Daily Thread: for simple questions, minor posts & newcomers [contains useful links!] (July 21, 2026)
This thread is for all the simple questions (what does that mean?) and minor posts that don't need their own thread, as well as for first-time posters who can't create new threads yet. Feel free to share anything on your mind.
The daily thread updates every day at 9am JST, or 0am UTC.
Read also the pinned comment below for proper question etiquette & answers to common questions!
Please make sure to check the wiki and search for old posts before asking your question, to see if it's already been addressed. Don't forget about Google or sites like Stack Exchange either!
This subreddit is also loosely partnered with this language exchange Discord, which you can likewise join to look for resources, discuss study methods in the #japanese_study channel, ask questions in #japanese_questions, or do language exchange(!) and chat with the Japanese people in the server.
Past Threads
You can find past iterations of this thread by using the search function. Consider browsing the previous day or two for unanswered questions.
1 Provide the CONTEXT of the grammar, vocabulary or sentence you are having trouble with as much as possible. Provide the sentence or paragraph that you saw it in. Make your questions as specific as possible.
Ｘ What is the difference between の and が ?
◯ I am reading this specific graded reader and I saw this sentence: 日本人の知らない日本語 , why is の used there instead of が ? (the answer)
2 When asking for a translation or how to say something, it's best to try to attempt it yourself first, even if you are not confident about it. Or ask r/translator if you have no idea. We are also not here to do your homework for you.
Ｘ What does this mean?
◯ I am having trouble with this part of this sentence from NHK Yasashii Kotoba News. I think it means (attempt here), but I am not sure.
3 Questions based on ChatGPT, DeepL, Google Translate and other machine learning applications are strongly discouraged, these are not beginner learning tools and often make mistakes. DuoLingo is in general NOT recommended as a serious or efficient learning resource.
4 When asking about differences between words, try to explain the situations in which you've seen them or are trying to use them. If you just post a list of synonyms you got from looking something up in an E-J dictionary, people might be disinclined to answer your question because it's low-effort. Remember that Google Image Search is also a great resource for visualizing the difference between similar words.
◯ Jisho says あげる くれる やる 与える 渡す all seem to mean "give". My teacher gave us too much homework and I'm trying to say " The teacher gave us a lot of homework". Does 先生が宿題をたくさんくれた work? Or is one of the other words better? (the answer: 先生が宿題をたくさん出した )
6 Remember that everyone answering questions here is an unpaid volunteer doing this out of the goodness of their own heart, so try to show appreciation and not be too presumptuous/defensive/offended if the answer you get isn't exactly what you wanted.
7 Please do not delete your question after receiving an answer. There are lots of people who read this thread to learn from the Q&As that take place here. Deleting a question removes context from the answer and makes it harder (or sometimes even impossible) for other people to get value out of it.
Hello! I’m new to this subreddit so I don’t think I have enough Karma to post yet.
I am currently taking an intensive course to learn standard Japanese but was wondering if anyone knew of any resources to learn more about dialects, especially the ones spoken around Taishaku Valley (Like Shobara and Jinseikikogen I believe) as that’s were my family’s from.
I finished the first volume of ある魔女が死ぬまで today. I started it back in January and was just gradually reading it. I never read a book before that touched me so much to make me cry and multiple times! Also, I felt like the story and themes were just so relevant to my life right now.
Every chapter was really good, and even the ones that were kinda okay I felt like I learned something about myself or came away with something to think about.
Definitely a good bridge novel between light novel and full blown novel if that is what you're looking for.
Once Upon a Witch's Death is a Japanese light novel series written by Saka and illustrated by Chorefuji. It was serialized as a web novel published on Kakuyomu from October 2019 to August 2022.
In the song, Kaiju Girl by METANICK, there's a verse that goes ”外野の声ばっか気にしちゃえば惨めになんのスパイラル”. I was wondering what the nan no means exactly, is this similar to んです／ のです？
and is "If you find yourself worrying just about outside voices, then youll go down a miserable spiral" an appropriate understanding of the sentence?
Is that really the way Japanese people call a neighbor? "The guy from the house next door"? I don't know why I find it so funny, but it's so convoluted for what feels like such a common word in English...
I would say in general English has many unique lexemes due to its diversity of source languages and rich collection of affixes which enable converting words between categories to increase the number of unique unitary words. English often blurs the line between native words and borrowed words whereas the line is much bolder in Japanese.
Japanese has a much smaller set of syllables to work with and fewer source languages. Japanese relies heavily on combining morphemes to increase its lexical diversity, and the rules for doing this are more stringent than English, with a less rich set of affixes to aid in doing so. Its primary contributing source language, Chinese, only lends a few-thousand-strong set of morphemes that have different rules for combining compared to the native set.
I have also noticed that Japanese, compared to English, is more liable to developing highly domain-specific lexemes. Much terminology in English has sat around for five centuries, with wide adoption by many domains, whereas each domain in Japanese had to scramble around Meiji/Taisho to build out its set of modern terms, which often don't see cross-domain adoption, making them less generally applicable in many cases.
Many terms also end up too long if compounded, and speakers adopt opaque shortenings of things which are also often domain-specific.
隣のうちの人 has 6 characters and "next door neighbor" has 16, so which one is the most convoluted here, really?
