Hey there

Lately I've been frustrated by a problem of mine and have been wondered how to best tackle it and am therefore looking for some advice.

Problem Statement
While I am quite happy with my overall level of proficiency, the thing that has come to bug me lately is that rather than understanding Japanese completely, I'm oftentimes just guessing my way through rough passages, especially if the material is rather complex and contains advanced grammar. This often works quite well as texts are usually well-behaved and 'continuous' (for lack of a better word think of it as in the maths/analysis sense) and therefore progress as expected. However, I fear that the chance of me failing to detect and comprehend unexpected turns and twists, nuances, or 'discontinuities', is therefore quite high.

So due to all my interpolating and filling in the blanks, I get out even more well-behaved and predictable content. So the result of this guessing game is that while I usually have a good feeling for what the author (or speaker) wants to say, I'm never completely sure. The remaining uncertainty is bugging me, and I'd like to get rid of it.

I've noticed this problem again while going through the Shinkanzen N1 dokkai book. I can read the sample texts, understand them more or less and even answer the questions correctly. But only because the questions usually target the main ideas of the texts and hence a rough understanding (which is inferable) instead of the more delicate points.

Looking back, I have also encountered this problem a lot before. E.g. at work during 'lunchtime speeches' [昼礼] I usually felt like I understood the content more or less, until everybody around me burst out laughing while I had no idea why.

I guess this also partially explains why I have long felt that Japanese is a 'tame' language. No wonder I got that impression when I'm always straightening out and interpolating things!

I usually have trouble understanding sentences not because of the vocabulary/kanjis, but rather due to unknown grammar patterns (or incomplete understanding of already learned ones) or overly long and convoluted sentences. Things like じゃないではあるないでしょうか where there are several negations and twists and so on. In those situations, it seems that rather than unwinding the sentence and taking the effort to understand it, I just fill in what seems most plausible from context.

Possible Solutions
Grammar books: It seems to me that the root of my problem is to a big part an insufficient understanding of sentence patterns and grammar. So I should probably study more of it. However, sentence patterns are usually studied in isolation, and I can usually go through grammar books just fine and then fail to spot/comprehend the patterns in the wild. So I am doubtful if more textbook practice will be effective.

sub2srs: This seems like one possible solution. Has anybody had similar problems and made good experiences combating them with sub2srs?
If yes, where do I get material that I can feed to sub2srs? From some searching online, it seems like there are mostly dramas and animes available with the required JP & EN subtitles. Unfortunately, I'm not really a big fan of those, so I'd prefer to use other sources. If I buy Japanese DVDs, do they have EN & JP subtitles?

対訳 books (books having EN&JP text side-by-side): Again, I guess it'd be helpful to have a translation available in order to be able to cross-reference in case of difficulties. Any experiences with those?

(graded(?)) readers: I'm actually not really sure what a graded reader is, but would books like "Read Real Japanese Essays" & co. help? In the description it says that it has "notes on nuance, usage, grammar or culture", which I guess is exactly what I am looking for. I usually understand most things quite well, it's only when the going gets tough that I start to struggle. So getting help with those parts without unnecessary hand-holding for the easier parts seems efficient.

Of course I'd also be happy to hear any other suggestions you have, or experiences and accounts of how it is going for you.

Thanks for any advice

Grammar books - have you considered buying something like the 新完全マスター grammar guides, and looking up expressions as you encounter them in reading? Or use textbooks the same way? You mentioned studying the 読解. For N2, I really found it beneficial to use the 文法 books to study grammar patterns that I found in the 読解. It was a much more entertaining way of studying grammar than just reading the 文法 book from cover to cover.

I agree that studying arbitrary patterns is likely not that useful.

対訳 seem like a great idea. Two I have on my shelf are 日本のすべて and アメリカの小学生が学ぶ歴史教科書. I haven't gotten through them yet, as I've been working more on novels and manga at the moment, but what I have read has been very helpful.

The Read Real Japanese books are excellent for exactly the reasons you state. There's also, BTW, an older version of the Nonfiction book still kicking around. No audio (the new RRJ books both have accompanying audio), but it contains eight separate essays from various authors along with detailed notes. http://www.amazon.com/Read-Real-Japanese...4770029365

Another idea: find something that contains some material you don't understand all that well, and work one-on-one with a teacher locally or on iTalki to walk you through it. I do this for some of my iTalki sessions and find it very valuable.

My book recommendation is "Making Sense of Japanese: What the Textbooks Don't Tell You" by Jay Rubin. I think most of the shorter essays may be below your level, but the last one is specifically about untangling long and complicated sentences, and I found it very helpful.

Usually the problem is not so much in learning specific grammar patterns, but in keeping track of which subjects and which verbs are connected to each other through the sentence.

