Hello everyone! I’m not sure if this is the right place, but I have a friend from Hokkaido who I talk to regularly through email. I have been wanting to write them a letter, but they exclusively speak Japanese. I’m afraid my Japanese isn’t good enough yet to be able to write a whole coherent letter to them.

So here is where I am looking for advice; how should I approach writing this? Should I write in English? (he’s used google translate plenty of times but I’m not sure about the camera feature) I feel like this would cheapen the experience, and I’d like to show appreciation to the culture by writing in Japanese. Or should I write in English, and leave a small note at the end in Japanese? Or maybe even rely on external help writing the letter, so it can be purely Japanese? Any help is appreciated, I just want to share something with my friend. :)

Tomorrow I’ll take the JLPT for the first time, I’ll be taking the N3. I wanted to ask from people who already took it if there’s any advice, tips, funny stories/things to avoid or whatever outside from the actual test (or rather, outside from the actual knowledge needed for the test). I’m only taking a couple of pencils, a sharpener, an eraser and my printed thingamabob where my registration number is. Should I bring anything else?

And for anyone also taking it: 頑張って！君ならできるよ！

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I studied 3 quarters of japanese back in college and still have my Genki I textbook from those classes. I dug it out the other day because I'm trying to learn Japanese again, but after hitting chapter 3 I'm realizing that while the textbook introduces Kanji in Ch 3, it doesn't necesarily teach those kanji and how one should write them. I'm wanting to be able to read and write the kanji contained in the chapters, but I'm not sure how to go about studying them to learn them efficiently.

I've used WaniKani in the past, but it doesn't really line up with the kanji used right off the bat in Genki I. I've learned some of the kanji in the past back in college, as my professor would give us chapter-appropriate kanji to learn when I was taking classes. But now that I'm self studying, I'm not super sure what the best way is for me to learn the kanji used in the textbook.

So, for most people, physical dictionaries are not really needed nowadays, and you can even use multiple of them digitally thanks to Yomitan; but in my case, I’m an exception because I have Keratoconus, and my vision is worse because of it, on top of tiring my eyes out faster when I use digital devices; and because of that, I’ve come to ask for advice from people here about physical dictionaries.

How do physical Japanese dictionaries work when it comes to sorting? I’ve asked ChatGPT about Japanese dictionaries before, and from what it could scoop up from an online search, Japanese vocabulary dictionaries are only sorted by reading, and if not, it’s only going to be a Kanji dictionary that relies on radical-based sorting.

I don’t completely trust ChatGPT in this question, but there’s gotta be some truth to what it was able to find on the internet because I’ve found a video on YouTube of someone who bought a classical Japanese dictionary that relied on kana sorting.

My hope with all of this is to find a native Japanese vocabulary dictionary written in Japanese, for the Japanese, which would somehow be sorted in a radical-based order. Why? Because when you read a book and find a word you don’t know, and it doesn’t have furigana, you obviously can’t read it; so if you can’t read it, a reading-based sorting is useless, and you’ll end up using a digital device.

I’ve seen a few English-translated vocabulary dictionaries a few days ago where they pretty much had both a kanji section and a vocabulary section where you could find the kanji by radicals, check its readings, and find the word in the vocabulary section, but I was wondering if any native Japanese equivalents exist that work like this, because if it’s just reading-based, it would pretty much be useless when reading books, since you can’t know the reading of all the words you see.

With that out of the way, If someone could explain how physical Japanese dictionaries work, I would really appreciate it.

よろしくお願い致します m(_ _)m

Enjoying Renshuu, but wish I could continue learning when I'm outside a wifi or cell service area. Anki is a little too basic, looking for something more guided/structured/gameified than pure brute force flashcards. Any recommendations?

Edit: looking specifically for Android-friendly mobile apps

I have recently started playing a VN in Japanese. No furiganas. This isn't my first consumption of reading Japanese stories because I've read mangas before but they have furigana.

I'm currently N3 level and am studying for N2. Thankfully this VN only has new words here and there so I'm not always looking at a dictionary. They are highschool students so the conversations are more about home and school stuff. My question now is do I just list down all these new words I encounter? Some of these words do not even use jouyou kanji. There are a lot of onomatopoeias as well and expression words that aren't common. Or maybe they are common depending on the setting.