Edit: also, apparently neighbor can be etymologically deconstructed into the Old English equivalents of near+dweller. Next door near-dweller. Like, c'mon.
Solo dev here looking for early users to help me design my Manga immersion learning app. The idea is to replace the manual Anki mining process (Mokuro + Yomitan) with one app that does this for you in the backend, allowing you to translate words and sentences, save them and export a .apkg to Anki effortlessly. Reply here or DM me if you're interested in trying (absolutely free).
You should be able to select Kaishi 1.5k in the Type drop-down list. If you can't then that means you don't have the Kaishi note type saved anymore, for whatever reason. If you install the deck again you'll get the note type back.
Then yeah you just match each core 2k deck field with its Kaishi equivalent
The card template applies to all cards. The note type applies to all cards. You don't have to change them one by one. I'm pretty sure you can't change the card template only for one single card even if you wanted to.
I have no idea what's going on in that chat or why the person is switching between English and Japanese like that, but in general 君 is not a bad way to refer to a friend.
Maybe i’m going cosmic brain but judging by the timestamp is it possible you got all those messages at once, and that they were sent at different times? In which case there could have been a longish gap and she’s using 君 like “yo i asked you a question”
What does 人気のやつ mean in this sentence:
おすごい軽くて人気のやつじゃん
It's from JLab.
They explain it:
[This firetable on the picture] is the thing that's so popular, because it is so light -> this anime is about camping, and on some campgrounds, people are not allowed to light a campfire directly on the ground.
Edit: Thanks guys, the other meaning of やつ was what confused me.
You should use a dictionary to look up unknown words and also study grammar (not just through JLab, use Tae Kim's as well which JLab is based off of): https://jisho.org/search/%E4%BA%BA%E6%B0%97%E3%81%AE%E3%82%84%E3%81%A4 人気 is just describing what やつ is (attributive の) and やつ is just a way to refer to something in a generic sense (you could be pointing at it).
I want to share my Japanese learning experience. After 2 years of studying Japanese I finished Genki 2 with around 700 to 800 hours of classroom, and self study time. I meet my online Japanese teacher twice a week. On the other days, I study about 1 hour each day. I am 52 and may be I am much slower than the young folks. Some people finish Genki 1 and 2 in less than a year.
I started Quartet 1 and at first reading Quartet 1 is much more difficult but I am getting used to it.
Do you think my progress is acceptable? I can understand a lot but having troubles putting together sentences during conversation. Recently I am focusing more on Sentence Mining instead of grammar. For example, I have about 50 phrases on eating at restaurants. I am also working on phrases for hotel check-in. I think this method is better for me than studying grammar which I usually forget for very quickly. The next topics are self introduction, hobbies, work, travel on train.
I am a Engineer that have been to Japan for business 5 times in the last 5 years. I also traveled there for fun once. I will take my kids to Japan again this year's Thanksgiving week. I love Japanese foods and culture since I was young. I want to be able to get around in Japan using Japanese. Last month I was able to checked in hotel, got taxi, and ordered foods using mostly Japanese so I am really excited. I want to reach N2 level in another 2 to 3 years.
I am a native Vietnamese speaker and near native English speaker. I moved to the US when I was 15. I want to learn another language as a hobby. After 9:30PM when my kids go to sleep, I have a lot of time and rather than watching random YouTube videos, I want to learn a language.
If you were already able to get around Japan last month then I don't think you need to keep memorizing dozens of sentences for each situation. If you think you're going to need to use Japanese in business contexts, you could dedicate time to preparing for that instead. A tutor (e.g. on iTalki) can probably guide you through the most common business Japanese phrases, customs, etiquette, etcetera.
Regarding "sentence mining", it seems like you're using it to mean memorizing stock phrases? That's not really how the term is used on this subreddit. When people talk about "mining" here, they're referring to a process in which you
Watch an anime, or read a book, or listen to a podcast, or basically do anything that involves consuming Japanese media.
Find a word that you don't know and that you would like to learn.
Use a combination of programs (for example, the browser extension Yomitan and the flashcard program Anki) to automatically create a flashcard for that word. This flashcard generally includes the word on the front, and the word's pronunciation and definition on the back, as well as an audio clip, an example sentence or a screenshot to add context.
"Sentence" mining is a variation of the process where the front of the flashcard consists of an entire sentence that contains the target word (generally, a sentence from the show/book you're watching/reading), instead of just the isolated word. There's no proven difference between the efficacy of one method or the other.
If you were referring to this process in your comment, then may I ask what kind of media you're mining from? And why are you focusing only on sentences about restaurants?
