My point was that I and I assume most English natives do not know the word "offing". Why use such obscure vocabulary when explaining something.

although 心得 can perhaps be translated as hint in certain situations, a better translation is knowledge.

I don't know, maybe マジ is technically gikun, you didn't explain it clearly. But it seems odd for it to be in the same class as words like 今朝 because you would only ever read 本気 as マジ when it is written with furigana. It's like writing エクスカリバー over 魔刀 or something, to me it seems like it should belong in a different class from the other examples.

nanorigana, I'm pretty sure I just copied from your site.

but anyway...

lesson 5:

I wouldn't call 我 archaic, it's used quite frequently.

You don't explain what your 'F' tag means. At first I assumed feminine and assumed you're wrong for saying watakushi is feminine, then I realised you probably mean formal.

Uchi isn't always feminine. It's often used by children.

Speaking about oneself in the third person is not necessarily childish in Japanese. You hear it frequently among adults.

Generally your labels are all generalisations and aren't that useful. You need to get a sense for how these words are used from observation.

"自分自身が立つ。
Jibun jishin ga oto wo tatsu."

you copy/pasted in "oto wo" for some reason. It would be oto wo tateru btw.

yudantaiteki Wrote:I'm not certain whether this is in reference to the classical lessons or not, but if it is, you really have no choice with classical. Making up your own sentences in teaching materials is not a good idea since nobody is a native speaker of classical Japanese, so you have no way of knowing whether your example is accurate or not. This is especially problematic for things like けり where the usage is still not fully understood even by specialists.

Yes, it was a reference to classical -- that's what I've been looking at. This is a definite possibility that I hadn't considered, or even known about -- had no idea けり was still up in the air, to whatever extent it may be.

yudantaiteki Wrote:For classical I tend to think the best thing to do is memorize the basic conjugations and get a chart of conjugations and suffixes, and then just dive into a text and ask questions.

Once I started bouncing around lessons figuring out what certain things meant (that first けり was the kickoff point), I was basically doing this, so I think it's a great idea. Any suggestions of good sources to get some charts?

yudantaiteki Wrote:(If enough people are interested in classical I may start posting the 百人一首 materials I've been developing...)

I'll throw in my vote

imabi Wrote:As to Asriel: I can help you aside from here with Classical Japanese and see where I may need to add grammar notes. I'm trying to wait a bit so I have most of the course made so that I can just make directories.

Yeah no worries. I told you I'd get you some feedback, and so I wanted to follow through. Recently I've been getting bored with Japanese, but getting into classical might be something to reel me back in. I'm not going to focus 100% on it, but I think your site (and you?) might be helpful.


Also, I was taking a look at some of he lessons people were talking about, and I went from Lesson 4 to Lesson 122, talking about abbreviations:

Lesson 122 Wrote:エンターテイメント えんたーていめんと エンターテインメント ⑦ Entertainment

...Actually never mind. I was going to say "you forgot to abbreviate it!" but then I saw that you took out that ン. I was going to suggest エンタメ.

yudantaiteki Wrote:(If enough people are interested in classical I may start posting the 百人一首 materials I've been developing...)

Count me in as an 'aye' vote!

Nadiatims: that was a typo when i tried to make sentences more simple. I should have put r instead of f. Ware is archaic in terms of first person. You are in a region of Japan where it is common for second person. I believe that is mentioned. I have been around japanese for a long time and feel my generalizations are fine. Some of those points were once in the lesson. I guess they need to be put back.

I just got to fix the typo. I also made a note on ware, and i also changed the notation of f to r so it matches the key. I do think, though, that some things you mention are based off of your location in Japan as what you describe is more so typical of West Japan. Nevertheless, i will be sure to add more notes later.

yudantaiteki Wrote:(If enough people are interested in classical I may start posting the 百人一首 materials I've been developing...)

I would be interested as well. ^^

I have a resource for it with english translations for each. Do you want it yudantaiteki?

I am thinking about incorporating poems from it in my lessons too. I will have time later tonight to read through my classical lessons to make them easier.

I have thought of ways to move harder things out of the first few lessons. I hope it will help.

ydtt, I really like your idea of using the 100 poems. It's part of common cultural knowledge that us foreigners often lack - like nursery rhymes and fairy tales. The bite-sized poems make that world more accessible and some of imagery, innuendo and symbolism is interesting.

There are websites with audio, woodblock prints, background notes and translations, so the relevance/context will be more readily apparent than with isolated sentences. (buonaparte's thread has some links for offline use - not sure which source.)

It's also a traditional holiday card game. (Friends played it with me, but I'm not really sure how popular it is.) I think most Japanese would be surprised/amused that a foreigner is able to play it. (parlour trick? ;p) One website provides audio for the first part of the poems in order to practice identifying the next part. (There's even a Nintendo museum near Kyoto with a giant illuminated squares people jump on when they recognize the poem.)

