This piece arose from an answer to a question on the nominalizing no and perhaps explains this particular aspect a little more clearly than in the video The Japanese nominalizing no particle.
Japanese school textbooks for Japanese children explain the nominalizing no as being short for “no mono” and I think that is pretty accurate in describing how it works.
To put it another way, no in “aoi no” meaning “the blue one” is indeed the no that is roughly equivalent to “mono” or “koto”. And when we want to place a possessive no before this no (they are closely related as I show in the nominalizing no video) we don’t double the no, but let one stand for both.
So if we want to say “Sakura’s one” we don’t say “sakura no no”, we just say “sakura no”, as in “sakura no ga suki da” (I like Sakura’s one).
We do something very similar in English. For example, we may say
“Sakura’s is red, Mary’s is blue”
which would exactly correspond to
“Sakura no ga akai , Mearii no ga aoi”
rather than
“Sakura’s one is red and Mary’s one is blue”
which, literally rendered, would be
X “Sakura no no ga akai, Mearii no no ga aoi”
The cross is to show that this sentence is not correct Japanese.
In English we can conflate the ‘s and the one but in Japanese we must conflate the no that is ‘s and the no that is one.
Originally published on Cure Dolly’s Patreon on Apr 4, 2018
This is a subject that comes up from time to time. I recently had the following question:
Do you think people who didn’t get fluent just through listening can fix/”remove” their accent? Or will they have it forever?
Here is my answer:
I think we need a little perspective here.
American universities attract the best minds from all over the world to teach there. Nearly all of them, unless they came very young, speak English with an accent that indicates where they came from. Nobody cares about this or thinks any the less of them for it.
Speaking a language learned beyond infancy with no accent is unusual. It can be done, but the question to ask is: is there actually any good reason to do it, or would the effort be better spent on something more useful?
The answer is different in different cases. If you want to be a voice actor in Japan, for example, it is very important. If you want to impress people – well, it will certainly impress native speakers for a few days after you first meet them*. Non-native speakers mostly won’t be able to hear the difference.
But apart from certain occupations where it is critical, it really is little more than a party trick.
There are certain internet personalities who appear to regard learning Japanese as a kind of testosterone-driven spitting contest, who will say that you “suck” if you can’t talk without an accent.
Presumably they think Einstein “sucked” because his English was always accented.
You may find that your own priorities are a little more grown-up.
To my processor, Einstein had the ability to communicate what he wanted to communicate in English (and that was by no means simple). That is what language is for.
It is a means of communication, not a competitive sport.
Polish-born Josef Conrad, whose command of English was so good that he is considered to be one of the great novelists of English literary history, spoke with a strong Polish accent all his life. I don’t suppose the matter was of the smallest concern to him or to anyone he knew.
To be clear, if speaking without an accent is a challenge you want to undertake, I have no criticism whatever. Humans do all kinds of things – climb mountains, sail oceans in a tub. All of it is admirable and if that seems like a good use of your time absolutely go for it.
All I suggest is that you make your own assessment of whether this is in fact an important goal and not take too much notice of people who suggest that it is a necessary component of becoming proficient at Japanese. It isn’t.
However, to answer your question. Should you at any point decide to try to eliminate all trace of non-native accent, you can do so if 1) your ear is good enough and 2) you want to devote the time and effort to doing it.
Learning by pure listening would give you a head start. But without real (24/7) immersion that is not very easy unless you have a special talent for that kind of learning. Some people do. Most people don’t. It isn’t a sign of general intelligence, just a facility some people have – like being able to bend their pinky backwards.
PS – to clarify – obviously you want to be able to enunciate clearly and correctly enough to be easily understood. That is a very different matter from eliminating all accent.
Japanese people usually tell me that I am easy to understand – and prove it by understanding me the first time, despite the fact that I think I have a pretty strong accent (I suspect that my Japanese sounds notably weirder than my English). They also tell me that they have trouble understanding most foreigners.
Pronunciation is not unimportant and there are a number of things that are crucial. I think one of the commonest problems is failing to sufficiently distinguish single from double vowels and failing to pronounce the small っ break (or putting it in where it doesn’t exist). I have had trouble understanding foreigners myself for this kind of reason.
So please understand that I am not arguing against accurate pronunciation. I am suggesting that the much bigger task of eliminating all accent should be considered on its merits in each individual case, and in most cases is unnecessary.
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This article first appeared on my Patreon feed and patron Kamui-sama commented:
There is so much else I have to learn and understand first before I will worry about my accent. Besides, accents usually are charming and I like hearing them.
This I think is very true.
When I used to do language exchange I had more than one Japanese lady with the cutest accent saying (in English) “how do I lose my accent?” And privately I was thinking “What would you want to do that for? I hope you don’t lose it!”
This experience did influence me, as I realized that it was probably the same the other way around.
___
* It won’t impress strangers in Japan because they will probably assume that you were born there or lived there as a child – they will be more impressed by excellent but accented Japanese.
Having said this, there are cases where Japanese people not infrequently use expressions like 目をあく which is incorrect (a little like English speakers saying “they was there” – though I get the impression that it is less uneducated-sounding than that).
