So Many Choices: Grammar [Books]

Japanese grammar. You start off studying it thinking, “Say, this isn’t too bad!” And then you get into て form, and adjective conjugations, and set grammar constructions, and then you listen to real Japanese people speaking outside of a classroom, and realise that you know nothing, John Snow. But, you have to learn some kind of rules, so when you go to speak, people can cheerfully smile at you and say 「日本語は上手ですね?」. Japanese people are very polite, you see. This entry is a bit long, so I am going to talk about apps that I use for grammar in a separate post. Books Holy cow, there are a lot of… Read More

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So Many Choices: Vocabulary

There are a lot of ways to learn Japanese vocabulary. This is one of the times where I think a mix of self-study methods is better. Textbooks I started learning my vocabulary the old-fashioned way. Took some Japanese courses, didn’t do a lot of my homework, and then stammered in class when 先生 asked me a question. I don’t recommend this as a great method, but still, you do retain some things. Genki I/II Sure, there are lots of other textbooks out there, but these give you a great start in studying Japanese. Sure, the situations and vocabulary are a bit skewed towards academia (do I really need to immediately… Read More

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お久しぶりですね?(2/?)

これは日常のブログ投稿だね?(笑) 人生はいつも忙しいからこのサイトを聞捨ている。悪い考えだと思う。 今年は日本語を学ぶのは本気な気持ちを集める。秋は日本へ行きたい。楽しい時と願う! それから今日の私の聞く事と話す事は将来より良くなければなりません。 よいいちにちを。

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A Tale of Two 文法

So I’ve been using Bunpro on my computer, and today I saw the app for it on Google Play, so I decided to add it to my collection of Japanese language apps. Except when I tried to log in with my ID and password, I couldn’t. After a few tries, I took a closer look, and saw that the app was called Bunpo, not Bunpro. Intrigued, I went on a bit of a detective hunt. If you go to the Bunpo home page, you will find that there is a Contact Us heading, but there is no hyperlink on it. After digging a bit on Twitter, I found this tweet:… Read More

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Easy Tomato

My Current Study Routine

So, you can’t study Japanese and not study daily. You can squeak by with less study time in languages closer to English, but Japanese demands a lot of daily studies. I’m going to share my current study tools, and maybe some of them are new to you. Kanji I mean, there are arguments about how hard you need to study kanji if all you want to do is speak the language. But if you’re like me, getting exposure to this part of the writing system helps you learn the spoken part faster. Wanikani I have used Wanikani in the past. It was good for getting down some of the basic… Read More

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Google Translate and You

Google Translate. The lazy person’s way to language. Full of errors, especially with non-Western languages. A waste of time for the serious student. Well, anyway, that’s what I used to believe. Now, I don’t believe it so strongly. (All the following is based on what I do in Android. I’m sure something similar can be done in iOS.) Here’s what I currently do when I get a sentence from a Japanese person on HelloTalk that I can’t figure out. First of all, I copy and paste it into Jota+, because sometimes a really tiny Kanji that gets a bit bigger in my text editor suddenly becomes comprehensible. If that didn’t… Read More

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nama

Why doesn’t Maggie Sensei get more Love?

I just realized today that every time I’ve done a search for a piece of Japanese grammar, and Maggie Sensei’s site comes up, I always get super useful content from her everytime. She explains everything clearly, gives lots of examples, and has bonus dog pictures! Today I looked up the grammatical meaning of との, and there it was, a complete list of all the particles that could be used with の , lots of clear examples, and a dog picture. Also today, I finally noticed she has a Patreon, and I subscribed immediately. I don’t have any affiliation with her, other than being a satisfied Internet user of her services.… Read More

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This Word is Rare

So I’ve already written about how I’m using the Android app Aedict as my main Japanese dictionary. It’s really handy, acts as a simple translator, but, it has one feature I can’t understand. It (like every Japanese-English dictionary I’ve seen) uses Jim Breen’s dictionary data as the source of all the words. And, it gives a “rarity” for each word I have looked up on it. I questioned some of the rarities before, but today I really had to check what was going on. I was typing out a reply on HelloTalk to someone, and I wanted to check that I was spelling こちらこそ correctly (no doubled vowel sounds anywhere),… Read More

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Go big or go home…

Go big or go home… …is a recipe due to make you fail in studying a new language. You need to do it every day, regularly. I’m as guilty as anyone else of failing to do this. So this is my new plan going forward in 2018. I’ve set my WaniKani subscription to expire by next December. So I will need to finish the course there in a year, which is certainly doable, especially since I’m not starting from level 1. There are some new online grammar resources, like bunpro.jp. And Dogen on Patreon. Heck, I might even take a physical course somewhere this year. So, go big or go… Read More

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お久しぶりですね?

It’s been a long time since my last blog entry. So what have I been doing with my Japanese studies? HelloTalk I’ve been using this app quite a bit to get answers on Japanese grammar, give answers to English grammar, and practice speaking some Japanese. Meetups I’ve been going to a lot of Japanese-English meetings via Meetup.com. I don’t know how these are going to be affected, given that they were recently bought by WeWork, but I guess I’ll find out. WaniKani Getting back into kanji studying. I’ve given myself a year to finish up using this online resource. That’s it. I don’t want this to become a dead blog,… Read More

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