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Japanese verb conjugation the simple hard way

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Re: Japanese verb conjugation the simple hard way

#171

Post by [deleted] »

danabramov wrote: post #51
yoyonamite wrote: post #10

As someone that recently went through an introductory Japanese course in Japan, I don't find this much different than how it's taught. Or maybe I'm missing something? It seems like the article is trying to make the case that in romaji, you can split the letters and isolate the vowel (e.g. the asterix in the article's conjugation). But we were simply taught to change from the う- row to the い- row (u- row to i- row). I…

If you’re taught to shift rows, and you already comfortably think in kana — yes, I think that’s equally good. Some of the materials I’ve tried learning from when I got started with the language didn’t do that, and instead described each case as special. That’s what I didn’t like. That said, part of the challenge to myself with this article was to allow someone to learn Japanese conjugation even if they have zero know…

[deleted]

Re: Japanese verb conjugation the simple hard way

#172

Post by zerof1l »

arunix wrote: post #139
zerof1l wrote: post #130

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 i…

Are there any books you'd recommend that get it right?

Don't know of any books that get it right. I don't think you can get it right the first time, it would be way too complex and technical. Most people would give up on the first lesson. Maybe better to treat it as an iterative process, which is how it's taught actually. First you learn it in some idealized, oversimplified concepts, then you go over them more deeply and pick up more nuance each time.

I’d recommend r/LearnJapanese for finding material and ways to study.

Re: Japanese verb conjugation the simple hard way

#173

Post by danabramov »

klodolph wrote: post #94
danabramov wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I genuinely haven’t thought about zu/ji here (conceded!) It’s not relevant to conjugation though. In general, I find your attitude a bit condescending. This is what I wrote about my choice: > note i could also have used a different romanization that renders し as "si", つ as "tu", and ち as "ti" for this article. i decided to not because everyone else uses romaji, and once you understand this point once, you shouldn't h…

> In general, I find your attitude a bit condescending. Yeah—I can understand why I’d come across as condescending. There’s a balance here—I want to be clear when I say that I have problems with the article, but I don’t want to be hurtful and I don’t want to make criticisms that are not supported by the text. Rather than defend my comments as “correct” let’s say that I failed in my goals of not coming across as conde…

Maybe it helps to explain the purpose of the article. My purpose is to help people who have fallen off originally with traditional approaches by showing an alternative way to build up the intuition. This precise order of layering is what I found most helpful, so that’s why I wrote it in that order. The constraints I’ve chosen (assume the reader has zero knowledge; write things as they sound; give an almost complete system in one evening) are maybe strange. And yes, my style is verbose and you could compress that by a lot if you don’t mind people stumbling. I tried to hand-hold every transition pretty closely.

So, on verbosity: that’s a stylistic choice. Not for everyone. For romanization: point taken and I agree frontloading it would’ve been more elegant. Though I kind of don’t like that it sounds wrong for an unprepared speaker.

For correctness: please provide specific issues. I’ll try to fix them. This is the part I actually care about.

For completeness: yes, some things I put out of scope break the pattern (or rather extend it — the mechanism of concatenation is the same but it actually may be easier to hard-split it by godan/ichidan). I genuinely think that by the point you learn those, you don’t need the scaffolding anyway, and the model has done its job.

I don’t feel like shit from the feedback. This is not my first rodeo. Where I have correctness issues, I would like them pointed out so I can fix. The handwringing about it being a weird way to teach — not so much. I know it’s weird; I wrote it because that’s what worked for me.

And fighting out the criticism in HN comments is half of the fun, isn’t it? :)

Again, the conceit of the article is you can learn almost the entire conjugation system in a single evening with no prior knowledge of the language. I invite you to step back for a moment, to accept that conceit as valid, and then to judge the article based on that conceit. For a serious learner, think of it as a fever dream that helps the concepts click next time you see them “properly”. For a tinkerer, think of it as a spark that gets you curious about the language.

Re: Japanese verb conjugation the simple hard way

#175

Post by danabramov »

lmm wrote: post #92
danabramov wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I genuinely haven’t thought about zu/ji here (conceded!) It’s not relevant to conjugation though. In general, I find your attitude a bit condescending. This is what I wrote about my choice: > note i could also have used a different romanization that renders し as "si", つ as "tu", and ち as "ti" for this article. i decided to not because everyone else uses romaji, and once you understand this point once, you shouldn't h…

> My main mistake seems to be meaning “[Hepburn] romaji” by writing “romaji”. I was obviously aware of other systems because that is what the sentence says but I thought it’s acceptable to refer to Hepburn as just “romaji” as a sort of the default one. "Romaji" does not (in English) mean "romanisation", as most people who've studied Japanese to at least beginner level know.

