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  • in reply to: Little Trick to Maintain Hiragana #47865

    thisiskyle
    Member

    You could try listening to a song (start with slow songs) and write what you hear, then look up the lyrics in hiragana and check yourself. I’ve never tried this, and I suspect it’s pretty challenging as a beginner since you will be doing it all phonetically one mora at a time without the ability to pick out too many words or phrases. But from my experience, many intermediate learners struggle with listening since they’ve mainly studied from books. In addition to the writing practice, practicing listening and transcribing early on might help you substantially later on to isolate new words in spoken sentences.

    in reply to: conjugations #47855

    thisiskyle
    Member

    For a whole bunch of verb conjugations and usage, look here: http://ww8.tiki.ne.jp/~tmath/language/jpverbs/

    Don’t mind the romaji.

    in reply to: Anki card furigana positioning #47838

    thisiskyle
    Member

    There’s a lot of background info here. To fix the problem, jump to TLDR.

    There is a pluggin called “Japanese Support” which this site used to recommend you install. However it seems most of the functionality of that pluggin was integrated into Anki 2.

    One of the features of that plugin (that has not been made native to the main product) is that note types containing “Japanese” anywhere in their name and that contain the fields “Expression” and “Reading” will be able to automatically generate readings (furigana) in the “Reading” filed for anything typed into the “Expression” field. The way this seems to have worked is that the “Expression” field was broken down into parts and each part compared to a table of some kind that contained readings. The contents of the “Expression” field were then copied into the “Reading” filed with each part being separated by a space (an “English” space not a “Japanese” space). Any readings found previously are then added after their respective parts from the original and wrapped in brackets. See below:

    Expression: 私は忙しい
    私は忙しい –> 私+は+忙+しい –> (look up readings) –>
    In Reading filed: 私[わたし]<english space>は<english space>忙[いそが]<english space>しい

    The readings (the stuff in brackets) are then centered over the areas between the English spaces. That is to say that わたし is centered between the start of the field and the first space, nothing is centered between the first and second spaces (since there was no bracketed reading), いそが is centered between the second and third space, and nothing is centered between the third space and the end (again, since there was no bracketed reading).
    The end result is that わたし is right above 私 and いそが is right above 忙, right where they should be. You can mess things up though by going into the “Reading” field and adding, deleting or moving the English spaces around.
    Why would anyone do that? Because the readings that are generated automatically are not always correct. 一人 for example is not automatically matched to ひとり. So, if you have that word in your expression, you need to manually correct the stuff that gets put between the brackets.
    It’s my guess that when the deck was being made, and when that correction was being made, the deck’s creator accidentally deleted one of the English spaces so that the reading no longer centered correctly. And I’m guessing that the missing space went unnoticed because it is so small compared to Japanese style spaces which this site uses in it’s sentences.

    TLDR:
    To fix the problem, type an English space (that is hit the spacebar while typing in English, not Japanese) before “一人” in the Reading field of the card.

    —whew—

    • This reply was modified 9 years, 8 months ago by  thisiskyle.
    • This reply was modified 9 years, 8 months ago by  thisiskyle.
    • This reply was modified 9 years, 8 months ago by  thisiskyle.
    in reply to: Anki card furigana positioning #47834

    thisiskyle
    Member

    I don’t know how to do anything with furigana, but I’d be willing to look into it to help you since I do know a bit about anki. However, before I (or you) invest any time in solving this problem, you should be sure you actually want it solved.

    Why show furigana at all? What is the goal of the card in question? Are you trying to learn the words in the sentence (一人, in this case)? If so, I would recommend leaving the furigana off. That forces you to remember the meaning and reading of the word, which is more useful that the meaning on it’s own. This is especially true for very basic vocabulary which will never have furigana in native material.

    If the point of the card is to practice a grammar point (A は B です。, in this case), I would suggest only using words in the sentence that you already know (meaning and reading). In which case, the furigana is superfluous.

    If you’re dead set on getting the furigana fixed though, I’ll need you to answer these two questions:
    Where are you importing the decks from?
    What are you using to show furigana?


    thisiskyle
    Member

    Double check 来る; it’s an irregular verb. Otherwise, they all look good.

    in reply to: Ultimate Decks with Kanji+Furigana? #47765

    thisiskyle
    Member

    The ultimate decks contain notes with several card types; some of these cards use kanji and and some don’t. what you can do if you don’t want to use the non-kanji cards is to open the card browser and search for the card types that don’t use kanji and suspend those cards.
    To search for a certain card type type “card:<cardtype>” in the search field, where <cardtype> is a card type. For example: card:Kanaます will return all results of the Kanaます card type.
    The card types that don’t use kanji (at least in the deck I have) are Kanaます, KanaDictionary, and TransitiveOrIntransitive.

    in reply to: Quick question about adverbs #47705

    thisiskyle
    Member

    One very common way that adverbs are used in Japanese that differs from English is that, in Japanese they are often used with the verb なる (“to become” or “to get”), while in English we would use the adjective, not the adverb.

    For example:
    J: さむく なる – さむい(adv form) + なる(verb)
    E: to get cold – to get(verb) + cold(adj)

    So, for ながい, you could use it in the sentence: ながくなったねぇぇぇ!
    I’ll leave the translation up to you.