So what I'm doing right now is just adding them to an anki deck with every new word I encounter. I'm not studying them yet.

What do you guys do when you encounter new words? Do you list everything down? Or do you first decide on whether they are worth to study or not?

Example of words encountered うろうろ ずっしり ひょいと ぼんやり 漕ぐ 呟く

I currently have 102 words added to the deck and I'm just in the prologue part maybe. The routes haven't split yet.

(and if you need to know the VN is Yosuga no Sora)

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I think this message needs to be put out there more as I have seen a lot of people, both in other communities centered around learning Japanese, and even in here to an extent, exhibit this sort of behaviour. I personally think that something that slows down a lot of people to a massive extent is the inability to progress forward due to doubts and fears, namely things like "I'm not ready to do this yet" or "I can't do this." I feel like this is something that needs to be addressed.

First, you can and you will eventually learn the language. Do you want to watch anime in Japanese? Go ahead and try. Forget the people who say "you shouldn't do this; you aren't ready yet." (No, watching Anime with English subs isn't learning Japanese. Use Japanese subs or go raw). And granted, you may not be, but should that stop you if you enjoy it? Even if you don't understand much, you can take what you do understand and refine it by doing watching more. Don't understand something? That's fine. You need to expose yourself to the thing in different, comprehensible contexts over time to understand it. Now, if something is too hard or incomprehensible, you can still try it and still gain something from the comprehensible bits that you do understand. Those are stepping stones. You should turn every little step of progress into a win. You're allowed to celebrate the little wins. You think that you're taking too long to learn the language when everybody else around you is progressing super fast? Don't compare yourself for others. As people say. "Comparison is the thief of joy." You're progressing every step of the way so why give up? There will always be highs and lows as success isn't a narrow street.

Second, don't hesitate to experiment. Everybody has their own styles and methods of learning. For me, I got told not to play visual novels when I was still starting out because they would be "too difficult". I still played them and those became my main source for learning Japanese. Now, if something is too hard or incomprehensible, you can still try it and still gain something from the comprehensible bits that you do understand. As long as you're having fun with the process, that's what matters most. Language learning is a personal journey so customize it however you like. If you wanna spice it up by watching your favourite TV show, go ahead. Anything to make the journey fun and spice it up.

Third, trust the process. You're not dumb. You can learn the language. Language learning isn't difficult either. Rather, it's pretty straightforward. What does make it difficult is that it's a lengthy and time-consuming process. You will end up at your destination eventually, but you have to not only trust the process but you have to place trust in yourself that you will see it through. You can do this.

Maybe it's just a fun coincidence, but it feels like there could be some intricated etymological explanations that we either have already known or would never know lol.

For reference, I live in Tokyo and I'm mixed Asian, but I don't think I look particularly Japanese. We all know the meme 日本語上手 but this isn't really about that, but instead reflecting on how far I've come. Being 上手'd or not isn't really any indication of your language level, heck, my good friend who is mixed-Japanese, speaks very minimal English, and lived her whole life here gets told she's "good at japanese" lol. Usually when people say it to me, I appreciate the compliment but don't really think much of it.

I’ve been going to a pilates class since August, and the instructor, let’s call her Aya, is familiar with me by now. This last class, I was rotating my wrist cause it hurt, and Aya asked if I was okay. I said I was fine, just did something weird during kyudo. She was surprised since she’d never met anyone who practices kyudo, so we started talking about it.

Aya: "Wow, you do kyudo? How long have you been doing it? Did you start in middle or high school?"
Me: "I’m in a circle now, but I started in bukatsu during high school when I studied abroad, so it’s been about 7 years."
Aya: "?? Study abroad? Where to America? Do they have kyudo in America?"
Me: "Oh? I mean study abroad in Sendai. I studied there for a year in high school."
Aya: "Why would you study abroad in Sendai? From Tokyo?? Wait maybe from a further part of west Japan?" 🤔🤔
Me: "...??? Cause I grew up in America?" 😅
Aya: * shocked Pikachu face * "WAIT, YOU'RE NOT JAPANESE??" 🤯

I started laughing but I was also having a confused/shocked face and asked "wait you thought I was japanese??" Honestly, I was in disbelief that she was in disbelief LMAO. We were both looking at each other mouths agape.