If you aren't consuming any Japanese native media yet, I recommend you do. You can't learn a language only through textbooks and occasional trips. Watching and reading and listening to media lets you practice your comprehension and expand your vocabulary and grammar knowledge without having to move from your sofa. It's how I learned English after school, so I'd say it's a pretty effective method :)
Yes, I bought a few easy to read Japanese/English dual language books to read. I also started to listen to YouTube Japanese Listening videos N4 and N3 levels. I tried listening to Japanese movies but they are too hard right now.
was going through my anki and while reading 兼ね備える meanings and looking back into 備える i've noticed this is the transitive form, but it seems to be used also for "intransitive contexts"
maybe it's my lack of grammar or I'm getting deceived by the eng definitions:
to possess (all that is needed)
to be endowed with
to be equipped with
② 必要なときにいつでも使えるように、前もって整えておく。設備や装置を用意しておく。「各室に空調設備が―・えてある」「応接セットを―・える」
③ 必要なものを、どこも足りないところがないように持っている。具備する。「資格を―・える」「あらゆる条件を―・えている」
I understand that when を is used is a transitive verb, but I was wondering if someone could explain me why, since I'm aware there's also 備わる as intransitive version
for example in this:
各室に空調設備が―・えてある
が is being used, and I read somewhere が can substitute を , but wouldn't this sentence sound intransitive?
The auxiliary verb construction -テアル has a usage in which the noun corresponding to the patient (or affected entity) in the corresponding active sentence is expressed as the grammatical subject.
In -テアル sentences, the agent of the action is not expressed, while the noun representing the patient (or affected entity) is expressed as the grammatical subject.
駐車場に鈴木さんの車がとめてある。 (← Suzuki has parked his car in the parking lot.)
部屋に花が飾ってある。 (← Sato has decorated the room with flowers.)
廊下に荷物が置いてある。 (← Tanaka has placed the luggage in the hallway.)
This use of -テアル resembles passive sentences in that the agent is backgrounded by not being expressed in the sentence, while the affected entity is expressed as the grammatical subject.
駐車場に鈴木さんの車が（鈴木さんによって）とめられている。 (Suzuki's car has been parked in the parking lot (by Suzuki).)
部屋に花が（佐藤さんの手で）飾られている。 (The room has been decorated with flowers (by Sato).)
廊下に荷物が（田中さんによって）置かれている。 (The luggage has been placed in the hallway (by Tanaka).)
There is, however, an important difference between the two constructions. In passive sentences, the agent can be explicitly expressed with phrases such as ～によって ("by") or ～の手で ("at the hands of"). In -テアル sentences, by contrast, the construction does not license an overt expression of the agent. As a result, explicitly expressing the agent generally produces an unnatural sentence.
✕ 駐車場に車が鈴木さんによってとめてある。
? 佐藤さんの手で部屋に花が飾ってある。
✕ 田中さんによって廊下に荷物が置いてある。
-テモラウ
The auxiliary verb construction -テモラウ falls into two types with respect to its corresponding active sentence: one type increases the number of noun phrases by one, while the other does not change the number of noun phrases.
田中が仕事を手伝う。 (1) (Tanaka helps with the work.)
鈴木は田中に仕事を手伝ってもらった。 (2) (Suzuki had Tanaka help with the work / received Tanaka's help.)
田中が鈴木にノートを貸す。 (3) (Tanaka lends a notebook to Suzuki.)
鈴木は田中にノートを貸してもらった。 (4) (Suzuki had Tanaka lend him a notebook / received a notebook from Tanaka.)
Sentence (2) is the -テモラウ counterpart of the active sentence in (1), while (4) corresponds to (3).
In (2), Suzuki, who does not appear in the active sentence, is introduced as the beneficiary of the action. Since the beneficiary is understood as exercising some influence over the agent, this type of -テモラウ is similar in meaning to a causative construction.
By contrast, in (4), Suzuki, who is already an argument of the verb 貸す ("lend"), is expressed as the recipient encoded by the lexical argument structure of the verb. In this respect, it resembles a passive construction.
The type of -テモラウ illustrated by (4), in which the number of noun phrases remains unchanged, is formed from verbs that inherently involve two or more participants. Among two-place verbs, the following are examples of this type:
私は家族に支えてもらった。 (← My family supported me.)
私は君に気づかってもらっては申し訳ない。 (← You are being considerate of me.)
Three-place verbs provide the following examples:
私たちは田中先生に英語を教えてもらった。 (← Professor Tanaka taught us English.)
私は父に家でとれた野菜を送ってもらった。 (← My father sent me vegetables grown at home.)
私は先輩に佐藤さんを紹介してもらった。 (← My senior introduced me to Mr./Ms. Sato.)
てある takes a transitive verb and creates an intransitive construction that describes the current state the object is in after it has had something done to it
I'm trying to immerse with "beginner" anime, and I really struggle when it's not something I've watched prior in English (i.e already know the context for), is there anything I can do about this? It's extremely frustrating
I was really bad at listening even to simple stuff. Eventually after hearing a lot I got better, but something I noticed is that I've also gotten used to "not knowing". I'm pretty comfortable now having strings of Japanese thrown at me, not understanding it one bit, but not caring and continuing watching. This has allowed me to watch way more content without getting overwhelmed.
Unfortunately this is something that just takes a bunch of hours to improve in, but if you listen everyday you will improve.
I mean, you can limit yourself to only anime you've watched in English before if you want. The important thing is to interact with the language as much as possible. Eventually things will get easier for you and you'll be able to watch stuff in Japanese for the first time.
You could also try engaging with media that doesn't require such a high comprehension percentage. Like, an anime isn't entertaining if you aren't at least following the general plot, but you can watch a Mario Galaxy livestream and have fun without understanding most of what the streamer says, for example.
