日本語を勉強しよう! Let's Learn Japanese! - Everything and anything that can help with learning Japanese language

[Celestial Peace]

I did add an article about the difference between は and が to the OP.

Can't find it.

I'm a bit confused about what's hard to understand with the rest. Do you have examples?

の中に and で both are translated as "in the/at the/on the".

まま and ながら both are translated as "while".

から and ので both are translated as "because".

I really can't tell the difference and which context each should be used.

 

[残念。]

まま and ながら both are translated as "while".

Mama is saying that the thing before it kind of remains in a state while nagara indicates that something is happening while the other thing is happening

の中に and で both are translated as "in the/at the/on the".

Remember how I was saying ni is like a big arrow? No naka ni indicates that something is happening inside of whatever it's attached to.

De is saying something happened from that place, object, idea.


I can't really explain the other one. I'm not a walking dictionary, I'm just explaining it as I understand from this point in time so disclaimer: I may be retarded.

 

[Ms. Dia Gnosis]

Can't find it.

の中に and で both are translated as "in the/at the/on the".

まま and ながら both are translated as "while".

から and ので both are translated as "because".

I really can't tell the difference and which context each should be used.

Ha vs Ga

They're not exactly translated the same way.

Here are some explanations from jlptsensei
で vs 中
Summary:
で can -
1. indicate where an action is happening (for example, がっこうでにほんごをべんきょうする。- I study japanese at school.
2. indicate a means or method
(For example, 車で行く- I will go by car)
3. Indicate a total amount of something
(For example, 1時間で終わります - I will finish in one (total) hour
4. Indicate a reason for action
(For example, 病気で今日休みます - Because I'm sick, I'm taking today off)

中 as a kanji means inside, in the center, in the middle.
As a grammar particle, it means currently, at some point throughout.

まま
から
ので
Summary:
から is 1. because, since (expresses causal relationship between A and B); 2. From (depends on what comes before から, can imply that you got something from somebody)
ので is because of, given that. It's used to explain a reason for an action. More examples in the link.

 

[Ice Mountain]

I took a class back in college (taught by a native Japanese lady, fwiw) where we had to watch a Japanese drama with Japanese subtitles, with the goal of analyzing and understanding the conversational Japanese. If there was a word or grammar point that completely stumped us, we could jot it down, but the goal was to get through as much as possible without pausing (sort of like an audio/visual tadoku). I really enjoyed it because it forced my brain to make connections and actually try to understand what was going on without crutches.

I still do this with different anime, and it has indeed helped my reading and listening over the years. Though, I don't know of any solid resources besides sniffing around for JP-subbed raws on nyaa. But the method itself is neat because you can go out and find something close to your skill level - like kids' anime for beginners or old documentaries for those seeking a challenge. If you're a ADHDtard like me who can't sit down and study, I recommend it!

 

[quisquiliae]

Though, I don't know of any solid resources besides sniffing around for JP-subbed raws on nyaa. But the method itself is neat because you can go out and find something close to your skill level - like kids' anime for beginners or old documentaries for those seeking a challenge. If you're a ADHDtard like me who can't sit down and study, I recommend it!

For Japanese subs: Kitsuneko has a large database. Sometimes the subs will line up to a specific Encoder's release that is easy to find, a lot of the time you'll have to do a bit of sub-syncing yourself which isn't too hard if you use tools like mpvacious and alass. This thread is looking good so far, thanks OP. It's nice to have a learning thread on something that's not discord or reddit. Overall I have had a lot of luck with the tatsumoto-ren guide specifically it's resources list that is quite comprehensive. It is also really helpful for setting up a learning environment with Linux/Free Software.

 

[Abbadon's Gate]

@Ms. Dia Gnosis Another good source for daily reading at a pretty easy level.

