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I’ve heard people use this to describe vocabulary learning. I honestly don’t get it. They say to learn vocab “Japanese to English, NOT English to Japanese.” I don’t understand what this means. If I understand correctly, this isn’t possible because you don’t know the foreign word, so you’d be learning it (insert your native language) to (insert studied language) no matter what. I’m quite confused by this. Am I misunderstanding this concept? And what is it to begin with?
Let’s say you encounter the following sentence:
友だちがいる。
I have friends.You know that いる here means “to have/to exist”. You can figure out the translation.
Now say you wanted to share your thoughts in Japanese:
I have a daughter.
You know that “to have” is “いる” when talking about living things like your daughter, but there’s also “ある” which means “to have” as in to possess something. If you don’t know the exact difference and usage of words, you will encounter many homonyms searching for vocabulary this way. That knowledge is not easily acquired and context is your friend. Thus, if you have seen 友だちがいる in the first place, you would know how to say “I have a daughter” naturally.
むすめがいる。
むすめがいる。
赤ちゃんのご誕生おめでとうございます！ =D
子猫ができましたね。ありがとうございます！
A much more simple explanation for “Japanese to English, NOT English to Japanese,” and more in line with what most people mean when they say that is as follows:
When using something like Anki you’ll be presented with:
ありがとう (Japanese)
You respond with the translation:
Thank you (English)
This is Japanese to English. Reading Japanese and translating it to English.
Where as if you had:
Thank you (English)
And you respond with:
ありがとう (Japanese)
This is English to Japanese.
The difference is between what is called ‘recall’ and ‘recognition’.
English to Japanese is recall. This is harder because you have to actually generate or recall the Japanese fully yourself; so you have to know every syllable of it and exactly how it’s put together. And if you are typing/writing it, you’ll also have to recall which characters to use as well.
Japanese to English is recognition. You simply need to recognize the Japanese word and come up with the meaning. This is easier because the Japanese is already there. You don’t have to generate abstract sounds and characters yourself, you already have all that there, you simply have to link it to the English word it represents, which you are already familiar with.
By doing this you’re able to learn greater volumes of vocab at a time and by using them often enough the recall will eventually happen on it’s own without much added effort.
Of course the natural result of this is that you can read and understand others Japanese well before you can speak and write your own Japanese. But that’s typically how it happens anyway.
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