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副詞と副詞

You can write the original English sentence together in your post in 一般的なフォーラム, but English is not always necessary. The readers would just guess the meaning and reply to your post, or maybe ask what you want to say if it's too unclear to understand. Anyway, as I wrote in your another thread, you wouldn't get any feedback about your Japanese there.
If you just want to chat in Japanese without getting any corrections, 一般的なフォーラム is the section for that purpose

By the way, @ the OP, I've just remembered a previous thread. I'm afraid to point out this, but your Japanese reminds me of a member who said "Don't overthink it" in the thread.
 
Your time and energy would be more productively spent reviewing Japanese grammar points such as particle usage and conjugation, in conjunction with making posts seeking correction and feedback on Japanese sentences you have created. The Japanese we have seen from you so far shows that you probably have a tendency to want to rush forward to the next thing before you have an adequate grasp of what you just finished learning. You need to slow down, back up, review, and learn to apply correctly and consistently what you have already covered.

I understand your wanting to create a thread in which you have conversations in Japanese. Yes, you are somewhat able to get your message across in Japanese, but that is due to the native Japanese speakers here having extensive experience grokking foreigners' messed up Japanese and the native English speakers here being able to spot the English shining through. Quite frankly, your particle use, conjugation accuracy, and other important things are as sloppy as a soup sandwich and you could really really really benefit from correction and feedback. But.......it is very hard for people to offer correction and feedback during the course of a conversation. It doesn't work in real life and it doesn't work online either. It very quickly turns rude, frustrating, and annoying and it derails the conversation. Besides that, you won't find many people here who will engage in Japanese conversation threads. We've had many threads from beginners wishing to try it and they never get off the ground.

I would suggest instead a thread in which you post things you have created, which people could then offer feedback and corrections for.

By the way, may I ask what you have used to learn Japanese so far?
 
Your time and energy would be more productively spent reviewing Japanese grammar points such as particle usage and conjugation, in conjunction with making posts seeking correction and feedback on Japanese sentences you have created.

I have never learned anything that way. In fact, in high school, I never studied, ever. I didn't even take notes most of the time. I learn best not by studying, but by simple mimicry and trial and error.

Quite frankly, your particle use, conjugation accuracy, and other important things are as sloppy as a soup sandwich and you could really really really benefit from correction and feedback.

Then this is a clear indication that studying, as you suggest I do, doesn't work for me, because of all things I possibly could have studied, particle use and conjugation were the single biggest things I focused on. I must have looked at dozens of different explanations of how particles and conjugation work, and this is over the course of almost a decade now. It's clearly not working.

Feedback, on the other hand, yes, that's a great think to seek out.

By the way, may I ask what you have used to learn Japanese so far?

First was Japanese class, 4 years of that, but it ended in 2011. That's where I learned most of my particle use and conjugation from, as well as some basic vocabulary.

Other than that, I've looked at some Wikipedia articles and some random articles on the Internet to try to learn about particles.

For vocabulary, usually a (paper) dictionary called "Kodansha's Furigana Japanese Dictionary", or jisho.org.

A lot, though, was just picked up from anime, e.g.:
  • なぜなら~
  • さもないと~
  • 心が強い
  • ~だろう
  • どういう
  • 悪い (as apology, from Son Goku)
  • ~って (casual "I said"/"was said", mostly from Naruto)
  • だと
  • 例えば~
  • つまり~
  • させるか
  • じょうだんじゃないよ
  • Lots of vocabulary (e.g. 恋、まんげきょう、体、動けない、風、土、心、キリン、砲)
I would suggest instead a thread in which you post things you have created, which people could then offer feedback and corrections for.

Sounds like a fair suggestion.

I have a blog in Japanese I post to every once in a while, and I also translate (best attempt, probably poorly) the games I develop. So those would be perfect subjects.

Would it be best to have a single thread, or different thread for different groups of works / major works?
 
