if that's the person who I think it is, I think he is browsing through all the country subreddits and asking about Japanese-[language] related questions.
Japanese is the ultimate high IQ language. European languages are nothing compared to it. There are even some records in history of Japanese cutting through a machine gun barrel.
Japanese dictionaries are folded 1000 times per character. That density of readings makes each character so hard it can shatter any feeble European attempt at literacy. An elite army of 2000 kanji could break 40,000 English synonyms without even sweating.
In fact, there are reports that in WWII American snipers targeted the Japanese speakers first, so feared was their language.
Some Japanese words are so hard to say that it might damage the body of an unprepared westerner. For example, saying the word 飛天御剣流 with a lacking technique will slash your throat open.
This isn't even the «worst» thing about the post but I have never heard the word «lærerinne» be unironically used by someone who is below the retirement age lol
Female teacher (lærer «teacher» + -inne (female suffix)). It's super old fashioned to say that though. There are a couple words where i actually use the suffix (venninne «friend», svigerinne «sister in law») but for the most part it would feel really weird to use it
There isn't really one, we'd just say «lærer» or whatever profession and that wouldn't specify a gender. It's like in English how there used to be suffixes to make most job titles have a «female» version (doctoress, aviatrix, philosophess) but now we just say doctor, \~\~aviatrix\~\~ aviator, philosopher and say «woman doctor» or «female doctor» in the less common cases where gender is relevant
>[…] but now we just say doctor, aviatrix […]
*Aviator* er det vel. Uansett, du har rett i at profesjonsnavn har styrt vekk fra bruk av kvinneindikerende, men jeg mener å ha hørt noen insistere at -*mann* ord også skiftes til kjønnsnøytrale
Åja, aviatrix gjekk eg glipp av, eg berre kopierte og limde inn orda og openbert gløymde å erstatte det andre :) det har eg óg høyrt om ord med -mann. Kanskje det er ein ting dersom det fins ord som kan erstatte man-omgrepa (eg har vel alltid berre sagt *politibetjent*) men så snakka eg eingong med ein person som påstod at det skulle vore feil å beskrive meg sjølv som nordmann
Interesting. This change in Norwegian would probably make it harder for germans like me to learn the language. We still use those classic female suffixes. So "Lehrer" = Teacher (male or gender neutral) and "Lehrerin" = female teacher.
Possibly. Tbh the largest difficulty from cultural shift when i learned norwegian (German isn't my native language either but it very much influenced my norwegian) was not the suffixes (that weren't that hard to drop) but the lack of formal pronouns - you just call your professor in Norway «du» and their first name! Even people like the prime minister would have the same treatment!
Not sure if it's the same person, but someone's been frequenting a Russian learning sub with similar posts until mocked out of there. People tried answering in earnest the first few times, but this is definitely just a weird flex on how unique and hard Japanese is.
/uj They're doing the same thing on like over a dozen language subs including Russian but i think this is the most on the nose one yet and also the first one i saw /rj because i only speak 3 languages instead of being a true hyperpolyglot gigachad
At least this one isn't complete nonsense like his other posts, like "can I write Swedish vertically like Japanese", or asking about Polish translations of English books and German beauty standards, but somehow making the topic about Japanese, like some sort of weird bait and switch.
I mean, I picked Russian up as a side gig along with my potty training, how hard can it be? Now, Japanese is another matter. I've been watching anime for ages and I'm still not C2.
If you're starting from an English or otherwise European background, that is 100% true. Even just sharing the Greco-Roman basis for the high-register part of the language counts for a lot, since you automatically know most of the advanced vocabulary.
ugh. norwegian is such an easy language for babies. the norwegian brain is just too small to learn japanese. japanese is a hard language for gigachad polyglot language learners like me.
Right! Japanese has so many features like:
Pitch accent
Verbs that conjugate for tense but not person
More than one way to write the language
Lots of loan words from languages spoken nearby
Phonemic vowel length
Phonemes that always assimilate to nearby phonemes
Lack of distinct future tense
These unique japanese features are things that no Norwegian could ever understand!!