 

[Jonah Hill poster]

Not sure if this would be applicable, but the e-learning platform Alison has course(s) regarding learning the Japanese language and the customs of it:

https://alison.com/tag/japanese-language

https://alison.com/course/diploma-in-japanese-language

This diploma course covers the fundamentals of Japanese. The language is spoken by over 120 million people worldwide, not only in Japan but also in large migrant communities found in the United States, Brazil and across East Asia and the Pacific Rim. This course lays out some basic grammar and vocabulary to get you up and running with your new skills and suits anyone who wants to communicate in Japanese or study the culture of Nippon.

I was actually hinting at trying to start this, since if you go through and finish, you might actually get a diploma in it. Plus, it’s also accredited by the CPD (Continual Professional Development UK), so that’s a bonus.

 

[Hustlin' Thick]

Not exactly learning but I like the 大辞林 and 実用日本語表現辞典 dictionaries (both are monolingual). fuseji helps you look up censored words.

For translation, I liked The Routledge Course in Japanese Translation and Making Sense of Japanese.

 

[Celestial Peace]

Does anyone here have a problem with 敬語? Specially with 尊敬語/謙譲語?

I'm always unsure if adding お+verb+します/致します is diminishing or elevating yourself. I've tried to use it with my Japanese teacher once and ended up making an ass outta myself.

 

[Ms. Dia Gnosis]

Does anyone here have a problem with 敬語? Specially with 尊敬語/謙譲語?

I'm always unsure if adding お+verb+します/致します is diminishing or elevating yourself. I've tried to use it with my Japanese teacher once and ended up making an ass outta myself.

そうですね。敬語は難しいです。使ったことがありませんけど。

The whole point of keigo is to humble yourself. How would you word it in a way that elevates you?

お+verb+します is for when you're talking to your superior about yourself, hence you're diminishing/humbling yourself. I don't think you'd even need it outside of work.

@Ms. Dia Gnosis Another good source for daily reading at a pretty easy level.

Oh yeah, I know this site. Very good news site with built in furigana for easy reading. I'll add this to OP.

Not sure if this would be applicable, but the e-learning platform Alison has course(s) regarding learning the Japanese language and the customs of it:

https://alison.com/tag/japanese-language

https://alison.com/course/diploma-in-japanese-language

And it's free too? Very good. Adding this to the OP

Not exactly learning but I like the 大辞林 and 実用日本語表現辞典 dictionaries (both are monolingual). fuseji helps you look up censored words.

For translation, I liked The Routledge Course in Japanese Translation and Making Sense of Japanese.

I'm adding those with digital versions too.

Thanks for contributing so much, everybody.

 

[Abbadon's Gate]

De is saying something happened from that place, object, idea.

I am extremely new to Japanese, but from what I can tell from my random bullshit of trying to read NHK Web Easy every day.

に seems to indicate that you have done, will do, or are presently doing something in relation to the location whereas で seems to be used to indicate a location in which you are talking about but aren't necessarily doing something at.

Like I'll read とても強い台風１０が東京で。。。

Sorry if my grammar is atrocious there, I'm working through Genki atm, my vocabular (though still limited) is much stronger.

 

[残念。]

Oh yeah, I don't think anyone has mentioned Cure Dolly yet. Good grammar resource if you can get over the creepy aesthetic.

I am extremely new to Japanese, but from what I can tell from my random bullshit of trying to read NHK Web Easy every day.

に seems to indicate that you have done, will do, or are presently doing something in relation to the location whereas で seems to be used to indicate a location in which you are talking about but aren't necessarily doing something at.

Like I'll read とても強い台風１０が東京で。。。

Sorry if my grammar is atrocious there, I'm working through Genki atm, my vocabular (though still limited) is much stronger.

You may not be doing anything there, but the typhoon is.

 

[Ms. Dia Gnosis]

Istg each explanation I look up only makes the matter more confusing, but from my understanding, に simply designates a place where X is, while で designates a location where X does something.