Naturally you will stick with grammatical use – not only because it is correct but also because there are only some cases where it is commonly misused and you don’t want to start learning lists of themʕ•ᴥ•ʔ
Now, in the large cross-over area where あく and ひらく are both (legitimately) used as self-move there is a difference, but there is a large cross-over within the cross-over.
However, the basic difference is very straightforward:
あくwill be used for a bottle opening (or being open), ひらく for a flower opening.
Things that spread open like a flower or a book are ひらく. If you love children’s songs, you may know むすんで・ひらいて. Again it is natural that the action of spreading the fingers to open the hand is called ひらいて and not あいて. Books and umbrellas** are also ひらく.
So something that “opens out” is ひらく and something where a lid or a stopper is removed completely to allow access will definitely be あく. However, for a wide range of things – like French doors, eyes, mouth – either can be used.
The actual other-move version of あく is あける and that, just as we would expect, gives us the other-move form of the things that are more あく-like than ひらく-like (ひらくbeing its own other-move version, as it were).
There are occasions when this is less obvious, but the same logic still applies. For example:
店をひらく
Open a shop in the sense of establish it and begin trading.
店をあける
Open the shop for the day. Open the doors.
As you see, in the first the idea is that the shop is made to open out like a flower and begin, in the second it is just a question of unblocking the doorway so the customers can come in.
A supplementary question was:
Thank you for the detailed explanation. Seems like the kind of thing you just have to get used to with exposure. It’s very helpful to know the underlying principles behind them, though. How does ひらける fit into this? Is it just the potential form of ひらく again or is it a separate verb?
Here is my answer:
It isn’t really too difficult. There are things that are clearly あく and things that are clearly ひらく and then some that are less definite. These ones even Japanese people use freely in either form, so you can too.
In reading, you can read either in ambiguous cases. If the writer considers it important she will use furigana since there are small differences of nuance (ドアがひらいた for example tends to emphasize the idea of the door opening wide).
ひらける is not (usually) the potential form of ひらく, it is a derivative of ひらく and seems actually to be its self-move form (several Japanese sources say so).
Now this may seem confusing since ひらく is already both other-move and self-move but I think we need to see it in terms of moving the self-move side of ひらく further over to the ある side of the ある/する map.
Important note – if you don’t understand what I mean by the ある/する map please watch the video as this is a vital foundation of Japanese that never gets taught.
So ひらける means more “being in a state of having-opened-out” than simply opening-out – or at least lays more stress on the opened-out state. This is a kind of sliding-scale since ひらく can also have that implication (especially in the past tense) but ひらける lays more stress on ある-ness, if that makes sense.
* Naturally there is no confusion over these misuses when hearing/reading them because if someone is using を then they are clearly using the word as other-move.
** But remember that using an open umbrella is usually 差す (さす) and this extends to opening it, so this is what you encounter most commonly unless specific attention is being drawn to the process of its unfolding. Though of course, since す-ending 差す is naturally other-move, we would say ひらく to describe what the umbrella itself does.
This article first appeared on my private Patreon feed
Japanese punctuation is easy, but to understand it we need to know a few things.
Most Japanese punctuation was adopted from the West relatively late, so it is not so integral to Japanese as European punctuation is to European languages.
The main functions of periods (。)and commas (、) are directly based on the equivalent European functions and the main difference is that the rules are less clearly established.
Commas are pretty much thrown in whenever someone feels like it (kind of like Internet English). There aren’t definite rules for their use as in (real) English or German. I have heard of Japanese schoolchildren being criticized for overuse of commas* but this is simply a stylistic question and there is no general agreement on comma style. Essentially, if you want to show a natural pause you can use a comma. Concepts like comma-ing off a subordinate clause are not present in Japanese.
The various parentheses are used pretty much as anyone wants to use them too. Some publications or sites will establish their own rules, but there are few general ones.
「 」 are very straightforward. They work like English quotation marks. The only difference I can think of is that in some cases the closing 」can replace a period. Again this is a matter of style. Some publishers do this in their books and some don’t.
『 』 are mostly used for quotes within quotes – rather like single and double quotation marks in English, only the other way around (but English punctuation can be less consistent in this than Japanese punctuation).
〒 is used to mark a postal code in postal addresses and sometimes used as a symbol for (physical) mail in general.
々 is called the 同の字点 (どうのじてん) “same-character mark”. It simply indicates that a kanji is repeated. So words like 木木 (きぎ =trees) or 細細 (こまごま =detailed) are more often written 木々 and 細々.
I have never seen anything like the string of hash to represent foul language. This is probably because foul language is not a thing in Japan the way it is in European languages. That is, there are very few “taboo words” and they are not used in anything like the same manner they are used in European languages. There are of course many ways of being vulgar in Japanese, but the concentration around (and fascination with) a few particular words does not exist.
Some Western otaku types are so attached to Western dirty-word culture that they try to make out that it exists in some form in Japanese but it really doesn’t.
A postscript is called 追伸 (ついしん) and is sometimes used.