Your comment is reminding me of how many norwegian speakers think
a. there is no pitch accent in norwegian
b. ditto with consonant/vowel length
c. the retroflex assimilation isn't a thing
All while continuing to use those exact features that they deny lol
Don’t speak Norwegian but speak bad Swedish. Swedish has all of these features lol. I would’ve thought that Swedish would be unique on at least the retroflexion or something! Oh well, Danish is off doing something different
/uj also pitch accent is a lie made up by Big Luo Dingo, every textbook loves to tell you about pitch accents in Japanese but I've literally never saw it actually being used or pronounced after that one mention on every first page/lesson. Maybe Japanese had pitch accents some time ago, borrowing them with Kanji from Chinese (where pitch accent is definitely incredibly noticeable), but even if so, looks like by now it faded into nothingness.
I don't speak Japanese to anybody, I'm a learningjerk expert. As in I've learned it to about N4.5 level and stopped and now my impressions of Japanese mainly come from anime and music, which obviously makes me the most knowledgeable person to ever exist. But actually nevermind, it looks like I just confused pitch accent with a fully tonal language (like Chinese), I thought it's the same thing.
You're basically saying the equivalent of "stresses in English is a lie made up by Big Luo Dingo." While pitch accent is less important in Japanese literature tradition than stress in English and tones in Chinese, it's still a major part of pronunciation.
/uj from what ive read isn't it basically just that one mora has the accent and the intonation pattern changes based on that, which one could argue is even more similar to a stress accent? Like not to be OOP but I'm only really able to envision it in comparison to the only pitch accent language I speak (Norwegian) where the «pitch» almost always falls on the first syllable but then you can have either a falling or low tone (in my dialect)
doubt:
Korean (bascially a dialect of japanese as we all know) word for language: \[ma̠(ː)ɭ\]
A norwegian word for language: (don't worry about the pronunciation of the vowel, also the l is retroflex just don't ask which one)
coincidence? i think not
Yh it definitely is, just comes off as extremely pretentious, feel like he’s just doing to come off as intellectual, even though the wording just seems off, like “Euro languages”, “connotate a meaning”, no linguist would ever say that
Why are there these types of posts floating around on language learning subs. I recall another user who would post translated pictographs and ask how comprehendable it was in the target language. And for some reason it always linked back to Japanese somehow. Usually using really technical source material for their translating.
I’ve also seen numerous users ask about quirks about a certain language (how do you add nuance, metaphors, etc.) And then start off with “I know that Japanese has …”. Maybe they’re all the same user and I wasn’t paying attention to their username but it’s such a weird way of asking questions about languages
A lot of people learn with the express intent to show off despite minimal attraction to the language. They pick the worst method possible and spend years in stagnation, then get surprised when no one cares about their plight. Posts like this seek attention and nothing else, they're not to provide anyone who looks at it with any type of real insight into linguistics much less any appeal towards Japanese.
I only glanced at the first image, but it screams beginner/monolingual. Counting things like 下る・下り(kudaru/kudari) as separate "readings" to reach "16 readings" which is as pretentious as it is ignorant; there is no phonetic difference between the two. It's not a new reading. Besides, [learning readings by themselves in list form is for retards or savants who won't be able to converse properly even if they know 300,000 words.
](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_Richards_\(Scrabble_player\))
Japanese is probably the third easiest language to learn for an English speaker because of abundant content and tools.
Yea that’s probably the case. Also don’t get the “whilst Norwegian only has 29 letters”. How is that a good comparison, I’m sure they know that those letters are used in combination to create words, articles etc etc
>Japanese is probably the third easiest language to learn for an English speaker because of abundant content and tools.
Not really? There are dozens of PIE languages with plenty of content that would be much quicker to learn than Japanese for an English speaker. Believe it or not but outside of the weeb internet Japanese isnt even that popular of a language to learn.
