Happy Thursday!

Every Thursday, come here to share your progress! Get to a high level in Wanikani? Complete a course? Finish Genki 1? Tell us about it here! Feel yourself falling off the wagon? Tell us about it here and let us lift you back up!

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 the following tweet:

今年もハロウィンかけました！

Why use かける instead of 着る here?

I understand the former to mean to “hang up” like a coat on a hook or a painting on a wall.

Japanese with Shun is doing a 7-day Japanese immersion bootcamp from 18th / Nov -24th / Nov!!!

https://nas.io/japanese-with-shun/challenges/7day-japanese-immersion-bootcamp

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.

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

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

Japanese subtitles for anime and anime films already seem to be covered by Jimaku and its predecessor Kitsunekko, but subs for Japanese films still seem to be sparse and I'd like to make it less so. There's OpenSubtitle, but from what I can tell, their Japanese entries are for western films to be watched by a Japanese audience, so they're not particularly useful to anyone who wants to watch native Japanese content. I also found a more appropriate subtitle resource depository on GitHub, but their selection is also very small.

I've done personal subtitling projects a few years ago, and the process was honestly kinda painful doing the both the timings and transcriptions manually by myself, but I'd like to try it again. This time I'll be using SubtitleEdit's implementation of Whisper AI, and then correcting its initial output manually to the best of my abilities as a non-native speaker. I'd like to be able to share the results with anyone who might want them, but I'm not sure where the best place would be to share. I also ask so that if anyone else has similar ideas, we can consolidate our efforts rather than having them be fragmented all over the web. I'd make my own site if I could, but I'm just not that tech savvy. For anyone who has any brilliant ideas, I'd love to hear them.

[EDIT]: After a bit of consideration, using AI for this is still really hit-or-miss since it often doesn't catch that there was even any speech, never mind transcribing it properly. The ambiguity isn't worth it, and I'm sticking to doing things manually.

Happy Wednesday!

Every Wednesday, share your favorite resources or ones you made yourself! Tell us what your resource an do for us learners!

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 no afifiliation with the developer of this app

I've used probably close to 20/30 different apps and websites throughout my studying journey thus far. You name it, I've probably at least heard of it. I recently found the app linked below and had to share it. In it you can: -look up words like a dictionary -it automatically creates flashcard decks based on your search history -you can paste entire passages in it and click words to look them up -you can listen to the passage be narrated -there is Safari integration within the app, so it's like Yomichan or Rikaikun for iPhone -flashcard decks are SRS based -it has grade level and JLPT level kanji learning plans where you learn between 6 and 20ish words per day for the respective level or grade. Every day, it teaches you to write 4 kanji on a three-level difficulty system. First, you trace an outline. Then, you draw the kanji with no outline but it corrects your strokes automatically to fit with the outline. The third stage is free-form calligraphy and it shows you the outline and stroke order after you turn the card over. -the example sentences have click-searchable words, furigana, and narration -furigana in the app can be set to display at different rates based on how many kanji you approximately know.

By far the most comprehensive app I have found and the closest thing to an all-in-one platform.

The catch is that it is paid, and it is not the cheapest resource out there. I went and bought a lifetime plan because I knew right away it would be useful for a long time.

The lid: https://apps.apple.com/app/id881697245

So whenever I encounter a new word while reading that has multiple meanings I usually just pick one by feel and add it to my anki deck. This however does make me cringe a bit each time as there is probably one of the readings which are more common. Is there a way to find out which of the readings is the most common?

example: 良家 りょうけ　りょうか　

Obviously I could learn both but that seems quite labor intensive.

Hi,

I am currently reading the story 笠地蔵 (かさじぞう) and in the story there is the following usage.

”うちに帰って、おじいさんはおばあさんにおじぞうさんの話をしました。”

The usage of 話をしました。caught me a little off guard here. Why not “話しました” here? I have never encountered this usage before so am confused. Any help is much appreciated. Thanks a lot in advance and take care.

I currently live in Tokyo and go to a pretty intense language school. I’m in Level 2, it’s the equivalent of N4. I started learning in June. I passed Level 1 (Equivalent of N5/Low N4) without much trouble (Averaged an 79)

Hit Level 2. Felt like I was doing really good. Got an 85 on my Kaiwa(Speaking) test, but got a 59 on my Bunpou (Grammer) test. I feel absolutely devastated because I did my absolute best. I was wondering if anyone could tell me what I’m doing wrong? I feel like such a failure I’m skipping school today.

9 AM to 1 PM - Go to school and study the days lesson. 1:30 - 4:45 - Go to class and do the said lesson. 5:30-9:45 - Go to the library and review the lesson more. I write 30 sentences and have them all checked for accuracy. I do my homework, and learn my 12 Kanji a day along with 20 new vocab words.

I walk home (30 minutes) listening to the days lesson.

