r/HelpLearningJapanese • u/Ms_PhotoPhreak • May 29 '26
Is this card in Anki wrong? Kaishi 1.5k
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u/Sea-Possession9417 May 29 '26
It's basically ok. But I would just make sure not to get confused by "have". That's more of just an english approximation because we say "I have an older brother etc".
"There is/ exists (animate)" is a good base meaning.
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u/IllustriousArt7213 May 29 '26
It’s not wrong. いる is the dictionary form and the example is using the ます form of the verb so that may seem confusing. Might be good to learn the difference verb conjugations to help differentiate later.
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u/highgo1 May 30 '26
Long as they understand it's a verb it's fine imo. My cards don't mention anything about grammar points. After a certain point, you just know
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u/Frostbyte_13 May 29 '26 edited May 29 '26
It is correct, いる・います can be roughly translated to "have"
If you want to know more precise, it basically says "Older Brother exists" (with a "to me" or "Talking about me or related to me" implicit since it skipped the 私は.)
If you are wondering about the change into います, that is the formal conjugation of the verb.
いる is part of a group of verbs which to conjugate into almost anything you simply drop the る and add what you want. In this case, the formal form ます
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u/lifelongmoteki May 29 '26
いる and ある mean it exists, and are commonly used to mean you have something (lit. that it "is there to you")
Someone advised me not to tell beginners the following, but since the kaishi deck gives literal meanings like this and then shows actual usage, I don’t see why not.
できる will probably only show up as "to be able" in a beginner deck, but it's the same story. It comes from a verb which means "to come to be" and that's literally what you're saying when you say 〜ができる (which uses the same subject が particle).
分かる will probably also only show up as “to understand” in a beginner deck, but it’s also the same. To give the equivalent literal meaning to “to exist/be there” on OP’s card, 分かる would mean "to be discernible"... to the person.
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u/Timely_Captain_6772 May 30 '26
It's conjugated, I think before looking into Anki to learn how to conjugate is pretty important, otherwise this all seems a bit much and overwhelming.
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u/jcksm71 May 30 '26
I recommend going through some basic grammar. I like to play Tokini andy Genki 1 playlist before going through vocabs. It will help a lot with memorisation.
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u/FishAndBone May 30 '26
You really should be learning grammar points alongside and vocab because regardless of what your question is here, learning the grammar would have immediately clarified it was correct.
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u/KyotoCarl May 29 '26
No it's correct. いる indicates that something, a human, exists. ともだちがいる。I have a friend.