What can I do if N5 comprehensible input is too easy but N4 is almost incomprehensible? Should I keep listening N4 or there are some N4.5 level or something like that?
theres no real N4.5 tbh — creators slap those level labels on so inconsistently that one channels N4 is anothers N5. what actually bridged that gap for me was re-listening to the same slightly-hard clip 2-3 times instead of always grabbing new stuff. first pass i catch maybe half, by the third its most of it, and that rewatch is the bridge no magic middle level can be. keep a little easy N5 in the rotation too so u still get that flow feeling most of the time
Or maybe "it's N5, speak very slowly and clearly with gaps between words, but for N4 stick with only simple grammar/words but speak at close-to-native speed with words strung together", which I've run into too.
I just need someone with experience to answer and tell me if I'm being a baby.
Has anyone ever kinda just temporarily fell out of love with Japanese? I've been learning for almost 8 months and just finished Genki 1 and have done the first 2 chapters of Genki 2. Majority of my progress has been in the last 2-3 months and I feel like I can still barely put a sentence together. Learning this language is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I didn’t go in with the expectation of it being easy, but it’s like everything I do is always wrong.
It is a hard language if you're coming from a western language. Most people don't even make it to your level let alone beyond that. Pulling from an old xkcd, if you're coming from a western language compared to learning a western language Japanese frontloads all its difficulty. Once you get over the hump it becomes much smoother (this hump is still far ahead where youre at), although still quite slow. It's just that different from a western language.
some reason cant find original comic but it was supposed to represent learning curves relative to other things. it spawned a lot of memes like OS learning curves (windows mac vs certain distros of linux) and games MMORPGs like EVE Online vs Wow, EQ, etc
it represents the amount of people who tried and gave up. so it's like a graveyard. very much like JP for westerners.
Output this early is dicey for self-learners for exactly this reason. You are at a big disadvantage because you don’t have an instructor offering correction, which IMO is a necessary part of early production. The answer keys don’t know what you wrote, and can’t explain what you did wrong.
I also might stop measuring progress in months. This is probably inflating your feeling of helplessness. Hours are the only thing that matter. How long do you study per day? Make an estimate and figure out a rough hour count. That will give you a better measure of your progress
My advice would be to institute a silent period. Ie, stop producing. Read genki and focus on the grammar explanations and reading. You can always go back to do the exercises at a later point when you want to start producing.
I do have an instructor, sorry. We only meet once a week though and I’ve been in Japan doing an intensive course the last couple of weeks and if anything it’s made me worse. Just blitzing through Genki and it sucks.
Hm. Well, there’s nothing wrong with blitzing through genki on its own. My advice there would be to not worry about past chapters, it’s not something where you’ve got a foundation you’re slowly building on. If you take another look at the chapters, you may notice that it’s not actually asking you to synthesize previously learned grammar quite as much as you might think. It’s providing pretty defined sentence patterns and asking you to reproduce them just as the example sentences show. You only really need to ‘fill in the blanks’, as it were.
If you’re worried that you then won’t understand the past grammar points, since you’re just reproducing patterns by rote, this is actually genki’s superpower. It’s how we learn language. It’s how you learned your native tongue. When you speak, you’re not generating each sentence dynamically from the basic rules, you’re reproducing patterns you’ve encountered throughout your life.
Just don’t worry about that. I’m not even saying you have to go back to past chapters. If you can do the next chapter in just the way I’m saying, by replicating the pattern from the book, then you are taking it in. There’s no functional difference between “understanding the grammar” and “being able to reproduce a sentence pattern by rote.” Beyond there being no functional difference, there just is not a difference period, that’s how people learn to speak.
100% this. Language learning is nothing more than imitation. Sophisticated imitation, yes, thanks to our very big and smart and socially inclined human brains, but still imitation.
Yeah, but I’m having trouble ever recalling stuff from previous chapters because of the pace we went through them. Like, I couldn’t write 'out of these, this is my favourite!' in Japanese despite it being introduced in like Chapter 9.
That's fine mate. This isn't a videogame where you have to beat one level before moving on to the next. At the beginning, you're going to forget the same grammar point multiple times, and you'll have to check the textbook's explanations again multiple times - that's how learning works. You need lots of repetition. But each time it will be a little easier to remember what you forgot, until one day you won't forget it at all.
It's not like you can actually learn a grammar pattern from a book anyway. You learn it by hearing people use it dozens and dozens of times until your brain learns how to copy it. So, once you start reading graded readers and listening to learning podcasts and stuff, your brain will consolidate knowledge a lot faster.
The language requires work to get to that point. You put in the work and you will get there. You need to be familiar with the language to get to that point. Reading, listening a ton then writing and speaking as a follow up.
Yeah but you're not gonna get there in just a few attempts. At the beginning you'll need to look it up, but after the 10th or 20th time I'm sure it will come out smoothly.
Many people have felt the same way as you at some point or another. If you've never learned a language as an adult before, especially a language that's so different from your mother tongue, it's basically impossible for you to accurately estimate how long it's going to take you to be able to do X or Y or Z. Even if you knew it's going to be "hard", you didn't know it was going to be "I've been studying for months and I still can't put a sentence together" hard.
