I think it means something like "the instance of falling for someone."
I think きゅん is a 擬音語　representing a feeling of infatuation or being charmed by someone, like the feeling a highschool girl might have when thinking about theb boy she has a crush on.

nadiatims Wrote:At the end of the day, what matters is what you know, not how you learnt it. This goes for, vocab/grammar/pronunciation you name it. What matters is whether or not you know how to use verbs correctly. At some point in your studies even if you're avoiding textbook explanations you're going to run up into the point of transitive/intransitive verbs and realise there's some distinction in how they work. At that point it's handy to have a mental label for the two types and pay attention to them when learning new verbs. That way you're not just getting the gist of a sentence and guessing what the verb is acting on from context while being somewhat confused at the particle choice. Paying attention to transitive/intransitive verbs (whether you call them that or not) will improve your understanding of particles and sentence structure quite a lot.

I pretty much agree with that. Your engagement with grammar can be determined by your interest in grammar, but I think that (a) nobody should ever literally do zero grammar, and (b) your exposure/production practice should always be a much greater part of your study than grammar explanations.

yudantaiteki Wrote:I pretty much agree with that. Your engagement with grammar can be determined by your interest in grammar, but I think that (a) nobody should ever literally do zero grammar, and (b) your exposure/production practice should always be a much greater part of your study than grammar explanations.

*きゅん* ♥

I can agree with that yudan. Only to append one thing though: You should do your small grammar studies concurrently with your exposure and production. People who learn grammar before trying to read or produce are just wasting their time because they will forget and also not practice what they have learned.

That's why I don't like formal textbooks much.

Most textbooks combine grammar with reading and production. I've never seen one that doesn't.

Quote:*きゅん* ♥

何ゆってんのｗｗｗｗ

yudantaiteki Wrote:Most textbooks combine grammar with reading and production. I've never seen one that doesn't.

Quote:*きゅん* ♥

何ゆってんのｗｗｗｗ

Oh sorry, since you mentioned production, I was inspired to try out this word that I'd seen before, but never actually used. But now that I see it in print, I must admit that キャラ違いすぎ.

Sorry I should have said that differently.

I meant I don't like classes that use formal textbooks, because they just glaze over the grammar, test on it, then move to more grammar.

Or people who read Tae Kim's before doing anything else.

The best way to spend study time imo is to focus on whatever will give you the biggest boost in useful knowledge (comprehension) in the shortest time. The great thing about RTK isn't the methodology itself, but rather that by the end of it you kind of know about 2000 kanji and that levels up your japanese bigtime. So the problem with focusing too much on grammar is that it doesn't give a lot of bang for its buck compared to forms of study that will boost your vocabulary. This is especially true at the beginner stages. There is also the problem that a lot of grammar explanation is just really confusing unless you are already familiar with it by which point you have probably half figured it out yourself anyway. I'd recommend beginners to 90% ignore grammar at first (unless they have a teacher who knows how to teach it properly) and see how much they can figure out on their own, perhaps rapidly going through one textbook or so but certainly not getting bogged down. Grammar knowledge can be polished later by further study if and when you feel it's necessary. A lot of conversational stuff, slangy conjugations etc aren't even in textbooks anyway but you figure them out quickly enough through exposure.

@iSoron
Thanks for the explanation! It makes sense now.

pm215 Wrote:

perrin4869 Wrote:そのような質点系一般に対して成り立ついくつの重要な事項を学ぶ。

Are you sure that's いくつの and not いくつかの ?

Just checked, and yes, you're right, it's いくつかの。Damn, I should be paying more attention when copying into the SRS...
Still, I'd like to know how you reached that conclusion. What's wrong with leaving the か out?

perrin4869 Wrote:@iSoron
Thanks for the explanation! It makes sense now.

pm215 Wrote:

perrin4869 Wrote:そのような質点系一般に対して成り立ついくつの重要な事項を学ぶ。

Are you sure that's いくつの and not いくつかの ?

Just checked, and yes, you're right, it's いくつかの。Damn, I should be paying more attention when copying into the SRS...
Still, I'd like to know how you reached that conclusion. What's wrong with leaving the か out?

