I been doing a lot of listening practice by watching Japanese TV and am improving at pretty good pace, but I notice that my comprehension of the nouns and adjectives is much better than my comprehension of verbs. I can generally catch a couple of words from the beginning of each sentence (when they're not speak too quickly, ), but I don't usually understand verbs that aren't in a very base conjugation.

I'm thinking that there may be a way that I can familiarize myself with the sound of different conjugations and their general meanings. I've noticed that suffixes we (English speakers) use frequently (-ly, -tion, etc.) have a inherent meaning, even outside of context, and I assume this is the same with suffixes Japanese speakers use. Does anyone have ideas of how I could systematically connect the inherent meanings of Japanese conjugation suffixes with their sounds?

Why is learning verb conjugations any different to learning anything else?

You could try Smart.fm's Core 2000 Dictation mode. It tests you listing > meaning + type out what you've heard. Of you could set up your own cards similar to this in Anki.

Repeatedly drilling listening > meaning with written text to help should (in theory) get you where you want to be.

fakewookie Wrote:Why is learning verb conjugations any different to learning anything else?

Well, I suppose you could learn every single conjugation of every verb(I suppose this is what eventually happens anyway assuming fluency is the end result), but it would probably be faster to familiarize with the main verb bases and and the conjugation suffixes, and sort of amalgamate them as you hear them.

i.e. you hear たべ (knowing this is the stem for "to eat") and させる (knowing that this conjugation suffix has an inherent meaning of "to make/let"), and know that the word means "to make/let eat."

The only thing I can really think of is just doing repetitions of listening to the suffixes and their inherent meanings, until I get a instant recognition of each. The only thing is that this is somewhat difficult because a lot of the う-verb conjugations sound slightly different.

fakewookie Wrote:Why is learning verb conjugations any different to learning anything else?

Well, what I'm trying to get at is instant listening recognition, which in my opinion SRS only helps slightly with. The bulk of it comes from just coming across something many, many times.

Edit: fixed typo of たべ

blazerqb11 Wrote:i.e. you hear てべ (knowing this is the stem for "to eat") and させる (knowing that this conjugation suffix has an inherent meaning of "to make/let"), and know that the word means "to make/let eat."

Thought たべ is the stem form of the verb 食べる for "to eat".. Or am I mistaken?

"Speak it as you hear it." It's my solution to most things listening/production right now. I've honestly found that I can hear it and completely miss it, but if I have to produce it at the same time then I am really listening hard and I catch the verb endings. Then again unless the form is really long like the passive + causative + ていません「でした」or whatever it can be hard, especially when they use a short form mid-sentence like ～たべるのは～ (bad example) and if your not with it you completely miss it or just hear it as part of the mid-sentence content.

This will come right with more listening (you and I hope!). You could do Subs2SRS. That might help too.

By the way, I've been doing listen and speak (at the same time) for 2 weeks and I feel like my comprehension has gone up slightly. It's a massive victory as I felt like I wasn't getting any better in this area for awhile now. I'll let you know how I go in 2-3 months!

Oh, someone once recommended to me listening for word gaps (the gaps between words) and sentence endings to improve my listening (it really helped). Why not try listening for the end of the sentence? That would sort of force you to hear the verb or whatever they end with.

If you watch things with Japanese subs (variety shows - I love them - #hangs head in shame# have subs sometimes.) You could read those and get the verb before they say it, as they show the subs just as the person talks - just read the last word.

Edit: Just tried the above. Seems to work quite well!

Edit2: Anime openings with Japanese subs from youtube could also be similar if you don't have anything cheap you can get a hold of with Japanese subs on it. Although, not super useful.

Tori-kun Wrote:

blazerqb11 Wrote:"... てべ ..."

Thought たべ is the stem form of the verb 食べる for "to eat".. Or am I mistaken?

The verbs base stem is たべ. It must be a typo on blazerqb11 side.

I've had this problem since like forever and I still struggle with it in some cases but overall I've improved greatly. What helped in my case was drilling grammar like crazy and conscious intentional listening comprehension, preferably coupled with some sort of transcription. By drilling grammar I mean listening/reading to some problematic case and looking at the same grammar point for umptheenth time.

If you do this systematically and relentlessly review that conjugation each time you have a problem with it, you will get better really fast. Proportionally to how much material you'll go through .

Either way at some point grammar will be irrelevant since something will either sound correct or not. I can't remember when was the last time I thought about grammar in Polish or even English (in this case because I'm lazy and not because I shouldn't ).

Tori-kun Wrote:

blazerqb11 Wrote:i.e. you hear てべ (knowing this is the stem for "to eat") and させる (knowing that this conjugation suffix has an inherent meaning of "to make/let"), and know that the word means "to make/let eat."

Thought たべ is the stem form of the verb 食べる for "to eat".. Or am I mistaken?

Yeah, sorry for the confusion, typo　(which I've fixed now). Lot of replies, but I'm dead tired right now, so I'll read them tomorrow. Thanks for the input everybody.

At the moment I'm reading Naruto vol. 1 and watching the anime episode it fits with (1-1, etc.) So far it's really good. I can get the meaning from the manga and then read and listen to the Manga at the same time. I'm not sure how it will turn out, but it's pretty good so far.

tokyostyle Wrote:My solution to this was to treat the different conjugations as separate words. In production, especially speaking, it's inefficient to conjugate on the fly. It's easier just to skip directly to the form you need.

In study terms you should have cards that use each form in context.

This is sort of what my original idea was, except that instead of SRSing, I was planning to do enough repetition to get instant recognition. My only problem is what do when the suffix changes, such as る vs う verbs in the causative form (or many others, just continuing with my previous example) e.g. 行く > 行かせる whereas　食べる > 食べさせる, or (not a real change of suffix but the the actual syllables used changes) 待つ > 待たせる. I suppose I could just drill あせる, which could probably sound right, but wouldn't fit as nicely with the る verb stems. What I'm considering doing is getting all the different possible suffixes (based on syllables) and drilling them together to try to connect them with the meaning of the suffix. The problem is where to get the audio.

A lot of the responses here were very interesting. I definitely agree that speaking grammar helps you hear it, and that repetition of weak grammar points is the best way to make them become natural.