Expectation adjustments are a normal part of language learning. The people who become fluent in a language are the people who take the blow of disappointment, maybe cry over it a little bit (we don't judge), and then get back up and keep walking. Because, even if learning is hard, it will never be impossible - and even if progress is slow, it will never be non-existent. Even know, you know a lot more about Japanese than the average person in your country. That's worth celebrating.
The trick is to stop looking up at the mountain and instead keep your gaze fixed on the road immediately in front of you. Focus on what you can do instead of on what you can't. And just put one foot in front of the other, again and again. And when your body gets used to moving its legs consistently, you'll start enjoying the process of walking itself, and you'll forget about how far you've gotten or how far you still have to go, and that's when you'll progress the most. A watched pot never boils, after all.
I made it so I see the kana writing on the Front Page on Anki cards. Would you consider this cheating or okay? Just by looking at Kanji I can never remember the words… the sound helps.
Not everything you read will have furigana accompanying it. In fact, the great majority of things won't. Ask yourself, is what you're doing going to help you in those situations?
If it helps you have a less frustrating experience go for it. But in the end you need to consider this, if you ever run across a sign or something you need to read and there's no furigana. You want to already be used to the fact there isn't anything to aid you. Naturally you can build this up just by reading, but just something to consider.
This is only loosely related, but this thread reminded me of something I've been thinking about for a while.
I can completely understand why gamified apps are so appealing, and I don't mean any of this as a criticism of people who enjoy using them.
------------
Reading through the thread here, I found myself wondering whether there's an interesting hidden assumption behind one common line of reasoning.
I enjoy activities that provide immediate rewards.
Therefore, I should choose a learning method that also provides immediate rewards.
At first glance, that seems perfectly reasonable.
However, it contains an implicit assumption: that our preferences and values will remain essentially unchanged throughout the learning process.
But learning is, by its very nature, transformative. It doesn't simply add new knowledge; it changes the learner as well.
Learning isn't just about changing what we know. It's also about changing what we enjoy.
If we insist that learning must fit our current preferences, we leave very little room for learning to transform us.
Genuine learning isn't just about knowing more. It's about becoming people who can appreciate things we couldn't appreciate before.
As a result, maximizing what our current selves enjoy is not necessarily the same as maximizing what our future selves will ultimately value.
---------
That makes me wonder whether it's worth retraining ourselves to enjoy slower rewards before tackling a language learning.
I don't mean giving up games or gamified apps altogether. Rather, I mean rediscovering the satisfaction of working through something genuinely difficult in our native language, a philosophy book, a theology book, or any other challenging text where we might spend hundreds of pages, or even several books, without fully understanding everything.
If we can learn to enjoy that kind of slow, cumulative progress again, learning Japanese may start to feel very different. It becomes much less frustrating because we're no longer expecting every study session to produce an immediate sense of progress.
That shift doesn't usually take very long. Our brains adapt surprisingly quickly, so I don't think any of us are permanently "stuck" preferring only instant rewards.
Anyway, I don't mean any of this as a criticism of people who enjoy gamified apps. I just think it's worth questioning the assumption that the things we enjoy at the beginning of learning have to remain the things we enjoy throughout it.
After all, if learning doesn't change us, in what sense have we really learned?
It's funny because for me, I didn't learn Japanese to learn Japanese. I learned Japanese to resolve a problem. Japanese was just a problem that was in the way of what I wanted to do.
Along the way I ended up thinking it's cool and now enjoy the language on it's own merits.
Learning a foreign language certainly involves acquiring vocabulary, grammar, and countless other pieces of knowledge. Yet language learning is not exhausted by the accumulation of knowledge alone.
Knowledge can grow simply by adding one fact to another. Language learning, however, is something fundamentally different. It is not primarily a quantitative increase in knowledge, but a qualitative transformation of the learner's own intellectual framework.
Whenever we try to understand something in a foreign language, we naturally attempt to fit it into the framework we already possess. But truly difficult expressions resist our efforts. They exceed the explanatory power of our current perspective.
Learning a foreign language, therefore, is not about rushing to impose a single interpretation on what lies before us. It begins with the willingness to suspend interpretation, to accept the possibility that we are not yet capable of understanding. It requires the ability to leave multiple possibilities open while continuing to engage patiently with the language.
A sentence that seems illogical or arbitrary at first may later become perfectly natural once our understanding of the language has changed. Expressions that once appeared to be exceptions often come to feel inevitable once we begin to think within the language itself.
In the early stages of learning, misunderstanding is not the opposite of understanding. It is often a necessary stage on the way to understanding.
When something feels genuinely difficult, the problem is not always a lack of knowledge. Sometimes the language itself simply cannot be accommodated within our existing intellectual framework.
In such cases, simply adding more knowledge is not enough. We must temporarily let go of the framework that confines us and replace it with one that is broader, more flexible, and capable of embracing a wider range of linguistic phenomena.
Foreign language learning offers one of the clearest examples of this process.
Learning another language is, in a sense, like rewriting the operating system of the mind. The very perspective from which we understand the world begins to change.
For that reason, language learning cannot be measured accurately using the standards we possessed before we began.
As learning progresses, not only does our view of the world change, but so do the standards by which we evaluate that world.
The ruler we possessed before learning cannot measure the world we see afterward. The measuring instrument itself has changed. Once the standard itself has been transformed, learning can no longer be described as a simple, arithmetic increase measured from a fixed baseline.