It sounds like you might be under the impression that か is acting as a particle, which I don't believe it is. いくつか is itself a word, just as いくつ is a different (but closely related) word.

nadiatims Wrote:The best way to spend study time imo is to focus on whatever will give you the biggest boost in useful knowledge (comprehension) in the shortest time. The great thing about RTK isn't the methodology itself, but rather that by the end of it you kind of know about 2000 kanji and that levels up your japanese bigtime. So the problem with focusing too much on grammar is that it doesn't give a lot of bang for its buck compared to forms of study that will boost your vocabulary. This is especially true at the beginner stages. There is also the problem that a lot of grammar explanation is just really confusing unless you are already familiar with it by which point you have probably half figured it out yourself anyway. I'd recommend beginners to 90% ignore grammar at first (unless they have a teacher who knows how to teach it properly) and see how much they can figure out on their own, perhaps rapidly going through one textbook or so but certainly not getting bogged down. Grammar knowledge can be polished later by further study if and when you feel it's necessary. A lot of conversational stuff, slangy conjugations etc aren't even in textbooks anyway but you figure them out quickly enough through exposure.

I know way too many people who try to translate Japanese by looking up all the words in the sentence, and then making up an English sentence that has all those words in it, to think that grammar is less of a level-up than a glancing knowledge of 2000 kanji.

Fillanzea Wrote:I know way too many people who try to translate Japanese by looking up all the words in the sentence, and then making up an English sentence that has all those words in it, to think that grammar is less of a level-up than a glancing knowledge of 2000 kanji.

Yep, the "know 3 keywords then guess" approach. Works ok sometimes if there is a lot of context (even then, you miss the nuance). I believe that without a solid vocab, you have no hope of understanding, but vocab alone really isn't enough. Not knowing grammar and just skipping over particles and conjugations you don't know is a great way of tricking yourself into *thinking* you understand something you really don't.

I agree though that just reading an explanation of a grammar point is pretty pointless. Examples of its use are far more important. But it's critical that you get some sort of confirmation that you are actually understanding it right (including nuance). Otherwise you could be just making stuff up.

perrin4869 Wrote:

pm215 Wrote:

perrin4869 Wrote:そのような質点系一般に対して成り立ついくつの重要な事項を学ぶ。

Are you sure that's いくつの and not いくつかの ?

Just checked, and yes, you're right, it's いくつかの。Damn, I should be paying more attention when copying into the SRS...
Still, I'd like to know how you reached that conclusion. What's wrong with leaving the か out?

If you leave the か out it doesn't make sense :-) (Try a google search for "いくつの重要な事項" vs "いくつかの重要な事項".) Basically a question word like いくつ ['how many'] goes in a sentence pattern where it fits (usually a question), and this sentence isn't one of those. The simplest fix was いくつか ['a number of'].

You can think of these as different words, as Mushi says, but there's also a definite pattern: だれ "who" / だれか "somebody" / だれも"everyone, noone" ; どこ "where" / どこか "somewhere" / どこも "everywhere, nowhere"; いくつ "how many" / いくつか "some" / いくつも "many", etc.

nadiatims Wrote:So the problem with focusing too much on grammar is that it doesn't give a lot of bang for its buck compared to forms of study that will boost your vocabulary.

Personally I think it's the other way around. There's not actually all that much grammar to be learned, so learning about a particular grammar point gives you much more bang for the buck than learning one vocabulary item, because the grammar point is probably going to be much more common. Also if you find a sentence where you don't know a bit of the grammar it uses, that's much harder to make a reasonable guess about than if you find a sentence where you don't know one of the words it uses.

Obviously in practice you want to learn in a balanced manner, and clearly it's possible to focus "too much" on grammar; I'm just saying that it's also possible to not focus enough on it.

(Also if we're really into 'greatest boost for shortest time' then rtk-lite seems like a better thing to argue for than full rtk :-))

yeah, but grammar can't be studied at anywhere near the speed of vocab. And grammar tends to be forgotten if not frequently encountered through exposure, but it's hard to get that beneficial exposure when you have no vocabulary. That's why I think cramming say 5000 words into your head at speed will do more for a beginner's Japanese level than attempting to internalize the contents of a grammar book which as a beginner will be a hard slog, but could be a pleasant read if they already know half the words in the book and already have some guesses as to how the grammar works.

