A few quick ones:
三人称 third person
五段 (verbs like 死ぬ、泳ぐ、走る）
上一段 (verbs like 見る etc)
下一段 (verbs like 蹴る etc)
サ変 (verbs like する）
カ変 (来る)
自動詞 intransitive verb
他動詞 transitive verb
未然形 "nai form"
連用形 conjunctive form
終止形 "dictionary form"
連体形 attributive form
仮定形 hypothetical form
命令形 imperative form
接頭辞 prefix
終助詞 (sentence final particle. Tae Kim calls these "gobi" but he doesn't know wtf he's talking about)
語尾 the end of a sentence or word (ex, raise your voice at the "end of the sentence")
格助詞 case marking particle (が／の／と／に etc)
接続助詞 conjunctive particle (と when it means and)
準体助詞 nominalizing particle (の)
係助詞 binding particle (さえ、しか、etc)
活用 conjugation
濁り voicing
濁点 voicing mark
半濁点 semivoicing mark
連濁 sequential voicing
形容動詞 adjectival verb

Things like verb groups and conjugation forms use completely different names in English in most books for no apparent reason, so a Japanese person will never know what you're talking about unless you use the Japanese terms.

Last edited by Jarvik7 (2009 October 23, 6:54 am)

Just a quick tip... A good portion of Japanese people won't know what you are talking about if you start throwing around these grammatical terms. I use to try to ask friends things, and they would ask me what I was talking about, especially if I asked about verb classes or anything.

To this day, I only have 2 friends (out of around 30 or 40 good friends, and maybe 50+ more acquaintances) that can answer Japanese grammatical questions for me.

I think most Japanese know grammar terms on IceCream's list. 固有名詞 (proper noun) is also a useful term, and everyone knows what it means. I think the majority learned at least half of what's on Jarvik's list at school and probably forgot almost all of them. Apparently he forgot to include 副助詞 adverbial particle (the notorious は, くらい, etc.) and some other particles, though I don't think it's useful to learn those obscure jargon.

As for U-verb, Te-Form, and the like, they're dumbed down grammar terms that foreigners only learn. There seems to be a translated version of the grammar jargon for foreigners too, so just because it's in Japanese doesn't mean your Japanese friends also learned it. The same term may mean different things, I guess.

The grammar Japanese kinds learn at school is called 学校文法, and this is obsolete in modern Japanese linguistics. So, there are at least three types of grammar: dumbed down grammar for foreigners (This is the one you learned, I think.), grammar for Japanese kids (i.e., 学校文法), grammar studied in academia (There are variations.).

But seriously, do you think your average native English speaker can answer questions like "Which tense should I use in a subordinate clause in the subjunctive mood in a reported clause of indirect discourse when the reporting verb is in the past tense and the subordinate clause in question would be past perfect if it were direct discourse?" "How do I know when I can use a dangling modifier and a split infinitive?"

Jarvik7 wrote:

Honestly I've never found talking to an average Japanese person about Japanese to be useful, ever.

In fact, it can be harmful -- many Japanese will feel like they should be able to answer your grammar question even if they have no clue (because they're a native speaker), and sometimes in their efforts to explain they will come up with total nonsense.  (The same goes for native speakers of any language, not just Japanese.)

There are other traps in talking to native speakers about Japanese as well; I've had students with Japanese friends who told them that only elderly Japanese use polite language (i.e. o-verb ni naru and such).

yudantaiteki wrote:

IceCream wrote:

i think we're pretty safe with magamo though

Yes, he clearly has linguistic expertise; he's the best kind of person to ask -- both a native speaker (I think?) and able to discuss the linguistic side of things.

Magamo, Aijin and Masamo commonly post here and are native Japanese speakers. They've all been a fountain of insight into the Japanese language and culture.

That's not to down play all the advice from non Japanese guys like Jarvik and (now) Yudan. Heck, I've read posts from Yudan on The Japanese Page forums for over two years now.

Jarvik7 wrote:

This is one of the reasons that language exchange partners are a complete waste of time. Natives generally can't satisfactorily answer questions about the language, and the conversations are too forced/awkward to be of any use as conversational practice.

I wouldn't go that far, because if you're lucky and you find somebody who has a lot in common with you, then you won't have forced or awkward conversations (at least if both of you have a reasonably decent ability to express yourselves in each others' languages). I've yet to find such a partner in any language, though... well, actually, I have found such a partner in the Spanish language, only to find that she doesn't use any IM services or any other real-time communication, and we're both bad at remembering to write each other even though we do enjoy it... ^^;

Anyway, seeking language exchange partners without actually knowing them beforehand can be very problematic, though, and you can probably draw quite a lot of parallels between it and trying to find your one true love through a matchmaker website. There was one guy I talked to via e-mail in Spanish that way for maybe about a year, and we were rather mismatched from the start. Often I'd send him a long e-mail several paragraphs long, and a few days later he'd respond with only something like, "Hola, Kef, ¿qué tal?"

- Kef