So, yeah...one more "aye"!

imabi Wrote:I have a resource for it with english translations for each. Do you want it yudantaiteki?

No, I have enough resources -- I've been studying classical Japanese for 6 years now so I'm not a beginner.

Re:我, I think it is archaic, at least in standard Japanese. 我々 is used sometimes, but not plain 我.

Yes, 我々is somewhat common. 6 years? Bravo. I wish I had that much life experience. It will come in time. At least I started my Classical Japanese studies young so it wouldn't be as hard. Plus, when I make my own lessons, I essentially double my own knowledge. I anticipate what you come up with. I didn't mean just for you yudantaiteki. If you're making lessons on them, it would be helpful for others.

May I add that 油断大敵 is a very clever name you got there.

Thora Wrote:It's also a traditional holiday card game. (Friends played it with me, but I'm not really sure how popular it is.) I think most Japanese would be surprised/amused that a foreigner is able to play it. (parlour trick? ;p) One website provides audio for the first part of the poems in order to practice identifying the next part. (There's even a Nintendo museum near Kyoto with a giant illuminated squares people jump on when they recognize the poem.)

Karuta, yeah! I've had an urge to learn more about it, and the poems after I started watching Chihayafuru, which is a really great anime involving competitive karuta.

I would like to know how to play it to. Could you send the rules?

I imagine it's on wikipedia, but basically you have 100 cards laid out on a floor or table, each with the 下の句 (last 2 lines) of a poem from the 百人一首. One person who's not playing reads a poem (the full poem) and the rest of the players have to find the card with the appropriate 下の句 and take it for a point.

It's a little more difficult because the cards are written in all kana with no dakuten, so it takes some practice. People who are actually skilled at the game memorize not just the poems but the unique portions of the poems, and the beginnings of the 下の句 to find it faster. So for instance, when you hear 秋 it could be either poem 1 or 79, but once you hear 秋の it has to be poem 1 so you're looking for the card that has わかころもてはつゆにぬれつつ on it.

(I really don't have much interest in the game...

Quote:May I add that 油断大敵 is a very clever name you got there.

I seem to get a lot of compliments on that but it's a totally random name that I started using quite a while back, when I needed something other than my real name in a hurry and I just picked that completely at random. It has no particular meaning or significance to me, but I guess it looks clever.

lesson 6
skimming through, it appears to all be correct. This information could be interesting for advanced learners as reference material. I think you should have lesson names in the menus instead of just numbering them though.


lesson 7

"何倍上ですか。(Polite)
Nanbai desu ka?
How many times did it increase?"

I think 何倍増えましたか would be better. Also you don't show how to read 上.

”温度を四度上る。(Plain)
Ondo wo yodo ageru.
To raise the temperature four degrees.”

that should be 上げる. 上る is read のぼる.

Those are unfortunate typing errors. I meant for the sentence to be just 何倍ですか。
I changed the sentence yesterday and apparently didn't change it all the way through.
I assume げ got deleted.

Could you please email these instead? These are basically all typos you are mentioning. I am not an idiot.　These mistakes are made from going back and forth. Rushing is also a factor.

Competitive karuta? I had no idea. haha (Wikipedia says it's like Fight Club and competitors can lose up to 8 lbs... :p)

ydtt: I was thinking that knowing these poems are well-known, are relevant today (even if only among family or fringe in the form of a game [or in expressions, I suppose]), and have themes that can be enjoyed in small chunks, would help bring it alive for some students. (I had to study classical Japanese in order to read legal material and it was really heavy and dry. No romance, no language play, no end-in-sight... Studying some of the poems years later was voluntary and a pleasure.) I wasn't really imagining you bringing the game to your lecture... :-)
edit in []

lesson 8

Probably can't comment too much on this one as I never memorised the words like 已然形 etc. Everything seems in order. I do think your exercises are kind of laughable though. Your lessons aren't really structured in a way that really teaches or explains anything. It's more like a reference book.

lesson 9

You don't need to teach your 'deletion rule'. If one is learning from native sources they will mostly not encounter incorrect usage.

"Case particles go before bound particles."
What are bound particles?

I think it's enough to simply say が marks the grammatical subject and then briefly explain what subject means using a few examples...
Saying anymore than that and you step into making up generalisations territory.


Your explanation about が as emphasis seems wrong to me. 今が今 and 皆が皆 for example are idiomatic, it's not a grammar rule, and actually I can't remember ever hearing them.

求刑の結果だが、予想通りだ。
Kyuukei no kekka da ga, yosou-doori da.
These are the results of the prosecution; it went just as planned.

this should be "as expected/predicted/feared"

I think the deletion rule is necessary because most gaijin will do it if not told. Laughable, I'm offended. I am at a loss in understanding you.