Aya said, “No way… how long have you been in Japan?” I told her it’s my 2nd year in Tokyo, 3rd overall including my exchange. She was still stunned and said, “I thought you were Japanese…you sound like a native speaker. I would’ve believed you if you said you grew up here and went through the school system.”

I laughed it off and said, “No way, I can’t even read properly,” but she kept insisting she was serious. She shared how she studied abroad in Singapore for over a year but never got proficient at English.

At the end of the class on my way out, she insisted again that she really meant what she said, told me that she's very impressed, and that I'm doing really cool things (we got into a conversation about my work and what brought me to Japan too).

I haven't been in Tokyo that long but this small interaction was one of the most validating experiences I've had about my language journey. I look back to when I first learned hiragana in high school and feel teary-eyed—it’s been a rough road. I haven't had the best experiences in Japan and honestly some of my language learning experiences have been a bit traumatic 😅 but if you’d told high school me, who couldn't even formulate a sentence in Japanese, that I’d be living and working in Japan someday, I wouldn’t have believed something that seemed so out of reach.

It's easy to feel like you're not doing enough, you're not learning fast enough, that "I should be at XX level but I'm not good enough", or you're not making progress. But remember to take a breath and look back at how far you've come. There's so many little wins and ways to celebrate your journey. You did that!! You started learning a language that is notoriously difficult! If no one is saying they're proud of you, then I am.

I’m taking the JLPT this weekend, so to anyone else studying, good luck! I hope this short story encourages anyone out there to keep going. The journey is long, but those genuine connections make it worth it.

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

So I started Bunpro in the last couple of days on the free membership, trying to figure out if it might be worth it to buy the lifetime membership on the $120 sale at the end of the month. I had a couple of newbie questions:

I'm starting with N4, grammar. It seems that after reading a grammar point and looking though the example sentences, the "quiz" is just a single question on that point, and if you pass, you've passed the unit for the day. And when it comes up in the SRS system youll also get one question on that point. Is that right, or am I missing something? (I was expecting several quiz questions. Honestly I dont mind if it's just one per point, I seriously don't want to vastly expand my SRS time.)

I think I'm probably N4 level, with a few N5 gaps in my knowledge. I started going through the many N5 points and realized it would take forever and I'd lose interest, so I decided to just move on and start with N4. Mistake? Or, good strategy? (It seems like if there are things I dont understand in the N4 sentences I can click on them and it will lead me to review the relevant N5 point. This would be great if true.)

How do you handle the example sentences after reading the grammar point? Today I just played the audio and read them, and it was a real time saver. Do people usually use each sentence to quiz themselves, or not necessarily?

Uh, what am I missing?

Anyway, based on my limited Bunpro experience, its going to be very helpful and I'll probably stick with it. Thanks to those who have posted about it here, it was motivational.

i can't find a single one, why is that?

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

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 think I have hit a sort of wall in terms of listening comprehension of Japanese. Content on one side of this wall I can understand almost completely, while content on the other side of the wall is to me almost entirely incomprehensible. To be clear, when I say that I "understand almost completely" I mean that, if I allow myself for aids such as slowing down the playback speed, repeated listenings, dictionary lookups, etc., I can eventually understand almost completely. By the same token, when I write "almost entirely incomprehensible" what I mean is that, even with all those aids, the content remains to me incomprehensible.

To be specific, this is an example of the first type of content is the Bite Size Japanese Podcast:

https://www.youtube.com/@the_bitesize_japanese_podcast/videos

...and this is an example of the second type is the Easy Japanese Podcast:

https://www.youtube.com/@EASYJAPANESE/videos

I happen to be a Patreon subscriber of both these podcasts, which has the benefit that I have easy access to full transcripts of these episodes. I'm pretty sure that both sets of transcripts are (at least) human-curated. This makes it relatively easy for me to use something like Google Translate to translate large chunks of these podcasts. Even with this massive help, it often happens that I just cannot understand the relationship between the Easy Japanese original transcript and the machine-generated translation. Basically, I need to take it on faith. This is what I mean when I say that Easy Japanese (as an example) remains "almost entirely incomprehensible" to me. It is extremely disheartening.

