On Dotards and Dictionary Dumping – getting Japanese words right!

Originally published on Patreon, Vocabulary

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.

Toe-in-the-Water J-J: 3 tips to help you start much earlier and easier than you think!

Japanese immersion, Originally published on Patreon
J-J doesn’t need to be an obstacle course

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.

Remember that with immersion-support Anki you are not trying to completely define the word, just pin it.

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).

That’s what we get for being good bunnies.

This article first appeared on Cure Dolly’s Patreon feed.

Massive Input vs SRS: the Inverse Ratio Effect

Japanese immersion, Originally published on Patreon, Vocabulary

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.

___

* 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

3 facts make “Japanese transitive and intransitive verbs” easy

Originally published on Patreon, Structure, Video

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.

Japanese actually does this quite often:

疲れた (つかれた)
Loose translation “I’m tired”
Literally “(I) became (and therefore am) tired”

お腹が空いた (おなかがすいた)
Loose translation “I’m hungry”
Literally: “(my) tummy became (and therefore is) empty”

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.

Interestingly, I would see this as being of a piece with Japanese not allowing us to speak directly of another person’s subjective states. While some people complain that Japanese is vague, I would say that it is very precise in saying only what it actually knows to be true.

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.

(This note first appeared on my Patreon feed)

 

How Japanese People Really Talk (ね、な、ぜ、ぞ、さ、っす、 あたし)

Originally published on Patreon, Uncategorized

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.

I’ve discussed the cultural reasons behind the heavy use of ね in this video. Essentially it is a sort of lubricant; a way of assuring that we are all in harmony and agreement.

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)

_____

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).

“Japanese Conjugation” Myth Busted! Never Conjugate Again! Potential form unlocked too in one fell swoop!

Structure, Video

What do “Japanese conjugation” and “flat earth” have in common?

They are both names for something that should have been consigned to the dustbin of human ignorance long, long ago.

“Flat earth” has. “Japanese conjugation” unfortunately hasn’t.

Until now.

Click the “play” button and see history in the making.

And make Japanese a lot easier at the same time!

 

Notes:

It took me quite a while to work out the best order to tackle things. I think the potential is the right choice for introducing the entire “Japanese conjugation” concept because it doesn’t involve any new “complications”.

The “complications” of the whole “Japanese conjugation” system only exist if you have absorbed confusing ideas in the first place – but most of us have, since they are the only ones you can find.

The only real “complication” of the potential is identical to the “complication” explained in the last lesson – concerning 好き and adjectives of emotion.

That is, the unbelievably destructive insistence that the grammatical subject must be the human agent of transitive potential verbs (and therefore that the が particle has no fixed value and can randomly perform the function of the を particle).

Since this is in fact identical to the previous (gratuitously created by Western prejudices) “problem”, I think it makes sense to tackle this one in the following lesson. It is easier to understand while the general principle is fresh in our minds and it reinforces the previous knowledge.

Also, by seeing what a wide range of language is affected by this problem,  it sets us up to understand the somewhat different problem of the receptive (so-called “passive”) – which is based on exactly the same prejudice but has to shoehorn the same Western model into a different Japanese box.

There is a delicate balancing act as to how much to refer to the misconceptions.

Ideally we would be simply explaining from scratch and ignoring problems that wouldn’t be problems at all if you never even knew about them.

There’s nothing confusing about the Japanese that isn’t clarified the instant you realize that

こわい can mean “scared” or “scary” depending on whether it is pointing at “me” or the thing that scares me.

The same principle is at work in all the “problem” cases we have discussed in this lesson and the last one. It is one little difference between languages that should take five minutes or less to clear up.

(わたしが)　うらやましい
I’m envious

おねえちゃんが　うらやましい
my sister is envy-inducing
(natural English: I’m envious of my sister)

and you can also say:

おねえちゃんの　ドレスが　うらやましい
my sister’s dress is envy-inducing
(natural English: I’m envious of my sister’s dress)

Note that the last two examples show that even English allows a certain adaptability of (what in English is) the object in some cases.

This absolutely isn’t difficult. It takes a very brief adaptation to the fact that these words work slightly differently (more adaptably) in Japanese.

What makes it a problem is that, rather than simply explaining this, Western “Japanese grammar” has invented a whole elaborate system that has nothing to do with how the Japanese works and everything to do with how it might have worked if it had been a Western language.

So – how much to refer back to the mare’s-nest that is Eihongo grammar is always a slight conundrum. The ideal, I think, is:

Enough to make it clear to people who have learned a bit (or a lot) of Eihongo grammar that we are referring to the same grammar areas and signalling that it is re-think time.

But…

Little enough not to distract those who are learning from scratch, or to give the old misdescriptions an undue prominence that will end up with us falling in the briar patch.

Because we all know what happens when you fall in the briar patch.

I hope I am achieving that balance.

How Textbooks DESTROY Your Japanese: Dolly’s longest and most controversial video

Structure, Video

Today’s video is my longest so far, clocking in at nearly 20 minutes. Possibly also my most controversial, though honestly I don’t see how anyone can seriously try to refute what I am saying.

