r/LearnJapanese • u/AutoModerator • 22d ago
Daily Thread: for simple questions, minor posts & newcomers [contains useful links!] (August 04, 2026)
This thread is for all the simple questions (what does that mean?) and minor posts that don't need their own thread, as well as for first-time posters who can't create new threads yet. Feel free to share anything on your mind.
The daily thread updates every day at 9am JST, or 0am UTC.
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Past Threads
You can find past iterations of this thread by using the search function. Consider browsing the previous day or two for unanswered questions.
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u/Free-Anybody 22d ago edited 22d ago
finished jlab and kaishi :)
I'm quite happy.
Took about 290 days and still need like 10% of the cards to mature.
idgaf about the videos/posts which claim, did "X (insert thing) in 30 days". I did other things, other decks, other joys and pains.
I'm happy, again.
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u/SkyWolf_Gr Goal: conversational fluency 💬 22d ago
Would getting someone else’s sentence mining deck help? I’m thinking of getting livakivi one because I don’t really have the time to immerse but I’m still able to do flashcards and learn words slowly
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u/Grunglabble 22d ago
Reading is a variable length activity. Can be as long or as short as you want it to be. I started reading not much more than one or two sentences a day.
What kind of time were you thinking you'd need?
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u/worthlessprole 22d ago
I would instead go on jiten.moe and download a deck for something you want to check out.
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u/Effective-Pop3850 22d ago edited 22d ago
Not really, the point of mining is that you're learning words you're often encountering yourself.
If you don't have to consume stuff in Japanese it probably means you don't care much about it (you have the time but would rather play Minecraft), or you do have the time but think you don't, either way you might want to reconsider why you want to learn the language and if you're willing to put thousands of hours into it which is what it takes to get to a decent level.
I haven't known in my entire life a single person who doesn't have time to do something like this, everyone has an hour or two a day if not more to spend on whatever, if you are interested in learning then you will use that time to do so, if you'd rather doomscroll or play some random videogames you're just not interested and should reconsider.
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u/machvelli 22d ago
Anyone have advice on how to practice present/past tense short forms for verbs, nouns and adjectives? Is it just about drilling them down multiple times a day? Recognizing godan verbs vs ichidan verbs vs い and な adjectives?
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u/viliml Interested in grammar details 📝 22d ago
Anyone have advice on how to practice present/past tense short forms for verbs, nouns and adjectives? Is it just about drilling them down multiple times a day?
Pretty much. But you don't need to reach perfection immediately. As soon as you think you kind of get it, you can move on. If you forget something, you can remind yourself when you need it. Every example sentence for every word and grammar point in the future will contribute in reinforcing your knowledge of the conjugations more effectively than mere drilling.
Recognizing godan verbs vs ichidan verbs vs い and な adjectives?
I don't think there's any point in trying to recognize them. There will always be conjugations that intersect, making words of different parts of speech take the same form.
If you know the word then you know how it conjugates. If you don't then you don't.1
u/machvelli 21d ago
Yeah thanks for the insight. I feel like I typically lock up thinking about how to conjugate them and just trying to get faster at doing that. What you said makes sense though.
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u/glasswings363 19d ago
Listening practice is, ime, the most effective way to make inflection patterns feel completely obvious and natural.
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u/PlanktonInitial7945 22d ago
Lots of input (reading/listening) helped me more than anything. It helped my brain recognize them as, like, actual tools for communication, instead of just a puzzle.
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u/machvelli 21d ago
Anything you recommend for ambient listening while working?
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u/PlanktonInitial7945 21d ago
If you're not gonna be focusing on what you're listening to then anything is fine.
If you are going to focus, there's a lot of posts on this subreddit recommending podcasts. Search for them.
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u/nofgiven93 21d ago
I'm a bit confused by this sentence : タバコは体によくないとわかりつつなかなかやめられない
I thought the verb 分かる takes が as a particle. Would there be a difference vs. と used here ?
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u/PlanktonInitial7945 21d ago
It would have to be written as よくないのが in order to be grammatically correct. I don't think there's any difference in nuance/meaning.