Fillanzea Wrote:My book recommendation is "Making Sense of Japanese: What the Textbooks Don't Tell You" by Jay Rubin. I think most of the shorter essays may be below your level, but the last one is specifically about untangling long and complicated sentences, and I found it very helpful.

Usually the problem is not so much in learning specific grammar patterns, but in keeping track of which subjects and which verbs are connected to each other through the sentence.

I checked out Making Sense of Japanese but I don't like the romaji. Any books that use Japanese writings?

+1 for the above ideas.

As far as RRJ Essays go, there is an essay from that book available online:
http://nezumilife.blogspot.com.au/2011/1...ation.html
and it has the poster’s translation (i.e. the translation is not a copy from the book).

You probably would appreciate this sentence from the text:
結局のところ、月刊誌の書評なんて誰も真剣に読んでないんだろうという気もしなくはないんだけれど、どうなんだろうね。

learningkanji Wrote:I checked out Making Sense of Japanese but I don't like the romaji. Any books that use Japanese writings?

You really need to get over that. That's a wonderful book, and the vast vast majority of the book is in English talking about concepts. It's not a textbook; the fact that the passages are in romaji is unimportant.

There's basically no other purchase you can make that's as cheap and easy as that book that will help your Japanese so much. (That is, of course, if you're at the appropriate level for the book, which is high beginner to low advanced)

[s0apgun]

I just ordered the book. I hope it helps!

Tzadeck Wrote:

learningkanji Wrote:I checked out Making Sense of Japanese but I don't like the romaji. Any books that use Japanese writings?

You really need to get over that. That's a wonderful book, and the vast vast majority of the book is in English talking about concepts. It's not a textbook; the fact that the passages are in romaji is unimportant.

There's basically no other purchase you can make that's as cheap and easy as that book that will help your Japanese so much. (That is, of course, if you're at the appropriate level for the book, which is high beginner to low advanced)

What's a good way to find out what level you are?

Tzadeck Wrote:There's basically no other purchase you can make that's as cheap and easy as that book that will help your Japanese so much. (That is, of course, if you're at the appropriate level for the book, which is high beginner to low advanced)

What's that range in terms of, say, JLPT levels?

learningkanji Wrote:What's a good way to find out what level you are?

I would say, for this book, you should have learned enough grammar that you can understand basic keigo and sentences with relative clauses (キャロライン・ケネディが駐日大使に選ばれた理由は何ですか、for example.) I'd say it would be most useful for someone in their 2nd or 3rd year of college Japanese. JLPT levels 2-3, maybe.

I've actually had this book on my shelf, and haven't touched it in ages. Reading through it now, and it's very helpful. Thanks for the reminder, Filanzea.

(Edit: corrected attribution)

I think Making Sense of Japanese is good for people who want to make the basics a bit more clear, and it's best after you have learned the basics at least once. So, it's basically for people who have finished a Genki 2 or JLPT N4-ish level of study. As you are exposed to more and more Japanese it gets less useful because you start to intuitively know more of the stuff. Probably by the time you can pass N2 you know most of the stuff pretty well, but not perfectly.

But, to be honest, it can always be good to go back and review the basics in more depth and with more clarity. I've actually been thinking about doing that (in other ways), though I passed N1 a little while back.

hyvel Wrote:Of course I'd also be happy to hear any other suggestions you have, or experiences and accounts of how it is going for you.

You never followed up on this thread so I'm not sure if this is superfluous or not.

I never really felt like I had the problem you are describing although I do occasionally feel something similar when I watch certain movies or dramas. What happens for me is that I'll come across a line that I've studied all of the grammar for but I cannot parse it with enough speed and accuracy to understand it in real-time. These are usually cases where the grammar and vocabulary are relatively simple, but it expresses a relatively complex idea or the saying is highly colloquial.

Ultimately with these kinds of expressions I just make two full English translations. One that captures the exact phrasing as it is in Japanese so that it sounds a bit like Japanglish and then a second pass to try and convert the phrase into an English expression even if it means changing every word.

After that I let Anki do the rest of the work. I'll eventually hear that phrase enough times to get it or it will come up again and again in various forms.

I would assume a similar process could work for written material as well especially if you want to understand the nuances of word and phrase choice. (The impact of a particular word choice can be lost if you brain is relying solely on a J→E gloss.)

First of all thanks for all the comments, I really appreciate it.

@gaiaslastlaugh:
Thanks for the good suggestion. As the kanzen grammar books are built in a linear fashion with exercises and all, I never actually considered not going through them from cover to cover. I'd imagine that it'd be much more memorable to just look up grammar patterns as needed, as you can 'ground' the acquired knowledge in reality.
I've also had a look at 'Read real Japanese Essays' and it seems like it'd be very helpful to address my issues, so I've ordered it. Thanks also for the hint about the older version!

@Fillanzea:
I've had a look at 'Making Sense of Japanese' and it seems like I already know almost all of it. However, as Tzadeck wrote, you can usually still gain some additional perspective, so I think I'll give it a go when I find time.
Do you happen to know if there are other books of this kind that cover more advanced material?