10:30-11:30 - I’ll get on the phone with my girlfriend and practice speaking. It’s definitely my strongest

I do this Monday - Friday. I’m able to do our さくぶん’s in class fairly easy because I’m able to control what I’m writing.

But when they give us Bunpou tests and I’m forced to write the particle in (no multiple choices) and finish the sentences I absolutely freeze.

I’m feeling like Bart in that episode of the Simpson’s when he got a 59. I feel like an absolute failure. Does anyone have any input on how I can get better at Bunpou?

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.

When I'm walking around the neighborhood, sitting on the couch at family gatherings, attending the birth of my first child, flying commercial aircraft, conducting heart surgeries.... they all think I'm just screwing off on my phone rather than spending all my spare moments pursuing a life goal I can hardly articulate my motivations for doing.

Hi all I've started my bunpro journey a month ago and I'm struggling in a few cases where I feel like multiple answer could be correct, but Bunpro won't count my answer as correct until I put the exact answer.

I know that it's a question of nuances but some grammar points can be interchangeable...

The most common case is for 'I have to....'

here you can choose between:

なければいけない
なくてはいけない
なければならない
ないと
なくちゃ・なきゃ

same goes for 'Not at all / not even a little' there are at least 5 options...

For 'it seems like/ it look like' I get that there is a nuance for the use of every grammar point.

How do you deal with it ? I'm tempted on skipping them by setting them as mastered as I'm losing too much time rotating my answers and it's very frustrating...

And also, in the phone app I can use backspace and only a part of the answer will be erased, whereas on my computer, hitting backspace delete the whole answer which is a pain, is it a feature ??

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

Title. In 「グランメゾン東京」,The characters want to have their restaurant earn 3 Michelin stars, and they recruit old allies and new friends to do so. Without spoiling too much (because if you haven't seen it it's absolutely worth a watch), various conflicts that arise are dealt with quickly and new friends come out of it every time. It's heartwarming to see. I won't spoil whether or not they succeed, you'll have to watch it to find out!

I'm at an N3 level and I found it pretty comprehensible overall. Notably, the characters use French on occasion. An early scene in the first episode is in France, and as a result there's moments where characters are speaking French and there's Japanese subtitles on screen. I found that to be be kind of overwhelming. Outside of that, there's some food vocab that knowing would be handy (the characters are constantly cooking or talking about it), but in general it wasn't that hard for me to follow along, especially with Japanese closed captioning on (which I 10000% use as a crutch when watching dramas. Sometimes I can't understand a word I hear, but then when I see the kanji it uses, I can guess what it means and then I'm able to continue watching without having to pause and Google something). My comprehension for Japanese TV goes up by like double if I have Japanese closed captioning available.

I am working on a bigger post where I am looking to share the dramas I've watched thus far with (relatively) short synopses, my thoughts on them / how difficult they were to understand, and a score; I'll definitely include more about this one. Maybe those recommendations will prove useful for someone who hasn't watched any dramas before. Prior to a few months ago the only Japanese media I'd consumed was anime basically. I've been pleasantly surprised by the shows TBS releases.

TLDR: 「グランメゾン東京」みたいなドラマを薦めてください！たくさん新しいと新しくない仲間を集まって、もっと強くなって、いい感じになるドラマ。日本語字幕があることは必要だ。ありがとう！

edit: clarifying that I mean live-action dramas that are reminiscent of this sort of anime, not anime lol

So there are a number of words that despite being generally written with a く are (often) pronounced with a っ e.g. 奨学金 as しょうがっきん, 洗濯機 as せんたっき, and 三角形 as さんかっけかい (the latter two come up in some dictionaries as both spellings are legitimate, but google suggests that in formal writings, the く spelling is preferred)

I recently mined 山岳会, and the audio I used pronounced it with く but during my reps I would always instinctively say it with a っ. I checked with youglish and it turns out that it seems like a fine pronunciation, but it made me concerned that I may be overdoing it in my day to day speech, so I was wondering if there are any rules, or things to think about when making the contraction?

For words of that sort of shape, can you always contract them, or will it sometimes sound unnatural? Are there exceptions to watch out for, or general rules to follow?

Many thanks!

As a rising N1 learner and someone also of Chinese heritage, I find the notion of Pseudo Chinese to be just the coolest phenomenon ever.

I was wondering if anyone had any interesting observations or resources about Pseudo Chinese. Pseudo Chinese is when you take a Japanese sentence and strip all the kana out so that the sentence appears Chinese. It is a form of internet slang that Chinese and Japanese speakers have used to communicate across language barriers. I would imagine that actual examples would employ Kanji that represent tense, mood and case as closely as possible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudo-Chinese

The idea of taking Kanji and attempting to make coherent thoughts while also carefully playing on the sounds of the kunyomi/onyomi readings and making sentences that are clear and unambiguous seems like a seriously creative venture. Would words be spoken using the onyomi readings? the kunyomi readings? a mixture? does word order matter? can location, causality, conditionals be described solely with Kanji, as they are with Hanzi? are there ateji? can a complete language be made from existing kanji that has the granularity of modern Japanese? These thoughts are super fascinating to me.

