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Japanese verb conjugation the simple hard way

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Re: Japanese verb conjugation the simple hard way

#121

Post by ponorin »

danabramov wrote: post #46
JuniperMesos wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Japanese phonological system doesn't allow a /s/ sound to occur before the vowel /i/, the consonant must undergo palatalization and become /ɕ/ (the IPA symbol for the Japanese sh-like sound). Because this is a regular sound rule, the native writing system doesn't have a way to distinguish the nonexistent */si/ sequence from the /ɕi/ sequence that actually occurs, and this is the syllable that hiragana し or kataka…

> And yeah the fact that the article-writer hasn't internalized this sound change yet I don’t understand where this misunderstanding about my article comes from. I am saying that the sound at the intersection of “s” column and “i” row is “shi”. My article uses romaji so this is self-consistent. I am also mentioning that there is an alternative system that would romanize it as “si” but that’s not the one I’m using in…

> I am saying that the sound at the intersection of “s” column and “i” row is “shi”.

That is exactly the problem. Japanese doesn't distinguish between 'shi' and 'si', so all you're really gaining by pointing that out is learning how to correctly romanize Japanese, in a single system. Instead of learning the language you're learning how to represent the language in a foreign way.

The rule 0 of learning a language is to get rid of the crutches as soon as possible. Use their native writing system (or if they're one of the latin alphabet users, use their pronunciation rule), learn words of the target language using said language, and learn how to formulate concepts with the language rather than translating it from what you already know. Crutches should only be used to get to this point and no more. If you do that, details like 'si' and 'shi' are not even worth mentioning. Romanization methods have their own goals, and rarely is it about facilitating language learning.

Re: Japanese verb conjugation the simple hard way

#122

Post by numpad0 »

asutekku wrote: post #114
wzdd wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Factual mistake" is a bit harsh, but the missing piece is that there are multiple ways to romanise Japanese; all of them produce "valid Romaji" but only in the particular system being used. Si is how you write し in romaji using the kunrei-shiki romanisation. In the Hepburn romanisation it's shi. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization_of_Japanese#Diffe... .

Kunrei has been deprecated, Hepburn is the official one even the government of Japan recommends these days and matches better the pronunciation of the language.

But nobody cares about formal romanization rules in the first place. People have informal bastardizations of Hepburn that's consistent enough for typing, and Kunrei deprecation is more or less just admission of the status quo.

Re: Japanese verb conjugation the simple hard way

#123

Post by euroderf »

stratocumulus0 wrote: post #111
valzevul wrote: post #80

There are lots of people in the comments somehow offended by the author's genuine excitement over the method that worked well enough for them that they wanted to share it. As someone who's never tried learning Japanese, I thoroughly enjoyed reading the deep dive and am now less afraid to check out some more serious tutorials (though I wish everyone put as much effort into explaining the system behind something so oft…

This kind of content is usually shared by people who are learning a language out of genuine interest for the first time. Most of the time it's Japanese because of the popularity manga and anime enjoy, and the challenge of learning a language that's so different from one's mother tongue. There are countless blog posts written by people to whom it "clicks" for the first time, and they excitedly run to their computer to…

> Mnemonics may work for some time, but in the end one won't be able to actually use the language if they don't learn it intuitively.

A crutch can be cast away gradually.

Finnish has two verbs, ottaa "take" and ostaa "buy". As a n00b I confused them all the time. So I decided that the "s" in ostaa was a dollar sign, and I used that quickly in conversation to select the right verb. And as I got quicker at it, it became "intuitive". I threw down my crutch.

Re: Japanese verb conjugation the simple hard way

#124

Post by raincole »

valzevul wrote: post #80

There are lots of people in the comments somehow offended by the author's genuine excitement over the method that worked well enough for them that they wanted to share it. As someone who's never tried learning Japanese, I thoroughly enjoyed reading the deep dive and am now less afraid to check out some more serious tutorials (though I wish everyone put as much effort into explaining the system behind something so oft…

This is a quite weird article. It opens with several paragraphs about romaji, implying the target audience are not familiar with romaji/kana already. But it's way, way too early for such a reader to worry about verb conjugation.