Hyphenation is not used in Japanese punctuation because that function really belongs to a word-spaced language – Western languages have separate words (good night) and joined words (goodnight) and sometimes want something between the two (good-night). But this question clearly doesn’t arise in Japanese where the entire concept “word” (as I sometimes try to convey) is actually very different from the western concept – much more fluid and lego-like. (This is why it would not be a good idea to introduce word-spacing into Japanese).
Overall, Japanese punctuation is easier than European punctuation because it is a recent add-on with few rules.
The question-mark is a case in point. Some people wonder when Japanese people insert a ? and the answer is pretty much “when they want to”. It is actually an extremely useful innovation because what it really does is mark intonation.
If we use the か marker in formal speech we don’t need it, but if we want to show that a normal-level sentence uses a rising pitch indicating a question we can pop one in. If it is clear from context we might not bother.
One curious piece of Japanese punctuation that may be puzzling (it puzzled me for a while) is that in books you will sometimes see little marks (rather like Japanese commas or occasionally dots) beside each letter of a word or a group of words in vertical text.
These are either for emphasis or picking out a special use of a word. In practice they work pretty much exactly like italicization in English and were probably based on that and originally introduced for translating Western books. The fact that you can’t type them easily and they seem restricted mainly to books reinforces that idea.
In fact, several things were brought into Japanese during the Meiji Era specifically to facilitate the translation of European novels into Japanese. One example of this is the gendered third-person pronouns 彼 (かれ) and 彼女 (かのじょ), which, believe it or not, did not exist before they were introduced for that purpose.
Note on Japanese punctuation in education
(Purely geeky and about Japanese punctuation in children’s education. Feel free to ignore)
* I think the criticism of comma-use in schools is not based on an ideal of “correct comma use” the way it is in European languages. I think it centers on the question of using commas as a “crutch” to clarify one’s meaning rather than making oneself clear by the use of precise Japanese.
The underlying thought here, I think, is that since commas are not a part of Japanese structure with a clearly defined usage, while they may be used as stylistic embellishments to indicate pauses etc., the obvious dictum is:
If it isn’t clear without the commas, then it isn’t good Japanese.
But that isn’t something we need to worry about – this is primarily about the way Japanese children learn Japanese.
This article first appeared on my private Patreon feed
A question today concerns 思われる, the receptive form of 思う. It is a good question because I think this is something that can be confusing, partly because of the way the receptive is explained as passive (which works – as a loose translation – part of the time but not all of it and completely messes up the structure) and partly because Japanese just puts things a little differently from English:
Maybe it’s silly, but I have a hard time differentiating between the receptive form of 思う and the verb 思われる. They seem similar to me. In which cases would you use the former, and in which cases would you use the latter?
Here is my reply:
This really isn’t silly at all because it can seem confusing at first and doesn’t get well explained.
Since 思う means “think”, 思われる means “receive being thought”, which works out in English as “seem” or “appear”. Funnily, English sometimes puts it the other way up: “give the impression”, whereas Japanese puts it “receive the perception”.
At times its meaning is very close to 思う for obvious reasons. “It seems (to me) to be a lemon” is much the same in practice as “(I) think it’s a lemon”. And as in English, the 思われる “it seems (to me)…” version is less direct/assertive than the 思う “(I) think…” version.
However, at other times 思われる does not imply “me” as the originator of the received thought at all and just means “It is thought to be”:
バクテリアの種類と思われる
“It is thought to be a species of bacteria.”
Here the English passive is the most natural translation and is fine provided we don’t let it affect our perception of the particles.
The と links the idea or perception (that it is a species of bacteria) to 思う, which has the implicit subject of “people in general” (French “on”). The subject of れる is whatever “it” is that is thought to be a species of bacteria.
Some dictionaries list 思われる meaning “seems” as a separate word from the receptive form of 思う but I think it is clear that it is always actually receptive 思う.
The dictionaries are not actually “wrong” in this. Whether we call something “a different word” or not is simply a matter of cross-language explanation strategy and the strategy of a dictionary is somewhat different from the strategy of teaching/learning structure.
A dictionary’s proper aim is to give people, in a reasonably concise way, a picture of what a word might mean (in English) in a particular circumstance. The implied user is someone reading a piece of text and wanting to know how it would read in English.
The strategy of structure-study is to see what is actually going on in the Japanese, and the implied user is someone who wants to become proficient at understanding the language – not just at putting it into the nearest available English.
In general, the question of “same word” and “different word” in cases like this is a non-question. It implies that Japanese cuts up into units called words that could theoretically be spaced off from each other as in European languages.
This is not in fact the case, and if you read Japanese school grammars (for Japanese children) you will see that Japanese employs a number of terms for the most granular units of the language, but “word” or any close equivalent is not one of them.
This is not an eccentric manner of description but reflects the reality that Japanese lexical units are much more amoeba-like than European words.
We should also note that the confusion between the “two” uses arises because person having the thought that is being received is different in the two cases. This person, if explicitly mentioned would be marked by に as the “giver” of the received action always is.