I think at the beginning grammar would be more beneficial. The usages of the particles, the different ways to conjugate verbs --> even into the "more difficult" causative and 受身 and such. I'm talking the very basics. If you can work sentences around to mean what you want them to, you won't need a whole lot of vocabulary to do it.

But, once you get past the bare bones of it, you should probably pile on the vocabulary. Because then you've gotten past the "how does i made sentence?" stage, and you can move onto broadening your horizons. I guess...the law of diminishing returns works faster on grammar than it does on vocab...so to speak?

Quick question -

「推測するに、布団の傍らにある小さなテーブルに行儀悪く座ってメイクを落としていたのだろう。」

Is this an elipsis of の ? So it becomes 「推測するのに」 - "even though I'm just guessing...". This makes the most sense to me, but I didn't know you could just drop the の like this.

FooSoft Wrote:Quick question -

「推測するに、布団の傍らにある小さなテーブルに行儀悪く座ってメイクを落としていたのだろう。」

Is this an elipsis of の ? So it becomes 「推測するのに」 - "even though I'm just guessing...". This makes the most sense to me, but I didn't know you could just drop the の like this.

The quoted sentence looks ok to my (untrained) ear, but the alternative "推測するのに", which you would apparently roughly interpret as meaning "Although this is just a guess," I don't think would work.

This is because you're forcing a particular English idiomatic use of "although / even though" on "のに". It's one of those little pitfalls of converting individual Japanese words into English, then trying to form an English sentence based on those words. I believe "けど" would be closer to the use of "although / even though" that you're thinking of.

So any idea of what the grammar point here might be? I honestly can't think of anything else, and just as-is に is being used in a way that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me Something must be getting left out right?

Edit: I'm actually trying not to think of the stuff I read in English at all, but in this case I'm just reaching for any grammar that can explain how we arrive at the meaning (which can be guessed from context).

FooSoft Wrote:So any idea of what the grammar point here might be? I honestly can't think of anything else, and just as-is に is being used in a way that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me Something must be getting left out right?

I only make drive-by observations. I'll leave more scholarly explanations to someone else. You see, even though I try to point out things when I can, you're actually reading considerably above my level. My background is really almost exclusively in speaking the language, and books still mostly baffle me.

I'm not completely sure of the grammar, but this definitely isn't のに "although"; you can't use のに like that.

I don't think anything is being left out. There are a huge number of uses of に, some of which can come directly after verbs like the example above. But this is one place where I can't explain exactly what is going on.

This is the real hazard of learning from exposure without formally studying grammar -- there are a certain number of grammar points where I know what it means, but if you ask me to explain it, I'm like, "I don't know, it's just how they say it!"

推測するに is roughly equivalent to "at a guess" in English -- "At a guess, I'd say she was ill-manneredly taking off her makeup at the little table by the futon."

You can find a lot of examples like this on Google:
起きた時森の中にいた女の子の言葉から推測するに、ここは異世界？
"Guessing from the words of the girl in the forest when I woke up, is this a different world?"
種の数から推測するに合計50個は食べました
"Guessing from the number of seeds, I must have eaten 50 in all."

But I'm not sure if this is a grammar point or just something quasi-idiomatic or what.

Dictionaries don't help much either in this case; here's what 大辞林 says about this usage: 「（接助）動詞の終止形に付いて，本論を述べる前の前置きを表す」

It's a conjunction, so I guess this に is related to the に we use to create lists「AにBにCに」. Kind of makes sense because, just as you can also create lists using と「AとBとCと」, you can also say 「今思うと、…」「推測すると、…」

Ahhh new に grammar! I remember seeing a very brief mention of に being used for lists in DBJG but I didn't even think of applying that pattern here. Good thing I asked

FooSoft Wrote:I remember seeing a very brief mention of に being used for lists in DBJG but I didn't even think of applying that pattern here.

I'm just speculating, though. Maybe they are not related at all.