Re: Japanese verb conjugation the simple hard way

#125

Post by [deleted] »

monadgonad wrote: post #87
valzevul wrote: post #80

There are lots of people in the comments somehow offended by the author's genuine excitement over the method that worked well enough for them that they wanted to share it. As someone who's never tried learning Japanese, I thoroughly enjoyed reading the deep dive and am now less afraid to check out some more serious tutorials (though I wish everyone put as much effort into explaining the system behind something so oft…

As someone who is fluent in Japanese, the thing is that this is not an example of a method that works well, it’s an example of a beginner coming up with an overwrought headcanon (while calling it “simple”, nonetheless!) that ultimately will hinder their understanding, as I will detail elsewhere. If this was a similar post about programming, it would not get upvoted here because more people would recognise it for what…

[deleted]

Re: Japanese verb conjugation the simple hard way

#126

Post by alinajaf »

valzevul wrote: post #80

There are lots of people in the comments somehow offended by the author's genuine excitement over the method that worked well enough for them that they wanted to share it. As someone who's never tried learning Japanese, I thoroughly enjoyed reading the deep dive and am now less afraid to check out some more serious tutorials (though I wish everyone put as much effort into explaining the system behind something so oft…

Senior management at a Japanese tech company, 2 kids, most of my daily life in Japanese here. Can confidently talk circles around most N1s.

I agree. I had plenty of strange abstractions and crutches when starting out learning Japanese, and starting in romaji was absolutely fine. While the post wouldn't benefit me now, starting out any useful mental shortcuts to producing Japanese would have been most welcome.

Re: Japanese verb conjugation the simple hard way

#127

Post by beeforpork »

Looks good. It essentially separates phonotactics out of conjugation patterns instead of conflating them, which works also very well with how I learn languages. How to conjugate then breaks down to finding the stem (yes, some learning is always involved), and then there are not even different conjugations, but there are simply vocalic and consonantal stems -- all the morphology is in the suffix (the 'secret vowel') and the rest is phonotactics. I am sure there are irregular verbs, but probably this explains 90% or more of the verbs with simple rules. For me, this creates a perfectly logical system. Thanks for the overview!

Re: Japanese verb conjugation the simple hard way

#128

Post by [deleted] »

kazinator wrote: post #100
monadgonad wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who is fluent in Japanese, the thing is that this is not an example of a method that works well, it’s an example of a beginner coming up with an overwrought headcanon (while calling it “simple”, nonetheless!) that ultimately will hinder their understanding, as I will detail elsewhere. If this was a similar post about programming, it would not get upvoted here because more people would recognise it for what…

E.g: > not so lucky and got a "ru" ending? check what vowel before the "ru". it it's one of -aru, -oru, -uru, then it's also a godan verb. Wrong: 煽る (aoru) is ichidan: 煽った、煽りたい、煽らない、煽ろう、煽られる 。。。

[deleted]

Re: Japanese verb conjugation the simple hard way

#129

Post by iainmerrick »

danabramov wrote: post #57
holistio wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like to do deep dives like this not to memorise but to understand deeper layers, the spirit of the language, the way it moves, the way it unfolds.

Thanks! Feels like the only person on this page who gets what I was going for.

I'm a bit dismayed by all the negativity you're getting. Thanks for all your level-headed and detailed responses here.

I have a hard time understanding why people object to this kind of attempt to systematize something that conventionally relies on rote learning. I've always found that figuring out the underlying rules helps with the rote learning. When you see some new word or conjugation, it's super helpful to have a method for explaining why it's that way; it helps fix it in your mind.

I wonder if native speakers object to this approach because it isn't really how you learn as a kid. You don't learn any abstract rules, you just absorb a huge amount of training material and construct your own model. But that doesn't mean adults need to learn in the same way; we can and should leverage our painfully-acquired knowledge and skills from other domains.

Re: Japanese verb conjugation the simple hard way

#130

Post by zerof1l »

Don’t want to sound negative, just want to share my observations as someone who’s been actively learning Japanese for a couple of years. I much prefer how Japanese people actually teach verbs: 一段 (ichidan), literally "1-step"; 五段 (godan), literally "5 steps", plus a few exceptions sometimes called irregular verbs. It's not hard; it makes sense, just some textbooks (e.g. Genki) teach it really bad.

Learning Japanese is about learning a new way of thinking and structuring your thoughts. The more you learn, the more you realize it just doesn't fit into the English world. You can't really translate Japanese into English without losing nuance — and sometimes that nuance is important. So start early and start training your brain to think in the language, instead of trying to translate it and force it into English or some other language brackets. It won’t work; it won’t make sense; you will get stressed and confused.

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