So, it's a difference of "学校にいる" vs
"学校で勉強している"

 

[Osama Bin Laden]

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLa3roq8Fxop4j0AVAZmfOHK0Qh2NCLgZQ&si=pCIK3LTeB8VOsYRH

 

[She Brings The Rain]

You have to pay for it, and the price is a bit steep, like a hundred burgerbucks for a year, but I've been using NativShark and I really enjoy it. Anki bores me to years and I could never get with Wanikani, but this has enough variety that it keeps me interested. No real exercises, because they expect you to use the language outside of the website, but the grammar is in manageable chunks, and they use native speed speaking examples in casual/irl formal and textbook casual/irl formal, which is nice. You also don't get body slammed with a thousand kanji to remember per unit, so as long as you keep up with your reviews, it's not too bad. If your reviews do pile up, they don't let you progress until you clear them.

I sound like a fucking shill but I never really hear people talk about it, probably because 90% of JP learners are young weebs with no real money of their own. I have Genki and Tobira, and while I love textbooks because I love grammar, I still felt like I wasn't really learning.

 

[Welsh Catgirl Enjoyer]

My go-to is Renshuu. I think there's word lists for Tobira/Genki so if you wanna use it as a complimentary to that, then it's fine. Free version is more than capable. Pro version is a bit over $100 USD for a lifetime license, don't remember how much yearly is.

I've finished Genki 1 and probably gonna try and get some more familiarity with it before I begin Genki 2 (I have made a start on N4 Kanji tho). Since I'm at roughly N5 level now, I'm not sure whether there's really any podcasts or anime immersion that'd help for more passive learning.

I also picked up James Heisig's Remembering the Kanji, but it definitely doesn't feel like a textbook. It's basically a giant ass table that stretches across the entire book, and the order the Kanji are taught in with that book is a bit weird since it's focussing on radicals first. I'll see how well I get on with that one.

 

[The Woop-Town Supper]

i'm only a beginner myself (somewhere between n4 and n3) but i have a bunch of resources i can throw onto the pile, i spent way too long amassing a collection before actually starting to learn in earnest.

youtube-
kaname naito - he was already mentioned on page 1 of the thread but i'm posting him again because he's great, he explains some of the trickier words and grammar points in an easy to understand way (his english is extremely good for a japanese) and plays out entertaining dialogs so you can see them demonstrated in a natural japanese conversation.
nihongo con teppei - japanese language podcast channel aimed at japanese learners
easy peasy japanesey - analyses phrases from anime
takumi - calligrapher. useless if you don't care about writing, but if you do i personally found it helpful at the start to actually see the characters being written rather than just looking at stroke order diagrams/gifs

some common japanese idioms

more subtitles repositories:
https://github.com/Matchoo95/JP-Subtitles - mostly anime but i think it has some tv shows and stuff too
https://djtguide.github.io/library/sub.html - anime, tv, movie. also has mega.nz links for bulk downloading

test your ability to hear pitch accent

i just uploaded some of the textbooks i've hoarded too, i got most of these from a private torrent tracker so i'm not sure which (if any) are easily available on the public net:
https://mega.nz/folder/fIACmRZK#uXW68LW5IEFXmXRE_gNezQ
i'd recommend grabbing "handbook of japanese grammar patterns" and maybe "all about particles" as references even if you aren't a textbook kind of person.

not sure where i picked up this tip but when writing it's useful to keep a weblio/jisho/immersionkit/sentencesearch.neocities sentence search tab open (weblio/jisho are in the op already, but it's easy to miss the sentence search if you don't know they exist. jisho needs the hashtag in the search query and if you don't know what 英語例文 means you probably wouldn't click it on weblio). any time you're unsure of a word/phrase, put it into a sentence search. if you can't find that phrase in an example sentence, it's probably not a natural phrase.
we've all seen esls saying things that while they're intelligible, and maybe technically correct going by dictionary definitions, are just totally unnatural and wouldn't actually be said by any native english speaker (languages are silly and synonyms often can't actually be used in place of each other in some phrases, it just "sounds wrong"). you can avoid this somewhat using this method and punch way above your weight when beginning to output.