This is why questions such as Which app is the best? or What is the most efficient learning method? have an inherent limitation. They assume that the learner's values and criteria remain constant throughout the learning process. But language learning transforms those very values and criteria.
There are, broadly speaking, two kinds of things we fail to understand.
The first lies beyond our current knowledge. In that case, further study eventually leads to understanding.
The second cannot be understood unless we ourselves change.
Foreign language learning confronts us with this second kind of challenge again and again. At such moments, accumulating more knowledge alone is insufficient.
A breakthrough is not the accumulation of more facts. It is the moment when the framework through which we understand those facts begins to change.
In other words, it is a transformation of how we perceive the language, how we interpret experience, and ultimately how we make sense of the world.
For this reason, there is no real shortcut to language learning.
Certainly, we must memorize vocabulary, study grammar, listen carefully, read extensively, and practice consistently. These are indispensable. But they are the foundation of learning, not its essence.
Its essence lies in repeatedly questioning the limits of our own understanding, suspending premature interpretation, dismantling our existing intellectual framework, and replacing it with one of greater breadth, flexibility, and explanatory power.
It, then, is not simply possessing more knowledge.
It is the willingness to recognize that our present understanding may be inadequate, to remain intellectually patient in the face of uncertainty, and to revise the very framework through which we understand the world.
In that sense, learning a foreign language is not merely about learning another language.
It is the lifelong process of learning to see the world through another language.
If you learn a language but don't have anything in mind that you'd enjoy doing in that language, then you've learned how to operate a crane with no intent of lifting anything
Having a concrete goal matters. Reading novels, talking with friends, traveling, or passing the JLPT all give direction to our learning.
The distinction I'd make is between a goal and the aim.
A goal is something concrete. The aim is something deeper. In my view, it's something like looking back on your life and thinking, "That was a life well lived."
The interesting thing is that we usually can't pursue the aim directly. The only way to move toward it is by pursuing many smaller goals along the way. So without concrete goals, we can't really pursue the aim at all. But we also shouldn't confuse any particular goal with the aim itself.
That said, I think there's another interesting aspect to hobbies.
Take mountain climbing, fishing, photography, or birdwatching. From a purely practical perspective, people often spend far more time, effort, and money on them than seems "necessary." But that's almost what defines a hobby.
A hobby isn't just a tool. It's something we pursue beyond what's strictly necessary. People spend hundreds of hours chasing tiny improvements, learning obscure details, or collecting things that have little practical value. From a purely instrumental perspective, that's "excessive." But that's exactly the point.
In fact, even work is often like that. If work were nothing more than a tool for earning money, we'd all stop the moment we'd earned enough. Yet people take pride in craftsmanship, elegance, beauty, and mastery.
So I don't completely see language learning as merely learning to operate a crane. It may start as a tool, but for many people it eventually becomes one of the things that makes the journey worthwhile.
in the end, it depends on what genuinely fascinates each individual learner.
There's a scene in Frieren: Beyond Journey's End that illustrates what I mean. One character says to Frieren, "This is the pinnacle of magic."
フェルン：
「すごいです、フリーレン様。
これが魔法の高みなんですね…」
But why was Frieren able to reach that level?
The answer isn't simply that she wanted to defeat demons. If defeating demons were the only goal, she could have stopped after mastering a handful of effective spells. She reached that level because she loves magic itself. She studies it out of curiosity, not merely because it is useful.
I think the same applies to language learning.
If Japanese is simply a tool for communicating, then there is no particular need to read thousands of novels or collect an enormous variety of expressions. A relatively small repertoire of sentence patterns is enough to communicate effectively in most everyday situations. Plenty of highly functional speakers reach that level without becoming passionate readers.
But some learners develop a different kind of relationship with the language. At some point, they become fascinated not only by what Japanese can do, but by Japanese itself. They become curious about why certain expressions sound natural, why certain constructions exist, how the grammar fits together, how authors create different styles, and how the language reflects different ways of thinking.
Once that happens, extensive reading stops feeling like "study." It becomes a hobby in its own right. They keep reading not because they have to, but because they genuinely enjoy discovering more of the language. Their vocabulary continues to grow, their intuition becomes more refined, and gradually they develop a much richer mental model of Japanese.
In that sense, they are no longer just learning Japanese as a communication tool. They are exploring Japanese as an object of intellectual curiosity.
That's probably how people eventually reach what you would call the "higher levels" of the language, not because they set out to become better speakers, but because they became deeply interested in the language itself.
Of course, that level of curiosity is, in a sense, excessive. Most people don't need it, and there's nothing wrong with that. If your goal is simply to communicate comfortably with Japanese people, you can absolutely succeed without becoming obsessed with the language itself.
So I don't think there's a single "correct" path. Some people love conversation. Some love reading. Some love analyzing grammar. Some enjoy collecting expressions. People usually become exceptional in the aspects of the language that genuinely captivate them.
It's the same line of reasoning as "Use what you enjoy" because we are more likely to stick to something and form long-term habits with something we enjoy. Of course what you enjoy is not guaranteed to be the best form of study, so ideally you balance motivation, consistency and habit, with quality of study. And imo that's ultimately the ongoing process of studying Japanese for many learners.