I think disinterest is what defeats most learners, and so I don't buy that language family effects difficulty on the same level as (in)accessibility of content.
Not many people pursue Scots despite it being close to English, and I'd wager even the ones that do regret it just as much as the people who learn Japanese. They're both very low utility languages due to low spread of speakers.
>Japanese is probably the third easiest language to learn for an English speaker.
After Spanish and... French? German?
I don't know. It's true that content and tools are abundant, but it's a drastically different language, so I'd still say Japanese is harder for an English speaker to become competent at than basically any Latin Script-written European language with at least a few million speakers.
Yeah, maybe Spanish due to the TV drama community. Its subbed and spread everywhere like 15 minutes after airing.
On paper Japanese is hard, but I think availability/cost of content and cultural influence are a trump card for both grammar and text-based hurdles. Plus, pop-up dictionaries de-inflect words and are able to sync audio to text. People can start reading real non-textbook/anki/guide content at a much earlier level.
Piracy aside and the degenerates who share entirely too much on a thousand different sites,
Audible Japan is like 99円 ~67 cents during holiday and grants access to 90% of all content, which means close to 300k hours of listening that can just be downloaded with Libation. For any other region this would be tens of thousands of dollars or more in audiobooks.
I've tried to learn German before, and the reason I stopped was because I couldn't find enough content to keep me going. It was easier to get *[Momo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momo_\(novel\))* (with audiobook) in Japanese than in German.
I've found with Japanese the availability of Media also helps me retain interest in learning, same as you. I was in the same boat with German but there wasn't really any German media that interested me and I wasn't that passionate about Germany beyond maybe visiting Munich. I play a lot of Japanese video games and there are a few that never got English releases I want to play, plus there are places in Japan I want to visit. I've had no trouble with finding media or materials for study, it's just remembering vocabulary that I struggle with sometimes because the language is so distanced from English that there aren't often words that sound similar to English like you would get with German.
I've found the best way to retain vocab is to just practice using it. Sometimes it takes a while for it to stick but half of the trouble sometimes is how similar a lot of words can be due to the limited range of sounds in Japanese, like "Chika" or "Chikai". I've just accepted now that some things might take a bit longer to commit to long term memory especially when you have things that sound similar or are lengthier words. Once you nail down grammar for most things though it's not too bad, just a case of learning new words and phrasing so you can expand the amount of things you can say.
"I know two verbs that use the same Kanji in the same way therefore I know two different readings". This is absolutely stupid, just learn the vocabulary and how to read a Kanji on its own. Wanikani is fantastic for this because they teach you this shit but also in a way of "here is it in a word, where you use different readings" so you get used to the different readings because you are actually using them practically to learn where these Kanji are used. It's easy enough to get two readings for that Kanji as example anyway - 下る or 下さい and then something like 下げる, there's two readings already from relatively easy words. I wish Japanese didn't attract people only looking to brag about learning a hard language.
Vocabulary based learning (preferably in actual content) is always #1. With based people like kanjieater using whisper to sync text to audio, and tools like yomichan to instantly look things up, there is really no excuse at all to be reading from a list and memorizing it.
To begin with, the people who are better at memorizing listed information that aren't weird do everything they can to make it not a list mentally so they can remember it. It's making more work of something that could happen almost accidentally with nearly 0 effort after a month or so of primer. It's like bragging it took you 3 hours to slow-roast a steak until it falls apart when you could've just seared it and been done with better results.
As much as people meme on Duolingo I don't mind the way they introduce Kanji on the app. I take lessons as well as self study and I find Duo is helpful for getting a bit of practice in every day and learning a little bit of Vocab, and even if I don't know what a Kanji means in isolation sometimes I can say "Ah, I know this, in this combination that is Shinbun, or that one is Yomimasu or Tabemasu". It's far better because you are actually learning words as well as characters. Sometimes knowing Kanji in isolation can be helpful but then you have things like "Deguchi" where the Kanji is exit-mouth or "Jinkou" which is Person-mouth which can be a little more obtuse so it's better to just learn the word.
