Ha. I do this in English (my native language.) Especially with boring and long winded text books. It sucks to have no memory/attention span. Really makes learning another language that more difficult.

This has happened to me several times as well. Not quite sure what to do about it though.

Perhaps I should just take this back to basics and study the definition of 'topic.'

If I was to take the (completely random) sentence of, "Jet-skiing is popular in France." what is the topic here? Why is it the topic in the first place? If it's not jet-skiing then why is it France (or vise-versa)?

crayonmaster wrote:

One good explanation I read was that は acts like ":".
so... 私の名前はＪｕｄｙです。 My name: Judy.
That's how I usually think of it.

That's interesting. That's the kind of thinking that seems to work for me.

I'll try look at it like that for a bit and see how I go.

wccrawford wrote:

Yeah, I get the same thing when reading Japanese.  I need to pay special attention to keeping the rest of the sentence in my head while puzzling out the rest of it.  Your brain can only hold up to 7 things at once, and when you're rifling through your memory trying to remember what things mean, many of those spots get taken up at once.  How the word looks, the pronunciation, the individual kanji and kana, and then some other stuff to remember where you first learned it, etc.  Do that for a few words in a row and it's very, very easy to lose the rest of the sentence.

As Japanese becomes second-nature to you, you won't have to specifically try to remember...  But until then, that's how it is.

Hah. That's actually really informative and encouraging.

I was wondering whether I'd eventually get used to it or not but there's the not knowing that can be a real kick in the self esteem. It's true, the likes of "ケーキを食べた" seem as plain as English to me whereas (presumably) once it wasn't (can't really imagine that now). Hopefully the rest will follow in a similar manner eventually.

Another observation I've made which I find quite encouraging is (though I may be wrong) spoken Japanese(/all languages?) is generally simpler than written. Perhaps I can get away with going over sentences more than once and still be good enough in listening, too.

Anyway, I'm trying to get used to the は/: way of thinking so I'm using Google to do half arsed translations. I'm sort of noticing they do fit with ':' but I'm wondering others are more suited to '=' as well?

Just using the first examples that came up after searching は...

Twitterは技術ではなく、人間性の勝利
Twitter: not a technique, a triumph of humanity

ハンゲームは Microsoft Windows および Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0でご利用ください
Hangame (name of site): Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0 (by means of) please use

はてラボは *.hatelabo.jp ドメインで運営されており、
Haterabo: hatelabo.jp domain (by way of) being managed (...)

友だち作りは、 オシャレから始まる！
The making of friends: it starts from talking!

私たちシックス・アパートはブログの会社です
We, the Six Apart (name of site): blog('s) company.

僕の彼女はサイボーグ
My girlfriend: cyborg

渡る世間は鬼ばかり
The world (we) live in: nothing but demons

To me it seems the shorter sentences' は could be paraphrased with '='. (ie. 僕の彼女=サイボーグ). What do you guys think about this?

wccrawford wrote:

Yeah, I get the same thing when reading Japanese.  I need to pay special attention to keeping the rest of the sentence in my head while puzzling out the rest of it.  Your brain can only hold up to 7 things at once, and when you're rifling through your memory trying to remember what things mean, many of those spots get taken up at once.

Yeah. I find this often happens with sentences that are kind of on the border of my level of understanding. Some sentences are straightforward; some have enough unknown vocabulary or grammar that throws me so I don't understand them to start with unless I start wading in with the dictionary; the ones where you think you understood all the pieces but fetched up at the end of the sentence with no real idea what it was lie in the middle. I guess that means these are the ones to try to focus on to push them down into the 'easy' category :-)

Virtua_Leaf wrote:

To me it seems the shorter sentences' は could be paraphrased with '='

One of the grammar notes in the back of _Read Real Japanese_ says that the usual pronunciation of '=' is in fact は... (well, presumably わ, but you know what they mean).

I suspect that thinking of は as either ':' or '=' covers a fair chunk of its usage, but (like "as for") will at some point lead you astray. After all, if it were this easy there wouldn't be so much of the literature devoted to the finer points of は and が. The section of Rubin's _Understanding Japanese_ on the subject is worth a look if you haven't read it before.

I  feel like I have this problem too sometimes. I will be reading through a sentence and I will understand all of the parts, but when I get to the end, I can't remember what it actually all meant. This is especially true if I find that I have to translate back into English to work out exactly what's going on. It's not a problem if I understand the sentence fully in Japanese (obviously).

Virtua_Leaf wrote:

If I was to take the (completely random) sentence of, "Jet-skiing is popular in France." what is the topic here? Why is it the topic in the first place? If it's not jet-skiing then why is it France (or vise-versa)?

I would say the topic is jet-skiing. Firstly because it comes at the beginning of the sentence, and if it was spoken, it would be emphasised. But if you said 'In France, jet-skiing is popular' I would say that 'in France' is the topic. Same applies in Japanese really.

ジェットスキーするのは、フランスに通俗です。　Jetskiing is popular in France (as apposed to other sports).
フランスにはジェットスキーするのが通俗です。 In France, jetskiing is popular (as opposed to other countries).

Well that's how I would interpret it anyway.

It's poor reading comprehension - do what you did at school to improve your reading comp. . When you're done reading, talk to yourself about what you just read, or write something about it on lang8.