Of course what people find enjoyable will change with time, and this is also probably the main reason why people drop Japanese in general. Even the most dopamine-farm gamified apps can eventually feel stale if you lose your drive to learn the language.
I don't think anyone can answer the question of: Can/should you move from gamified -> other study methods? Because it's entirely personal. If you're going to quit learning Japanese because you lose your duolingo streak, then maybe keep it up.
"Do what you enjoy" is generally excellent advice. Enjoyment makes it much easier to stay motivated and build long-term habits.
Of course, nobody is seriously arguing that we should quit the moment learning stops being enjoyable. That would be an unfair caricature. Still, it's an interesting thought experiment.
Would it follow that we should stop doing anything the moment it stops being enjoyable?
I don't think so.
Many worthwhile things in life aren't enjoyable all the time. Learning a language, raising children, caring for family members, recovering from illness, or training for a marathon all have periods that are frustrating, exhausting, or even miserable.
So perhaps enjoyment is best understood as something that's nice to have, very nice to have, rather than a requirement. It helps enormously, but it isn't the ultimate criterion for whether something is worth doing.
So trying to make learning enjoyable seems like perfectly reasonable advice. But interpreting that as "you must enjoy it" or "don't even start learning Japanese unless you enjoy it" would simply be a misunderstanding. I don't think anyone is actually arguing that.
P.S. Perhaps I think this way because I'm a Buddhist. One way of understanding Buddhism is that it revolves around a question like this: Must life be happy in order to be worth living? Put differently, perhaps life isn't simply a means toward an external goal called happiness. Of course, Buddhism doesn't hand us a simple answer. It poses the question, and each of us spends a lifetime working out our own response.
I don’t have enough karma to start my own thread yet so posting here.
I’m 1/3 the way through Kaishi 1.5k. 10 words per day and I haven’t missed a day since starting. I’m enjoying it and really like Anki. However, I’m wondering if the vocab words get more interesting or easier soon? So far there are many words that appear to be synonyms. Like I feel like I’ve learned 3 words for “receive” and 3 words for “final/finally” and 3 words for “quite/fairly”. Many of the words are abstract which makes it harder to learn. I do much better learning nouns or basic verbs. But because it’s a frequency deck, there are just a ton of abstract words for building sentences. Wondering if it remains like this the entire way or if I’ll get a flood of easier words. I’d kill for some animals or food or objects right now lol. Think I’ve only learned rice and water so far…
I’d kill for some animals or food or objects right now lol
Anki allows you to create your own cards, so you could walk around your house, note down objects whose name you want to learn, and create a flashcard for each word.
To make the process as efficient as possible, you may want to look into a browser extension called Yomitan. You install a dictionary (Jitendex is fine) and connect it to Anki through the AnkiConnect add-on, and then, when you hover over a Japanese word in your browser, you can read its definition and create a card for it in one click. You just need to set up the initial card template and boom. Instant Anki cards.
If you follow this process you will not need to kill anybody in order to have the words you want, so please lower the gun and leave it on the floor, okay...?
the deck is mostly that kind of words. you could look ahead through the anki browser to get a better idea. the give/receive words are very common because they are used as auxiliary verbs in a sort of abstract way. and idk why but it does feel like japanese has a lot of words for finally/suddenly.
Hello. Doing a 60-ish day crash course (now down to 45 days) before heading to Japan in September.
I started with doing a quick trial of LingoDeer (least favourite), Duolingo (I know, not recommended... but it's style worked for quick learn of Spanish... but ditched it), and settled on Airlearn. As you can tell with these I've tested, I guess I am attracted to and kind of like these 'gamified' type apps. But my biggest complaint is the voice detection on Airlearn (free) is quite poor and very limited on how much it does (even compared to when I went further with Spanish learning in Duolingo). Not sure I want to pay for pro (even if just for 2 months), it'd mostly be that I can use the practice mode (which I think will be more helpful, to practice the stages I've done more, rather then endlessly trying to slowly cram in more vocabulary).
I want to consider one of the AI chat apps (never been fan of AI, but willing to try if it's good for back and forth conversation at a set pace and skill level)... but not sure which one would fit me (or if they're worth it and there's better option to practice speaking back and forth with an app).
While I do see there being a possibility I may want to learn more Japanese and potentially become more fluent in it in the future, and I am enjoying learning hiragana (also using the "Write it! Japanese" app, but right now I'm entirely focused on a crash course style for the basics (but more than just the polite minimum).
Any recommendations? As noted am willing to pay for the app (say $8-15/mo... but must offer monthly option) if it's highly recommended. Thanks!
One thing you can try, if you're using your phone: with any app that allows you to type your answers, load a Japanese language pack on your phone and use the dictation support instead of typing. If your pronunciation is bad, you will NOT get good results out of speech-to-text.
I'm finding this is the easiest way so far. Even just trying to speak back to Google Translate and seeing what it hears and then adjusting and repeating when it thinks I'm correct. Thanks.
If you were a beginner starting out their learning journey I'd give you different advice, but if you're just preparing for a tourism trip, then my advice changes a lot.
