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.

Last edited by QuackingShoe (2010 June 04, 1:36 pm)

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

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.

Last edited by JimmySeal (2010 June 05, 8:01 am)

@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 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.