Those usages of ga are valid, and my translations stand. We all have the right to our own style. If I have found holes in your knowledge, I have done my job.

May I suggest you google が　接続助詞?

Bound particles, well if you read the previous lessons, you would know. There are several links to these terms to go back to where they are first mentioned. Please go back to Lesson 2. That statement is the reason why you say Nihongo de wa rather than Nihongo wa de.

My exercises are meant to make you think and see if you read. They are varied and purposely not consistent in format. It is also one feature of the site that I have least worked on. So, there is plenty of room for me to improve on them. Remember, the site is still in a somewhat embryonic stage. It is fine that you give advice for it to grow, but not to abort it.

Encountering incorrect usage is not the issue; reproducing incorrect usage is the issue.

I'm sorry, but my explanations of particles are not generalizations. They are what you would find in any given Japanese dictionary. Look up ga in one and tell me if it makes such a simple definition. I don't think so. Situations are only ways that such can be so. It would help to put the gist in the center of a piece of paper with branches going off to depict those situations. That is how I have always viewed things, and it works.

Besides, saying that it just marks the subject is the biggest generalization you could possibly make.

Idiomatic? No, I call it emphatic repetition, especially if we are really finding a literary device term.

This back and forth is interesting, but I would much prefer you send emails listing your points so that I can address them more quickly and give you my reasoning.

As our time zones are different, I would appreciate you email. I will not be able to respond until 9 hours when I wake up. Thank you.

I would just avoid responding to nadiatims' comments about the grammatical explanations and teaching style; nadiatims has a view of learning that heavily emphasizes "immersion" and "native sources" and experience and is very critical of English explanations, so your blog is going to be pretty much completely opposite of what he/she would recommend for learning.

In particular, nadiatims' view of "ga" is idiosyncratic and has been debated many times on the forum but he/she has not budged a bit, so further discussion is unlikely to be fruitful. The debate over whether "ga marks the subject" is (a) correct, or (b) if correct under certain definitions, useful, is another one that has continued for a long time with no resolution.

(For nadiatims I don't think it will be useful to point out over and over again your view that immersion makes English explanations useless; it's obvious that the blog is taking a different basic strategy than you would, so bringing it up multiple times on every lesson is pointless.)

Thank you for your comment ydtt. I have always thought that immersion is the only way. Now, my version of immersion may inevitably make some people drawn, and I am trying my best to minimize that, as I'm sure you can tell through my hard work and commitment to address things here as best I can.

I'm still in high school, and my time there takes a way a lot of the time I would otherwise devote to improving what I have. So, it is normally pigeonholed for the weekend. Now, this weekend is screwed because I have an SAT. It is very bad timing. He has found typos, but has also used, in my opinion--and I may be completely wrong on this--, using the opportunity to tell me off. I went back last night to make a lot of sentences shorter and easier, and consequently some things were not saved and published properly. It is something that I am going to have to increasingly watch and make sure of doesn't happen; it's what you get when you rely on a site builder.

The way to approach ga, I agree, is very debatable. It is even debatable in 比較対照 analysis with the Korean particle. I have found it intriguing recently at the differences between the two.

I guess there will always be polar opposite ways of learning. That's what makes us all so unique. It's like what I thought today: the probability that one will exist in the first place is slim to none, and it is this that makes everything about us so unique.

If h/she doesn't like it, well, I'm sorry to say that. I do thank nadiatim to pointing typos. It's like what my English teacher told me. When you the writer write something, you think what it is right, but when you start writing down and make an error, you still read it as what you thought in your mind. It is only when another person notices that makes that switch go on and say "aha"!

Lastly, I'll take everything you ydtt and nadiatim said as a compliment.

...oh, and about karuta: remembering 100 poems is probably going to take me forever. I can't remember songs at all, much less A poem, although it does sound like a fun game that would probably be very competitive.

I'm not trying to offend you, I'm just saying that there is clash in style between a textbook and reference book. As a reference, you have a lot of useful information but as a textbook it needs editing. This is constructive criticism and I don't think I'm the only one whose said it...

lesson 10:

"The particle wa is a bound particle, which means that it is primarily used to show emphasis. "

WA is used to bring up and/or change the topic so that it clear what the following comment is about.

Topic WA - comment related to topic.

X WA blah blah....
Now we're talking about X, (it)'s blah blah.
Y WA?
Now we're talking about Y, what about it?

Your rules are sooo complicated.

