come?», which doesn’t seem to capture what ということ adds to a sentence like this. Or more likely I’m not able to understand. Is there a good way to explain ということ in sentences like this?

Not sure if anyone used chatgpt for learning Japanese, but I ask it to talk to me about different topics and I respond back. Is there a good prompt for language learning? I don’t know how good it is to learn this way so I’m not entirely relying on it, I still do tutoring twice a week as well.

I'm well aware that the standard advice is to learn vocabulary with the pronunciation, rather than individual kanji since the reading of a word may not be the "sum" of its individual readings (e.g. 七夕 for an egregious example). I've even followed it myself.

However, when it comes to unknown words, especially when reading books, I basically lose my flow when I have to stop because I can't read a word -- even if its meaning is understandable from the kanji. I can't "skip" over the word if I'm reading silently; even if I can understand the meaning of the sentence. It gets worse if there's multiple words that I don't know, or can't recall at the moment.

This question was prompted by seeing research about how a shift away from phonics in English caused students to become impaired in reading, by relying too much on context:

• https://heartland.org/opinion/decline-in-phonics-has-led-to-downfall-of-public-education/
• https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/08/22/whats-wrong-how-schools-teach-reading
  • Haven't finished going through the entire article but this is one notable excerpt:

  But Adams soon figured out the disconnect. Teachers understood these cues not just as the way readers construct meaning from text, but as the way readers actually identify the words on the page. And they thought that teaching kids to decode or sound out words was not necessary.

There's probably more resources out there, and I may or may not be mistaken about thinking that this can apply to Japanese as well. But, by using the examples of words' readings being different for the same kanji (e.g. だい、おお and たい for 大体、大幅 and 大使館) as a reason for not learning the readings seems like we're throwing the baby out with the bathwater by making one unable to read a word they haven't come across because they haven't learnt the reading beforehand.

It's easy for kanji you already know all possible readings of through previous words (common kanji like 大 and 前 are learned pretty quickly due to their presence in common words) but for those you don't come across often, it's a crapshoot as to whether you'll actually remember the reading of the kanji since you're actively advised against doing so, and instead to just "learn the differences between their appearance".

What do you think?

Hi everyone! I’m planning to start working with an italki tutor to improve my conversational skills, which are currently almost nonexistent. I’m at the veryyy beginning of the N3 level, but I struggle to form proper sentences without taking a long time. I also get really nervous and often stumble over grammar and phrasing. I’d love to hear your insights at what level did you start using italki or other platforms to improve your conversation skills?

Hello,

I'm searching for the audio for Nobuko Mizutani's Let's learn Japanese - Basic Conversational Skills radio course (books 1 to 4) (not the Let's Learn Japanese video course that is available on YouTube - the one also known as Irasshai and about Yan).

It was originally broadcast on the shortwave radio and there were supposedly cassette tapes made. I'm posting a l*nk to one of the books below

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.

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

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

What's your favourite tip you discovered this year?

Back when I lived in Osaka, I noticed that workers at amusement parks or similar places sometimes would use いちにん/ににん instead of the assumed ひとり/ふたり, when they asked how many riders were in my group (just me lol). Is there a reason for this? Is it Osaka/Kansai specific? I don’t remember experiencing it in Tokyo or Okinawa, so perhaps it’s some type of 関西弁?

I would love some insight on this!

I have just started studying for the N1 exam, and I'm unsure if it's just me, but I don't see kun-yomi for kanji in Sou Matome N1(that's the preferred kanji book I use). Please let me know if I am supposed to look for it separately for each kanji. Thank you in advance!

This is actually something that's been bothering me for a long time and I can't really find anything about it. It's well known that Japanese lacks relative pronouns, as such “寝ている人”, “寝ているベッド”, “寝ている時間” and “寝ている理由” all have widely different interpretations based on what makes sense despite having identical surface-level grammar.

In practice, one can use other nouns to shift the interpretation such as “ゲームする人” and “ゲームする相手” generally having different interpreations but with specifying specific locations I'm honestly at a loss. If one really would want to somehow set apart the bed under which something is sleeping, opposed to the bed in which something is sleeping, how would one do that? I would assume that something such as “下で寝ているベッド” would be used, but I've also never seen it.

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’ve really been enjoying the Pimsleur audiobook series as a supplement to listen to while I’m at work/driving/walking etc. I like the way the lessons are structured to add on to each other and will pull old vocab and fit it into new situations. I’d really like to find something similar to this or with a good structured system. Preferably free or available through a library. I mainly use Libby to listen to Pimsleur but would be open to other apps or downloads so I don’t have to have a time limit/ wait for the books to be available.

Overall, I’d rate Pimsleur as a 6/10 as an accessory. It doesn’t seem like some of the vocab is super necessary and they definitely are lacking in grammar explanations. But, as an accessory it’s not bad and is fun/engaging enough to do a lesson or two a day.

Is there anything like this that you’ve found to be well structured and fun/easy to use? I have listened to about 75 episodes of Learn Japanese with Masa Sensei and have learned some but I’d like a little bit more of a structured approach. I’m not yet at the level where I can really get that much from podcasts such as Nihongo con Teppei. I’m also slowly making my way through Cure Dolly’s videos but honestly it can be kind of hard to get through to many videos at once (probably due to the voice, honestly).

Anyways, I’d love to hear your recommendations, what worked for you, what you enjoyed listening to, and your tips for approaching audio formatted learning resources. ありがとうございます!