    ながい can mean “long” in the temporal sense as well, such as in:
    ながく つづく - to continue for a long time
    ながく はたらく – to work for a long time

    • This reply was modified 9 years, 9 months ago by  thisiskyle.
    in reply to: Grammer Advice #47670

    thisiskyle
    Member

    1:子犬がすきですか?
    2:いいえ、子犬が嫌いです。 -or- いいえ、子犬が好きじゃありません。

    1:何で子犬が嫌いですか? -or- 何で子犬が好きじゃありませんか?
    2:子犬が煩わしいです。

    1: Do you like dogs?
    2: No, I hate dogs. -or- No, I don’t like dogs.

    1: Why do you hate dogs? -or- Why don’t you like dogs?
    2: Dogs are a nuisance.

    何で(なんで) – why

    in reply to: How to further fortify kanji? #47610

    thisiskyle
    Member

    I actually disagree with Justin on this about pure, high-exposure rote memorization. Its a recipe for burn-out, and at least in my experience, any short term gains will be lost over time. If you’re having trouble remembering a kanji, you should try to improve your mnemonic. Make it more visceral.

    in reply to: Thinking about sentence structure #47584

    thisiskyle
    Member

    It’s becoming a habit where instead of thinking about the sentence structure I’m simply using memory to answer it.

    I had this same problem early on when trying to study sentence cards. And in fact, I still would if I were making cards like that. I think sentence cards are mainly good for grammar practice. For example, for the pattern that Joel pointed out, you could create a few cards like this:

    • Question Side: えいがを____。 I’ll go see a movie.
    • Answer Side: 見に行(みにいく)く
    • Question Side: すしを_____。 I’ll go eat some sushi.
    • Answer Side: 食べに行く(たべにいく)
    in reply to: Getting frustrated with lang-8/ Need some corrections done #47580

    thisiskyle
    Member

    I checked DOBJG and it seems you’re right about it *almost always being antecedent/consequence. The exception (which my examples fall into) is counter-factuals; like “If I were you…” or “If I had a million dollars…”

    I guess since I use counter-factuals so much, it didn’t strike me as an “exception”.

    Also, I know 私 is a noun. When you said that the first clause had to precede the second, I thought you meant it must entirely precede the second, that is to say, what’s happening in the first clause must be done with before the second.

    in reply to: Getting frustrated with lang-8/ Need some corrections done #47578

    thisiskyle
    Member

    If the two clauses in an A たら B sentence were required to be chronological with A before B, then sentences where A is a stative clause would be ungrammatical.
    Take the following sentence from a lifehaker article on teaching yourself to like foods that you don’t currently enjoy:
    しかし、人によっては、恋人や家族が辛いもの好きで、自分もそれが好きだったらいいのにと思っているといった場合もあるでしょう。
    Rough translation: “However, there are some people, perhaps with family or loved ones who like spicy food, that think that it would be nice if they themselves also liked it (spicy food).”

    If I pare the sentence down (and rephrase it) a bit to get to the part we are talking about:
    (私)も好きだったらいい or “It would be nice if I liked it too.”

    The state of liking the food (A clause) is concurrent with the “goodness” expressed (B clause). You would have to do some doctoring to make the A clause precede the B clause. Something like this:
    私も好きになったらいい or “It would be nice if I come to like it too.”
    Which is a perfectly fine sentence (if not a little clunky), but so is the original.

    Other examples include any sentence starting with either 私だったら or あなただったら (“If I were you…” and “If it were you…” respectively).

    in reply to: Getting frustrated with lang-8/ Need some corrections done #47575

    thisiskyle
    Member

    In the future, when posting sentences here that you got confusing feedback for on Lang-8, try to include the corrections you got on the sentences, not just the sentences themselves. Also, both here and on Lang-8, try to give some context. A sentence that has been isolated from its context is hard to interpret. This is especially true with conditional statements, where the context really determines what the conditional means.
    I say this because some of your sentences seem very strange to me (and I realize that them may have just been contrived grammar practice), but they could make sense in context. For example, “When it’s twelve o’clock, I’ll go to sleep” sounds strange on its own (why not just say “I’ll go to sleep at twelve”?), but could make sense in the context of a conversation. Without the proper context, the people on Lang-8 (and here) don’t know which way to go to help, and will likely reduce the sentence to the simplest form that still conveys the information, even if that form does not bear the nuance you were looking for.

    I’ve never heard of ~たら being limited to strictly chronological cases.


    thisiskyle
    Member
    1. I can’t really help you here. Although I use Anki on several platforms (iOS, Android, ChromeOS and Windows), I’ve never installed any plug-ins, so I can’t speak to any problems they may cause.
    2. Finish RTK, don’t bother with the Textfugu kanji sections. In fact, don’t worry about the Textfugu vocabulary sections either; the decks here are overly complicated. Just download a big shared deck with tons of words and example sentences. I don;t think it really matters which one, just make sure that they use the kanji in the vocab. You will pick up readings fairly quickly. Another good (paid) resource is http://www.readthekanji.com. It presents vocabulary in an order that groups words with the same kanji together so you can pick up the reading patterns more easily. The SRS is not great (I think it shows words way to often), but it was helpful for me.
    3. Like I said above, don’t bother with the decks here, they are bloated and not really related to the lessons at all. Use this site for grammar. As far as what’s coming in the new version, nobody knows, and the site creators do not participate in the forums, so you are unlikely to get any feedback from them.
    in reply to: わたしのなまえわライアンです。 #47497

    thisiskyle
    Member

    I imagine it’s either the restaurant or the daughter that is “in the process of becoming a reality”. In either case (in fact, in both cases), congratulations.

Viewing 15 posts - 16 through 30 (of 446 total)