I recently realized that this wall that I am experiencing maybe boils down to the sharp difference between 丁寧語 and タメ口, and that proficiency in the first does not automatically result in any level of proficiency in the second. It's almost as if タメ口 is a separate language altogether, one that shares some features with "standard" Japanese, but follows different rules...

I feel a bit stuck now. Just banging my head against this wall is not working. I could as well be trying to learn some other entirely alien language (e.g. Hungarian or Basque) just by doggedly listening to podcasts, however incomprehensible they may be. This sounds pointless, but I don't know what else to do to get past this barrier...

Has any of you experienced a similar listening comprehension wall? Have you been able to overcome it? If so, how?

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

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

Do I have to memorize the meaning in each card? Because at the start of taking this deck, I was trying to memorize the reading as well as the meaning of each cards. But as time passed by and the harder the cards went, I transitioned to only memorizing the readings. Hoping that someday, as I get a lot of repetition, I will eventually recollect each card's meaning and associate to the writing.

Is this okay and if not, how can I reconstruct my Anki session to get back on track?

Edit: apologies for the wrong flair. It should be in the Studying flair

Besides the basics, what are the phrases that actually made a difference for you in Japan? I’m talking about the ones that saved you from confusion or helped you communicate better with locals.

For example, I learned 'Ikura desuka' ("how much" at a shop) or ‘betsubetsu de onegai shimasu’ (for separate checks at a restaurant) from reading trip reports by other Japan travellers; give me your super helpful phrases to know!

P.S. If you’re also learning Japanese for travel, my friend invited me to a small Discord community where they share great tips for learning basic Japanese and exploring Japan. Feel free to join if that sounds helpful.

I started learning JP back in late July 2023, and stopped around the same time this year because I was getting tired of having to study every day. I was also royally disinterested in immersion material of any kind: I didn't wanna read any manga, watch any anime, play any game or watch any vtuber in JP.

But now I'm beginning to feel like I've wasted a year on learning: I've reached N3 in terms of words and kanji learned as well as grammar, N4 in terms of hours, but I feel like I've regressed back to N5 with all of that, so I want to test myself and see where I stand. Is there anything I can try, and if my knowledge has truly regressed so badly, how do I go about regaining it? Do I just start from square one?

Recently, I've been watching more Japanese Hololive vtubers on youtube without English subtitles and figured it'd be a good idea to sentence mine while I'm doing it.

I've found some extensions, like Migaku, that pull the subtitles from the video, automatically clips the audio/video, and then makes an Anki card for it. The only issue is all the clipper channels I watch don't have custom CC subtitles, just the default auto-generated ones, which I'm told aren't very reliable.

So I'm wondering if anyone else sentence mines these types of videos and how they go about doing it.

I've seen a couple alternative solutions, like screenshotting the subtitles that are embedded into the video itself, but I'd really like to have furigana on my cards since I'm currently just focusing on improving my listening comprehension and plan on improving my kanji/reading later on. It's also easier to search the definition if I can see the furigana to type it.

There seems to be a lot of confusion around "formality" and "politeness" in Japanese, no doubt in part due to the fact that every resource seems to use these terms differently. I've found Japanese: The Spoken Language's explanation of speech styles to be very good, and I wanted to share a paraphrased version of its explanation with a few added examples. By posting this, I hope I can clear up some concepts for at least a few people.

I've kept most of the textbook's original terminology, but I've tried to define terms that may differ from what people are more familiar with. The one notable exception is JSL's term "careful," for which I've substituted "formal," as it is used synonymously throughout the text and is more readily understood.

______

For each set of "opposites," interpret them as a sliding scale, rather than a strict binary.