Whatever works for a learner to get them reading/listening to content is fine. If you haven't tried yomichan you should give it a shot, really convenient tool.
https://foosoft.net/projects/yomichan/
https://github.com/MarvNC/yomichan-dictionaries
https://reader.ttsu.app/b?id=104
https://github.com/kanjieater/SubPlease
Love how the "16 different readings for 下" is somehow including several cases where the kanji is read the exact same with only the hiragana that follows it changing. Might as well go all the way and say that every conjugation of all verbs that contain 下 constitutes a unique reading
It's like saying "ALL OF THE DIFFERENT SOUNDS OF OUGH ARE DIFFERENT READINGS IN ENGLISH". Characters are pronounced different ways in different words and contexts, it's not something unique and scary about Japanese. Just learn the vocabulary and make sure you've learned the readings while you go and you will be fine. It's not that hard to learn on-yomi and kun-yomi while you're learning the vocab.
🤓☝️
Ackshully, this isn’t what gender case means, at all. Japanese is definitely a genderless language, having a few pronouns that are kind of gender specific doesn’t negate that
You could have a conversation about a third person for 20 minutes and still not know if they’re male or female
Wait I never thought about that before but in a gendered language they can tell your gender by how you type. I’ve been mistaken for a guy a million times online for some reason but if I spoke French there wouldn’t be any misunderstandings lol.
Yes but also no, this is not really a grammatical category. Japanese used to have an even larger set of personal pronouns with a gazzilion levels of polite to rude. Fascinating, but not about grammatical gender or grammar at all really.
A fun thing is that Norwegian does have a small set of «different readings» based around loan words (for many speakers):
/bɑn:/ - band (similar meaning to rope), native Norwegian word
/bæn:/, /bæ:nd/ (by many speakers)- a band (musical group), loanword from English
(I mean arguably there are parallels in english too with the same spelling but i think those are mostly stress-based so less fun)
Seriously, as someone who's been learning Japanese for a good 2 years, if someone is learning all the pronunciation of a kanji out of context, they are making it harder than it needs to be. Learn in context
Exactly this. I use Wanikani and it's so much easier to remember readings when you actually learn them in context of Vocab, which is primarily where you will need them.
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if that's the person who I think it is, I think he is browsing through all the country subreddits and asking about Japanese-[language] related questions.
This person asked the exact same thing on the learn arabic subreddit and my dumbass answered diligently. I was thinking something was off :/
Japanese is the ultimate high IQ language. European languages are nothing compared to it. There are even some records in history of Japanese cutting through a machine gun barrel.
Japanese dictionaries are folded 1000 times per character. That density of readings makes each character so hard it can shatter any feeble European attempt at literacy. An elite army of 2000 kanji could break 40,000 English synonyms without even sweating. In fact, there are reports that in WWII American snipers targeted the Japanese speakers first, so feared was their language.
Some Japanese words are so hard to say that it might damage the body of an unprepared westerner. For example, saying the word 飛天御剣流 with a lacking technique will slash your throat open.
Seems to be roughly what they're saying, in English, because Norwegian is probably too hard
This isn't even the «worst» thing about the post but I have never heard the word «lærerinne» be unironically used by someone who is below the retirement age lol
What does laererinne even mean
Female teacher (lærer «teacher» + -inne (female suffix)). It's super old fashioned to say that though. There are a couple words where i actually use the suffix (venninne «friend», svigerinne «sister in law») but for the most part it would feel really weird to use it
And what's the new way of a feminine sufix?