I think a long video was in order because I am tackling one of the really key issues in Japanese structure and one of the core misconceptions that spreads its tentacles over many areas of Japanese…

…and makes what is in fact clear and simple into an absurd tangle in the minds of most students.

I am dealing here with a core problem of Western “Japanese grammar” and showing how simple and understandable real Japanese grammar is.

It affects many areas of Japanese, but by way of example, I decided to focus on  desire/emotion expressions because they throw up this problem very extensively.

And this kills two birds with one stone by allowing me to introduce these structures at the same time (and clarify them for those who already know them).

 

A piece of semi-trivia here is that I deliberately chose the crepes example because it is the one used by Tae Kim-sensei in his “proof” that there is no grammatical subject in Japanese. I have the utmost respect for Tai Kim-sensei. And as I have said before, he makes this assertion not because he is illogical but because he is much more logical than the usual explicator of conventional Eihongo Japanese.

If you accept the premise of Eihongo grammar then it logically leads to conclusions that eat away the entire structure, ending up – quite logically – with denying the grammatical subject altogether.

So Tae Kim-sensei’s logic is impeccable, but unfortunately a false premise can only lead to a false conclusion. The textbooks continue to talk about the existence of a grammatical subject while saying things incompatible with it, because they fudge the logic.

If you are interested in this “controversy” I wrote an article about it here.

I have great respect for Tae Kim-sensei and more rather than less because he relentlessly thought out the logic of his position where everyone else shied off and fudged it.

I had hesitated over linking to Tae Kim-sensei’s article because it really can tie one’s logic-circuits in knots about how Japanese works.

However, I think it is worth doing. Please don’t read it until you are comfortable with the logic of this video. Because if you aren’t, it will make the  confusion worse than ever.

If you have absorbed the video, however, I think you will gasp and roll on the floor in paroxysms of amazement (well, perhaps not actually on the floor, but I wanted to show off that I can spell paroxysms).

Seriously, I think you will be astonished that a mind as fine as Tae Kim-sensei’s can produce quite such an all-fired mess of the whole structure of Japanese.

And I say this with no disrespect at all. It is precisely because his mind is so fine that he is worth referring to at all. This is what the inside-out illogical premises of Eihongo grammar will do to the very best.

So be glad you got the Magic Talisman from some odd-looking android!

Japanese Adjectives: the inside secrets that make the whole thing easy

Basic Japanese, Structure, Video

My whole enterprise of unlocking Japanese started with Japanese adjectives!

My short explanation of the so-called i- and na- adjectives proved so popular that I turned it into a video. It tells you four facts that you need to know about Japanese adjectives – not one of which the standard textbooks and Japanese learning sites ever tell you.

It’s kind of amazing. These are the basic things you have to know in order to use Japanese adjectives properly and the standard teaching methods just leave you to half-intuit them. If you’re lucky you do, and if you’re not lucky – well hard luck.

So we cleared that up a few years ago. Made the video last year. Why a new Japanese adjectives video now?

Well the last one starts off from the “i-adjectives and na-adjectives” notion of the standard textbook explanations. And it finally makes them clear and understandable.

But what if we start from scratch? What if we explain how the whole adjectival concept is different in Japanese than in English? What if we show how not just “adjectives” (i-adjectives) and adjectival nouns (na-adjectives) but also verbs work as adjectives all the time in Japanese?

And how this is essential to the most basic structure of how Japanese works all the time.

Can we do all that in one short video? Yes we can.

Isn’t it terribly complicated? Not at all! It’s looking at them in the wrong way (the way the textbooks do) that makes it complicated.

Just sit back and let the whole thing become crystal clear!

You will find the worksheet to go along with this lesson right here. This will help you to consolidate the information and really understand it. It’s on my Patreon, but you don’t need to be a patron to access this worksheet.

The answer sheet is here but please don’t peep at it until you’ve completed the worksheet!

Using these tools you can cement your understanding of Japanese Adjectives.

Japanese Verb Groups and the Te-form, Ta-form

Basic Japanese, Structure, Video

Japanese verb groups are very simple to understand, but I have found various people confused about them.

Calling them “u-verbs” and “ru-verbs” certainly doesn’t help! It’s one of the sillier things the textbooks have come up with. All verbs end in the u-sound but only a small number actually end in う. And more る (ru)-ending godan (so-called u-verbs) than there are る (ru)-ending ichidan (so called ru-verbs)!

Go-dan figure! So let’s take a simple, rational look at Japanese verb groups. You’ll be using them a lot, so it’s a good idea to get them right from the start.

And it’s not nearly as hard as the textbooks make it!

Japanese Verb Tenses: How past, present and future really work

Basic Japanese, Structure, Vocabulary

Japanese verb tenses – the “past, present and future” can be confusing partly because standard explanations of  even the English tense system is rather obscure and misleading.

If you’re reading this, then that probably doesn’t matter for you in English (though it confuses a lot of learners). But it muddies the waters of Japanese and makes the Japanese tenses seem more obscure than they need to be.

So how do we go about setting it all straight?

Easy. Let an android doll do it for you.

This video will make everything clear!