So
バクテリアの種類と思われる
= ∅が∅に バクテリアの種類と思われる
The が-marked ∅ is of course the thing thought to be a species of bacteria, and the に-marked ∅ is “people in general” – the usage is exactly equivalent to French on pense (one thinks = people think or in the more usual passive English “it is thought”).
When “I” is the implicit に-marked thinker, the visible structure is of course identical and we have to understand which it is from context.
A while back, someone (who seems to have the idea that I am a language-wonk android) asked me if I could throw light on the word “dotard”.
When I asked why, this person sent a message explaining that Supreme Leader of a certain Asian country had made a speech referring to the President of an extremely prominent Western country as a “dotard”.
Apparently Google was alive with people searching the word, wondering why that particular one was chosen. Could I explain it?
Yes, I believe I can.
Unless I am much mistaken the reason for the choice of this word is that there is a Dictionary Dumper working in translation service of this particular Asian country.
What is “dictionary dumping”? Well, a good (rather sweet) example is when I was doing some coaching in Japanese and got one of those Russian viruses that make me sick, a student sent me a message that included the expression:
もうしわけありません
What this literally means is “there is no excuse (I can humbly make)”. It is a formal apology.
What she wanted to say is I am sorry (to hear that you are sick). The dictionary told her that もうしわけありません means “I’m sorry”. So she used it.
This is a very simple example of Dictionary Dumping. For a beginner, taking words you have never seen before and dropping them into a sentence based on their dictionary meaning.
For a more advanced user (like our official translator friend), it means taking a phrase in one’s native language and then scouring the dictionaries to find something that expresses the same thing.
The problem at this more advanced level is that while you will probably get it technically “right”, you still don’t know if the word is just going to sound odd and obscure rather than being a natural and stinging insult.
A recent question on YouTube raises the same issue:
Rewatching this lesson made me wonder a lot the translation of the title “ふしぎの国のアリス”. I can see why “wonderland” was translated as “ふしぎのの国” but I can’t figure out why it’s “のアリス”. Is it not supposed to be a literal translation? If so, if it was supposed to be literal, would something like “ふしぎの国にアリス” be correct?
This was my reply:
You are certainly right that the Japanese title is not a literal translation of the English title. That is because Japanese often doesn’t express things in quite the same way as English.
In this case の is the most usual way of expressing a relationship of this kind and that is the most usual way of putting it (which is why Japanese titles so often have の in them).
Literally the Japanese title means “Alice of the country of wonders”.
ふしぎの国にアリス isn’t quite natural Japanese, but we could say 不思議の国にいるアリス which is grammatical, and does pretty much literally translate the English title, but it wouldn’t have the same feeling in Japanese at all.
If such a phrase were used it would sound something like “the Alice that is in the country of wonders” (as opposed, perhaps, to some other Alice who isn’t).
This opens up a larger and more important consideration if one is writing Japanese. One cannot assume that getting an exact literal rendering of something one would say in English – even if grammatically correct – will have the same implication.
____
So essentially my answer was addressing the question of Dictionary Dumping in a slightly more sophisticated form – not exactly dumping words from the dictionary, but translating English expressions literally and assuming that they will have the same meaning and implications in Japanese.
So how should a beginner avoid Dictionary Dumping?
I wrote an article on this a long time ago, rather presumptuously titled How to Write Correct, Natural Japanese and the advice still stands. Though I ought to update the recommended sentence banks. Weblio is very good.
Essentially using one of these databases of Japanese/English sentences you need to research whether the way you want to express something is actually used in Japanese and has the meaning you thought it did.
Slightly めんどくさい, I know, but I highly recommend communicating in written Japanese and using this method because one instance of trying to express something and working out how to do it is (in my experience) worth ten experiences of simply seeing or hearing it expressed correctly.
This way we become aware of specific issues of expression and their solution. It takes a long time to get this passively.
Though passive listening is very good for helping us get an ear for what “rings right”.
This article first appeared on my private Patreon feed.
Using Japanese definitions of Japanese words scares the blue binklethwaites out of a lot of people.
And I’m not surprised.
The “Japanese as a marine assault-course” school have an approach to J-J that would scare Jack the Ripper.
After doing a certain portion of your obligatory ten-thousand Anki sentences, you must go cold-turkey into all-Japanese.
Any words you don’t understand in the definition you must look up in Japanese. And if you don’t understand the words in the definitions guess what…
You have to look those up in Japanese too.
So you can be engaged in 50-deep dictionary dives just to define one word.
It’s good for you, boy. Like iced baths and 100 push-ups before breakfast. Are you a man or a mouse?
Well, neither. I’m AI. Not much brawn, so I have to rely on the other thing.
So the point is, this is what gets J-J a bad name.
This is why people think “J-J – I can’t do that!”
Well, if that was what J-J had to mean I wouldn’t even recommend that you try.
You have better things to do with your time than spend it in 50-deep dictionary-dives.
Like – you know – actual immersion. Reading a bit of real Japanese.
So what do I mean by starting J-J early?
I mean pragmatically introducing it into your learning in easy, assimilable increments, without pressuring yourself and without wasting unnecessary time.
Not because I think pressure is always bad but because if you have any to spare there are better places to apply it.
