r/LearnJapanese • u/AutoModerator • 1d ago
Daily Thread: for simple questions, minor posts & newcomers [contains useful links!] (October 27, 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.
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Past Threads
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u/Enough_Tumbleweed739 3h ago
Can somebody help me understand why this is framed as a passive construction?
> 目にはクマもあるようだし、髪もほつれているし。
> 前に見たときよりもやつれているような気がする。
> 尋常ではない雰囲気を感じて、思わず声をかけるのがためらわれた。
> 以前にも声をかけて無視されているし。
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u/PatheticParty 9h ago
I'm really struggling with finding interesting methods to improve my listening and was wondering if anyone had any intermediate (around N3?) level materials that aren't long or too slow that they can suggest. Podcasts don't really work for me and that's what I've seen recommended the most :( Anime would be fine but I think I'm burned out on it
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u/ProactiveJP_ 8h ago
Maybe you could try TV shows and get exposed to native speaking. Like idk terrace house for eg? I dont know of a N3 level specific TV show (maybe someone else can suggest).
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u/ultimamax 15h ago
I burned out of Kaishi 1.5k after learning ~750 words in like 2.5 months. It was really starting to feel like a chore and my reviews would take 2+ hours a day by the end. I do want to go back to it but I think I need a new strategy. I want to somehow be encountering the words I've been learning so they hopefully stick better. I am not really watching any anime or anything like that atm.
My main goal is to be able to speak or listen at a decent level during my Japan trip next April.
What do you think I should do differently? Maybe I'll start working on grammar now alongside maintaining my Anki (probably only 1-5 words a day for the foreseeable future?)
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u/writingpracticeman 13h ago
This looks like a post I could have written awhile ago...
For what it's worth I also gave up the ghost on Kaishi 1.5k about halfway through because the grind was getting to be too much and my study time was becoming too lopsidedly devoted to Anki, which is not fun at all for me. I switched over to just mining words from native content but eventually ran into the same Anki-related problems (not really sure what I expected...)
I don't really know what level you're at now, but my suggestion would be to just dive headfirst into reading and listening; aka, do what's fun to you. Want to play video games? Play some freaking video games. Want to [do x]? Then [do x]. It is honestly that simple.
The major caveat there is that I am kind of guessing from your Anki time-spent that you have a somewhat comfortable grasp on N5/N4-ish grammar, so there would not be immense amounts of pain with understanding very basic grammar and things would be slow primarily from vocab lookups. If that is not true then yeah, dive in to grammar for a bit, read some lower level Tadoku readers, and then dive in to the stuff you like.
The two things that leveled up my Japanese the most was getting a tutor and just saying "screw it" to some of the conventional wisdom stuff (Anki, Bunpro, Genki, whatever) and just engaging in stuff that I like. Very very importantly is that I did use that stuff to lay a foundation where I went into immersion at a fairly comfortable spot though. But I can't recommend a (native) tutor enough if you want to try and cram for a Japan trip in 6 months.
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u/Lertovic 14h ago
Read and listen, there is tons of graded content available if relatively easy native media is too hard.
Learning words in a vacuum is quite difficult.
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u/Grunglabble 14h ago
I guess lower your expectations a little. It's really not easy in the beginning if there isn't something already fun to do. Like I recall learning the hiragana, a handful of kanji and reading 1 or 2 chapters of genki and stopping until I had an opportunity to do language exchange once a week, and then I wrote little stories for my partner to correct for me and utilized my glorious 100 words of conversational vocabulary to respond to what they said in English.
I also stopped for a decade after the exchange meetings stopped, landing somewhere around pre or early b1 (that's well past something like kaishi/core 2k imo) , maybe a genki 1 level of knowledge of grammar that was patchy and featured some grammar points above my level/genki. Eventually I decided to read with a dictionary when I found software that made that easy.
In other words, if you want the opposite of what the speedrun approach looks like, that's kinda it. Some people want it bad enough to anki over an hour and watch shows all evening even when they understand little, I just built it up slowly and now I can confidently say I'm as good at Japanese as I was at StarCraft, which is to say I know the game and can have fun at my level but I'm not a top foreigner or anything ;) If I went back and did it again I'd probably be nearly as slow (in other words, I'm just advising you find things you like doing and not worry about becoming high level, as clearly the grind isn't for you anymore than iy was for me).
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u/ultimamax 14h ago
Yeah I am still willing to grind I think, Anki is just uniquely punishing in some ways, like if you push to learn a lot of new words in a short period of time it really increases your workload for the next few days, and also if you fall behind the work just piles up even more.
If I grind grammar or comprehension instead I can do it at whatever pace I'd like depending on how busy I am, my energy level, etc.
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u/Grunglabble 14h ago
Yeah, I mean I made most of my progress when I was reading aozora for an hour every morning, but I don't consider than a grind just something I was able to and liked doing.
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u/huskie2002 16h ago edited 16h ago
Hi All
Male, 24. I speak fluent English and I’m around N3 in Japanese.
I’m looking for someone at N3 or above who’s serious about learning, to practice together. I’m fine with calls or texting, to improve on. My goal is speaking fluency, and I can’t get there talking alone.