Would it be best to have a single thread, or different thread for different groups of works / major works?
Either is OK.
Back to your initial question (probably) at the end of this thread, what I explained about adverbs that modify adverbs is that most of them are the ones regarding degrees or something, not "it's not very common." You need to check if your understanding is correct with showing your interpretation, instead of just saying "OK, I understand it". This is exactly "feedback", right? (And unfortunately, you couldn't understand it from my explanation in Japanese...)
 
Sorry, I forgot to address that.

I didn't take "it's uncommon" as a translation of anything that you said, and it wasn't quite what I meant. I more meant that my understanding was that that it's usually degrees and such.

But more to the point, you're right. I don't remember why I didn't mention my interpretation at that time, which was wrong because the word for "degrees" and the other example you used (which I forget) each had like 8 definitions, though I don't remember the interpretation I had come up with. I later found out the correct interpretation thanks to Google Translate, of all things.

This is largely just me taking a whole bunch of mental shortcuts; I end up doing it all the time when there's a lot going on and/or I'm tired, and it leads to misunderstandings every once in a while even in English; that in combination with a language I barely understand is just a recipe for disaster. I apologize, it's a bad habit of mine and I'll try to keep it in mind from now on.
 
Still, what do I do about threads that have nothing (directly) to do with learning, i.e. threads started just to practice and engage in casual discussion? For example, I kind of want to start a "Username Origin" thread, just for fun and to have an excuse to use Japanese for something, but as has been mentioned, I should probably use English as well. Where should I post these kinds of threads?
Toritoribesan's advice still holds:
If you just want to chat in Japanese without getting any corrections, 一般的なフォーラム is the section for that purpose, and if you want to practice to use Japanese (want to get correction, grammatical explanation or like that), Learning Japanese is the place. In the 日本語で勉強 section, you get replies in Japanese even for these corrections or explanations.

I'm not sure if these guys can hold back from correcting the Japanese and turning such threads into learning Japanese threads though. As you can see that forum is not very active. But definitely give it a try.
 
I have never learned anything that way. In fact, in high school, I never studied, ever. I didn't even take notes most of the time. I learn best not by studying, but by simple mimicry and trial and error.

I didn't study or take notes in high school either.

We could make a drinking game out of learners who reject our advice to work through a proper textbook by telling us that textbooks don't work for them and/or that they learn best some other way....despite either never having studied a foreign language at all or having self-studied Japanese with absolute crap results. Seriously....EVERYBODY tells us that.

Then this is a clear indication that studying, as you suggest I do, doesn't work for me, because of all things I possibly could have studied, particle use and conjugation were the single biggest things I focused on. I must have looked at dozens of different explanations of how particles and conjugation work, and this is over the course of almost a decade now. It's clearly not working.

To the contrary, it is an indication that you you studied from crap materials and/or lacked anyone to help you through them. You probably also studied them in an ad hoc hodgepodge fashion, picking up things here and there, rather than working through a pedagogically sound proper textbook. You also lacked the single most vital element, which is FEEDBACK. You have to actually interact with people in the target language and get feedback, which comes not so much in the form of corrections, but in the form of finding that the other person either can't figure out what the hell you're talking about or vice-versa. So far, in the course of your Japanese studies, it simply has never mattered if you got anything right or not and consequently your brain is content to go with its own personal way of doing things rather than having any pressure to have to adjust and use the language in the same way everybody else does. Interaction is vital.

First was Japanese class, 4 years of that, but it ended in 2011. That's where I learned most of my particle use and conjugation from, as well as some basic vocabulary.

From your age, I'm guessing that was four years of high school Japanese. I've seen some of what comes out of four years of high school Japanese classes before, and I must say they expect alarmingly little of the students. Same story for people who majored in Japanese in college.

If you had four years of Japanese class, you have had two and a half years more than I did, though.

If you had told us you had been studying for six months on your own, I would have been impressed and thought you doing rather well, though lacking in direction. I can't tell you how surprised I was to learn that someone who was so eager to do all-Japanese discussions on here couldn't recognize so much of the vocabulary, constructions, and kanji in my post to you (which you highlighted and underlined). I certainly didn't use anything in there that anyone with 10 years of productive Japanese learning under their belt shouldn't have recognized.