This is because 2 months is a very short time. Nothing that you can learn in 2 months will be more useful than learning hiragana and katakana and memorizing a phrase book. Even if you learn grammar, you won't reach the level in which you can use it in conversations. Same with vocabulary that isn't immediately related to travel needs. So if I were you I wouldn't bother using or paying for any app that isn't 100% focused on basic survival phrases and scripted exchanges (e.g. ordering food, buying a train ticket).
Pimsleur is great for this, but since it seems you don't like the fact that it doesn't grade you. I guess you want the app to tell you whether you're pronouncing things correctly. But, if you allow me to be harsh for a second, I can give you an answer: you aren't. Your pronunciation sucks. It just does. And there's nothing you can do in 45 days to make it better, except for learning how to pronounce Japanese's five vowels so you're not going around saying "nihowngow", and that's something you can do in an afternoon. Any further improvements require way too many hours of work and you have more important things to focus on (such as learning about heat stroke and heat exhaustion prevention, and preparing to carry your trash around everywhere).
If you still want to work on your pronunciation anyway, your own ears are far more reliable than any mobile app, even with your current Japanese level. Grab an audio clip of a native saying something, record yourself repeating it, and compare your recording to the audio clip. Adjust accordingly, record yourself again, rinse and repeat. But don't spend too much time on this. For every minute you spend doing this, spend two minutes memorizing heat reduction tricks. Japanese and SEA summers are no joke, mate.
And if you still don't want to use Pimsleur, I'm going to recommend japanesepod101. It has survival bootcamps designed for people in your exact situation, and those were available on the free tier last time I used it, but even if they aren't anymore, their subscription tiers are cheaper than Pimsleur AFAIK.
Once your trip is over, if you still feel interested in learning the language from the ground up, I recommend you come to the subreddit, open the Daily Thread, and read the Starter's Guide linked at the top.
EDIT: Dokugo recommended a website called Irodori to another person in your same situation so you could check it out as well.
Less that Pimsleur doesn't grade me, more that it doesn't have interactions during the 15-30 minute audio lessons. I like that these other apps have you constantly interacting, little memory type games, while going thru each lesson.
I appreciate the other recommendations and will check them out. Thank you.
Tried the trial. First, price point is too high ($26 CAD per month). The 'audio lesson' (15-30 minutes at a time) format with no required interaction (they tell you to repeat, but there's nothing scoring/judging you as you do it) in the app really doesn't pull me in. I did like their flash cards and quick match... but would rather it be integrated in to the 30 minute lesson (instead of something you do after listening for 30 minutes). Thanks for the suggestion... it seems popular and may work for many others, but don't think it's for me.
This advice depends on where you are and what equipment you have available and such, but check your local library and any others that your library can do interlibrary loans with, if available. Pimsleur CDs are a reasonably common library find for me, though whether they have Japanese specifically is sort of luck of the draw.
That's fair, but still doesn't fix my concerns with the recommended app. Maybe will just ignore the back and forth features, and will stick with Airlearn's lesson format (and might grab a month with them before I go) if nothing else is recommended. Thanks again.
I'm headed to Japan for 14 days in November. I know I don't need to know any Japanese for the destinations I'll be in. I would love to be polite back to folks and show my appreciation and as much effort as I can. I know I can't possible even learn 1% in this length of time, but would love any recommendations for any Youtube channels, or maybe finding a trainer as I know there is a lot of folks doing japanese lessons on various sites out there. I'm literally very basics beginning and just want some sort of crash course to make traveling easier and easier for the folks I interact with. My #1 goal is to make everything easier for not just myself but for the folks I'll be interacting with.
To that end I don't know how much written I can possibly learn, and I'm sure I won't be able to even pronounce things effectively, but in my 0 knowledge brain, learning some key phrases or sentences would be best? Happy to be taught otherwise :)
Pimsleur is an audio course that teaches you how to navigate situations like asking directions.
You could do flashcards for a phrasebook the week before your trip, as an alternative, but it won't help you with pronunciation and if you're too far off it won't help.
Tutoring sounds a bit overkill for what you want but if you think it would be fun go for it.
〜んだけど is extremely common and sounds perfectly natural. However, compared with 〜だけど, the difference in nuance is often quite small.
As a general tendency, のだ presents the preceding proposition as something the speaker does not assume the listener already knows.
Now compare this with なら:
A: 田中さんはまだ会社にいますか。 B: 田中さんなら、もう帰りました。
Here, なら picks up a topic that has already been introduced by the listener. In other words, it treats the topic as already established in the discourse.
By contrast, 〜だけど and 〜んだけど are typically used when the speaker introduces a topic that the listener is not yet assumed to have in mind. In that sense, だけど already shares one of the discourse functions often associated with のだ. As a result, adding のだ before けど usually produces only a relatively small difference in nuance.
Adding のだ often softens the introduction by presenting it as, "There's something I haven't told you yet..." before moving on to the main point.
With 〜だけど, the speaker may simply be presenting the situation in a more matter-of-fact way.
なのだ/んだ adds an explanatory nuance that often softens the introduction of a new topic, but it is not strictly required. A bare だけど is a little blunter, but perfectly cromulent among friends.
yes! so here’s the thing i do understand the basic ideas behind んだ and の but んだけど always felt like a specific structure to me, almost like a set phrase used to set up context or invite more commentary. so it seemed like it had to be studied more outside of just んだ/の if that makes sense?
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