Direct vs Distal

“Distal-style" refers to です/ます. It is so-called because, more than anything, it marks a linguistic distance between the speaker and the addressee. The style is respectful, showing solicitude and light deference to the listener. Distal-style is most appropriate towards those with whom you’re not especially intimate (strangers and acquaintances), or those who may be above you in status.

Direct-style refers to the style which uses base predicate forms you might see in a dictionary, hence the common term "dictionary form." While the style isn't inherently "rude," it is, as the name suggests, a very direct way of speaking, and it may not be appropriate unless used impersonally or with those you're close to. Note that direct does not necessarily mean "casual," as we'll see in a moment.

The final predicate within a sentence is the only thing that determines whether a sentence is direct or distal. For example, a sentence like 猫がいるけど、犬がいません is still distal overall, despite the direct-style predicate in the middle of the sentence. A distal-style non-final predicate is of course also possible here, with the result of making the sentence more distal and formal overall.

Casual vs Formal

Like English, formality in Japanese isn’t determined by any particular grammatical structures. Markers of formal-style include longer, more complex sentences, a lack of contractions, minimal use of sentence-particles indicating tone like よ, ね, ぞ, etc., and certain differences in vocabulary such as みょうにち instead of あした and ただ今 instead of 今 (Sino-Japanese words are often considered more elegant, similar to how words of French origin are considered more elegant in English). In the spoken language, distal-style final predicates are predominantly used.

Casual-style, by contrast, makes frequent use of sentence fragments, contractions, and sentence-particles. In casual-style, direct-style final predicates are regularly used.

In written Japanese, distal-style comes across as colloquial—thus, in formal writing (and also in impersonal forms of speaking such as voiceover and formal speeches), direct-style is used. Features of the formal impersonal-style include the copula だ being uncontracted to である, and gerunds (て-form) being replaced by the infinitive stem form when connecting two major clauses. Examples of the stem forms are shown below:

分かって　→　分かり

高くて　→　高く

本で　→　本であり

Plain vs Polite

In traditional Japanese grammar, keigo is typically taught as having three "levels": teneigo (distal), kenjougo (humble-polite), and sonkeigo (honorific-polite). I find this is a bit misleading for a few reasons: 1. humble-polite and honorific-polite are the really same "level" of politeness, and the use of one versus the other only depends on who is referring to whom; and 2. humble-polite and honorific-polite can occur with or without distal markers です/ます. As such, distal-style has been placed in a different scale from "politeness," despite "polite speech" being a common term for distal-style.

Humble-polite and honorific-polite can collectively be called "polite-style"; regular words which don't fall under the upper-level keigo umbrella are "plain-style." Some examples of plain　→　polite pairs include:

いく　→　参る (humble) / いらっしゃる (honorific)

書く　→　お書きする (humble) / お書きになる (honorific)

です　→　でございます (humble/inanimate) / でいらっしゃいます (honorific)

どう　→　いかが

As with all these categories, there are varying levels of politeness. Some structures are more polite than others—for example, お書きだ is considered a polite predicate, but not as polite as お書きになる.

Also note that, while most often appearing in formal situations, polite-style is not inherently formal—casual-style polite speech was once considered a common feature of feminine speech.

Blunt vs Gentle

Traditionally these have been analysed as men's and women's speech, but nowadays the differences between men's and women's speech have become less prominent, and both blunt and gentle structures are in regular use by both genders depending on context.

Blunt versus gentle structures are too numerous and varied to list, but some examples include:

だ in sentence-final position is typically considered rather blunt, especially followed by the particles よ and ね. The gentler alternative would be to drop だ entirely, or otherwise opt for distal-style.

In casual-style, questions ending in の are gentler than questions ending with no particle with rising intonation. The use of the か particle in casual-style is particularly blunt.

Casual requests ending in a gerund (e.g., やめて) are made more gentle by adding よ or ね.

The わ particle is a mildly emphatic particle that is characterised as gentle. With rising intonation, is considered very feminine, and nowadays you'll probably hardly hear it except from older women and ojou-sama archetypes in media.

____

If you read through all of this, thank you! I hope this helps at least a few people out.

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.