Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Japanese verb conjugation the simple hard way

underreacted.leaflet.pub

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 276 posts

Re: Japanese verb conjugation the simple hard way

#31

Post by refactor_master »

> why romaji is actually good

It isn't. It falls slightly apart in the `s` column, and completely in the `t` column which contains both "chi" and "tsu". It also breaks for godan words that end in "u" which become "wa" in the negative form.

Mu, bu and nu also all obey the -nda transformation due to phonetics, and not due to how "if we just shuffle the letters around and presto! Nomu becomes nonda".

Japanese already has plenty of its own reading inconsistencies, so adding another layer on top isn't going to help you.

Finally, there's going to be so much kana in your every day life that learning conjugation in romaji is guaranteed to cripple your reading, because instead of recognizing kana (e.g. you see a billboard that says お茶を飲んだ方がいい！ as you frantically try to back-translate everything into romaji, but also removing excess w's and converting nda's as you go) you've spent the first n hours on trying to "hack" the language instead of just learning it.

Re: Japanese verb conjugation the simple hard way

#33

Post by JuniperMesos »

refactor_master wrote: post #31

> why romaji is actually good It isn't. It falls slightly apart in the `s` column, and completely in the `t` column which contains both "chi" and "tsu". It also breaks for godan words that end in "u" which become "wa" in the negative form. Mu, bu and nu also all obey the -nda transformation due to phonetics, and not due to how "if we just shuffle the letters around and presto! Nomu becomes nonda". Japanese already ha…

-u godan verbs historically ended in ふ /fu/ (and earlier /pu/), and were written that way until the 20th century kana reform. So the historical conjugation pattern of a verb like tamau was tamafa-/tamafi-/tamafu-/tamafe- + additional inflectional endings. The /f/ became a /w/ before /a/ but weakened and was lost entirely in other positions, leading to the modern pattern of tamau, tamaimasu, etc. but tamawanai.

Re: Japanese verb conjugation the simple hard way

#34

Post by klodolph »

nemomarx wrote: post #20
donw wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also still don't understand why the author thought this was wrong?

There's different romanization systems and English learners usually use Hepburn

I think it’s probably a mistake to use Hepburn if you’re learning Japanese, it kinda gets in the way. Either learn kana (which takes what, a week?) or use one of the other romanization systems which maps more cleanly to Japanese orthography

Re: Japanese verb conjugation the simple hard way

#35

Post by Larrikin »

I've found that any resource relying on any romaji after the first chapter or two is often a complete waste of time.

It slows down beginners needing to make the hard jump, since romaji is never used except for signs in real life, and it just becomes a distraction to the material for anyone who is not a complete beginner. Furigana is helpful to the intermediate learner, romaji just becomes harder to read at that point.

Re: Japanese verb conjugation the simple hard way

#36

Post by danabramov »

lmm wrote: post #19

If it's taking you this much effort to do the trivial conjugations (seriously, the whole page barely mentions the interesting ones 80% of the way down, and falls back on "yeah, you just have to memorize the patterns" for た/て forms), yeah, just memorise them. Language learning and exercise are the two things where I've found the programmer's instinct to "work smarter, not harder" works against you; you actually just h…

Author here. Strong disagree.

I prefer having a system to simply memorizing. I don’t know what you mean by “so much effort”. I am literally just describing the system as it is brick by brick. If you see an opportunity to simplify, you’re welcome to provide a specific suggestion. I find this system rather elegant, and I tried to build it piece by piece because that’s my preferred way both to learn and to teach.

>the whole page barely mentions the interesting ones 80% of the way down

The te/ta-form is genuinely a separate system linguistically with its own heritage. So it makes sense to look at it separately. I don’t consider it more “interesting” and I’d argue getting the details right with other forms is much more useful coverage-wise. So I didn’t spend much time on te/ta-form. (That said, even for -te/ta form, I find it calming to think of -nda as a contraction of -nita, and so on, which AFAIK is in the ballpark of what historically happened.)

> Language learning and exercise are the two things where I've found the programmer's instinct to "work smarter, not harder" works against you

I agree you need to put time to practice and all that. But if there’s a genuinely simple system underneath, I always prefer to see it. Even if there’s a layer of memorization and repetition to achieve actual fluency. Japanese conjugation is a rare case where the system actually is very clear and methodical. The article is written for people like me who also prefer to know it. There’s literally thousands of resources that teach it your preferred way, so I don’t understand the impulse to complain about someone teaching it differently for a change.

Re: Japanese verb conjugation the simple hard way

#37

Post by qingcharles »

Larrikin wrote: post #35

I've found that any resource relying on any romaji after the first chapter or two is often a complete waste of time. It slows down beginners needing to make the hard jump, since romaji is never used except for signs in real life, and it just becomes a distraction to the material for anyone who is not a complete beginner. Furigana is helpful to the intermediate learner, romaji just becomes harder to read at that point…

Agree. Especially how easy it is honestly to learn hiragana. You can practically learn it in a day and keep a table next to you to look up every time you forget one.

If you're at the point you're learning verbs you'd be mad not to know how to read some kana.

Re: Japanese verb conjugation the simple hard way

#38

Post by danabramov »

Larrikin wrote: post #35

I've found that any resource relying on any romaji after the first chapter or two is often a complete waste of time. It slows down beginners needing to make the hard jump, since romaji is never used except for signs in real life, and it just becomes a distraction to the material for anyone who is not a complete beginner. Furigana is helpful to the intermediate learner, romaji just becomes harder to read at that point…

I’ve explicitly addressed this in the article. Cmd+F for a section called “why romaji is actually good” and then “why romaji is actually bad”. You may disagree with the approach, but I outlined my reasons for choosing it (as well as its downsides).

Re: Japanese verb conjugation the simple hard way

#39

Post by qingcharles »

BigTTYGothGF wrote: post #16

Up until just last year "si" "ti' and "tu" were the proper official way to romanize "shi" "chi" and "tsu": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunrei-shiki

And thank the lord that the romanization of Japanese (with its few little quirks) is one of the simplest transliterations there is.

Re: Japanese verb conjugation the simple hard way

#40

Post by danabramov »

qingcharles wrote: post #37
Larrikin wrote: post #35

I've found that any resource relying on any romaji after the first chapter or two is often a complete waste of time. It slows down beginners needing to make the hard jump, since romaji is never used except for signs in real life, and it just becomes a distraction to the material for anyone who is not a complete beginner. Furigana is helpful to the intermediate learner, romaji just becomes harder to read at that point…

Agree. Especially how easy it is honestly to learn hiragana. You can practically learn it in a day and keep a table next to you to look up every time you forget one. If you're at the point you're learning verbs you'd be mad not to know how to read some kana.

I explicitly address my reason for choosing it over kana in the article. If you disagree, please engage with the argument that’s already there.
Post reply on HN