Purely Japanese practice, focused on comprehension and speaking but about grammar and kanji a bit too. I am also around level 20 in WK.
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u/rin_and_tadashi 17h ago
Anki can do exactly this, and it's free on desktop and Android. Make the front of the card a picture and the back the word with its reading, like 犬 (いぬ, inu). Then it quizzes you on the picture and you say or type the word.
Since you already own a pocket dictionary with illustrations, you can build your own deck from it. Take a photo of each picture, put the word on the back, and you'll learn the exact words you care about. Making the card yourself also helps the word stick.
If you'd rather not build it, search the shared decks on AnkiWeb for "picture vocabulary" or "visual vocabulary". Several decks pair an image with the Japanese word, so check the sample cards before you download one.
Tip: add the kana reading to the back even if you learn the kanji, so you always know how to say it.
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19h ago
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u/morgawr_ 18h ago
Core meaning-wise, do you believe there is a difference between "which would you like" and "which do you like"?
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18h ago
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u/Acerhand 6h ago
You are correct and thats called nuance. Japanese can have this nuance, however at your level for the deck you are learning etc, nuance is not so important now. Context rules over nuance in most situations.
So the question said with an option of items where you will obviously pick one, will absolutely mean that in that context. However there absolutely are ways in Japanese to directly express the nuance of “which would you like” too. It’s just unimportant until much later in your language learning and i’d even dis encourage focusing on it too much for now
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u/worthlessprole 15h ago
The difference between the meaning would be dependent on whether you are just having a conversation or they are offering you something from a selection.
It’s worth noting that the conditional mood does not exist in japanese.
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u/morgawr_ 18h ago
Definitely overthinking. The phrase in Japanese is simply asking, out of a group of things, which one do you like. It could be the lead up to an invitation to pick one, or it could just be a simple neutral question gauging your interests. Either is fine, depends on context.
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u/Time_Ad5549 19h ago
Hello! I would like to start learning japanese. I’m searching for a free book (pdf version) because I don’t wanna spend an euro.
What do you recomend? If possible, I would like a textbook that covers grammar, culture, readings and exercises.
Thanks to everyone
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u/worthlessprole 15h ago
No one is going to give you recommendations on where to pirate a textbook, if that’s what you’re asking
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u/lhamatrevosa 21h ago
Hello, all.
Quartet 1 - Chapter 1
They say nound modifying clauses has a verb in the plain form (green) but then they give an example in the short past form (purple). The correct wouldn't be "noun modifying clauses has the verb in the short form"?
By the way, Tokini Andy doesn't cover those syntax explanations, do you recommend a YTber that covers the syntax on Quartet?
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u/worthlessprole 15h ago edited 15h ago
Quartet has a section that compares terms from genki to what’s used in quartet. I believe it’s called
“comparison of grammatical terms” or something like that. It is called “Symbols for Parts of Speech and Conjugation.”It should be noted that quartet is using the orthodox terms.
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u/vytah 20h ago
You might misunderstand what "plain form" means. Plain form is simply the non-polite form without desu/masu. It's probably what you meant by "short form". "Short form" is not a term I've ever encountered in descriptions of Japanese grammar.
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u/lhamatrevosa 20h ago
Genki 1 uses this term "short form"
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u/vytah 18h ago
I haven't used Genki, so that's new to me.
Anyway, if that's what they call it, then just remember that plain form = short form. I guess plain form is the shorter one, so it makes some sense.
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u/lhamatrevosa 18h ago
I think Genki should have thaught as plain form, despite I think short form makes sense (食べた is really shorter than 食べました). By the way, do you know a YTber that covers those syntax explanations of Quartet?
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u/_Ashy_9 23h ago
Helllo!
I just got to the の section in Genki and I don’t really understand it. Can anyone help me with this?
I also attached an image that shows some sentences I gotta translate. I am sooo confused.
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u/worthlessprole 14h ago edited 13h ago
At the most general level, の is a particle that allows nouns to modify other nouns. In some cases it is possessive, but that’s not really fundamentally different than the basic descriptive use.
Let’s say there’s an いぬ. Now, what kind of いぬ is it? Well, it’s a japanese breed, so it’s a にほんのいぬ. It also belongs to me so it’s わたしのにほんのいぬ. Does this make sense? Think in terms of a noun modifying another noun, letting one noun act a bit like an adjective.
E: zooming out a bit, one area where it might be tripping you up is just being used to how English does things. So you see だいがくのせんせい and your gut says, “well why’s that の there? It should just be だいがくせんせい like english.” English likes to use word order to convey meaning. Japanese does not like to do this. It likes to use particles to indicate how words relate to other words and the sentence as a whole. One thing that’s important here is that particles are attached to the end of words. They’re like post-positional phrases, in a way. So a noun that doesn’t have の after it is not modifying another noun. Put another way, the last noun is the thing you’re talking about, the thing that everything is modifying. Always.
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u/GreattFriend 22h ago
Can you type out your current understanding of it? And then maybe we can tweak it to point you in the right direction
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u/kasumikui 23h ago
Maybe you can elaborate on what, specifically, you don't understand?