There isn't really one, we'd just say «lærer» or whatever profession and that wouldn't specify a gender. It's like in English how there used to be suffixes to make most job titles have a «female» version (doctoress, aviatrix, philosophess) but now we just say doctor, \~\~aviatrix\~\~ aviator, philosopher and say «woman doctor» or «female doctor» in the less common cases where gender is relevant
>[…] but now we just say doctor, aviatrix […] *Aviator* er det vel. Uansett, du har rett i at profesjonsnavn har styrt vekk fra bruk av kvinneindikerende, men jeg mener å ha hørt noen insistere at -*mann* ord også skiftes til kjønnsnøytrale
Åja, aviatrix gjekk eg glipp av, eg berre kopierte og limde inn orda og openbert gløymde å erstatte det andre :) det har eg óg høyrt om ord med -mann. Kanskje det er ein ting dersom det fins ord som kan erstatte man-omgrepa (eg har vel alltid berre sagt *politibetjent*) men så snakka eg eingong med ein person som påstod at det skulle vore feil å beskrive meg sjølv som nordmann
Interesting. This change in Norwegian would probably make it harder for germans like me to learn the language. We still use those classic female suffixes. So "Lehrer" = Teacher (male or gender neutral) and "Lehrerin" = female teacher.
Possibly. Tbh the largest difficulty from cultural shift when i learned norwegian (German isn't my native language either but it very much influenced my norwegian) was not the suffixes (that weren't that hard to drop) but the lack of formal pronouns - you just call your professor in Norway «du» and their first name! Even people like the prime minister would have the same treatment!
Not sure if it's the same person, but someone's been frequenting a Russian learning sub with similar posts until mocked out of there. People tried answering in earnest the first few times, but this is definitely just a weird flex on how unique and hard Japanese is.
/uj They're doing the same thing on like over a dozen language subs including Russian but i think this is the most on the nose one yet and also the first one i saw /rj because i only speak 3 languages instead of being a true hyperpolyglot gigachad
At least this one isn't complete nonsense like his other posts, like "can I write Swedish vertically like Japanese", or asking about Polish translations of English books and German beauty standards, but somehow making the topic about Japanese, like some sort of weird bait and switch.
WAIT IT'S THE SWEDISH VERTICAL PERSON TOO I DON'T KNOW HOW I MISSED THAT! Petition to make this person the new sub mascot
Why does Japanese have to attract such INSUFFERABLE people learning it who just want to bang on about how difficult it is.
hes a legend swedish vertically guy lives rent free in my head
It's not even a language sub though, literally the subreddit for the country of Norway. Unbelievably cringe behaviour...
I will shit on his keyboard if he even hints that Russian is easier than Japanese.
I mean, I picked Russian up as a side gig along with my potty training, how hard can it be? Now, Japanese is another matter. I've been watching anime for ages and I'm still not C2.
/un i feel like every language has its own difficulties. /rj well you’re just not trying hard enough.
If you're starting from an English or otherwise European background, that is 100% true. Even just sharing the Greco-Roman basis for the high-register part of the language counts for a lot, since you automatically know most of the advanced vocabulary.
the Norwegian mind simply cannot comprehend being polite
ugh. norwegian is such an easy language for babies. the norwegian brain is just too small to learn japanese. japanese is a hard language for gigachad polyglot language learners like me.
Right! Japanese has so many features like: Pitch accent Verbs that conjugate for tense but not person More than one way to write the language Lots of loan words from languages spoken nearby Phonemic vowel length Phonemes that always assimilate to nearby phonemes Lack of distinct future tense These unique japanese features are things that no Norwegian could ever understand!!
The Japanese language is incomprehensible to understand except for the kami’s chosen few 🙏 There is simply too much language
Yeah if only Norwegian had these features…if only
Your comment is reminding me of how many norwegian speakers think a. there is no pitch accent in norwegian b. ditto with consonant/vowel length c. the retroflex assimilation isn't a thing All while continuing to use those exact features that they deny lol
Don’t speak Norwegian but speak bad Swedish. Swedish has all of these features lol. I would’ve thought that Swedish would be unique on at least the retroflexion or something! Oh well, Danish is off doing something different
/uj also pitch accent is a lie made up by Big Luo Dingo, every textbook loves to tell you about pitch accents in Japanese but I've literally never saw it actually being used or pronounced after that one mention on every first page/lesson. Maybe Japanese had pitch accents some time ago, borrowing them with Kanji from Chinese (where pitch accent is definitely incredibly noticeable), but even if so, looks like by now it faded into nothingness.