"犬は聞こえるが、犬は見えない。
Inu wa kikoeru ga, inu wa mienai.
I can hear a dog, but I can't see a dog."

this is a really weird sentence. You're using は to change the topic but it's not changing... You'd just say 犬は聞こえるけど見えない。

"私は行かない。
Watashi wa ikanai.
I won't go."
you'd just say 行かない except in a situation it's not clear you're talking about yourself. For example if you'd just been talking about whether or not John will go or something.

In the following examples also, your use of WA would seem strange in many contexts.

"お金は払う。
Okane wa harau.
I'll pay the money."
Why bring up money as the topic? You don't seem to understand the nuance of specifying/changing the topic. When I read that sentence, I immediately get, "The money, I'll pay" implying a change of topic or something like "I'll pay the money but....(change of topic for contrast) I wasn't happy with service" or some such.

That one sentence is parallelism nadiatim.

Wa is not used just to change topic. That is a fundamental misunderstanding in my opinion. My sentences are categorized in the right place and the definitions are as simple in my mind as can be with the information I am trying to present. If you can't understand the information, that is something we have to work on.

I honestly see nothing wrong with that page. So, like ydtt said, I think it's just we're coming from two completely perspectives on how to word things.

That sentence with money is forcing that the speaker will pay for the money in a way that is not as strong as the volition but not as meek as just using を.

Did you even notice that there were different sections in that lesson? The examples were not continuous.

I'm reading some of the lessons that nadiatims is commenting on, 9 and 10 I think it is?

Yeah.. I definitely wouldn't want to read this as a beginner. It would scare me off and I'd be one of those guys saying I can't learn it because it's just too darned complicated. I'd want to know how to put sentences together and learn some good words to throw in there.

This site is way more like a reference site. How did you learn Japanese, imabi? You have so much knowledge about it, it seems like you just read a grammar dictionary and absorbed it all, quite dry. I can't explain grammar for anything, but I understand it when I see it.

edit: About the money, I feel like context is needed -- why the sentence is being constructed in such a manner. As it stands, お金は払う (I'll pay the money), a beginner could potentially see this and be really confused about を and は and what the difference would be.

I didn't see imabi's lessons but from the comments here it looks like they are really worth a visit. Unfortunately, I consider myself a beginner so I don't think I could contribute to making your lessons better, imabi.

@nadiatims
I think you should take imabi's comment on a "fundamental misunderstanding" seriously. A mere beginner like myself can provide you with the following examples where wa is not a topic marker.

1. Source of that phrase is my japanese colleague:
[私は]"レントゲン"と読むとは、思いもしませんでした。
[ I] wouldn't even have thought to read it "rentgen".

2. Source of that phrase is DBJG (p.518):
僕は今日はテニスはしない。
I won't play tennis today.

3. Source is Murakami Haruki:
僕は嘘をつくのは得意ではない。
I'm not taking pride in lying.

Thora Wrote:Competitive karuta? I had no idea. haha (Wikipedia says it's like Fight Club and competitors can lose up to 8 lbs... :p)

Yeah, in the anime it looked like it was a pretty intense game.
In case anyone is curious, I found an online karuta game, and multi-platform karuta software. I couldn't find any online competitive karuta sites. I guess it isn't popular enough to have multi-player servers, like Go (not that I'd have any chance of winning, but it would be fun to try ^^).

@Inny Jan

"レントゲン"と読むとは、思いもしませんでした。"
(that/the fact) (it) is read レントゲン, I never thought that.
Here the notion that something is read "レントゲン" is brought up as topic...and it is commented on.

"僕は今日はテニスはしない。"
likewise these は are also topic markers, just the topic is being refined by use of multiple は for clarity. ie　しない refers to I, today and tennis.

@imabi
the sentence "犬は聞こえるが、犬は見えない。" is definitely incorrect and defending it demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding.

犬は聞こえるが、猫は聞こえない。
or
耳は聞こえるが、目は見えない
or
声が聞こえるが、姿が見えない
would all be correct though...

there is nothing 'meek' about saying 金を払う。

There is no need to take anything personally. You have a site in which you've compiled a lot good information. To be good learner material it needs editing and it needs to be simplified so it can be digested easily. You use a lot of japanese grammatical terms that even advanced students (and likely a lot of natives) don't know or need to know. You suggest remembering a lot of unexplained information. For example how can someone apply or even remember your deletion rules before they have even learnt those particles (dake, koso etc)? As reference material you have a lot of good information but reference material needs to be indexed in a way that is easily searchable. It should also be as error-free as possible which is why I recommend you get a native to proof-read it. You're at a high level but not infallible (no one is). The advanced learners to whom a lot of your information could possibly be useful are going to find frequent errors in your examples. Some of these are typos, some are mistakes. If you want people to view your site as reliable, then it should be largely error-free.

I would be interested in reading your bit about classical Japanese because I have never studied it, but in the back of my mind I'll be wondering is this information really reliable.