tadoku offers a bunch of free graded readers you can download.
if you're not familiar with "graded reading" think back to when you were in primary/elementry school and they had you pick out books from the library in a certain "band" (or "grade") and had you read them out loud while they monitored you, and you progressed up the bands as you got better. the idea of tadoku in particular is purely extensive rather than intesive reading, and they suggest you don't stop to use a dictionary, just skip over anything you struggle to understand, and just take in the language and gather what you can from context and pictures when reading them.

you can use jo mako's spreadsheet to get an overview of how difficult various pieces of native content are (it has anime, games, manga, vns, and tv shows) and ease yourself into gradually harder media in a similar manner to graded readers. jpdb (already in the op) has difficulty ratings so is another good resource, but i prefer to make my own anki decks (tatsumoto's workflow with mpvacious/manga-ocr, yomichan, and ankiconnect is really good) and keep everything local on my pc rather than use their website srs system.

for 99% of people taking the actual jplt exam is a waste of time and money and you shouldn't bother unless you need it for work or it's a personal goal, but if you want to test yourself you can find past exams and mock exams online for free: official jplt sample questions | past jlpt exam papers
and there's also the jcat, which is a "placement test" that tells you what level of jlpt you might be able to pass. i've also heard they use it to place foreigners on courses in japanese universities.

also while learnjapanese.moe is a decent starter's guide, i'd recommend to avoid associating with the community there because shoui (the admin) is a literal tranny. who knows what he gets up to on that discord of his... at this point i think everyone here can say it's safe to assume that every discord tranny is a nonce and/or groomer

 

[Abbadon's Gate]

Tofugu is another really solid option. They also own Wanikani I believe. They have a ton of articles about various particles and grammar point but I think their most useful stuff is the Learn Hiragana and Learn Katakana guides. I think most people in the last three pages are well beyond needing those two guides, but if some farmer in the future wants to start, you can learn Hiragana and Katakana in like 2 days. I think that's an extremely important fundamental step, and its not super hard so it'll help build your confidence in going forward to harder things.

 

[残念。]

also while learnjapanese.moe is a decent starter's guide, i'd recommend to avoid associating with the community there because shoui (the admin) is a literal tranny. who knows what he gets up to on that discord of his... at this point i think everyone here can say it's safe to assume that every discord tranny is a nonce and/or groomer

It's best to avoid DJT related discords in general, they're full of lolicons.

Edit: That's a problem with any chatroom around learning Japanese, you got trannies, and then on the other side you have trannies that say nigger. Either way, there's trannies, and it sucks.

 

[Welsh Catgirl Enjoyer]

Tofugu is another really solid option. They also own Wanikani I believe. They have a ton of articles about various particles and grammar point but I think their most useful stuff is the Learn Hiragana and Learn Katakana guides. I think most people in the last three pages are well beyond needing those two guides, but if some farmer in the future wants to start, you can learn Hiragana and Katakana in like 2 days. I think that's an extremely important fundamental step, and its not super hard so it'll help build your confidence in going forward to harder things.

Adding onto this, a few of my own observations:

Yes. Katakana is very important. I think a lotta people see Hiragana as the "primary alphabet" and assume that means they can put off Katakana, but I definitely wouldn't do that. It might be less common but it's still like, in every other sentence.

Also, You don't necessarily need to be perfect with kana before you move onto vocabulary and grammar. Having real words or grammar points to tie those kana too will probably make them much easier to remember. You're going to see て, で, か, は, が, お, へ, を and に so much when you start doing particles that you won't need to use the mnemonics anymore, alongside stuff like the です copula, or common starting words like わたし, おいしい, ラメン, がくせい and せんせい.

Progress update on my own study too: I've now begun studying N4 Kanji, putting my total up to just below 250 Kanji. I'd say 100 of which I'm confident in. The main difficulty right now is that the N4 Kanji set seems to have a lot more complex and slightly ambiguous kanji that can be easily confused. For example: 運動 and 運転 are pretty easily confused for me.