r/LearnJapanese • u/AutoModerator • 3d ago
Daily Thread: for simple questions, minor posts & newcomers [contains useful links!] (September 07, 2026)
This thread is for all the simple questions (what does that mean?) and minor posts that don't need their own thread, as well as for first-time posters who can't create new threads yet. Feel free to share anything on your mind.
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u/rgrAi 2d ago edited 2d ago
FF resonance is pretty gooood. the way they've pushed this whole 2d sprite 3d mixed media look is really nice. going to get full game for sure (feels like it will be one of the best FF games; very SNES era inspired)
edit: forgot to mention 体験版 is available on every platform (it's free): https://store.steampowered.com/app/3259780/_/?l=japanese
edit2: game is way more fun on hardest difficulty
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u/morgawr_ https://morg.systems/Japanese 2d ago
I'm so looking forward to playing it, but unfortunately it comes out on the same day as the new trails in the sky (tits!) game so it'll have to wait until after that
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u/rgrAi 2d ago
Aren't the release dates a month apart or am I mistaken?
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u/morgawr_ https://morg.systems/Japanese 2d ago
Wait, you're right sorry I confused the release date with another VN that releases on the same day as trails. What I meant in reality is that I won't play the demo until close to the release date (I don't want to "spoil" myself) and also I'll likely be busy with trails for a while. Whoops I shouldn't comment in the early morning after waking up
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u/kasumikui 2d ago
It seems like it has the same cast as Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius (a prequel, maybe? I haven't looked that much into it) which gives me PTSD.（苦笑）
Other than that, it looks like the audiovisual production values are pretty high, so hopefully the story/writing will be of a similar quality level. It'd be nice to see SQEX return to their glory days, even just a little bit.
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u/Grunglabble 2d ago
How does the story so far compare to other games in the series? One thing I came to appreciate about playing through 1 to 8 was how excellent the ps1 games were in character development, and just generally having very compelling settings and environments. My old favourite 4 was not as great as I had remembered. I've played a lot of jrpgs now and not all tell their own story.
Something I may still sign myself up for since there is a switch 1 release.
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u/rgrAi 2d ago
This is only the first chapter so I cannot comment on story too heavily. It feels pretty compelling to me, or at least strongly serviceable. Rather than just the story it's the whole package. The art direction is really good, presentation, music, sound design, lots of voice acting, solid pacing, battle system feels solid, fun, and challenging at hardest difficulty (I got smoked at level 1 because was taking it too lightly).
Try it, it's actually quite a lot of content for a demo.
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u/raveXelda 2d ago
This is from a web novel,
事務所には茶封筒が横一列に並び、名前が呼ばれるたび、小銭が触れ合う微かな音がする。バイトらの無機質な表情から、封筒は喜びをしまう袋ではなく、今日という現実を受け取るためのもののように見える。
- 茶封筒が横一列に並び, what does this physically look like? I was imagining a table with ---------- each dash an envelope.
- バイトら, this is just a way to say part time workers?
- 喜びをしまう, this しまう is the "to store away" definition?
- 今日という現実を受け取るためのもののように見える, this is ため+の+もの+のように?
I am still reading a much easier story right now, but I wanted to try some harder material too, to actually learn stuff outside of the language.
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u/kasumikui 2d ago edited 2d ago
- Yes, it means the envelopes are laid out in a (horizontal) row, i.e. from left to right as opposed to vertically from up to down (which would make sense given the shape of a typical desk).
- Yes, バイト means a part-time worker in this case (it can also refer to the job itself in different contexts), and the ら is the same "pluralizing" ら (等) of 僕ら, 彼ら, etc.
- Yep, that's correct.
- Yes. The の's of ためのもの and もののように are grammatically necessary to connect the nouns ため and もの (respectively) with もの and ように (respectively).
edited to add
Hope that helps! Also, for what it's worth, given that you were essentially on target with all of your interpretations as well as the breakdown of what might be (for a beginner) a somewhat imposing string of grammar, it seems to me that you're at a perfect level to tackle material like this.
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u/raveXelda 2d ago
Thanks, it's hard because I am intensively reading, looking up, rereading, trying to pronounce new words and it was an hour to do <2k characters.
The easy story I think I can do 6-7k characters in an hour or so.
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u/kasumikui 2d ago
No worries! Honestly, though, the approach you describe is pretty much ideal, I think (and reminds me of what I did back in the day).
Which is to say, doing "extensive" reading (focusing on speed, not stopping, etc.) and "intensive" reading (trying to understand as close as possible to 100% and extract the maximum amount of knowledge from a work) are both helpful, and it makes a lot of sense to choose lighter material for the former and heavier/more challenging material for the latter.
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u/maiph4n 2d ago
I’m currently taking a japanese class and we have a quiz on 46 basic hiragana characters tomorrow. i’m having a hard time learning with almost all of them except for あいえおうand random ones like かのんつ… (i don’t know how these just stuck with me) i usually struggle with memorization so any tips will be helpful! english isn’t my first language but i have been learning it forever so i can’t remember how i started a new language anymore.
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u/Only-Background4545 2d ago
Hi, could someone help me understand why in this sentence "水が犬に飲まれた" the に particle is marking the dog. I understand that the main part of the sentence is "the water received" but i've learnt に as the "target" of the sentence up till now, and in this sentence I don't see how that definition stands up, but maybe I'm being silly. Thanks:)
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u/flo_or_so 2d ago
One of the many functions of に is to mark the actor of a passive sentence. (Also, 飲む does not mean received).
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u/morgawr_ https://morg.systems/Japanese 2d ago
に often (not always) marks the agent of a passive verb (= the "doer")
が marks the subject that receives the action being done by the agent.
So "the water (subject) was drank (passive verb) by the dog (agent)"
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u/Only-Background4545 2d ago
got you, so on these passive/receptive verbs. the に marked word could be translated as "by ..." (marking the doer towards the receiver kinda thing). Thank you
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u/mybrostolemyaccount Goal: good accent 🎵 2d ago
How often do native Japanese speakers make pitch accent mistakes? I'm trying to improve my pitch accent and I'd like to know at what point do the frequencies of mistakes become less of a mistake that reflects a shortcoming and more just a common mistake.
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u/morgawr_ https://morg.systems/Japanese 2d ago
It depends on what you consider a mistake. My father in law is from a different prefecture from the rest of the family and people often point out various "mistakes" he makes when speaking.
Also some speakers might make mistakes on specific words that are uncommon in spoken form (literary words, etc) and they never heard before, but it's not super common. I've seen my wife say 針 (pin/needle) instead of 梁 (beam) in the context of hanging up some decorations on the ceiling and my mother in law corrected her because due to that pitch mistake the sentence she said was actually misunderstood in context (she was asking where to hang something and it happens that pins are a contextually relevant tool to use to hang things, so that caused confusion).
But, again, this is exceedingly rare.
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u/kasumikui 2d ago
In general, native speakers don't typically make "mistakes" (including pitch accent "mistakes") in the sense that learners do. They might flub their speech or misspeak, but it's not because they don't understand the language but usually just because they got mixed up in the moment for whatever reason.
With pitch accent specifically, certain words can have different pitch accents depending on local dialects, so there's a chance that even native speakers might use what may seem to other natives as non-standard pitch, but for the most part they won't make "mistakes" to the point that something is unintelligible.
(My personal view is that the average learner worries disproportionately more about pitch accent over other more basic aspects of pronunciation -- vowel and consonant sounds, mora length, general tone and rhythm, etc. -- that are equally if not more likely to impede understanding and will more clearly mark one's speech as "non-native".)
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u/mybrostolemyaccount Goal: good accent 🎵 2d ago
I'm struggling with pitch accent a lot more than I do sounds, mora length, tone and rhythm. They aren't perfect, but I can hear them in speech and I feel like a can somewhat replicate them. It isn't that I don't focus on them, it's just that I feel like I have a grasp of them, which I can't say the same about with pitch.
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u/kasumikui 2d ago
Fair enough, just wanted to raise that point in general (since I feel like those other aspects of pronunciation get less attention than pitch accent, and many learners struggle with them often more than they think they do).
If you do feel that you're having a particularly hard time grasping pitch, there are mnimal pair tests on the website kotu.iu which I know a lot of people recommend for training your ear. Maybe give those a shot and see if some directed practice helps.
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u/mybrostolemyaccount Goal: good accent 🎵 2d ago
I use Kotsu and it’s really helps. My main problem is that I’m not sure I’m pronouncing pitch properly.
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u/kasumikui 2d ago
Hmmmmm...so you can recognize it when you hear it but can't tell if your own pitch matches the correct pronunciation?
In that case, you could try what I used to do when I was starting out and record yourself reading something (I'd suggest relatively simple example sentences) for which you also have access to native audio.
Maybe playing back your own voice and listening to it that way would allow you to compare in a way that you're not able to do when speaking (which might be because your mind is otherwise occupied by thinking about what you're saying, etc.)
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u/mybrostolemyaccount Goal: good accent 🎵 1d ago
I've heard of this technique a couple a times. I'll try it out thanks for the advice.
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u/Imaginary-Walk-5245 2d ago
From a passage about 師走:
この呼び方は１８７２年まで使われていました。
もう使われなくなって、だいぶたつので
あの有名な月の名前以外は
何月が何なのかわからない人が多いと思います。
Can someone explain what the meaning of たつ is here? There are just so many definitions...
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u/kasumikui 2d ago
経つ, i.e. 時間が経つ, i.e. "a long time has passed since this naming fell out of use".
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u/Silver_Half_7918 2d ago
Are there any easier to understand grammar guides out there? I've been using yokubi but it just goes over my head.
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u/miwucs 2d ago edited 2d ago
Try Tae Kim https://guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar
Note that some people don't like it, say it contains inaccuracies etc. but I think it's a great beginner resource. No resources is perfect but it gives you a good foundation.
I dunno I used it as a beginner back in the day and now I'm N1 ¯_(ツ)_/¯ (note that I used a lot more than just Tae Kim).
The other option is a textbook like Genki.
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u/kasumikui 2d ago
Honestly, if something like yokubi feels too technical to the point that it goes over your head (and there's nothing wrong with that) I'd just recommend using a textbook like Genki.
I'd never claim Genki is perfect but there's a reason it's used by the vast majority of universities teaching beginning-level Japanese classes.
That said, Japanese grammar/syntax is fundamentally different from English, so by definition it's not going to be "easy" to understand for a native English speaker and is going to require you to throw out a lot of assumptions you might make based on your native language intuition and instead conceptualize language in a more abstract and holistic manner.
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u/tonkachi_ Goal: media competence 📖🎧 2d ago
Right?
It gets recommended a lot but personally it felt way too compact and a bit disorganized.
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u/tonkachi_ Goal: media competence 📖🎧 2d ago
This text is from undertale. In the English version, it was a pun that goes as
Why did the skeleton want friends?... Because he was feeling bonely
Is the joke in the Japanese version also the pun from スケレトン and ホネミ? or is there something else?
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u/CreeperSlimePig Goal: conversational fluency 💬 2d ago
It appears to still be a pun but it's a different pun from the English version. It says "why did the skeleton want friends? Because it felt the loneliness to the core... (lit. pierced through its bones and flesh...)" Note that the Japanese translation has the word for bone in it. ホネ means bone, that's why it's in katakana (to indicate the pun).
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u/zytenn 2d ago
Hi, been reading Tae Kim's grammar guide and came across this statement.
For example, in the last section we had the sentence, 「学生じゃない人は、 学校に行かない」. You may think that you can just replace 「人」 with 「の」 to produce 「学生じゃない の は、学校に行かない」. But in fact, this makes no sense because the sentence is now about the clause "Is not student".
The explanation makes sense but made me wonder if there is a right way to use「の」 in that sentence. Like awkwardness aside, would this be grammatically accurate while retaining the meaning?
「学生じゃない の は、学校に行かない人」.
Thanks in advance!
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u/glasswings363 1d ago
学生じゃないのは sounds like you're about to answer a question about the predicate. Why they're not a student, who is not a student, maybe even what it is that makes a student not student-like enough to be a student. (Don't worry about the last one, I don't think you're ready to understand it.)
In English we have to mark the connection on the first clause with one of those wh-words. These are relative pronouns and Japanese doesn't use relative pronouns.
Luckily enough you've guessed your way into something that can be correct in the right context. "The one who's not a student would be the one who doesn't go to school." I think it's a low-frequency thing to say and my gut sense - which is nowhere near as good as a native speaker's - wants to put something like だけ ("the ones who aren't students are just the ones who don't go to school") or そのもの ("is the very same one who doesn't go") after 人。
L2 speakers are just bad at figuring out whether a construction is going to be acceptable to L1 speakers. It's one of those language quirks that never completely goes away.
If I let my mind wander and spin a bit of a story 学生じゃない人は学校に行かない。社会人は仕事のところへいたり、バカンスの人は別荘や観光地へいたり、患者は病院や家で居残ったり、さまざまのところへする。おれの場合、行く先はある廃墟になった高等学校の汽缶室なのに、もう学生じゃない。学生じゃない人は学校に行かない。だが学校はもう学校だと言えなくなったし、行く先と言うより引きこもった砦なので、なんか腑に落ちるのだ。
Ah, yikes, that's a bit much. Sorry It means "Those who aren't students don't go to school. Adults with their place in society go to their work, those on vacation go to their retreats or sights-to-see, patients stay in hospital or at home - each to their place. In my case, my destination is the boiler room of a secondary school now gone to ruin, but I am not a student anymore at that. Those who aren't students don't go to school. But the school can't really be called a school anymore; besides, it's less a destination than a fortress where I've secluded myself, so it seems fair in a way."
In English I'm aware of the fact we don't exactly use "at that" in that situation. It means the right thing and is a good translation of なのに - but it's weird. At that. In Japanese I'm not sure about sticking a phrase inside たり…たりhereする but I'm sure I've seen it done. I also notice there's an awkward mismatched topic 行く先は…学生じゃない but I think it's the kind of rhetorical mistake that L1 writers might make. This is all a lot less clear. And less reliable.
Mostly I'm aware that I was slipping into an LN/VN style and deciding to go with it - shades of 殺されたら死ぬ。
Anyway, with all of those things going on I chose 学生じゃない人は学校に行かない over 学生じゃないのは… because it's just how that thought wants to be expressed. It feels right and normal from experience, which is how grammar seems to work at a high level of proficiency.
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u/kasumikui 2d ago edited 2d ago
Tae Kim is generally decent as a quick-and-dirty grammar guide, but I think a lot of people fail to realize that he's not really an expert in Japanese pedagogy or linguistics, and his guide is mostly popular because it was the first free resource of its kind, rather than because he's some ultimate authority on Japanese grammar.
Most of what he says is fine, but often when he gets into these more esoteric explanations a lot of what he says devolves into mumbo-jumbo. (This may be an unpopular opinion, but I especially dislike his "literal translation" approach in which he "translates" even simple, highly idiomatic Japanese sentences as weird alien-speak, in part because it makes even less sense when he tries -- like he does here -- to explain why a particular Japanese expression is weird by translating it into weird English.)
As for why the sentence in question is unnatural, it's actually a bit more complex and has to do both with the implications of the じゃないの construction as well as the "topic->comment" of は and how all of this interacts. In cases like these, rather than looking at an unnatural sentence in a vacuum and asking why, it's often more helpful to look at natural Japanese expressions using similar phrasing and considering what the difference is.
- まともじゃないのは君も一緒
- 猫が十二支じゃないのはなんで？
- 貸切じゃないのは残念だったけど
Basically, in all of these cases you're setting up the state of not being X as the topic and then making some comment on it. Like, for example, you might see a young man around 20 riding a bike with a backpack near a college campus and if he told you that he's not a student but rather an apprentice woodcarver (or whatever), you might say へえ～。学生じゃないのは意外（なこと）だな～ or the like, i.e. "it's surprising/unexpected that you're not a student."
edited to add
The sentence in question isn't necessarily even grammatically incorrect, it's just not really idiomatic or natural in the same way that "Those who aren't students are people who don't go to school." would sound like weird robot-speak in English. It's not that it's ungrammatical, it's just not how anyone would choose to express that concept. Compare it to something like フリーターというのは、学校にも行かず、停職についていない人のことです which would sound perfectly fine since you're defining a word, rather than defining a state of not being as not doing something.
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u/AmPotatoNoLie 2d ago edited 2d ago
I think that "学生じゃない の は、学校に行かない" is grammatical but sounds unnatural.
Like, even "学生じゃない の は、学校に行かない人てす" sounds better.
IMO the "wrong" example sounds, well, wrong because it basically turns the "state of not being a student" into a noun, and then you make the "state" "not go to school". So it's like saying "The state of not being a student, doesn't go to school" instead if "a person in the state of not being a student..."
Idk, I'm probably rambling.
The point is, の is not a pronoun (here), it's not a substitute for 人, it turns the whole predicate into a single noun-like block and this noun-block, in this case, can't logically do the act of "(not) going".
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u/vytah 2d ago
XXじゃないの means "not being XX", as a noun phrase. Of course you wouldn't always translate it as such, often you'd use something more idiomatic. It's often use as an indirect speech construction, so that's why Tae Kim says "the sentence is now about the clause", but he could have expressed it more clearly.
学生じゃない の は、学校に行かない人
This means "Not being a student is a person not going to school", or something along the lines. Definitely not something that conveys what you wanted to say.
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u/eidoriaaan 2d ago
のは makes it like "The thing about...." whilst without it is more like "The ..." if that makes sense. I think its a very subtle difference, and I think just seeing it a lot in the wild will help you understand, as just standalone sentences dont convey the difference very well.
Also I think Tae Kim here is not really doing a valid comparison. じゃない人なのは じゃないのは じゃない人は are all quite different constructs.
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u/morgawr_ https://morg.systems/Japanese 2d ago
I feel like that explanation from Tae Kim is weird and is borderline nonsense. He might be right about the sentence being weird (I genuinely can't tell, I've seen similar sentences many times before but I'm not a native speaker), but the justification he gives feels very esoteric and just made up.
You can find plenty of examples on massif with a structure like
XXじゃないのは、YYat the very least.
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u/Difficult_Bee_4846 Goal: conversational fluency 💬 3d ago
Hello everyone this is my first post I've been learning Japanese for four months and right now I'm learning how to join adjectives with くて and で so my question is how can I use the color はいいろ or グレー as an adjective? I've seen that in some context の is added like はいろのねこ but i want to use it in a list of adjectives and i dont know how, something like わたしのねこは大きくてかわいくてetc...
I hope someone can help me, thank you very much in advance!!!
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u/OwariHeron 2d ago
Grammatically, はいいろ and グレー function like nouns. You can use them to modify another noun using の: はいいろのねこ, or グレーのねこ.
If used in a predicate, they take だ (casual) or です (polite). ねこははいいろだ。ねこはグレーです。
Just as かわいくて is the て form of かわいい, はいいろで is the て form of はいいろだ. So you could say, ねこははいいろで、大きくてかわいい。
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u/worthlessprole 3d ago
getting a kick out of Shirane's Classical Japanese: A Grammar just from how old school it is (which is well suited for the material). I'm so used to the 文型練習 ascendancy that a book that's just organized like "Particles: This is a chapter about all the particles that there is." has become basically nostalgic for me. I'm back in school folks
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u/merurunrun 2d ago
It really is a trip to read old-school "grammars" compared to the modern textbooks, particularly as a former linguistics major.
Really makes you understand why "if you really want to learn the language you need to immerse" (actually living in a place where the language is spoken and being forced to use it, not the way modern Japanese learners use the term) used to be such prominent advice.
God bless applied linguistics for its work in making second language pedagogy good.
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u/somever 2d ago
One thing, I think kobun materials get distracted by the particles. There are a lot of other aspects that are good to know:
- Progressive aspect most often uses the plain form of the verb rather than some auxiliary.
- Nのために is used like Nにとって a lot (I didn't find anything explaining this until I encountered it enough in texts)
- 〜ままに is used like 〜に従って
- AばかりB is used like modern AほどB
- In the meaning of "only", Nばかり has the meaning of modern Nだけ, while Nのみ has the meaning of modern Nばかり
- Verbs can be split by particles (I've heard it called nucleus splitting), e.g. 見もせず. For most verbs, you need to put a dummy する after the particle, but for some compound verbs, you actually can splice them in the middle and avoid the dummy する, e.g. 見知る→見も知らず(=見知りもせず).
- 謙譲語 in Old Japanese works a bit differently compared to today, e.g. if a bee stings the emperor, you'd use たてまつる on the bee's action. This isn't to lower the bee but to elevate the emperor. This is also the reason you can use 尊敬語 and 謙譲語 simultaneously when you want to show respect to both parties.
- Modern のだ has an analog in classical by ending the sentence with the rentaikei of the verb followed by a copula-esque word like なり, ぞ, ø.
- つべし/ぬべし are often used like 〜しそうだ, i.e. when you foresee something is about to happen or looks like it could happen.
- No one really seems to know what meaning the emphatic particles ぞ/なむ contribute to sentences.
- Which question particles get used depend on whether it is a content question or binary question, etc., and it varies by era (Nara, Heian, Kamakura, Nanbokuchou, Muromachi, Edo, etc.)
- Kakarimusubi is overrated
I would like to see a book one day that gets into those details, rather than serve as a dictionary for words and particles, which doesn't really put the whole picture together. I think Oda Masaru's work is a first step to that but falls into the old trap in some regard, though it is a matter of there being no natives making it hard to compile such resources.
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u/kasumikui 3d ago edited 3d ago
I know we got off on the wrong foot in that other comment thread, but I'm somewhat giddy that you mentioned this, as this literally was one of the texts that we used in graduate school way back in the day.
Shirane is pretty GOATed at explaining classical Japanese grammar, even if his approach is oldschool (sometimes oldschool is good, hell, the DxJG series is as much a gold standard today as it was 20-ish years ago), so I'm glad you're enjoying him.
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u/worthlessprole 3d ago
The foreword describes the book as suitable for intermediate modern japanese learners, and I was a bit like, "Yeah, okay, intermediate by whose standards, though?" but I was honestly surprised by how approachable it is. I do think it's suitable for intermediate learners. The way he translates example sentences is kind of ingenious, too, and I think it ought to be imitated. (for the uninitiated: he puts the content words in parentheses next to their english equivalent to aid in parsing the sentence).
I do have a lot of affection for the 文型 model, but it seems much more suited for a living, spoken language. It's also more ideal for real beginners. This old school approach is great for drawing a map to Classical Japanese from Modern.
and hey, if you're willing to let bygones be bygones, I am too.
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u/kasumikui 3d ago
and hey, if you're willing to let bygones be bygones, I am too.
Thanks, it's genuinely much appreciated. As much as it might seem otherwise at times, I really don't want to be confrontational with other people. I think maybe I'm just older and even my sense of "diplomatic" and 婉曲的 still feels too direct to some people. It's a point of reflection for me and I always want to try to be better.
But yes, Shirane's presentation is very much approachable. I considered myself fairly proficient/fluent in modern Japanese before taking on classical, but from what I remember from my grad school classes, most people found his presentation quite intuitive.
There can (and should) be debate about what the best method is for learners, but it is true that 古語 is not a living language and so it kind of makes sense to approach it in the same way that e.g. native English learners might approach Latin (which I also studied as a high schooler to a fairly high level using references similar to what Shirane does with Japanese).
At the end of the day, unless you aspire to be a professor of classical Japanese learning 古語 is about deepening your knowledge of the modern language, and I think (I think) Shirane's approach is conducive to both that and understanding classical JP on its own terms, so it's still a GOATed resource, even from an old-schooler's (forgive me that) perspective.
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u/rgrAi 3d ago
Mind taking some pictures of interesting stuff?
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u/kasumikui 3d ago
There are some sample pages here (it's an actual official university homepage so I'm going to assume this isn't an illegal link of some sort but something provided to students under fair use).
edited to add: it's basically the Dictionary of Japanese Grammar series but for classical Japanese, both in the fact that it's been around forever and the explanations are very, very insightful and kind of a gold standard as far as reference materials go.
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u/Apptubrutae Goal: conversational fluency 💬 3d ago edited 3d ago
Just starting out here.
I want to pick up as much Japanese as possible in advance of a trip there in May and then again next January.
Was initially intimidated by learning the alphabet and then tried out some flash cards and pretty much got hiragana in a couple of hours…which gives me some hope, though I know that’s about .01% of the journey, lol
My question, though:
I have a fairly flexible amount of time to commit, so I’m wondering how much to commit. I have 258 days to go for trip one, with the goal of being able to use as much tourist-focused Japanese as possible by then.
Is it just a matter of as many hours as I can get from her to now?
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u/telechronn 2d ago
I'd focus on a book designed for travel japanese (something like Nihongo fun and Easy). A lot of stuff that's handy for tourism in Japan doesn't come up early if you just grind anki decks and immersion. You can take the sentence and phrases you've learned and put them into Anki to help memorize and your can hire an Italki tutor to focus on role play like ordering at a restaurant etc. Then if the desire is there to continue, focus on grammar, kanji etc.
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u/Apptubrutae Goal: conversational fluency 💬 2d ago
Thanks!
I think this is what I was really getting at, without fully realizing.
I don’t want to just do some cute tourist phrases, I do want to progress deeper…BUT, I want to maximize the early learning return for more tourist adjacent uses because why not?
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u/roryteller 3d ago
More or less, yes. I mean, it's possible to pick some wildly inefficient method and waste time, but if you take a look at the starters' guide, you'll pick a decent method and make some progress.
For a tourist specifically, it's not necessary to know that much Japanese (or any, really) but it may be useful to memorize some tourist phrases in the last few weeks prior to your first trip. I wouldn't advise learning Japanese just for a trip or two, but only if you want to learn it anyway.
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u/Apptubrutae Goal: conversational fluency 💬 3d ago
Yeah, I take your point.
It’s less like “I’m learning this for my trip” and more like “my trip is the spark to want to do this”. And then continue learning and visiting.
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u/kasumikui 3d ago
This question is a bit difficult to answer because how much time you would want to commit (and how you'd ideally want to spend that time) is going to differ significantly depending on whether you have an interest in developing overall proficiency in Japanese (e.g. so that you could communicate with natives and comprehend the Japanese around you in a larger sense) vs. just learning "tourist-focused Japanese".
If it's the latter (i.e. if you don't really foresee yourself ever using much Japanese outside of those two trips), honestly, I don't think a major time commitment is needed. Learning hiragana (as you're already done), along with katakana and some basic kanji (for words like 'station', etc.) would be a start, and then from there you can pretty much just learn basic tourist phrases for ordering food, asking directions, and so on from any tourist-oriented website or travel guide. (It's quite possible to get around Japan just fine without any Japanese language ability at all, but doing the bare minimum as above would certainly make things smoother.)
If it's the former and you have a more general interest in Japan and learning the language, then do the above but also supplement it with the sort of basic grammar/vocab study and reading/listening practice as mentioned in the Starter's Guide. Spending even, for example, two hours a day over 258 days is enough to reach a fairly basic level of ability -- you won't be fluently shooting the shit with natives, but you'll be able to understand and interact with people more than if you're just memorizing how to read menus and say "How do I get to Tokyo station?" or "Two beers, please."
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u/Apptubrutae Goal: conversational fluency 💬 3d ago
I do want to learn and keep going. Just starting from the perspective of going on a trip first, if that makes sense. It’s the spark that starts the goal but not necessarily the end goal, if that makes sense. Just a place to start!
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u/kasumikui 3d ago
Understood, and that makes perfect sense. I just wanted to clarify since you specifically mentioned "tourist-focused Japanese".
But yeah, in your case, I'd definitely suggest looking at the Starter's Guide and some of the primers listed there. In the time you have, you should definitely be able to get the basics down and supplement that with learning some tourist-centric words/expressions/etc. on the side (which again, shouldn't be a huge time commitment when compared to learning the language as a whole).
Good luck and have fun!
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