This really is the game-changer in learning Japanese.

After a few centuries of antiquated methods – finally a rational, organic approach to Japanese structure.

I don’t know why no schools or textbooks or websites ever explain Japanese in all its beautiful simplicity and logical clarity.

It doesn’t matter any more because their day is over.

Finally, the great red sun rises over the first Japanese lesson of the New Dawn!

Now you can learn Japanese from scratch the organic way.

What used to be “complicated Japanese” is now “Japanese made easy” and understandable to anyone.

Notes

If you want to do the exercise you should post it in the comment section linked here. (Not on this page).

If you need the super-basic vocabulary list, you’ll find it here.

This is the last in my nano-series (heh heh) on all those sentences that end in various na, no, ni, combinations.

It can really feel like kana-soup at first can’t it?

Actually they are very easy and self-explanatory once you understand how they really work. The real problem is that because the standard “Western Japanese grammar” texts never explain a few basic facts about Japanese structure they can seem difficult and confusing when they really aren’t.

This should clear up the problem completely, but if you still have questions, please post them in the comments section of the video on YouTube.

And…

To see the entire sentence-ender series just go here.

Godan and ichidan verbs (so-called u and ru verbs) are one of the few areas where Japanese can seem as painful as a European language.

All ichidan verbs end in る (ru) but so do a significant number of godan verbs. So it really is true that you have to know them on a case-by-case basis. And for once even Dolly doesn’t have the One Logical Ring that binds them all.

But wait! Put away those word-lists. There’s still a much smarter way to learn which is much simpler and more effective than rote memorization.

Dolly explains all in this eye-opening seven-minute video.

This week’s new video is on desu/da. One of the earliest and simplest things we learn.

However, I have seen people at JLPT N3 level and beyond getting into trouble with more complex sentences simply because they have never learned what da/desu really does.

As so often, the textbook explanations don’t make it properly clear.

Actually some of them do tell you, in passing, the technical term that would give you the key to the mystery.

But then they don’t explain that term properly and carry on with the usual rough-and-ready dumbed-down explanations that  leave your Japanese understanding like a poorly-built building that will come down when a strong wind blows.

So is this going to be some complicated technical explanation that the textbooks don’t tell you because it’s too difficult?

Not at all! It’s very simple and straightforward. In fact, it’s easier than what they do tell you. And once you know it your understanding of the da/desu function will be as solid as a rock.

This is part of a mini-series or “story arc” (heh heh) within the current sequence of videos, because part of the confusion is intertwined with the way i- and na-adjectives aren’t properly explained (one of my earliest grammar articles which I made into a video last week) and will lead on to a discussion of “na no desu” and related constructions in videos to come.

So if you need more desu (and who doesn’t?) watch this video now.

Supporting videos:

For more information on the concepts in this video, please see:

I and Na Adjectives: what the textbooks don’t tell you (article and video)

I Am Not an Eel – the invisible Japanese particle (article)

Japanese Sentence Structure: the simple secrets (video)

One of the problems with textbook Japanese is that they treat Japanese grammar as if it were a series of random, unconnected “points” when really it is an organic, beautiful and amazingly logical whole (much more so than European grammars, including English).

In fact, I think it is because they expect language to be complicated and random, like European languages, that they treat Japanese as if it were so, and thus make it so for the poor learner.

Da/desu fits together with everything else in basic Japanese to make a rounded whole.

The “suffering passive” or “adversity passive” is one of the weirder notions that the Western version of “Japanese grammar” foists on us.

According to the textbooks, Japanese people, for some quite inexplicable reason, lapse into the passive voice in order to complain or lament about some event.

They don’t.

As we have explained before, there is no passive in Japanese, at least not in the sense of the English “passive voice”. It is the insistence that the Japanese ukemi (receptive form) is “passive” that leads to this odd notion of a “suffering passive”.

What is actually happening in the meiwaku ukemi (nuisance receptive – the accurate Japanese term for the “adversity passive”) is much simpler and actually is something that English speakers also do all the time – although it isn’t considered to be correct grammar in English.

Once you know this, you can forget the Byzantine explanations of European-language-based “Japanese grammar” and see the nuisance-receptive form as it really is – simple, logical and easily intuitive.

Watch this seven-minute video and stop suffering passively forever!

‘Cause dolls do what doctorates don’t.

Notes:

This video unpacks pretty deeply the confusing tangle that is Western “Japanese grammar”. The “suffering passive” misconception is born out of three other misconceptions. I think this video works on its own but you may need some help (and it certainly would be a good idea anyway, to dispel the other three.