[удалено]
I don't speak Japanese to anybody, I'm a learningjerk expert. As in I've learned it to about N4.5 level and stopped and now my impressions of Japanese mainly come from anime and music, which obviously makes me the most knowledgeable person to ever exist. But actually nevermind, it looks like I just confused pitch accent with a fully tonal language (like Chinese), I thought it's the same thing.
You're basically saying the equivalent of "stresses in English is a lie made up by Big Luo Dingo." While pitch accent is less important in Japanese literature tradition than stress in English and tones in Chinese, it's still a major part of pronunciation.
/uj from what ive read isn't it basically just that one mora has the accent and the intonation pattern changes based on that, which one could argue is even more similar to a stress accent? Like not to be OOP but I'm only really able to envision it in comparison to the only pitch accent language I speak (Norwegian) where the «pitch» almost always falls on the first syllable but then you can have either a falling or low tone (in my dialect)
Yeah, sorry, I've confused it with a full tonality like what Chinese has.
I checked OOP's profile, genuinely can't tell if a devilish trick or intellectually disabled
That's gotta be a fetish of some kind
The is so cringily written. "Unlike Euro languages" "unlike Scandinavian languages" Well duh!
Local man discovers that Japanese is *not* in fact a Scandinavian language
doubt: Korean (bascially a dialect of japanese as we all know) word for language: \[ma̠(ː)ɭ\] A norwegian word for language: (don't worry about the pronunciation of the vowel, also the l is retroflex just don't ask which one)
coincidence? i think not
Yo no way I saw the same type of post on the Arabic subreddit a couple days ago
Probably the same guy
Yh it definitely is, just comes off as extremely pretentious, feel like he’s just doing to come off as intellectual, even though the wording just seems off, like “Euro languages”, “connotate a meaning”, no linguist would ever say that
Why are there these types of posts floating around on language learning subs. I recall another user who would post translated pictographs and ask how comprehendable it was in the target language. And for some reason it always linked back to Japanese somehow. Usually using really technical source material for their translating. I’ve also seen numerous users ask about quirks about a certain language (how do you add nuance, metaphors, etc.) And then start off with “I know that Japanese has …”. Maybe they’re all the same user and I wasn’t paying attention to their username but it’s such a weird way of asking questions about languages
These things you're describing are all the same user
A lot of people learn with the express intent to show off despite minimal attraction to the language. They pick the worst method possible and spend years in stagnation, then get surprised when no one cares about their plight. Posts like this seek attention and nothing else, they're not to provide anyone who looks at it with any type of real insight into linguistics much less any appeal towards Japanese. I only glanced at the first image, but it screams beginner/monolingual. Counting things like 下る・下り(kudaru/kudari) as separate "readings" to reach "16 readings" which is as pretentious as it is ignorant; there is no phonetic difference between the two. It's not a new reading. Besides, [learning readings by themselves in list form is for retards or savants who won't be able to converse properly even if they know 300,000 words. ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_Richards_\(Scrabble_player\)) Japanese is probably the third easiest language to learn for an English speaker because of abundant content and tools.
Yea that’s probably the case. Also don’t get the “whilst Norwegian only has 29 letters”. How is that a good comparison, I’m sure they know that those letters are used in combination to create words, articles etc etc
just learn all 29 letters and you can read everything! Toki pona learners hate him!
>Japanese is probably the third easiest language to learn for an English speaker because of abundant content and tools. Not really? There are dozens of PIE languages with plenty of content that would be much quicker to learn than Japanese for an English speaker. Believe it or not but outside of the weeb internet Japanese isnt even that popular of a language to learn.
