One of the other threads that was resurrected reminded me of something I had been wondering about.

Recently I've been trying to learn synonyms for Japanese words I'm learning right now. Part of the reason is it helps sometimes to known more than one way to express something you are trying to say. The other reason is that in English its usually bad form to repeat the same word again and again, it makes you sound child-like.

Does this hold true in Japanese as well? Does repeating say the same adjective (すごい！) or noun/adverb, over and over, make you sound unrefined?

Thanks

Think it would depend on the commonness of the word, just like in our common-tongue, English. Incredibly common words, it isn't weird to repeat them in most common contexts, because they're so common in the first place that you don't commonly notice them. Slightly rarer words are rare enough that if you use them too much it will start to sound a bit off, but not rare enough that using them heavily is rare, and you don't need to make any special effort to use them rarely. But it's only the pretty esoteric words that really seem an egregious violation, even if you're utilizing a variety instead of just one repeatedly. Employ a cornucopia of obscure terms in close proximity without fair justification, and people may think you're intentionally obfuscating, or that your tastes are esoteric.





Aaaaaanyway, I think most of the words you're going to learn as a beginner are the type that you can repeat without much worry.

Isn't it best to avoid learning related words at the same time?

QuackingShoe,
I laughed at your post. And I agree that most common words don't sound weird when repeated. です、これ、人 etc

Codexus Wrote:Isn't it best to avoid learning related words at the same time?

Should probably tell that to my one Japanese teacher here. But not what I meant was more like I simply include synonyms in the "Japanese meaning" field for my facts. I won't always have 2 cards with the same meaning at the same time. Too much collision with that.

In my experience, repeating words instead of interchanging them with synonyms in Japanese writing isn't as much of a taboo as it is in English writing. I find this a little ironic, since the copious quantity of loanwords (especially the Chinese ones) results in having a lot of synonyms for a lot of words.

Like codexus said, learning synonyms at the same time is very bad for learning. I don't think putting some synonyms in an answer field is a big problem though. However, what I would recommend is a system where you add one word and then add the synonyms in a textfile or something. After a few weeks, you can go back and pick one of the synonyms since you should know the first word fine by then.

@Jimmy: Thanks and ya there's a crap ton of kango its the majority of what I learn in my Japanese classes now and I find it important since a lot novels like to use it as well.

@Tobberoth: That might work for some but I would never get around to going back and doing that in a few weeks. All I do right now is use a field for the "Japanese definition" (pulled off weblio) and add the synonyms there. I don't fail cards if can't remember any synonyms/日本語 definition. Eventually I'll get around to adding the words in those field into my deck one way or another.

I find it easier to learn synonyms all at once, if your goal is to learn them all eventually. Seeing them all at once in one place forces you to come up with ways of distinguishing them right away, which you're going to have to do eventually.

I was taught that Japanese is more tolerant than English of repeating the same words in close duration, although if you do it too much it does sound a little repetitive as in English. The exceptions being topic/subject which an English sentence must have 95% of the time but much less in Japanese.

That said, there would definitely be no harm in learning synonyms.