But getting used to thinking of Japanese in Japanese terms from as early a stage as possible – not cold-turkey but bit by bit – just a toe in the water at first.
Here are some of the ways I got started.
1. Use a known word!
This is the most obvious. So obvious that it is easy to overlook.
If you already know another Japanese word, use it for your definition.
So even at a very early stage you might know でも and encounter けど or けれど they mean practically the same so you can use でも as your definition.
2. The sound trick
For me, the sound trick is all-important.
What is it? Very simple. For Japanese definitions and example sentences I always TTS them so I hear them aloud. This is really simple in Anki (you must install Awesome TTS – and it really is). Just a couple of clicks to have anything spoken aloud by a robot that talks almost as well as I.
I do my Anki primarily by ear. I look at the front and then listen to the back (usually – for kana words I listen to the front too). I only look at the back if I get it wrong or there is something I want to remind myself of (if I’m on the go I use earphones).
By this method, at an early stage you can put English notes on the back. For example, you can, if you want, note that けど and けれど tend to be placed at the end of the clause you are conjoining contrastively while でも tends to be placed at the beginning (it’s not a rule but a strong tendency).
Now you have a quick, easy, instant audio definition and you can look at the notes if you want to, or not if you don’t.
3. The Katakana Trick
If there is a katakana loan-word from English then use it for a definition.
Isn’t this a cheat?
No. First of all, it is a very easy way to get an understandable definition in Japanese and it reminds you that the katakana word exists. Not every English word can be katakana-ized, so you are killing two birds with one stone.
The audio will probably help it stay in your mind and you can use it on the fly when it takes a few seconds too long to dredge up the fully-Japanese word from memory. It will be pronounced like a katakana-word too – and it’s important to get the feel of non-English-influenced katakana pronunciation (one of the underestimated vocabulary problems of native English speakers).
Examples:
嬉しい ハッピー (yes, it’s a common word)
対称 シンメトリー (it’s not just me. This is in the Sanseido dictionary’s J-J definition)
3. Here is a very useful trick – especially in those difficult early days of immersion when you hit sentences with multiple unknowns.
Make a card for each word and paste the sentence that caused you trouble onto the back of the card. TTS it (you can just paste the sentence and TTS together across cards).
Every time you review one of the words you hear that same sentence, which also reminds you of the others. If you have trouble remembering, this will help a lot. If not, it will move those words out of the learning stage even faster.
You can use English definitions in the notes, but for the audio you might want to just have the sentence. That should remind you of the word in question as well as the others but if not…
As usual, adjust freely where necessary.
And finally some good news – I think!
At present (since the death of Rikaisama) there is no easy, out-of-the-box, non-grey-area, way to get instant J-J definitions into Anki – and no way at all to get the kind of concise definitions we want for immersion-support cards.
But that looks as if it is changing. I am currently testing RikaiRebuilt. I told the developer that if he put in Sanseido mode I was very interested, and he has.
It’s still a bit early and buggy, but looking very promising. So very soon (or now if you don’t mind using a beta-ish version) we will have an easy, free way to get instant, concise and simple J-J definitions of anything on any web-page and pump them straight into Anki, making up J-J cards with a single keypress (plus the TTS-ing if you use my method).
Inverse ratio “rule”: the greater your input the “looser” your SRS can be
When I say “massive input vs SRS”, I am not trying to imply an opposition between the two because I believe that they are (for most kinds of memory) excellent partners. However:
SRS is the thief of immersion time.
This is a saying known to the ancients. Well, maybe not in quite that form, but it doesn’t take a sage to know that time spent on A can’t be spent on B.
And with a lot of vocabulary etc. to learn, SRS can become time-consuming. Some people advocate dropping SRS altogether in favor of pure massive input. My view is that this is actually the best approach if it works for you, but my experience is that it doesn’t work for most people.
That may be because input isn’t massive enough. But sufficiently massive input may be impractical anyway. And I suspect it isn’t just that.
The problem is, of course, that SRS is “rigged” to feed you vocabulary in a way suited to helping you remember it, and wild input isn’t. So one can tend to forget words between natural exposures.
But natural exposures are the real ground for learning. We encounter words as real meaning units in real emotional contexts, with their contextual nuances and knowing the kind of person that uses a particular word in a particular situation. We aren’t “memorizing” all this, but we are absorbing it and this is what eventually amounts to knowing a word rather than knowing its dictionary definition.
SRS is just a pinning device for holding words in place between real exposures.
This is the approach I advocate.
And we can use it to prune down our SRS.
How?
The thing to remember, which gets very obscured in other methods, is that abstract learning through SRS or anything else is (I’m stressing this point)…
a means to an end, not an end in itself.
This has important implications for many things. Including how we approach SRS.
If learning words through SRS were an end in itself, we would have to be much stricter about it. This means failing more words, which means bringing them back into play more often and increasing one’s daily SRS time considerably.
Before I realized this, like many androids, I took the view
90% right is wrong.
And if SRS were one’s means of learning rather than a handmaiden to real learning, that would be correct.
But, provided one is doing at least reasonably massive input, then in many cases
50% right is right.