“Romaji” in Wikipedia literally redirects to “Romanization of Japanese” which says “This method of writing is sometimes referred to in Japanese as rōmaji”. It sounds like your effort might be better spent fixing those problems in Wikipedia before continuing with the rest of the discussion here.

Re: Japanese verb conjugation the simple hard way

#176

Post by zerof1l »

danabramov wrote: post #167
zerof1l wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s nothing wrong with trying to make sense of something new using terms and concepts you already know and that click for you. We all do it, me included. I was speaking more broadly about learning Japanese and what I see on HN. Every six months or so, somebody discovers a clever pattern in the Japanese language. It’s almost always related to something taught in the beginning, the N5 level. And that pattern seems…

Sure. I like Cure Dolly. I’m actually surprised you bring her up because she gets a lot of purist haters too. I’ve found this lesson difficult to digest when I tried her approach. It’s actually where I fell off and lost the interest the first time I tried to learn the language. The comparable lesson is primarily https://kellenok.github.io/cure-script/7-5-conjugation.html , not the one you quoted. I prefer teaching it…

So this whole thing is about romaji… Judging from your article and the comments you've been writing, you have strong feelings about it. Okay, you don't need kana to understand verb conjugation…

But what you've already encountered is that everyone keeps insisting you should learn kana as soon as possible and avoid using romaji. I'm not gonna write an essay on why that is, but if you're serious about learning Japanese, you're gonna have to learn kana, and it's one of those things you should really get out of the way early.

Re: Japanese verb conjugation the simple hard way

#177

Post by danabramov »

eloisant wrote: post #105
danabramov wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The benefit you give (be able to "cut" a kana in the middle) is really weak, I've never seen anyone being confused by that when learning in kana. This is completely nullified by all the drawbacks of using romaji while learning and they're well known already. The only reason to use romaji for Japanese grammar is to explain the concepts to someone who has no interest in learning the language, just for their general kno…

Part of conceit of my article is that I wanted a person with zero knowledge of Japanese to walk away with ability to conjugate almost any verb to almost any suffix in a single evening. I also wanted the visual notation to work and I don’t consider that motivation weak. Maybe this helps frame it.

Re: Japanese verb conjugation the simple hard way

#178

Post by danabramov »

purpleflashing wrote: post #160

I wonder what the author’s native language is as they seem to struggle with the concept of alternation. For me, the first half of the article could be removed and the learning could simply start with “there are two types of verbs in Japanese (+ some irregular verbs), one type conjugates without alternation in the root, the other with”. That’s enough to get the mental model but my native languages have alternation to…

My native language does have alternation but I don’t want to assume its knowledge so I show it visually. Also, alternation doesn’t always work the same way. In Japanese it’s decided by the suffix but that doesn’t need to be the case. But yes, I am basically describing alternation.

Re: Japanese verb conjugation the simple hard way

#179

Post by danabramov »

nakedneuron wrote: post #138
eska wrote: post #21

I started to learn Japanese 30 years ago, and in my experience the people who try to be smart and build systems almost never get decent. It’s procrastination while thinking they’re actually productive. To add insult to injury this article hasn’t discovered anything new, makes it sound way more complicated than it is, and in the end still requires you to just remember which verbs are of the eru/iru group, and which ar…

Agree. Experience shows that fluency arises when you don't have to think about rules anymore. My advice is to not spend too much time learning grammar rules (actually, no time, like native learners). Leave the rule discovery to your unconscious brain and get going with rote repetition. Your brains "language module" is not a slow computer, computing rules, it's a fast lookup-table.

I 100% agree with that actually. But I find that my lookup table resists adding things to it until there’s a known fallback algorithm. There’s also joy in seeing the system’s elegance. That’s what I wanted to share by writing.

Re: Japanese verb conjugation the simple hard way

#180

Post by danabramov »

TonyStr wrote: post #99
danabramov wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you expect the article where I’m describing what worked for me to “discover something new”? I’m literally sharing the mental model that I personally found helpful. There’s nothing “new” in learning or teaching a language. But this is the most minimal model I’ve found useful, compared to others, and I wanted to share it with other people. I think you’re taking a lot of stuff for granted. “Just” do cards etc.…

Honestly, you don't need to "learn" or "understand" much grammar explicitly. I think it definitely helps get you off your feet, as you can "decode" sentences if you remember grammar rules, but eventually the grammar has to be internalized anyway. This happens when you are repeatedly exposed to the same patterns in context. I don't know how English or Norwegian grammar works, and I'm fluent in those. I skipped grammar…

Clearly you and I learn differently. If I need to apply suffixes correctly, I want to understand how to do it predictably without learning every single form for every single word. Even if patterns coalesce in my mind into an intuition later, I appreciate seeing the shape of these patterns. Especially when they’re so elegant. Why is sharing that a problem?
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