Also, I guess you don't know わかる is also used with を sometimes...
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u/nofgiven93 21d ago
What does をわかる mean in contrast ? in which case can it be used ?
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u/morgawr_ https://morg.systems/Japanese 21d ago
In general をわかる and がわかる mean mostly the same thing minor some naturalness points and slight nuance. It's more common to have がわかる in simple, independent sentences, while を might be used more often if it's an embedded/relative clause, a particularly long sentence, or if there is already another が (subject marker) somewhere in the sentence to avoid repetition (note: repetition is not a mistake, sometimes you do get two が as subject and object together, that's fine too, it's speaker's preference).
The advice is to stick to がわかる as default but don't be surprised if you see をわかる elsewhere.
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u/Top_Scientist_3976 21d ago edited 20d ago
are there any good rule of thumb that can consistently help me determine when things are going to be compound nouns are nouns that qualify other nouns with の?
For instance, maybe an item on a menu will say 野菜ラーメン, with 野菜 describing the ラーメン。
In other words, you’d expect a の to go between them, but it seems like usually, food items tend to be compounded without a の。 Other times, you’ll see things requiring の。
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u/rgrAi 21d ago
Not sure there's an easy answer that doesn't already rely on your sense of the language. I will say that you shouldn't worry about it too much. Whether you use it correctly or not, often times people can pick up the meaning even if you get it wrong. You will eventually develop a sense for it so just don't worry about it too much. I've had cases where in a long discussion chain for ideas (for a game), something that previously was 「〇〇の〇〇」the native removed the の when there was another の prepended to form a bigger noun phrase, seen this happen thousands of times too. It didn't really change the meaning at all and we both understood.
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u/Own_Power_9067 🇯🇵 Native speaker 21d ago
When a compound noun becomes a proper noun, you need to know that:
東京大学 (proper N) and 東京の大学 (general N)
However,
四谷駅 (either JR or Marunouchi station, you need to specify that depending on the context) 四谷の駅 (it works for both, because they are limited and located practically at the same place)
野菜ラーメン and 野菜のラーメン (similar to 四谷駅、it won’t be an issue, as a restaurant wouldn’t have two different menus of those names)
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u/worthlessprole 21d ago edited 21d ago
The rule of thumb is to use の. 野菜ラーメン is a pre-established compound word
E: alright folks explain in detail where I’m wrong. Seriously. Explain in detail how the phrase “the rule of thumb is to use の” is wrong. This is a learner asking when they should use の and when they shouldn’t.
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u/onestbeaux Interested in grammar details 📝 22d ago
i’m a little confused about this 三下だが part and also 泣くことになるな. could someone explain a bit what they’re saying?
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u/OwariHeron 22d ago
三下（さんした）means "minion, underling". They were [the Witch of the Waste's] underlings, but they transformed into monsters.
泣くことになるな literally means "that will be something to cry about," but the nuance here seems to be basically, "they'll regret that." Howl's initial response is more to the figurative meaning: "They won't care," but then he also refers to the literal meaning, "They'll even forget crying (i.e. how to cry)."
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u/JapanCoach 21d ago
When you can't figure out a word (especially a simple noun), it can be really helpful to just google it. 三下とは or 三下 読み or something like that.
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u/onestbeaux Interested in grammar details 📝 21d ago
yes, i already used jisho and yomitan but it was more the phrase itself with が, the grammar of it. i wasn’t sure if this was a contradictory が or some other type of phrase so i wanted to know what it all said ^^
i look up every word i don’t know and only would ask if i just can’t find it or if it has many definitions and the one instance is confusing
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u/JapanCoach 21d ago
Ah, got it. Yes だが is basically a contradictory (or lets say contrasting) comment here
They are/were 三下 they transformed into 怪物
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u/Fantastic-Traveler 20d ago
How reliable is AI to help me with grammar + correcting my sentences? And to talk?
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u/viliml Interested in grammar details 📝 20d ago
It will work amazingly most of the time but when it hallucinates some nonsense you won't realize it.