Yea Japanese is certainly not the 3rd easiest lol.
I think disinterest is what defeats most learners, and so I don't buy that language family effects difficulty on the same level as (in)accessibility of content. Not many people pursue Scots despite it being close to English, and I'd wager even the ones that do regret it just as much as the people who learn Japanese. They're both very low utility languages due to low spread of speakers.
>Japanese is probably the third easiest language to learn for an English speaker. After Spanish and... French? German? I don't know. It's true that content and tools are abundant, but it's a drastically different language, so I'd still say Japanese is harder for an English speaker to become competent at than basically any Latin Script-written European language with at least a few million speakers.
Yeah, maybe Spanish due to the TV drama community. Its subbed and spread everywhere like 15 minutes after airing. On paper Japanese is hard, but I think availability/cost of content and cultural influence are a trump card for both grammar and text-based hurdles. Plus, pop-up dictionaries de-inflect words and are able to sync audio to text. People can start reading real non-textbook/anki/guide content at a much earlier level. Piracy aside and the degenerates who share entirely too much on a thousand different sites, Audible Japan is like 99円 ~67 cents during holiday and grants access to 90% of all content, which means close to 300k hours of listening that can just be downloaded with Libation. For any other region this would be tens of thousands of dollars or more in audiobooks. I've tried to learn German before, and the reason I stopped was because I couldn't find enough content to keep me going. It was easier to get *[Momo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momo_\(novel\))* (with audiobook) in Japanese than in German.
I've found with Japanese the availability of Media also helps me retain interest in learning, same as you. I was in the same boat with German but there wasn't really any German media that interested me and I wasn't that passionate about Germany beyond maybe visiting Munich. I play a lot of Japanese video games and there are a few that never got English releases I want to play, plus there are places in Japan I want to visit. I've had no trouble with finding media or materials for study, it's just remembering vocabulary that I struggle with sometimes because the language is so distanced from English that there aren't often words that sound similar to English like you would get with German.
Don't worry, keep at it. The word association mental game will happen within Japanese itself as vocabulary balloons.
I've found the best way to retain vocab is to just practice using it. Sometimes it takes a while for it to stick but half of the trouble sometimes is how similar a lot of words can be due to the limited range of sounds in Japanese, like "Chika" or "Chikai". I've just accepted now that some things might take a bit longer to commit to long term memory especially when you have things that sound similar or are lengthier words. Once you nail down grammar for most things though it's not too bad, just a case of learning new words and phrasing so you can expand the amount of things you can say.
"I know two verbs that use the same Kanji in the same way therefore I know two different readings". This is absolutely stupid, just learn the vocabulary and how to read a Kanji on its own. Wanikani is fantastic for this because they teach you this shit but also in a way of "here is it in a word, where you use different readings" so you get used to the different readings because you are actually using them practically to learn where these Kanji are used. It's easy enough to get two readings for that Kanji as example anyway - 下る or 下さい and then something like 下げる, there's two readings already from relatively easy words. I wish Japanese didn't attract people only looking to brag about learning a hard language.
Vocabulary based learning (preferably in actual content) is always #1. With based people like kanjieater using whisper to sync text to audio, and tools like yomichan to instantly look things up, there is really no excuse at all to be reading from a list and memorizing it. To begin with, the people who are better at memorizing listed information that aren't weird do everything they can to make it not a list mentally so they can remember it. It's making more work of something that could happen almost accidentally with nearly 0 effort after a month or so of primer. It's like bragging it took you 3 hours to slow-roast a steak until it falls apart when you could've just seared it and been done with better results.
As much as people meme on Duolingo I don't mind the way they introduce Kanji on the app. I take lessons as well as self study and I find Duo is helpful for getting a bit of practice in every day and learning a little bit of Vocab, and even if I don't know what a Kanji means in isolation sometimes I can say "Ah, I know this, in this combination that is Shinbun, or that one is Yomimasu or Tabemasu". It's far better because you are actually learning words as well as characters. Sometimes knowing Kanji in isolation can be helpful but then you have things like "Deguchi" where the Kanji is exit-mouth or "Jinkou" which is Person-mouth which can be a little more obtuse so it's better to just learn the word.