I find Kanji to be super fascinating compared to Hanzi because with Kanji there is greater creative freedom as there are multiple readings, and the readings reflect the etymology of the words. I am only an early intermediate learner of Mandarin though, so perhaps this phenomenon exists in Chinese as well. I'm not familiar enough with Chinese to know.

I was wondering if books have been written in Pseudo Chinese. I was wondering if anyone has attempted to make a grammar.

It's almost Kanbun, I don't know much about the details of how it works but I find it super cool. However, Kanbun is almost exclusively pre-modern, and I would love a Kanbun that has modern words, like computer, genes, etc.

Kanji are so addictive. They're like the red and blue sour patch kids.

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.

My reading ability is somewhere in the Intermediate zone, but my listening ability is still PATHETIC. I have a hard time understanding most of the "easy" or even "very easy" podcasts without using any subtitles. If I have Japanese subtitles on, I can understand them pretty well, except for a few words here and there.

Is it ok or useful to use Japanese subtitles? Or should I just tough it out? I am currently in this perpetual loop of just not know what the right approach is. I feel paralyzed that I'm going to study "the wrong way". I know that's not really a thing, but I want to improve my listening skills and get them up to my reading ability. What's your advice for me?

I'm planning on taking a sabbatical and studying Japanese for 6-12 months. I don't have any ambitions of working in Japan professionally, so my studies would be more focused on everyday language and less formal matters; My current goal is to get to the point where I can strike up a casual conversation at a bar or with friends without having to dig up google translate constantly. In addition, I'd also like to get to a point where I can reliably read Manga and play games in Japanese without having to look up every word.

I've been studying on my own for about a year, albeit at a slow pace as I'm working a full-time job. In that time I've gone through Genki 1 and 2 and grinded a bunch of Anki cards, as well as sentence mining some anime and reading stuff like Yotsubato.

So, with all that said; Are there any people here on this forum who have been in a similar situation to me, and could tell me about their experience with Japanese language schools?

How long did you attend, and did it improve your language skill?

Would you recommend the school you attended?

Is there any school in particular that would fit my goals? (I've been looking at KAI and Shinjuku Language institute in Tokyo, but I'm not averse to studying in another city if there's a school that might be a better fit.)

Basically, I just want to share my progress and process with people who can relate.

For context, I learned basic Japanese in the University around 2007-2008, and barely touched it again until January 2023. Since then, I mostly went the comprehensible input route, finding content that I understood enough to enjoy, while extracting vocabulary and reviewing it with jpdb.io.

I tried not to worry to much, and let my brain acquired what it can as I go (I dind it's like Katamari Damaci, where what fits the ball sticks, and what doesn't fit is left out).

Anyway, since my progress is not linear as I'm not following JLPT based courses or textbooks, I had a hard time knowing where I'm at, and tried the N5 and N4 tests on the Toaii app.

I passed N5 easily, and only did half of the N4 one since I was tired (but was only 15 points short of passing, so I guess I would have passed if I did the full test). The vocabulary and kanji part went very well, and the text comprehension wen fine too. Unsurprisingly, I had a bit of trouble with the grammar part.

Now I'm thinking of analyzing sentence structures a bit more while I read, as well as lookup grammar points here and there, to slowly fill the gaps in my knowledge.

Now I feel like I know enough for it to be efficient, so I'm getting really motivated! Hope it goes well!

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

Hi all,

Wanted to have your feedback on whether you have encountered the same problem as me: despite knowing a fair amount if grammar, I find myself using very simple structures when speaking and feel like I am only using 10% of the grammar I know. This makes me feel like I sound like a baby and often use the same patterns / grammatical forms I don't feel like talking more to people is helping in this regard. I've noticed a few fellow learners having the same problem ... I would love to be able to make more complex phrases and sound sharper

Did you encounter the same problem ? How common is it ?

How did you solve it ?

Context: level is around N3. Ironically I would say grammar is my strong point vs vocab which I really lack

I've noticed that I struggle with accurately producing appropriate grammar in formal situations like interviews. I want to improve my ability to communicate properly in a business setting. While I use BunPro everyday to review grammar points, I find it difficult to consistently differentiate between casual, formal and literary speech.

People who have professional working proficiency in Japanese, what are some study methods you've used to improve your ability to quickly recall 尊敬語, 丁寧語 and 謙譲語 speech patterns? Additionally, how have you learned to accurately adjust the formality of your grammar with relation to the person you're speaking to?

I saw a Verb table where the Nominalized and Present Continuous both have the "-ing" suffix in their explanation.

Example:

食べるの - eating

食べている - I am eating

見るの - watching

見ている - I am watching

The nominalized section also said: "not to be confused with the present continuous", but what's the difference? (in terms of using it in a sentence)