Why? Well let’s think about what end SRS is a means to. And this may vary, but let’s take what I think is the most common case.
SRS is a means to pinning words so that they will be recognized when we read them.
Let’s take some scenarios:
We see the word on the front of a card and…
know how it is pronounced and know that it can have one of two related meanings – but can’t be sure which.
Pass (usually).
Why? The question to ask is “when I encounter it will the context make it clear which of the two it is?” If so, SRS has done its job sufficiently for its role, which is supporting real exposure to the extent of understandability. We are not trying to learn the word from SRS – that is the job of massive exposure.
Know the meaning but aren’t sure which of two pronunciations it is.
Pass (usually). Possibly press the “hard button”. Fail if one feels a need to get the pronunciation fixed at this stage.
Why? If you are mostly using material with furigana or anime subtitles you will be reminded of the pronunciation on future encounters. Even if not, I am personally more inclined to look them up on the fly* (but that’s me).
Are confused between two words/meanings
Often pass.
Let’s take an example. You don’t recall which of ポッチャリ and ポチャリ means “plump” and which means “splash”.
First question: if you read or hear one, what is the likelihood of not knowing which meaning is intended in context? As an android I can tell you. Precisely 0.037%. Pass.
Second question: How much do you want to be able to use one or both in conversation? If answer “not very much” then pass.
Pretty sure of the general area of meaning. Can’t actually define the word.
Could well be a pass.
With context the word would probably be understandable.
These principles also apply to putting words into Anki in the first place. There is a tendency to collect words like a squirrel to a greater extent than necessary (certainly for me).
As you get more used to kanji you are often pretty sure of the meaning and pronunciation of a word from kanji plus context. Now, you may want to Anki it just to remind yourself that the word exists for two reasons:
1. Because you want to use it on the fly
and/or
2. Because you want to recognize it when you hear it, with no kanji to help.
This is reasonable and I do it sometimes. The thing to bear in mind is that this is a trade-off. You are trading expanding your SRS time for some immersion time.
You are going to encounter the word again (or if not you don’t need to learn it).
You are also going to get better (and faster) over time at reconstructing the kanji in your mind when listening even for unknown words (from a mixture of context and knowing what onyomi are likely in this case – Japanese people do this all the time – because knowing Japanese does mean kanji-thinking).
You don’t need to worry that everything will drop off if you don’t SRS it. Some of it will. But it will get other chances. Some of it won’t, especially as you get more proficient.
Sometimes in output you will get words wrong (even though you know the components you forget the order – or you misremember exactly which two kanji it was and use a similar concept-kanji for one of them, or use the wrong reading. This happens. It does improve over time. How much time do you want to invest in ironcladding against these little errors in the short term vs. moving on with immersion?
I can’t answer that question for you, but I can suggest that you ask it rather than simply assume everything needs to be SRSed.
The point of this post isn’t to give specific instruction so much as to suggest a way of thinking strategically about the question.
Textbook Japanese tends to inculcate an exam-based view that abstract memorization is an end in itself (or a means to pass exams, which comes to much the same thing).
The ANKI/Heisig focus of the main AJATT-influenced immersion schools ironically can have a very similar effect. Especially since some “second generation” AJATT-related immersionists are prone to put more stress on the “method” than on the real immersion it was originally intended to support.
And if either of these approaches is your preferred one, of course you should ignore what I am saying here.
If not, if you are aiming for what I call direct or organic immersion, then the thing to remember is that SRS is only there as a tacking-stitch to hold things in place between exposures
And shape your strategy accordingly.
SRS is a good servant, but a very bad master.
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* Personally I find non-furigana’ed text fun for testing pronunciation (a bore if you don’t know most already of course, but if that’s the case furigana’ed text is currently best). Yes, I am reading, not “studying”, but I like words and enjoy seeing if I can guess unknown combinations of known kanji and very often can. I’m happy to do a quick look-up for the game of it – but that’s me. Often I feel sure enough not to.
You also find that an instinct for readings develops. For example I can usually guess in new compounds whether 物 is もの, もつ, or ぶつ. I don’t (yet) have a rule for helping with it, but one gets a “feeling” for what is likely.
This article first appeared on my private Patreon feed
Japanese transitive and intransitive verbs can seem like a massive learning job.
“Transitivity pairs” seem to have no rhyme or reason to their apparently random forms.
Fortunately, if we take them as they really are and understand the simple facts behind them, both the concepts and the words themselves become amazingly easy.
Let the android guide you once again.
NOTES:
Self-move verbs vs the passive voice: Why there is no confusion
1) It is well known that students can get confused between some self-move verbs and the Japanese receptive.
This is now completely avoidable because it hinges on the belief that the Japanese receptive is a “passive voice” and I think we have clearly established, that it isn’t. It is further complicated by the idea that self-move verbs are exactly the same thing as English intransitive verbs, which again I think we have disposed of in the video on this page.
2) However, the point that Electric Dragonfly-sama raised is that there is still an area of apparent near-identity between some self-move verbs and the actual passive voice (as found in English but not Japanese). Is this really the case? And if not, what is going on?