@tokyostyle:
Stupid question, but how do you know if your translations are actually accurate (unless you can cross-reference it)?

Overall I guess it boils down to paying more attention to details instead of just skimming over them. I'll have to make an effort in order to look up any points that confuse me. That will of course slow down my perceived rate of progress, but I guess that if I just keep on skimming details, I'm only cheating myself.

Another thing I noticed is that if I can use a grammar pattern to build sentences on my own, then I almost never have problems figuring out its meaning in a sentence. So maybe I should also try to increase active production more instead of relying solely on a passive understanding.

hyvel Wrote:@tokyostyle:
Stupid question, but how do you know if your translations are actually accurate (unless you can cross-reference it)?

If you can't come up with some kind of word-for-word deconstruction of the sentence then you'll at least know the exact parts that preventing your comprehension. I assume you don't ever have problems with straight-forward factual sentences; its the ones where the author talks around his point, starts rambling a bit, or injects some philosophical or cultural references. For those it can be useful to map them to English because your brain can digest and manipulate that easier. The point is to have that "ah-ha" moment where you realize how the verbal gymnastics behave which allows the Japanese, not the English translation, to become clear.

hyvel Wrote:Overall I guess it boils down to paying more attention to details instead of just skimming over them. I'll have to make an effort in order to look up any points that confuse me.

I think ultimately I was just trying to describe a very specific strategy to accomplish exactly this.

Honestly this is a pretty good problem to have. Most people get stuck for they opposite reasons, they attempt to read everything intensively.

@tokyostyle
I definitely agree that the method you described helps to disentangle sentences. However, I'd be interested in how you tackle the 'little things'. Small words, or even fragments that usually show up in colloquial settings. Small changes can completely alter the tone of a sentence, and it's often those things that trouble me.
Do you have any suggestion on how to handle those cases?

For people who struggle with similar problems, I can highly recommend 'Read Real Japanese (Essays)'. After having read the first three essays, I'm very pleased. It greatly facilitates acquiring a thorough understanding of the texts at hand. It does so by providing basically all the information needed in one place, so you don't have to painstakingly look up tons of things on your own. It actually impressed me so much that I now also ordered the fiction version. And that's quite a feat considering my complete lack of interest in literature!

hyvel Wrote:@tokyostyle
I definitely agree that the method you described helps to disentangle sentences. However, I'd be interested in how you tackle the 'little things'. Small words, or even fragments that usually show up in colloquial settings. Small changes can completely alter the tone of a sentence, and it's often those things that trouble me.
Do you have any suggestion on how to handle those cases?

Can you post something specific the next time you run into it? Most of the times I do some digging online because natives, or possibly other advanced leaners, have asked about the same stuff before. I think the fact that there are so many accents in Japanese means that even non-Kanto natives will occasionally have trouble with slang they read in manga or hear in a drama.

In fact I'm watching an anime that's entirely in Kansai-ben and so it's really straining my brain to watch a full episode. Often I know what the characters are "supposed" to be saying in most of the stock situations, but occasionally someone says something completely unintelligible. I can imagine that even (young?) natives who have never been heavily exposed to it might have a similar reaction. Interestingly enough the main plot points of the story are always very easy to understand so the odd bits are mostly just flavor.

Anyway, at the end of the day you do also need to be able to ask someone what something means. I remember I had been kind of struggling to understand the proper usage of なんちゃって and one night, completely randomly, I brought this up to my friend's bilingual girlfriend and she turned to him and said, "Yeah it's like 'just kidding!'" and suddenly it completely clicked. I had figured out it was only used after the end of jokes, but it was still an artificial understanding. (Just FYI this phrase is actually in dictionaries but apparently I never bothered looking it up.)

Finally if it's just little inflection things I like to make a J-J note and apply it to all of my cards immediately. (Note: I stole this directly from Khatzumoto/AJATT.) Thus the back of the card will have stuff like:

乗っけて→乗せて
だっちゃ→だって
あんとき→あのとき
しでぇ→ひでぇ→ひどい
なんつっちゃったりして→なんちゃって
どいつもこいつも→だれもかれも→みんな
調子こいてんじゃねえよっ→調子に乗るな→Don't get cocky!

My subs deck is full of this stuff but I think knowing what that slurred speech originally was helps a lot. If the part on the very right isn't comprehensible you can also add a normal English gloss as well.

Also, I don't know if anyone else does this, but because of Anki's powerful searching features I use my Anki deck as a bit of a notebook and personal dictionary so I tend to fill it up with notes that I might want or need later.

(Sorry this is so long, but I can really identify with your problem and I think you'll gain a lot once your sort out your own method for attacking it. It seems unlikely that any one thing I say will help, but experimenting with many things will help you nail it.)