So I am listing the three underlying misconceptions and giving links to the lessons that clear them up.

“Suffering Passive”: Underlying Errors

1. That the Japanese receptive form is something like the English passive voice.
2. That it is a “conjugation” – which in turn is based on
3. The notion that the amazingly simple and logical Japanese helper-verb and helper-adjective structure is “conjugation” in the European sense.

If the ideas are unfamiliar to you, you will also find it useful to watch the lessons on the zero pronoun and particle and Japanese ga-centered grammar structure.

Sorry for all these links! I do think the video above is understandable by itself but it is based on unpacking the whole misguided structure of Europeanized “Japanese grammar”.

And this is something you are going to want to see for yourself if you want to make the whole of Japanese grammar – not just the “suffering passive” – as simple as it really is.

If you have questions, please ask them in the comments section of the video. I usually answer pretty quickly.

Te iru, te aru, te iku and te kuru are among the most commonly used constructions in Japanese.

Once you’ve learned how to make and recognize the te-form (made super easy in our last video lesson) you’ll want to start using it. It isn’t difficult and the textbooks don’t do a bad job of teaching it.

But…

They do tend to omit telling you the rationale behind how it all works, and that makes life harder.

Why do they do it? In this case I think it’s because they don’t want to burden students with “something extra to learn” – but that something is what makes it all hang logically together.

So it’s a bit like making people carry the shopping home without a bag because the bag would be “something extra to carry”.

Yes it would – but it’s the something that makes carrying the rest easier!

It’s not a huge deal in this case (the way it is in some of the grammar taught in this series) but if you know, for example why te iru (meaning “be”) is used the way it is, and what is the logic behind using te aru in place of te iru, it makes it a lot easier to know what you are doing instinctively rather than just trying to remember abstract “rules”.

More importantly, by learning it logically and organically we  start to get a grasp of the way Japanese, unlike Western languages, fits together in various ways like so many very regular, very logical lego-blocks.

So let’s devote 8 minutes to learning just how te iru, te aru, te iku and te kuru really work!

Notes:

1. One other irregularity (apart from kuru and suru) is iku which is irregular in te-form only (it is itte instead of iite). This really is the only other irregularity you will encounter in basic Japanese.

2. Why do we say akete aru when we say aite iru? This is because logically te aru can only be used with transitive verbs while te iru can be used with both intransitive and transitive ones (but tends to favor intransitive).

Our article on transitive and intransitive verbs makes this much easier. But if you’re a beginner don’t worry about it too much yet. All you need to know is that 開く means open (as in “the door is open) while 開ける means opening something (as in “I opened the door”).

Te aru needs a transitive verb because it is always stressing that somebody caused the state something is in. Te iru doesn’t and is happy with either. If this is all gobbledegook to you, don’t worry. You’ll get to it as your Japanese level advances.

The te-form of verbs is one of the more difficult parts of Japanese because it really is a small set of “facts” that you have to learn.

Most of what gets presented as the random “gotta-learn-em-all” facts of Japanese grammar actually aren’t that at all. They are part of a logical system that the textbooks never teach and I have explained the real secrets in my book Unlocking Japanese and in various articles and video-lessons.

However, the te-form of verbs is one exception in that there really are six different forms depending on how the verb ends, which you just have to know.

Mendokusai (Japanese for “pain in the petunia”), ne?

Fortunately it can be made a lot easier.

In this video I give a simple mind-map with mnemonics that will allow you to dominate the te-form in a very short time. The video is under 8 minutes and you may want to watch it a couple of times. But you should have the te-form of verbs conquered for life in under an hour!

Notes (and advice):

There are  just three notable exceptions to the system presented here. They are Japan’s famous two irregular verbs kuru and suru, plus iku, “go”. Iku, instead of becoming the slightly awkward-sounding iite becomes itte. They work like this:

する （suru）→　して  (shite)

来る （くる kuru） →　来て  （きて kite）

行く （いく iku）→　行って  （いって itte）

Even though I mention these for completeness, I don’t recommend “learning” them now unless it feels easy.

My advice is, if these three feel confusing, just ignore them for now. Don’t let the whole system feel over-complex for the sake of these three. Consolidate the overall system in your mind. You will easily pick up the few exceptions over time.

A lot of people stay shaky on the te-form of verbs for a long time (especially recognizing it on the fly). With this system you can master the whole structure in a very short time.