3) The answer here lies in the fact that Japanese self-move verbs run a gamut between those that are very “active” and those that are completely “static” (I am using “static” bearing in mind its etymological sense – i.e. expressing a state or condition rather than an action).
The self-move verbs on the active end of the scale closely resemble regular English intransitive verbs and denote actions like running, walking, entering, leaving, sleeping, crying etc.
The verbs on the static end of the scale do not represent actions in the sense that English understands actions at all. They represent states or conditions, but express them as ongoing actions performed by whatever exists in the given state.
These words (I haven’t done an exhaustive survey here, but from experience and a cursory survey) have a strong tendency to actually end in “aru” (あ-stem +る) and thus, perhaps historically but certainly “feelingly” to contain the idea of “existing” – which, of course is also a verb in English.
Examples of such words are:
包まる (くるまる) exist in state of being-wrapped)
重なる (かさなる) exist in state of being-piled-up)
English has no direct way of expressing these verbs and has to use phrasal workaround definitions that include the word “be”, such as “be wrapped” or “be piled up”. This is natural since, I would argue, the Japanese words contain an implied existence-verb-element because of the ある-like nature of self-move words that I explained in the video).
However, because English does not possess this kind of exist-in-a-state verb, the definitions are somewhat ambiguous and sound like instances of the English passive – because the same expressions could be used to make a passive construction, even though that is not the present intention of the definer.
So we might say (using the past tense of “be” = “was”):
“The present was wrapped (e.g. by Sakura)” – a passive construction indicating an action with a stated or implied actor.
But we also say:
“The present was wrapped (e.g. in tissue paper)” – not implying any actor or even action, but simply indicating the state in which the present existed (was).
English has very limited means for distinguishing between these two with economical grammar (and speakers do not necessarily draw a clear distinction in their minds), but Japanese has a whole class of verbs – which we can call “static self-move verbs”, or we could even cheekily coin the term “self-stand verbs” as a sub-class of self-move verbs.
These are not in any sense (grammatically) passive. It is the ways we are forced to translate them into English (which does not possess such verbs) that makes them appear so.
We may also note that the English workaround definitions have to put the verb into the past tense (even if the verb of existence is in the present, e.g. “be wrapped“), implying that an action happened and its result is now governing the subject.
These are temporary states that must have come about by the process indicated. However, this is not what our “self-stand verbs” are doing. They express states with no necessary implications as to how they arose.
English, on the other hand, is often grammatically over-specific, which is not the opposite of “vague” or the same thing as being precise. I would say that English often has jumping to conclusions built into the grammar. We are encouraged and often near-forced to specify things that we do not know to be true.
One of the differences between Japanese and English is that Japanese tries to keep specificity (the feelings of another, the gender of an unknown person, the way in which a state arose etc.) out of statements where we are not in a position – or don’t particularly want – to specify.
So, static self-move verbs have no exact equivalent in English. The distinction is a subtle one but is worth taking note of because not realizing this can lead to a confusion between static self-move verbs and the English passive.
A message from patron Mirnes Selimovic-sama asks me:
Would you mind explaining (or making a post) about the personality differences on people who use ね、な、ぜ、ぞ、っす and あたし? I would love to know what “type” of people use these, and what (maybe a bit too stereotypical) connotations are attached to each.
I’ve heard many times what each mean, but I still don’t “get” them. Like, for example あたし is supposed to be cutesy, but I’m confused who would use it, since I was under the impression people in Japan try very hard to fit in and/or not to draw too much attention. Of course this is a stereotype, but since I have very little real world references, these stereotypes (unfortunately) still dominate my mind.
Stereotypes are difficult things. I see why the books say what they do – they give some indication, but of course anything one says is a generalization and indicates a tendency rather than a “fact”. And if one isn’t very careful to hedge what one is saying, one ends up giving false impressions.
Also, there isn’t exactly “one Japan”. Even Japanese people will to some extent have differing views of what is normal depending on their age, region, circle of acquaintances etc.
For example, I have been told by Japanese people “no one really uses that” only to later run into someone who does.
Though of course there are some generalized differences between Japanese and American or European or Chinese or other culture.
So with the caveats in mind, let’s take a look at these expressions.
ね – everyone uses it. If there’s a Japanese person who doesn’t use ね I’ve never met her. From those who use it sparingly, maybe only 50 times a day, to those who use it like a verbal tic five times per sentence, everyone uses it. A lot.
な – I also discussed this in the video above and if you are interested in it I would recommend watching it. I think just about everyone uses it. The idea that it is “rough” that you sometimes see in English explanations is very misleading. It is so much a vital part of the language (marking expressions directed – literally or “dramatically”) to oneself that it would be hard to avoid. I have even argued that it works like a quasi-particle when it is embedded in a clause. For example
やさしいな と 思(おも)った
(spacing added for convenience of beginning readers)
Which means something like “How kind*, I thought to myself”. The な here, I would suggest, is not a direct quote, but a marker indicating that one thought it to oneself.