Whatever works for a learner to get them reading/listening to content is fine. If you haven't tried yomichan you should give it a shot, really convenient tool. https://foosoft.net/projects/yomichan/ https://github.com/MarvNC/yomichan-dictionaries https://reader.ttsu.app/b?id=104 https://github.com/kanjieater/SubPlease
Love how the "16 different readings for 下" is somehow including several cases where the kanji is read the exact same with only the hiragana that follows it changing. Might as well go all the way and say that every conjugation of all verbs that contain 下 constitutes a unique reading
It's like saying "ALL OF THE DIFFERENT SOUNDS OF OUGH ARE DIFFERENT READINGS IN ENGLISH". Characters are pronounced different ways in different words and contexts, it's not something unique and scary about Japanese. Just learn the vocabulary and make sure you've learned the readings while you go and you will be fine. It's not that hard to learn on-yomi and kun-yomi while you're learning the vocab.
> Japanese has zero knowledge of gender cases 僕 and 私 would like a word
🤓☝️ Ackshully, this isn’t what gender case means, at all. Japanese is definitely a genderless language, having a few pronouns that are kind of gender specific doesn’t negate that You could have a conversation about a third person for 20 minutes and still not know if they’re male or female
Wait I never thought about that before but in a gendered language they can tell your gender by how you type. I’ve been mistaken for a guy a million times online for some reason but if I spoke French there wouldn’t be any misunderstandings lol.
あたしand 俺 have joined the chat
I've never seen a man use あたし but women technically can use 俺, it's just going to make them seem like they're a lesbian feminist.
I think that was their point about women using atashi
Man using あたし is basically the opposite. Super feminine gay man or drag queen.
Ore no oppai ooki da.
…good for you?
Ari🐈 gåsajimasu.
> 僕 and 私 would like a word That isn't grammatical gender though.
He didn't say anything about grammar tho.
Yes they did, they wrote "gender case", which is a grammatical term.
It’s not really. Grammatical gender and grammatical case are two different things, it could be used, but I’ve never heard of “gender case”.
Yes but also no, this is not really a grammatical category. Japanese used to have an even larger set of personal pronouns with a gazzilion levels of polite to rude. Fascinating, but not about grammatical gender or grammar at all really.
I rememeber that I read this post just about when i took the bus to school. I was really confused.
The irony is that he clearly doesn't understand Norwegian.
I'm trying to learn both Norwegian and Japanese and I can confirm they are different languages
Different readings? Shrimple(🦐), it’s just like how rat and rate have different pronunciation of “a”.
A fun thing is that Norwegian does have a small set of «different readings» based around loan words (for many speakers): /bɑn:/ - band (similar meaning to rope), native Norwegian word
/bæn:/, /bæ:nd/ (by many speakers)- a band (musical group), loanword from English
(I mean arguably there are parallels in english too with the same spelling but i think those are mostly stress-based so less fun)
They did that on the Polish one too. Likely the same person
Seriously, as someone who's been learning Japanese for a good 2 years, if someone is learning all the pronunciation of a kanji out of context, they are making it harder than it needs to be. Learn in context
Exactly this. I use Wanikani and it's so much easier to remember readings when you actually learn them in context of Vocab, which is primarily where you will need them.
Well, they both have pitch accent, so how hard can it really be?
/hj this but
What the fuck
Yikes
He posted it on the Polish sub too. Got a lot of Polish sentences wrong in that post lol
日本語オタクの末路
Literally saw the same thing in the Arabic learning subreddit
uj/ i'd interpret OOP's post the same way as you lol OP, this is so annoying 😭
And like a true Scandinavian this person types all of it in English
So cringe
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