Genki is a textbook that literally explains the language from zero. If even that feels too difficult or overwhelming for you, it might help if you went into some detail as to exactly why.
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u/_Ashy_9 22h ago
So I know it’s used for possession like “たかしさんのでんわばんご”
But when it goes to something like
“だいがくのせんせい” it gets a little confusingI don’t really know how to explain it better but I think maybe I’m just getting a little confused for when it’s used for something other than possession like in “だいがくのせんせい”
Sorry if I’m not explaining why I’m confused that well. I honestly don’t really know how to explain it better than i already have
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u/Grunglabble 19h ago
possession in a grammatical sense doesn't mean something owns something, it means something belongs to something, including abstract categories. To that extent it can resemble an adjective. Honestly "possession" and "belonging" are not very instructive terms and there are cases they don't feel appropriate.
大学の先生 is just the way that you say a university professor. We don't say university's professor in English, so you'll have to give up trying to get english and japanese grammar matching 1 to 1.
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u/EpicDaNoob 21h ago
More generally than possession, の can be a sort of "tagging" particle whereby one noun is made more specific using another noun. What kind of せんせい? A だいがく one.
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u/GreattFriend 22h ago
Also there's a guy with a channel named Tokini Andy where he teaches both Genki 1 and 2 himself. Might want to check it out as a supplement to your studies
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u/GreattFriend 22h ago
TIp that helped me when I first learned the string of のs is just to read it backwards and replace it with "of"
So せんせい (teacher) の (of) だいがく (college)
At this point in your journey, you're not going to automatically understand even the most basic of things when you hear/read something. So it's totally okay to use cheats like this. And after a while understanding will just come naturally.
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u/antimonysarah 20h ago
This, plus if you're trying to compose sentences and getting scrambled on which word should be before the の and which after, try deleting the one you're putting before the の and see if the sentence still means the same thing. "He is a college の teacher" -> "He is a teacher", not "He is a college".
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u/GreattFriend 23h ago
Is there a certain point at which 泊まる turns into 住む? Like after staying at a friend's house for 2 months do you 住む there now?
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u/JapanCoach 18h ago
There is no clear "line" that all people would agree to in all situations.
Not only that, you might be interested to know that there are also words which describe the sort of liminal space in between 泊まる and 住む. Words like 入り浸る or 居候
As a general principle Japanese loves degrees on a spectrum much more than clear bright red lines.
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u/kasumikui 23h ago
This is nothing unique to Japanese. What is the point at which "stay" turns into "live" in English?
If you sleep over at your friend's place for a couple of nights you don't "live" there. Yes, if you stay in the same home or house for multiple months you might say that you're living there.
There is nothing mystical about the Japanese words, just use your own common sense.
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u/antimonysarah 20h ago
Interestingly, this is one that varies by English dialect, so it's NOT necessarily clear in English, either, and there's no reason to be rude about it.
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u/GreattFriend 22h ago
Last sentence was totally unnecessary and can deter people from asking questions
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u/mil0wCS 1d ago
https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1HJW4j3aoc/
Are there any apps like this that show objects and then give the Japanese word for that object?
I have a pocket dictionary that does this, but would love to actually quiz myself with this.
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u/OkIdeal9852 1d ago
How common are 紀元前 and 紀元 for BC and AD years, will the average Japanese recognize them immediately? Or do they have a strictly Gregorian/Western/Biblical connotation in Japanese
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u/Global-Kitchen8537 1d ago
紀元前 is widely understood and commonly used. Expressions like 紀元前6世紀 or 紀元前300年 would be immediately understood by most Japanese adult, without any particular religious connotation.
On the other hand, we almost never say 紀元1830年 or 紀元19世紀. We simply say 1830年 or 19世紀. Sometimes we add 西暦 (seireki, literally "Western calendar").
Japan also has its own era-year system, known as 和暦 (wareki). For example, 2026 is 令和8年 (Reiwa 8; the 8th year of the Reiwa era).
The Western dating system was introduced in Japan in the Meiji period, but Japanese era names remained more common in everyday life well into the Showa period (~1989). The Western system has since become increasingly prevalent, particularly with digitalization, although era names are still widely used, especially in administrative contexts.
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u/OkIdeal9852 18h ago
What if I wanted to ask explicitly about AD vs BC, e.g.
"This historical event happened in the year 200" "AD or BC?". Or if an old person says "I was born in 1955" and someone jokingly asks "AD or BC?"
Would 紀元 be used and understood?
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u/Arazzile 1d ago
We use "紀元前”, but we don't usually use "紀元" We simply say "2026," for example. I don't really feel any biblical connotations, but now that I think about it, I suppose it means before and after the birth of Christ.
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u/OkIdeal9852 18h ago
What if I wanted to ask explicitly about AD vs BC, e.g.
"This historical event happened in the year 200" "AD or BC?". Or if an old person says "I was born in 1955" and someone jokingly asks "AD or BC?"
Would 紀元 be used and understood?
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u/Arazzile 17h ago
If you don't specify anything, it's just "AD," but if you absolutely have to specify it, I think you'd say "西暦."
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