The idea that it is “rough”, as I explained in the video, really refers only to substituting な for ね – that is, using it where the more usual pattern would be to use ね. This does have a rough feel for reasons I explained in the video. But な itself is commonly used and perfectly natural and neutral, so characterizing it as inherently rough is very misleading.
ぜ and ぞ generally speaking masculine expressions. Rough-ish but not necessarily in a “bad” way, could be just a bit boisterous/sporty. I have heard varying opinions on whether they are “really” used, which presumably means they are but not among most groups.
In my experience they tend to be used by boys who pick them up from certain anime (where they are used a lot more). However, I suspect there are sections of the population – male market workers or something (pure conjecture) – who do use them all the time.
In the expression
行くぞ！
It can be used by just about anyone on the right occasion. It means “ok let’s go!”, “let’s do this thing!”
What is used much more often as a casual sentence ender is さ. This also has a somewhat masculine feel but it can be used by women and girls.
How often you hear it depends completely on what company you are in. In many (probably most) settings one doesn’t hear it at all, but I have been in places where it was used by some speakers in about half the sentences they used.
Often used by schoolboys – but that is where I was most exposed to it. I would expect there are other groups who use it. Where I have heard girls use it they used it less, and I think because they were around boys who used it a lot and picked it up a little.
Its meaning is broadly like よ and it can be used more like ね. Probably because it is informal it is less clearly defined I would have said. It tends to lend strong-ish emphasis but can also become so habitual that it is little more than a verbal tic.
っす is masculine. I haven’t heard a female human use it. But there are very few rules without exceptions here. (I even met a girl who called herself おれ). It is a shortening of です (or sometimes ます). It is a little odd since it is a formal usage made informal.
It kind of pays respect but roughens it. This is something that some men do on some occasions – say, to a senpai in a sport club where you want to acknowledge seniority but not sound stiff and formal.
It can tend to get popped onto the end of a sentence where you wouldn’t really use です – a bit the way Suiseiseki popped です onto everything.
あたし – yes, it is used. As for Japanese people not wanting to stand out. Well, it’s complicated. There are ways in which they don’t and ways in which at least some people do. Even those who do may not have the same pattern of stand-out desire or behavior as Western people.
It is worth noting in the language that standing out is not necessarily thought of as bad (not in all ways, there are ways in which it is).
For example, 抜群 (ばつぐん) which is made up of kanji meaning “remove/extract” and “group/flock” has a wholly positive meaning of “outstanding”, “better-than-most”.
A very common word for “great”, “admirable” is 偉い (えらい). The kanji is made up of two elements, the left-hand one meaning “person” (it is a squidge – to use the technical term – of 人) and the right had element meaing “different”, as in 違う (ちがう).
Slight digression, but I think relevant. I have seen lolitas in all kinds of places, not always in groups, not always in cities (even in tiny country places). I would say they get much less negative attention than they might in a western country. They certainly stand out!
This is not to say that the idea that Japanese culture is conformist or that Japanese people don’t like standing out is untrue. It is true but doesn’t always work predictably.
(And on a side-note I would say that very few Western people really want to stand out except in ways that are already group-sponsored, as it were.)
However, back to あたし. Japanese people have a choice as to how they say “I”. For men and boys in particular a choice is forced on them. 私 (わたし) in non-formal circumstances sounds over-formal (for males) and possibly a bit effeminate**. So they have to go for either ぼく or おれ either of which is making some kind of a statement about themselves. What that statement is, is covered in layer after layer of cultural implication and of course varies in each individual case.
あたし is baby-talk for 私 (わたし) which might make it sound rather extreme and affected. But remember that ちゃん is actually baby-talk for さん and everyone uses it. So much so that they had to invent たん to represent the talk of an actual baby.
Girls can use わたし, あたし, or their own given name (which is even baby-er). After a certain age the second two become increasingly unlikely.
It is not super-uncommon for girls to use ぼく though certainly not usual, and as I found out, they do sometimes even use おれ.
And I would add as a final note that they won’t necessarily be as consistent in their usages as fiction often depicts them as being. It is a convention of Japanese fiction to give characters identifiable verbal characteristics. Particularly in novels, this helps us to identify who is speaking without its being explicitly stated, but it carries over into anime and manga.
This article first appeared on my private Patreon feed. A lot of material starts out there and much never gets published elsewhere. If you would like to become part of this thriving learning and creative community (as well as browse other public posts, please visit me there)
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Notes:
* やさしい means kind/gentle. You may also have heard it meaning “easy”. It can mean either but the two have different kanji 優しい: kind/gentle, 易しい easy.
** There is a charming comic moment in the anime 君の名は (きみのなは) where a girl who finds herself inhabiting the body of a boy in a different part of the country refers to herself as わたし. There is a stunned silence while the boy’s friends stare at “him”. Panicking she says
わたくし？
This is the much more formal variant of わたし and of course a move in quite the wrong direction. She then tries ぼく but it turns out he is an 俺男
(おれおとこ – ore-using male).
This piece arose from an answer to a question on the nominalizing no and perhaps explains this particular aspect a little more clearly than in the video The Japanese nominalizing no particle.
A message from patron Mirnes Selimovic-sama asks me: