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Learning Japanese |OT| ..honor and shame are huge parts of it. Let's!

RetroDLC

Foundations of Burden
It does not, what he means is study for 3, and if you don't think you will pass sign up for 4 instead when applications open. The tests are more or less at the same time and I think the applicationsystem locks you out of signing up for more than one test, but I have never tried to do that. Even if it does and the test time is skewed enough to do it, I don't recommend doing so, the JLPT is a marathon not a sprint.

Fair enough. I'll think about aiming for N3 and falling back to N4 if I feel inclined, but anyway, I still need to figure which iOS apps will be most beneficial to me learning Kanji in bulk.

Edit: Smeg, I'm at the top of a new page. I'll quote my original post below for convenience.

Hey, just a quick question.

I'm almost done using the Dr. Moku apps and Real Kana app for learning the Hiragana and Katakana alphabets, and I'm wanting to start learning Kanji to take the JLPT N5 at the end of the year. Next weekend I'm going to start doing a intensive learning beginners course every Saturday up to the end of the year, which will be using Minna no Nihongo Elementary Book 1 for reference.

So, my question is, which iOS apps are the best and up to date for me to learn Kanji with? The Dr. Moku Kanji app seems to have the outdated JLPT sets, which sucks because they're IAPs which I wasted money on. imiwa! seems to be the best equipped and up to date for teaching me and Kanji Quizzer seems fine for flashcard quizzing. Real Kanji is a thing too, but I've no clue if its up to date or not.

This is going to be fun.

Edit: Oh, if anyone knows a good app for learning how to count (and with quizzes), that would be great too. I'm on the verge of designing my own damn app for this.
 

Jintor

Member
The textbook. If I'm being honest a big reason why I liked Duolingo to start studying the language is because I'm a rather scatterbrained person, and I decide to do most of the stuff I do on a whim (EDIT: I think I should stress here that that is in regard of what I'll do during the day, not what new thing I'll start and then abandon. Even if scatterbrained, I'm serious in following up when I need to), even while I'm at work. Puling out the app at any given time seems easier to me than pulling out a textbook at any determined hour of the day. I've used the app at 8 am all the way to 5 or 6 pm, and a few of those were simply because the reminder of the app in my phone ringed. Self-study is not something I'm exactly good at, so that's why I was hoping to study at a language school before long. Might as well go all out with the self-learning stuff now that I'm actually really motivated and have started to learn something.

Guess I could try setting up a reminder to study during the day... Anyway, I suppose there's no app that's structured to function like a textbook, is it? Any good kindle recommendation would be the second best thing here, I suppose, though I'm guessing I'll still need to pull out the good ol' pen and paper for it.

I've been playing around with duolingo here and there, but to me the main problem with it from a beginner perspective is it just doesn't sit you down and explain shit to you very much. It just is kind of there. It's like skipping to the Lesson Exercises without actually doing the Lesson. It's okay for maintenance or if you already have learned how to learn, as it were, but it's just not very good at being a straight up only learning tool. It's a supplement, not a focus.

Retro, again, I recommend Anki. People say use the core JLPT decks and they're right for JLPT study, but I got a lot - a lot - more utility out of Anki once I started making my own decks based out of things I actually saw and used. That material might just be your textbook for starters, of course, but the beauty is you can add anything to it. That's why half my shit in there is from NHK News or random people's twitter. (Twitter is not a great platform for pulling structured learning words out of btw)

On Android, AnkiDroid flashcards is far and away the best.
 

Jintor

Member
At least in terms of actually getting memorising your kanji though the best tip by far to me is to find situations where you can read it. The actual use of a kanji is what drills it into your head because you see it in a meaningful context to you and your brain can associate it not just 'abstract' meaning to characters, but actual meaning with the character. It's one thing to know that 禁止 means 'prohibited' on a flashcard, and another to immediately associate it with a big red sign stopping you from entering a building, for instance. That's a base-level example of course but it works from all sorts of stuff.

Anki is useful for keeping kanji swirling in your head, but it's actually reading, writing and speaking that will keep them there permanently.

This is another reason why the beginner phase is really frustrating for most learners imho
 

kubus

Member
For learning kanji, if:

- You don't want to deal with textbooks, pen/paper, etc. but rather use an application you can take anywhere and practice in bursts/whenever you want
- Don't mind paying for a subscription for this convenience

Then I can recommend WaniKani and/or Skritter. Both use monthly subscriptions (with cheaper plans available for 6 months, a year, etc) but they make it really easy to study kanji.

- Get WaniKani if you're completely new to kanji, don't know radicals, and are only interested in being able to read kanji. WaniKani throws radicals, kanji and vocab at you in batches, and uses SRS to make you memorize them. You won't learn to write kanji, and there's not a lot of context for the vocab you learn except for maybe 1 or 2 example sentences. So you'll have to supplement it yourself with grammar and reading exercises and stuff. There's some gamification to it (you level up, which makes it a bit more fun), and there's a free trial. WaniKani starts extremely slow which throws a lot of people off, but can get overwhelming easily once you hit level 10+. I'm sitting on 660 reviews now because I failed to keep up for a few weeks. There's a smartphone app and multiple plugins for the website to spice up the way you learn, if you want to.

- Get Skritter if you want to learn to write kanji. It's basically Anki, but you actually write the kanji. The kanji stroke recognition software is pretty good. If you forgot the next stroke, you can tap and the app will give you a hint. If you completely forgot, double tap and you'll get an outline to trace. Skritter also uses SRS, and there's both a web app and iOS/Android apps. You can make your own vocab lists (which is neat; just write the word or kanji in Japanese and Skritter automatically finds the definition + reading for you) or use one of the predefined vocab lists (all JLPT levels, many textbooks like Tobira, Genki, "colors", "animals", etc). It keeps track of your progress as you go through your vocab lists, and there are statistics if you dig that. Iirc once your subscription runs out, you can still review -- you just can't add new vocab lists. If nothing's changed, Skritter also has a free trial.

Note that this is just for learning kanji, and really just that. You can't learn Japanese from these apps alone, it would be like learning any foreign language using only a dictionary. You will still have to learn the grammar, make exercises, expose yourself to the language to make it stick, so you can't completely eliminate the use of a textbook.
 

Kilrogg

paid requisite penance
"英語、ポルトガル語などの外来語から入って来て" should actually be "英語、ポルトガル語などの外国語から入って来て", but that's beside the point.

While it is true, as Kilrogg stated, that "も" doesn't necessarily always mean "also, too", it is in that sense that it is supposed to be understood here.
"Words from foreign languages such as English or Portuguese which have come to be used in Japan as well are called gairaigo".
"日本では” is impossible here because it would imply an opposition, so it feels unnatural in the sentence.
"日本で" would be fine. But "でも" definitely feels more natural since borrowed words, by definition, are (or were at some point) also used in the language they originated from.

Good point, didn't even think of that.
One thing we should mention is that the reason why the Japanese use も so liberally even when it's not really necessary (as shown in the example above) is because it's a one-syllable grammatical particle. The more a word is grammatically ingrained in a language (and the shorter it is), the more it tends to be used abundantly. In other words, it's easy to make a habit of saying a 1-syllable word that is really easy to fit into the grammatical structure of a sentence. If you're saying で, you might as well say でも while you're at it. It makes the statement ever so slightly more precise without making the sentence awkward or contrived. In fact, as Oare pointed out, it actually sounds more natural in many cases. Just don't go around adding it everywhere and replacing は particles with も systematically, obviously.

Oare, I don't remember seeing you in this thread, though I'm sure this isn't your first post. Welcome anyway :). Out of curiosity, what's your Japanese background?
 

KtSlime

Member
For flashcards I like to use mikan, it's intended for Japanese learners of English, but it can go the other way of course. I also like that Mario level complete tune after every 10 cards.
 

Forkball

Member
I'm almost at level 60 of Wanikani (level 59 currently) and I would definitely recommend it for new or newish learns of kanji. It's certainly not perfect. Some of the words they teach you are never actually used (they choose them to further test kanji reading) and it may be slow for many, but I felt like the program has helped me tremendously. Kanji is such a tremendous hurdle, and once you become at least somewhat good at it, Japanese is so much easier and engaging. If you do it, you really have to stick with it and do your reviews multiple times throughout the day. But if you stick with it, I think you can get a lot from it.
 

Porcile

Member
Wanikani is only really useful for learning the onyomi and kunyomi readings. Admittedly, maybe the toughest part of learning kanji. It's a good tool for that but I think as a tool for learning vocabulary it's really not that great. Some of their meanings are just weird.
 

ISOM

Member
Total newbie to learning Japanese. Is there a step by step guide to starting and becoming proficient in the language. I'm mainly looking for online resources that would teach me indepth? Any links would be appreciated.
 

Alanae

Member
Total newbie to learning Japanese. Is there a step by step guide to starting and becoming proficient in the language. I'm mainly looking for online resources that would teach me indepth? Any links would be appreciated.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/15uvv72eVFBtcOlfHaHUfT_HhZsgWxd7VjT9u-zVSwdw/edit?pref=2&pli=1
for a walkthrough for the various things to use in order to learn to read.
Writing and speaking would follow naturally from spending time actually trying to do so after getting a sense of how the language works by doing the above for long enough.
 

Oare

Member
Good point, didn't even think of that.
One thing we should mention is that the reason why the Japanese use も so liberally even when it's not really necessary (as shown in the example above) is because it's a one-syllable grammatical particle. The more a word is grammatically ingrained in a language (and the shorter it is), the more it tends to be used abundantly. In other words, it's easy to make a habit of saying a 1-syllable word that is really easy to fit into the grammatical structure of a sentence. If you're saying で, you might as well say でも while you're at it. It makes the statement ever so slightly more precise without making the sentence awkward or contrived. In fact, as Oare pointed out, it actually sounds more natural in many cases. Just don't go around adding it everywhere and replacing は particles with も systematically, obviously.

It does add a bit of nuance though.
"日本で使われるようになった" is not 1:1 when compared to "日本でも使われるようになった". From a purely grammatical standpoint, で can usually replace either では or でも (with a neutral nuance) while both では and でも are mutually exclusive in a context like that sentence.

Here's another example, two old friends meet after not speaking for 10 years:
1)お前は老けたな!
2)お前老けたな!
3)お前も老けたな!
4)俺もだけどお前(も)老けたな!
These 4 examples are all standalone possibilities that are not equal, but where you can have a contextual nuance overlap between 1 and 2, 2 and 3, 3 and 4 while here's no overlap between 1 and 3 or 4, or 2 and 4.
By the way in this example, number 3 would perfectly fit the bill for the "toned down version" of the sentence you were talking about.

Another thing is で+も should not be confused with でも.
For example:
"ラーメンでも食べに行くか。"
"あの人にでも聞いてみようか。"
Here it's not で+も but でも as a whole, since none of those would be grammatically correct if replaced with で. They again introduce a nuance but since it's different from what the initial poster asked about it might be a bit confusing to develop here...


Oare, I don't remember seeing you in this thread, though I'm sure this isn't your first post. Welcome anyway :). Out of curiosity, what's your Japanese background?

I was here some time ago. I needlessly confronted I'm an expert out of the blue on a very very drunken night because he was getting on my nerves with the attitude. I failed to express it properly back then but I think learning Japanese isn't easy for anyone, and I swear -probably because it's difficult- there's always a guy in Japanese-related discussions who treats everyone else like shit just to assert dominance, forgetting there are 120 million natives who still speak better than they do.

Anyways, I was legitimately asked to leave the thread by other posters because he did way more than I ever did, and since I'm far from being the best teacher and often find posting way too time-consuming, I thought it was fair.
I'm not against the idea of sharing knowledge; I would be more than happy to do it in person over a drink. But writing... I don't know. It just always takes me forever squared so I kind of avoid it.

Also, I can't shake off the idea that with Japanese, most basic questions arise due to the sheer differences in grammar with Western languages. From my experience, there's a turning point where people suddenly "get" the basic inner-workings of the language, and then a lot of problems suddenly disappear (only to see more pop up at the same time). Until then, it's just drilling over and over.
I remember myself just a few weeks before I left for Japan back in 2001, a little over a month before 9/11, struggling over the sentence これは俺のだ in a self-learning book; it was in something like a suitcase-confusion-at-the-airport cliche scenario. I'm sure the person who wrote the explanation back in the day did the best job they could, but it confused the fuck out of me. So I definitely understand where posters are coming from. I know how I'd explain that specific sentence to myself-back-then, but I'm also sure even if today-me managed to pull his best explanation, back-then me would require a sizable amount of time to let it sink.

Please keep in mind that I think your own personal involvement in the thread is absolutely admirable; teaching is always a laudable thing, and it is also the absolute best practice when it comes to understanding. I never understood my my own mother tongue (French) as well as when I taught it here in Japan a good 16 years ago, and that teaching process also helped me tremendously leap-frog my own study of Japanese.

As for your other question regarding my background with Japanese, I passed the JLPT 1 back in December 2003. It took me 2 years and a half from the これは俺のだ point to get there, but I got a score a score of 367/400 if I remember correctly. Which I, for some reason, still feel weirdly proud about -perhaps because it's one of those times in my life I really put my mind into something. The effort also translated into perceivable improvements on a daily basis, which felt great. Incidentally, I think both teaching French and explaining my own grasp of Japanese to struggling peers was the absolute best thing I ever did to get me there.Now I know it was just the beginning, but still, it was a fantastic ride.
Besides that, I've worked as a professional translator and interpreter since I think 2005. I've done all kinds of jobs in the field.
But in all honesty, it's a dead end.
 

Marche90

Member
This is another reason why the beginner phase is really frustrating for most learners imho

Yeah... Thanks to this conversation I'm feeling conflicted about how much I can learn in the long run. If things were explained, that would be a completely different matter...

I know I'm repeating myself here, but any textbook recommendations that can be used for a complete beginner will be appreciated.

For learning kanji, if:

- You don't want to deal with textbooks, pen/paper, etc. but rather use an application you can take anywhere and practice in bursts/whenever you want
- Don't mind paying for a subscription for this convenience

Then I can recommend WaniKani and/or Skritter. Both use monthly subscriptions (with cheaper plans available for 6 months, a year, etc) but they make it really easy to study kanji.

- Get WaniKani if you're completely new to kanji, don't know radicals, and are only interested in being able to read kanji. WaniKani throws radicals, kanji and vocab at you in batches, and uses SRS to make you memorize them. You won't learn to write kanji, and there's not a lot of context for the vocab you learn except for maybe 1 or 2 example sentences. So you'll have to supplement it yourself with grammar and reading exercises and stuff. There's some gamification to it (you level up, which makes it a bit more fun), and there's a free trial. WaniKani starts extremely slow which throws a lot of people off, but can get overwhelming easily once you hit level 10+. I'm sitting on 660 reviews now because I failed to keep up for a few weeks. There's a smartphone app and multiple plugins for the website to spice up the way you learn, if you want to.

- Get Skritter if you want to learn to write kanji. It's basically Anki, but you actually write the kanji. The kanji stroke recognition software is pretty good. If you forgot the next stroke, you can tap and the app will give you a hint. If you completely forgot, double tap and you'll get an outline to trace. Skritter also uses SRS, and there's both a web app and iOS/Android apps. You can make your own vocab lists (which is neat; just write the word or kanji in Japanese and Skritter automatically finds the definition + reading for you) or use one of the predefined vocab lists (all JLPT levels, many textbooks like Tobira, Genki, "colors", "animals", etc). It keeps track of your progress as you go through your vocab lists, and there are statistics if you dig that. Iirc once your subscription runs out, you can still review -- you just can't add new vocab lists. If nothing's changed, Skritter also has a free trial.

Note that this is just for learning kanji, and really just that. You can't learn Japanese from these apps alone, it would be like learning any foreign language using only a dictionary. You will still have to learn the grammar, make exercises, expose yourself to the language to make it stick, so you can't completely eliminate the use of a textbook.

Souds like both are pretty good, but I'm not sure which one to use. Guess I'll start with skritter since learning how to write them might be useful
 

Beckx

Member
Oare, thank you, that explanation was useful for me. Your example of "これは俺のだ" bothering you back when you were an intermediate learner is funny because sentences like that give me fits. (I assume that is just "that one is mine"). There's a line in the opening for Tiger Mask W (I like wrestling and anime dammit) that's "虎になるのだ" and while I know it's something like "become a tiger" the "のだ" messes me up.

Yeah... Thanks to this conversation I'm feeling conflicted about how much I can learn in the long run. If things were explained, that would be a completely different matter...

I know I'm repeating myself here, but any textbook recommendations that can be used for a complete beginner will be appreciated.

Genki I. It's tried & true, updated, and IMO the most comprehensive because it includes audio files and reading/listening comp. I used it and recommend w/o hesitation.

Edit: I would also suggest using Tae Kim's online Guide to Japanese in tandem with Genki. It's very good, but very condensed and I found it worked better as a supplementary site to reinforce grammar than a primary way to learn.
 

Kilrogg

paid requisite penance
It does add a bit of nuance though.
"日本で使われるようになった" is not 1:1 when compared to "日本でも使われるようになった". From a purely grammatical standpoint, で can usually replace either では or でも (with a neutral nuance) while both では and でも are mutually exclusive in a context like that sentence.

Here's another example, two old friends meet after not speaking for 10 years:
1)お前は老けたな!
2)お前老けたな!
3)お前も老けたな!
4)俺もだけどお前(も)老けたな!
These 4 examples are all standalone possibilities that are not equal, but where you can have a contextual nuance overlap between 1 and 2, 2 and 3, 3 and 4 while here's no overlap between 1 and 3 or 4, or 2 and 4.
By the way in this example, number 3 would perfectly fit the bill for the "toned down version" of the sentence you were talking about.

Another thing is で+も should not be confused with でも.
For example:
"ラーメンでも食べに行くか。"
"あの人にでも聞いてみようか。"
Here it's not で+も but でも as a whole, since none of those would be grammatically correct if replaced with で. They again introduce a nuance but since it's different from what the initial poster asked about it might be a bit confusing to develop here...

All true, of course. I was simplifying for the sake of my point: that も is really common in Japanese, and many times serves as a way to introduce some nuance, that you might not even reproduce when translating it into your own language. It's one of those typically Japanese grammar points.

I was here some time ago. I needlessly confronted I'm an expert out of the blue on a very very drunken night because he was getting on my nerves with the attitude. I failed to express it properly back then but I think learning Japanese isn't easy for anyone, and I swear -probably because it's difficult- there's always a guy in Japanese-related discussions who treats everyone else like shit just to assert dominance, forgetting there are 120 million natives who still speak better than they do.

Anyways, I was legitimately asked to leave the thread by other posters because he did way more than I ever did, and since I'm far from being the best teacher and often find posting way too time-consuming, I thought it was fair.
I'm not against the idea of sharing knowledge; I would be more than happy to do it in person over a drink. But writing... I don't know. It just always takes me forever squared so I kind of avoid it.

Also, I can't shake off the idea that with Japanese, most basic questions arise due to the sheer differences in grammar with Western languages. From my experience, there's a turning point where people suddenly "get" the basic inner-workings of the language, and then a lot of problems suddenly disappear (only to see more pop up at the same time). Until then, it's just drilling over and over.
I remember myself just a few weeks before I left for Japan back in 2001, a little over a month before 9/11, struggling over the sentence これは俺のだ in a self-learning book; it was in something like a suitcase-confusion-at-the-airport cliche scenario. I'm sure the person who wrote the explanation back in the day did the best job they could, but it confused the fuck out of me. So I definitely understand where posters are coming from. I know how I'd explain that specific sentence to myself-back-then, but I'm also sure even if today-me managed to pull his best explanation, back-then me would require a sizable amount of time to let it sink.

Please keep in mind that I think your own personal involvement in the thread is absolutely admirable; teaching is always a laudable thing, and it is also the absolute best practice when it comes to understanding. I never understood my my own mother tongue (French) as well as when I taught it here in Japan a good 16 years ago, and that teaching process also helped me tremendously leap-frog my own study of Japanese.

As for your other question regarding my background with Japanese, I passed the JLPT 1 back in December 2003. It took me 2 years and a half from the これは俺のだ point to get there, but I got a score a score of 367/400 if I remember correctly. Which I, for some reason, still feel weirdly proud about -perhaps because it's one of those times in my life I really put my mind into something. The effort also translated into perceivable improvements on a daily basis, which felt great. Incidentally, I think both teaching French and explaining my own grasp of Japanese to struggling peers was the absolute best thing I ever did to get me there.Now I know it was just the beginning, but still, it was a fantastic ride.
Besides that, I've worked as a professional translator and interpreter since I think 2005. I've done all kinds of jobs in the field.
But in all honesty, it's a dead end.

Thanks for the backstory. I definitely get where you're coming from. Moreso than with similar languages to your own (be it French, English or Spanish), there are different knowledge thresholds and walls you're gonna hit your head against. I never got past a certain point because of that - and because I lacked motivation, to be honest. You don't have to justify yourself, I was just curious. We're in dire need of proficient speakers here. There's a big knowledge gap among the regulars between the likes of Zefah (and I'm an expert before he was banned), you, and then folks like me who kinda sorta used to be somewhat good but never pushed far enough to teach anything with enough mastery.

I'm surprised to hear you say translation and interpretation are a dead end. I mean, translation I can see, but interpretation can be very profitable, can't it?

Je suis francophone aussi au fait. Serais-tu toi aussi un produit de l'INALCO ? :D
 

ISOM

Member

Oare

Member
Oare, thank you, that explanation was useful for me. Your example of "これは俺のだ" bothering you back when you were an intermediate learner is funny because sentences like that give me fits. (I assume that is just "that one is mine"). There's a line in the opening for Tiger Mask W (I like wrestling and anime dammit) that's "虎になるのだ" and while I know it's something like "become a tiger" the "のだ" messes me up.

Oh, it was even worse than that. I was a complete beginner back then, that sentence was in a flimsy "learn Japanese in 40 lessons" book. I had no clue about the language whatsoever.

Save for hiragana and katakana which is the first thing I taught myself thinking it could come in handy.
"At least, I won't be completely illiterate", I thought. And oh boy, was I wrong. I remember myself sitting in a car with a guy who had come to pick me up at the airport, slowly driving away from Narita. Back then even in the suburbs of Chiba, where I lived for a year, a lot of road signs tended to have fewer and fewer alphabet transcriptions the farther you got from the city. Mid-drive, I thought to myself "fuck, I'm illiterate after all" I asked the dude who was driving how long it had taken him to learn all the kanji. To which he replied with a smile: "I've been here for ten years, and I still don't really know any".
In retrospect, that's what sparked my learning craze in the following years.

Oh and by the way, you are right about that のだ, your sentence could be translated into "become a tiger". It has the nuance of "you must". "(You must) become a tiger".
Depending on the context, say you have a character on his knees and the fainting memory of his dear master appears in his mind to kick him back up, for example, it could also be translated into something to the effect of "(stop whining,) be a tiger".
It's a one-way form of imperative which doesn't take into account the other person's state of mind.
It can set a sort of "hierarchy" in a series of commands.
For example:
頑張れ!立ち上がるんだ!
立ち上がれ!頑張るんだ!
are both basically the same, but the emphasis is on the second one which carries the のだ form.

I definitely get where you're coming from. Moreso than with similar languages to your own (be it French, English or Spanish), there are different knowledge thresholds and walls you're gonna hit your head against. I never got past a certain point because of that - and because I lacked motivation, to be honest.

Tell me about it! Coming from Europe, and being the young man I was (I was 22 years old), I naively thought "if people can pick up a decent level of Spanish by simply staying in Spain for 6 months, one year should be plenty of time for me to be proficient in Japanese!"
After a year, I found myself at a level where I was able to do some basic conversation, but I knew I'd forget everything in a matter of months if I went back home. So I decided to stay one more year. Six months later, I was plateauing hard so I decided to switch my full-time job into a part-time, and went to school. Probably one of the best decisions of my life (since I still live in Japan...)

Which brings me back to the motivation bit you're mentioning. I can't speak from experience on your situation, but keeping a steady pace of study, especially with a language like Japanese, seems extremely hard unless you live in the country. In that regard, I was lucky; being able to speak the language was a matter of independence, and I wanted to be independent. A lot of Japanese learners want to do it for hobby-related reasons, which makes it all the more difficult. Hobbies aren't supposed to be a chore, and God knows learning Japanese can be one at times.
However, I have witnessed a guy, a good friend of mine, who did all his Japanese learning alone in France, and still managed to trounce the JLPT 1 on his first try just a year after he began living here. So with hard work, it's definitely feasible.
My advice would be to basically forget everything you were taught in school about learning foreign languages. If you were brought up in France, you were probably served the exact same crap as I was when learning English, German and Latin: "never use a dictionary, when you don't understand a word, try to infer its meaning from context".
That dogma I had been countless times force-fed in school became my biggest hurdle when I was upper-intermediate, and it took me a very long time before I was able to pinpoint it as the culprit. Even after I got the JLPT 1.
The problem with Japanese is that trying to infer from context often doesn't work; sometimes you find yourself faced with an idiom where you're supposed to know all the words, but when you try to infer, you end up with something that makes no sense. So you start binding the grammar until all your words fit, not knowing you're actually way off.
During that period, I felt a huge loss of motivation. The fact that a lot of times, the core elements of a misunderstood sentence lie in particles and their specific uses in expressions didn't help, because it was all "stuff I knew". My advice under such circumstances would be to get back to grammar. Translate the sentence as literally as possible, properly respecting every single word's grammatical role and taking great care not to bind anything Don't ignore any も, any は, nor anything else. Just translated them as faithfully as you can.
If the sentence doesn't make sense at that point, there's something you're not understanding. It might seem like you do because you know the words separately, but you're missing something, and you've always been missing it. So it's time to learn it.
Once I started doing this, my motivation went back through the roof, because it ended the guessing game for good.

As a side note, I've served as an examiner for translation positions with a couple of companies; and interestingly, rejected French candidates always made the same mistakes at the exact same spots. And every single time, it boiled down to an approach of grammar that was too loose. So there is definitely a problem when it comes to how languages are taught in France - and I guess those become a lot more prominent with language where there's little common-ground, such as Japanese.

Honestly, I wouldn't hire the man I was when I actually began doing this job.

I'm surprised to hear you say translation and interpretation are a dead end. I mean, translation I can see, but interpretation can be very profitable, can't it?

It can be quite profitable indeed, but with French, there is a sore lack of demand. Also, there are fewer people able to work as interpreters, especially for very specialized topics. So sometimes you get called for stuff you have no clue about. A couple of months ago, I got an offer for a gig with scientists who worked in coral research.
I can't say I'm familiar with this topic besides a couples very basic things, so doing the gig would have required me to go through a self-imposed coral 101 crash course in both Japanese and French. It would have required a few days of work ahead for a sub-par result. I had already plenty of work to do in that period, so I had to let it go.
There's a reason interpreting is expensive. It's not the days you're actually on the frontline that count. It's all the work you do ahead if you're a decent professional.
Obviously, sometimes you get sweet deals. I got to go to remote islands I would never have been to, all fees paid, and received a nice amount of money for gigs that required just about a day of preparation. But these aren't legion, unless you have a good niche like sports.

The other problem is that the field is swarming with bozos who have no work ethics whatsoever, and show up with no preparation at all thinking they're going to nail it. Since they don't do any preparation, they're able to undercut your fees and thus get the job while making a large margin compared to the work they actually provide. Working for even less is not an option. Take a two days job with two days of prep time, you work a total of four days for JPY100,000. It's not a bad deal, but it becomes a lot less attractive when you have to compete with guys who'll do it for half of that simply because they just get rid of all the upstream work. Worse, even: they actually get the same amount of money as you do, since you both cash in at 25,000 a day. If you were to try and undercut them, you'd fare less than half of that. So unless you're in dire need, you just pass. And they get to add that line on their resume, regardless of how shitty their work was.
It's the same with translation, although it's actually easier to fight in that specific field. In both interpretation and translation, fees are pretty standardized. With interpretation, the only difference in quality besides the actual knowledge of the language is the amount of preparation. Translation is more on the go. Of course, a good translator will do a lot more work because he'll do research while a bad one will just skip through almost everything, thinking he understands things he in fact doesn't. But at the end of the day, the ratio will never be 2:1, so it's a lot more sustainable.

Then again, machine-translation is making a lot of progress and is coming hard at us

Je suis francophone aussi au fait. Serais-tu toi aussi un produit de l'INALCO ? :D

Comme tu le vois, non ;D Tu es allé jusqu'où, dans les diplômes ?
 

eefara

Member
Hello, everyone. It's been a while since I was last here. I've been focusing lately on drastically increasing the number of words I know. I'm estimating that I know around
~2700 now (based off of the number of flashcards I have, as they're my primary means of memorizing vocabulary), and want to move that number up to a goal of 6000.

I don't need any assistance with finding words or anything like that; rather, I'm a bit nervous about about memorizing the remaining 3300 words. I don't want to drag this out, so my goal is efficiency. Daily work with the flashcards and reading is a given; I'm also going to see if I can write a sentence or two per word and post them on lang-8 (and here if anyone would be willing to occasionally give me pointers).

Does anyone have any tips or techniques or anything else I could try? I already know it's going to be a lot of work; just trying to cover my bases before I start.
 

Kilrogg

paid requisite penance
Very interesting stuff, Oare. Thanks.

Oh, it was even worse than that. I was a complete beginner back then, that sentence was in a flimsy "learn Japanese in 40 lessons" book. I had no clue about the language whatsoever.

Save for hiragana and katakana which is the first thing I taught myself thinking it could come in handy.
"At least, I won't be completely illiterate", I thought. And oh boy, was I wrong. I remember myself sitting in a car with a guy who had come to pick me up at the airport, slowly driving away from Narita. Back then even in the suburbs of Chiba, where I lived for a year, a lot of road signs tended to have fewer and fewer alphabet transcriptions the farther you got from the city. Mid-drive, I thought to myself "fuck, I'm illiterate after all" I asked the dude who was driving how long it had taken him to learn all the kanji. To which he replied with a smile: "I've been here for ten years, and I still don't really know any".
In retrospect, that's what sparked my learning craze in the following years.

I can imagine. I only had the JLPT N3 (old formula, so N4 now), meaning I knew about 300 kanji. Even taking the train in Tokyo was an anxiety-inducing experience at times, not knowing which train to hop on.

However, I have witnessed a guy, a good friend of mine, who did all his Japanese learning alone in France, and still managed to trounce the JLPT 1 on his first try just a year after he began living here. So with hard work, it's definitely feasible.

I know a guy who's a bit like that. He was an INALCO student like me, though he was great at self-teaching. He managed to get the N1 before going to Japan. I got the N2, and got then N1 - ahem, barely - sometime during our exchange year in Japan.

My advice would be to basically forget everything you were taught in school about learning foreign languages. If you were brought up in France, you were probably served the exact same crap as I was when learning English, German and Latin: "never use a dictionary, when you don't understand a word, try to infer its meaning from context".
That dogma I had been countless times force-fed in school became my biggest hurdle when I was upper-intermediate, and it took me a very long time before I was able to pinpoint it as the culprit. Even after I got the JLPT 1.

Well, I mean, there's some merit to that line of thinking, but they should add a huge asterisk to that: you've got to build a strong foundation first, and then use those foundations to help you guess stuff. But I agree with you overall.

As a side note, I've served as an examiner for translation positions with a couple of companies; and interestingly, rejected French candidates always made the same mistakes at the exact same spots. And every single time, it boiled down to an approach of grammar that was too loose. So there is definitely a problem when it comes to how languages are taught in France - and I guess those become a lot more prominent with language where there's little common-ground, such as Japanese.

Honestly, I wouldn't hire the man I was when I actually began doing this job.

Dude, you need to give me some examples of those typical mistakes the French applicants made. Translation was my strong suit in college - in fact, I used to want to become a professional translator -, but in my experience, the French suck at translating, even with English. I'm curious to see if I would have had a shot, haha.

It can be quite profitable indeed, but with French, there is a sore lack of demand. Also, there are fewer people able to work as interpreters, especially for very specialized topics. So sometimes you get called for stuff you have no clue about. A couple of months ago, I got an offer for a gig with scientists who worked in coral research.
I can't say I'm familiar with this topic besides a couples very basic things, so doing the gig would have required me to go through a self-imposed coral 101 crash course in both Japanese and French. It would have required a few days of work ahead for a sub-par result. I had already plenty of work to do in that period, so I had to let it go.
There's a reason interpreting is expensive. It's not the days you're actually on the frontline that count. It's all the work you do ahead if you're a decent professional.
Obviously, sometimes you get sweet deals. I got to go to remote islands I would never have been to, all fees paid, and received a nice amount of money for gigs that required just about a day of preparation. But these aren't legion, unless you have a good niche like sports.

Gotcha. My brief experience with interpreting (both with Japanese and English) taught me how hard it is. Interpreters are demigods to me. Couldn't you do JP-ENG/ENG interpreting though? You have a great handle on the English language.

The other problem is that the field is swarming with bozos who have no work ethics whatsoever, and show up with no preparation at all thinking they're going to nail it. Since they don't do any preparation, they're able to undercut your fees and thus get the job while making a large margin compared to the work they actually provide. Working for even less is not an option. Take a two days job with two days of prep time, you work a total of four days for JPY100,000. It's not a bad deal, but it becomes a lot less attractive when you have to compete with guys who'll do it for half of that simply because they just get rid of all the upstream work. Worse, even: they actually get the same amount of money as you do, since you both cash in at 25,000 a day. If you were to try and undercut them, you'd fare less than half of that. So unless you're in dire need, you just pass. And they get to add that line on their resume, regardless of how shitty their work was.
It's the same with translation, although it's actually easier to fight in that specific field. In both interpretation and translation, fees are pretty standardized. With interpretation, the only difference in quality besides the actual knowledge of the language is the amount of preparation. Translation is more on the go. Of course, a good translator will do a lot more work because he'll do research while a bad one will just skip through almost everything, thinking he understands things he in fact doesn't. But at the end of the day, the ratio will never be 2:1, so it's a lot more sustainable.

That's disheartening.

Then again, machine-translation is making a lot of progress and is coming hard at us

Do you think even literary translation is at risk?

Comme tu le vois, non ;D Tu es allé jusqu'où, dans les diplômes ?

Licence, puis Master pro commerce international. En master pro tu fais quasiment plus de japonais, donc en fait j'ai surtout bossé le jap en licence, puis pendant un an à Fukuoka.
 
I am learning some Japanese with Memrise.

There is a section called "Where in the Universe?". Which is meant to be about country names and nationalities.

But the only places covered are England, Scotland, Ireland, Northern Ireland and Japan.

Not even Wales, let alone places outside of Great Britain (Japan excluded)! This section is so repetitive, just going over those places!
 

KtSlime

Member
I am learning some Japanese with Memrise.

There is a section called "Where in the Universe?". Which is meant to be about country names and nationalities.

But the only places covered are England, Scotland, Ireland, Northern Ireland and Japan.

Not even Wales, let alone places outside of Great Britain (Japan excluded)! This section is so repetitive, just going over those places!

Depending on your Japanese skill level, you could try iPhone game apps such as あそんでまなべる 世界地図パズル. It's free.
 

Beckx

Member
Oh and by the way, you are right about that のだ, your sentence could be translated into "become a tiger". It has the nuance of "you must". "(You must) become a tiger".
Depending on the context, say you have a character on his knees and the fainting memory of his dear master appears in his mind to kick him back up, for example, it could also be translated into something to the effect of "(stop whining,) be a tiger".
It's a one-way form of imperative which doesn't take into account the other person's state of mind.
It can set a sort of "hierarchy" in a series of commands.
For example:
頑張れ!立ち上がるんだ!
立ち上がれ!頑張るんだ!
are both basically the same, but the emphasis is on the second one which carries the のだ form.

Thanks for this! Discussion like this really helps me work out some of the sticking points I have with grammar, I hope you keep participating in the thread.
 
R

Rösti

Unconfirmed Member
I intend on asking someone if he is going to attend an upcoming shareholder meeting at Nintendo. Could the sentence below be considered sufficient and grammatically sound?

任天堂株式会社第の第77期 定時株主総会を出席しますか?

Thanks in advance.
 
D

Deleted member 17706

Unconfirmed Member
Change the を to a に and you're good to go!

If it's the next shareholder's meeting, then you could also just say:

任天堂の次の株主総会に出席しますか?
 

RM8

Member
I'm so burnt out of kanji. I started studying Japanese a little over a year ago and I barely feel like I'm halfway there... and I'm taking JLPT N2 this weekend, lol. I passed the 模擬テスト at my Japanese school, but still, these tests are never fun. Kanji is truly evil, yesterday one of my coworkers (native Japanese speaker) couldn't read this kanji: 迄 (まで) - Heck, I didn't even know it had a kanji!

I learned how to read Korean hangul in literally one or two hours, I should have gone to Korea instead ;(
I love Japanese, and Japan is great, but I definitely need a break...
 

Kilrogg

paid requisite penance
Rösti;241957600 said:
I intend on asking someone if he is going to attend an upcoming shareholder meeting at Nintendo. Could the sentence below be considered sufficient and grammatically sound?

任天堂株式会社第の第77期 定時株主総会を出席しますか?

Thanks in advance.

Change the を to a に and you're good to go!

If it's the next shareholder's meeting, then you could also just say:

任天堂の次の株主総会に出席しますか?

Also, if you're gonna keep 任天堂株式会社第の第77期 , make sure to remove 「第の」, which I assume is just a typo.
 

Kilrogg

paid requisite penance
I need some good reads, especially for the upcoming summer vacation. Any recommendations? No manga, thanks.

Kafka on the Shore / 海辺のカフカ, if you haven't read it already. I'd recommend it reading it on an eerader with an integrated j-dictionary, but although Amazon.co.jp has a number of Murakami Haruki novels, I'm not even sure they have Kafka, for some weird reason. Don't take my word for it.

The book is great though. Read it in English if you can't in Japanese lol.
 
Depending on your Japanese skill level, you could try iPhone game apps such as あそんでまなべる 世界地図パズル. It's free.
Thanks, I'm very much a beginner though.
 

Porcile

Member
Kafka on the Shore / 海辺のカフカ, if you haven't read it already. I'd recommend it reading it on an eerader with an integrated j-dictionary, but although Amazon.co.jp has a number of Murakami Haruki novels, I'm not even sure they have Kafka, for some weird reason. Don't take my word for it.

The book is great though. Read it in English if you can't in Japanese lol.

I already read Kafka in English. That book is hot though, damn. Just sayin'.
 

JimPanzer

Member
Kafka on the Shore / 海辺のカフカ, if you haven't read it already. I'd recommend it reading it on an eerader with an integrated j-dictionary, but although Amazon.co.jp has a number of Murakami Haruki novels, I'm not even sure they have Kafka, for some weird reason. Don't take my word for it.

The book is great though. Read it in English if you can't in Japanese lol.

I have a kindle, is there any way to buy books of amazon.co.jp without a credit card? I really want to read Murakamis new novel and some older stuff by him.
 
I need some good reads, especially for the upcoming summer vacation. Any recommendations? No manga, thanks.

コンビニ人間 by 村田沙耶香 (Murata Sayaka) if you didn't already read it on one of my prior recommendations. I've read a half dozen of her other stories and they've been pretty easy reads in terms of grammar and vocab, while being quite thought provoking. Currently translating ギンイロノウタ for fun/practice.
 

shounenka

Member
Just chiming in to say that I found Oare's posts to be exceptionally informative and well-written (especially for someone who claims that his mother tongue is a language other than English).

As a fellow translator by trade, the "counting the days till robots eat our lunch" thing has started to get to me as well after 17 years in the business. Figure if a robot comes knocking on my door, I'll go for the national qualification in interpretation(通訳案内士)and see where that takes me (probably not far)
 

Beckx

Member
I need some good reads, especially for the upcoming summer vacation. Any recommendations? No manga, thanks.

For fun summertime reading, I like Higashino Keigo's Detective Galileo novels. (I've only read them in English though). Otsuichi's Goth if you're into something creepier.
 

Porcile

Member
Last book I tried to tackle was 駅前旅館, which I wanted to read ever since I read some of Masuji Ibuse's other stuff but honestly found it pretty dull and the somewhat old fashioned language was a bit too much for me. Well, not really old-fashioned, but difficult to get into if you know what I mean. So yeah, I guess i'm looking for a fun ride this time around. I already did Murakami in English, so I'm not that interested in him anymore (and I really hated 1Q84.)
 

Gacha-pin

Member
日本語勉強している外国人像のステレオタイプ的を思い描いて勝手におすすめ
「四畳半神話体系」
「有頂天家族」
日本のアニメ好きな人向け。たぶんこのスレッドの住人たちぐらいの年齢の若者(?)が主人公。京都の有名な場所が登場するので旅行とかで京都に行ったことある人も楽しめると思う。難点は出てくる言葉や言い回しが少し小難しいかも。


「おけら長屋」
江戸時代の町人の市井話。現在の江東区あたりが舞台。1話完結型でそれそれが50ページぐらいなので読みやすいと思う。
 

Beckx

Member
Last book I tried to tackle was 駅前旅館, which I wanted to read ever since I read some of Masuji Ibuse's other stuff but honestly found it pretty dull and the somewhat old fashioned language was a bit too much for me. Well, not really old-fashioned, but difficult to get into if you know what I mean. So yeah, I guess i'm looking for a fun ride this time around. I already did Murakami in English, so I'm not that interested in him anymore (and I really hated 1Q84.)

If you're looking for fun rides Higashino definitely fits the bill, assuming you like "clever detective" stories (I love them, so it's in my wheelhouse). Devotion of Suspect X or Salvation of a Saint (probably the former since the latter relies more on you knowing the characters). His book Malice has a different type of cast & detective and is amazing. It's told through several written recollections of the various characters and a really great time. (I believe the titles are pretty direct translations of the originals. 90s RPG fans will be interested to hear that Alexander O. Smith does the US translations, he's great.)

But if detective stories aren't your bag, probably not worth it.
 

Kilrogg

paid requisite penance
Last book I tried to tackle was 駅前旅館, which I wanted to read ever since I read some of Masuji Ibuse's other stuff but honestly found it pretty dull and the somewhat old fashioned language was a bit too much for me. Well, not really old-fashioned, but difficult to get into if you know what I mean. So yeah, I guess i'm looking for a fun ride this time around. I already did Murakami in English, so I'm not that interested in him anymore (and I really hated 1Q84.)

Just saying, I haven't read 1Q84, but it's pretty universally panned as one of his worst. Plus it's a trilogy of bad. Other books like The Wind-up Bird Chronicles or A Wild Sheep Chase are much safer bets.
 

Hypron

Member
There were some interesting discussions going on in the last few pages, it's good to see activity in this thread!

So I'm back from my self-imposed ban. I've had a bit of a dip in motivation lately, although I think I finally got over it last week and I'm back to being excited about learning new stuff.

I started lightening my Anki load about two months ago, going from 6 new kanji per day to 3 (I'll be hitting a total of 1,200 Kanji this weekend), and I didn't really do much outside of Anki apart from reading some NHK easy. Doing Anki stuff still takes an hour a day at the very least so it's not like I didn't do anything, but just learning vocabulary isn't sufficient to learn a language.

I mentioned NHK Easy in the previous paragraph, and I assume all of you guys know about it, but did you know some guy on Reddit made this really cool Android application to read it?. I've been reading articles on there every day for the past 2 weeks, it's really practical. It's sleek, it's got a J->E dictionary and you can choose whether to display furigana or not (you can even tell it which words you know and it won't show you furigana for those any more).

I feel like I've gotten a bit better since I am starting to find these articles too easy. I didn't really realise this before, but the grammar used is really simple. The hardest thing about these articles is that you still need to know a decent number of words to understand them. After I reached ~1k Kanji it wasn't really an issue anymore.

Ah, and I'll be taking the JLPT N4 this weekend. I said I wasn't going to do it before but I couldn't help myself. My listening skills still aren't great but I'm doing practice questions now and they're not too bad (the audio quality is the worst part about them haha). The rest of the exam should be more than fine. I think I'll carry on going up 1 level every 6 months, it seems like a decent pace.

Good luck to anyone else taking it!
 
I mentioned NHK Easy in the previous paragraph, and I assume all of you guys know about it, but did you know some guy on Reddit made this really cool Android application to read it?. I've been reading articles on there every day for the past 2 weeks, it's really practical. It's sleek, it's got a J->E dictionary and you can choose whether to display furigana or not (you can even tell it which words you know and it won't show you furigana for those any more).

I feel like I've gotten a bit better since I am starting to find these articles too easy. I didn't really realise this before, but the grammar used is really simple. The hardest thing about these articles is that you still need to know a decent number of words to understand them. After I reached ~1k Kanji it wasn't really an issue anymore.

Hey, just wanted to say thanks for that suggestion, really liking the app.
 

Sakura

Member
Hey, just a quick question.

I'm almost done using the Dr. Moku apps and Real Kana app for learning the Hiragana and Katakana alphabets, and I'm wanting to start learning Kanji to take the JLPT N5 at the end of the year. Next weekend I'm going to start doing a intensive learning beginners course every Saturday up to the end of the year, which will be using Minna no Nihongo Elementary Book 1 for reference.

So, my question is, which iOS apps are the best and up to date for me to learn Kanji with? The Dr. Moku Kanji app seems to have the outdated JLPT sets, which sucks because they're IAPs which I wasted money on. imiwa! seems to be the best equipped and up to date for teaching me and Kanji Quizzer seems fine for flashcard quizzing. Real Kanji is a thing too, but I've no clue if its up to date or not.

This is going to be fun.

Edit: Oh, if anyone knows a good app for learning how to count (and with quizzes), that would be great too. I'm on the verge of designing my own damn app for this.
Honestly don't see much reason in aiming for the N5.
Study for something higher, even if you fail you'll have a better base for the next JLPT, which I imagine you'd be taking anyway. I don't see any point in going N5>4>3>2>1. Maybe if the tests were monthly, but passing the N5 then waiting half a year to attempt the N4 (or some other levels) when you could've had it in the first place is kind of a waste.
 

ikuze

Member
Failed the N4 in December last year and this year there won't be any JLPT in my city... Damn.
I guess I will aim even higher for next year then!
頑張ります!
 
folks like me who kinda sorta used to be somewhat good but never pushed far enough to teach anything with enough mastery.

If you're in a position to actually teach (like, maybe an internal company thing; or as a review for a student org/frat/etc), you should try it.

Teaching a subject can teach you more about the subject. Especially the stuff you thought you "knew" when you learned it.

Well, I mean, there's some merit to that line of thinking, but they should add a huge asterisk to that: you've got to build a strong foundation first, and then use those foundations to help you guess stuff. But I agree with you overall.

The merits have become narrowed with the age of smartphones and 24/7 connectivity. Especially with web-based writing-to-computerEncoding.

Trust me on this, I used to study Chinese in my childhood (90s) and the electric dictionaries that my schoolmates had didn't even have a stylus thing.

Japanese learners

Are Japanese learners those who study Japanese or Japanese people who are learners?
 

Kilrogg

paid requisite penance
If you're in a position to actually teach (like, maybe an internal company thing; or as a review for a student org/frat/etc), you should try it.

Teaching a subject can teach you more about the subject. Especially the stuff you thought you "knew" when you learned it.

That's definitely true. But I don't like teaching to a group - I used to do it -, and one on one isn't an option because... Why would you ever a non-native speaker when there are hundreds of native speakers willing to do it?

Anyway, I'm not good enough to teach anything well, beyond the very basics. And even that can fill you with doubt when comes the time to actually teach. You start to question so many things you used to take for granted, as you pointed out.

The merits have become narrowed with the age of smartphones and 24/7 connectivity. Especially with web-based writing-to-computerEncoding.

Trust me on this, I used to study Chinese in my childhood (90s) and the electric dictionaries that my schoolmates had didn't even have a stylus thing.

It's true, but that's not what I meant. I meant that "think for yourself" and "try to change the way you think about how to phrase an idea" would generally be good pieces of advice to follow. I think that's what (some) teachers mean when they say "try not to use a dictionary". But yeah, obviously everyone does and should use one. Integrated j-dictionaries on ereaders were a game changer as far as I'm concerned. I'd never dare read in Japanese without them.

Are Japanese learners those who study Japanese or Japanese people who are learners?

Ha, good point. I use "Japanese learners" to refer to "people who learn Japanese", as opposed to "Japanese speakers", "people who actually speak Japanese". What would you suggest I say instead? "Learners of Japanese"? It sounds a bit clunky to me, but English is not my native language.
 

Beckx

Member
"Japanese learners" is fine and despite the inherent ambiguity in isolation, is not ambiguous at all in context. If I were writing formal essays or legal contracts, I'd use "students of the Japanese language" or "people studying the Japanese language" (much like how in Japanese I'd choose 日本語を勉強する人達 over 日本語を習う人達, though I wonder which is more natural). But that's almost weirdly formal in English.
 
It's true, but that's not what I meant. I meant that "think for yourself" and "try to change the way you think about how to phrase an idea" would generally be good pieces of advice to follow.

Sorry, I can't see the dots between this and the previous post. :p

I don't really like the whole 'get the meaning from contextual clues' since it's meant to be a emergency thing. Especially if there's a nuance that the word itself brings but none from the surrounding words.

Ha, good point. I use "Japanese learners" to refer to "people who learn Japanese", as opposed to "Japanese speakers", "people who actually speak Japanese". What would you suggest I say instead? "Learners of Japanese"? It sounds a bit clunky to me, but English is not my native language.

Nah, it's partially a joke/amusing thought.

It's totally fine in your post (
actually Oare's post
) just like Beckx said. But it amuses me nonetheless that you could go "none of those Japanese learners are Japanese".
 
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