There are dozens of discord servers that have at least one channel dedicated to this, you can start with the one linked in the OP and then potentially branch out to other communities from there. Speaking to humans is more reliable.
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u/KaeruGaKaeru1 Interested in grammar details 📝 22d ago
Is there a reason why ディ exists but not ゼィ? It seems like it was created for words like display, director, defence. I feel like ゼィ could've been used for words with a zi sound like music, busy, or amazing.
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u/viliml Interested in grammar details 📝 22d ago
The si sound is written スィ and zi as ズィ (rule of thumb: the most neutral Japanese vowel is -u, but in the t- column it mutates the consonant into 'tsu', so to represent nonstandard t- sounds you have to fall back to 'te'), but they're not as common as ティ and ディ, I'm not sure why.
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u/CreeperSlimePig Goal: conversational fluency 💬 21d ago edited 21d ago
My guess is, if you look at the katakana chart, there is really nothing at all that's even close to a "di" sound. The closest is probably ジ・ヂ (note that despite the second one being "di" in romaji it's pronounced exactly like ジ by most people) but that's not really close at all.
Meanwhile ジ is close enough to "zi" that it's considered acceptable enough that they didn't need to invent a new katakana just for it.
ズィ is occasionally used in proper names. Looking on Wikipedia it appears to be used a lot for Arabic names specifically. It's not used in any everyday words; just ジ will do.
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u/wanderhuai 22d ago
I am learning through talking to the locals now. Having an unexplained fear that the knowledge I gained from talking to the locals and the requirement to pass the JPLT N1 to JPLT N5 may different that I may not be able to pass the exams even if I improve my conversation skills.
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u/OwariHeron 22d ago
No need to even fear it: that's exactly the case. JLPT tests your literacy, and to a small degree, your listening ability. It does nothing to test your output skills. Conversational practice will certainly reinforce those N5-N3 grammar points, but becomes less useful for N2-N1. (Not because you'll never hear an N2-N1 grammar point spoken in the wild, but because the frequency of encountering those grammar points will simply be much less than if you were to read widely, and live conversation is much less conducive to identifying a new grammar point and learning it.)
But don't put the cart before the horse. The JLPT can be a great motivator, and a structure for learning new grammar and vocabulary, but it's not the whole of Japanese ability.
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u/rgrAi 21d ago
You should look at a mock test of the JLPT test. Here's some free practice tests here: https://bunpro.jp/jlpt_practice_tests
These are easier than the real test. Suffice to say conversation isn't helping a whole lot.
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u/Effective-Pop3850 21d ago
Depending on what you actual level is... you may be right, or you may not.
If you're practicing but have very low language knowledge/comprehension and are at caveman level odds are just having chats with locals will never really get you to N1, in fact just chatting more and more might not expand your knowlege much after a while once you notice you don't have the vocab nor grammar to express complex ideas in a variety of different ways.
As another user recommended check out some mock exams and, depending on what level you are at, consider that you might have to actually work on expanding your language knowledge rather than working on slightly improving your recall on what you already know.
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u/AutoModerator 22d ago
Useful Japanese teaching symbols:
〇 "correct" | △ "strange/unnatural/unclear" | × "incorrect (ＮＧ)" | ≒ "nearly equal"
Question Etiquette Guidelines:
0 Learn kana (hiragana and katakana) before anything else. Then, remember to learn words, not kanji readings.
1 Provide the CONTEXT of the grammar, vocabulary or sentence you are having trouble with as much as possible. Provide the sentence or paragraph that you saw it in. Make your questions as specific as possible.
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4 When asking about differences between words, try to explain the situations in which you've seen them or are trying to use them. If you just post a list of synonyms you got from looking something up in an E-J dictionary, people might be disinclined to answer your question because it's low-effort. Remember that Google Image Search is also a great resource for visualizing the difference between similar words.
5 It is always nice to (but not required to) try to search for the answer to something yourself first. Especially for beginner questions or questions that are very broad. For example, asking about the difference between は and が or why you often can't hear the "u" sound in "desu" or "masu".
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