Look, I get that you don't like to sit down with a textbook and study. Neither do I. In fact, neither did I...but I have the advantage of living in Japan, having massive exposure to the language, and having the pressure of actually having to function in daily life entirely in Japanese, including being able to read. About a year and a half ago, I was able to pass JLPT N1 without studying or preparation, despite having some gaps in my knowledge and shortcomings in my abilities that I have managed to live with and not worry about. After I finished that, I hit the books and spent five hundred hours just on kanji study, going back to the most elementary stuff and working my way through to the end of the roughly 2,100 that make up the 常用漢字 so I could finally be done with it and not do guessing and skipping as I had for decades previously. If I can force myself to sit down and work through the books, despite having ridiculously far less need to do so than you have, then there is no reason whatsoever that you can't get some proper materials and (with the help of people on JREF) get serious about polishing what you already have and then building upon that.

You most definitely need to work on kanji knowledge and just general Japanese literacy skills if you are to make any progress. My earlier suggestion that you need to do massive amounts of reading of Japanese materials in order to gain some familiarity with Japanese phrasing is entirely unworkable if you are essentially functionally illiterate in Japanese. No, watching cartoons isn't doing the trick.

Taking "mental shortcuts" won't work. Making progress in learning a language well is very very very much a matter of attention to detail. You have to be fully alert to everything because you're going to miss some of it no matter what you do and you just can't afford to lose any more than that. Such mental laxness only works for those who have no real-world time pressure on them (and is also the reason they can indulge in the counterproductive habit of translating everything). Your brain has to be going a mile a minute to keep up with what is going on in anything where you are expected to be an active participant in it.
 
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You also lacked the single most vital element, which is FEEDBACK. You have to actually interact with people in the target language and get feedback, which comes not so much in the form of corrections, but in the form of finding that the other person either can't figure out what the hell you're talking about or vice-versa. So far, in the course of your Japanese studies, it simply has never mattered if you got anything right or not and consequently your brain is content to go with its own personal way of doing things rather than having any pressure to have to adjust and use the language in the same way everybody else does. Interaction is vital.

I agree with this 100%. Are we talking past each other? This is exactly why I'm not focusing on getting things right the first time.

(I'll have to respond to the rest later.)
 
I think you just got stuck in the weeds very early on, and so the suggestion for you to post in English as well as Japanese (and thus, freeing us to respond to you in both English and Japanese) was meant to help you get out of the weeds. It wasn't meant to insult you.
 
Absolutely! I hope no insult was perceived because none was intended at any point.
 
まだ基本的な文法や語彙がよくわかってないのに、副詞のことをこんなに気にしてるのですか?
確かに、ネイティブ並みの人と話す機会がないなら上達しづらいのですが、教科書などでちゃんと勉強した方がいいと思わないですか?
「そこまで分かりました」とか、「それを英語で繰り返す必要なかったんじゃないですか」とか、OPが皆さんの言うことが全部分かってなくて、修正を受け入れるより自分の言うことが正しいって言い訳をしてるのは少し場違いじゃないですか?皆さんはただ手伝おうとしてるからですね。
あとは、lanthasさんの言う通り、機械翻訳に依存しては絶対いけません。考え方を変えた方がいいですよね。もちろん英語でも日本語でも言いたいことを言ってみる方がだんだん読解も文章も上達できると思います。
頑張ってください。
 
I certainly didn't use anything in there that anyone with 10 years of productive Japanese learning under their belt shouldn't have recognized.

I should clarify: between the end of Japanese class (2011) and a few months ago, I didn't study much of anything. I had to re-learn quite a lot as a result.

Look, I get that you don't like to sit down with a textbook and study.

And this is another thing I should clarify. I'm sorry, I'm really bad about this. In my defense, this isn't something I do out of laziness or anything like that, but rather due to a lack of time and a habit of sloppily covering everything rather than thoroughly covering just part of it. Part of that is because I don't want anyone to feel like I'm ignoring part of what they said, but actually thinking about it, this has probably almost always been the wrong course of action.

In any case, I do study, and I don't reject studying outright. I'm sorry that what I said made this the most obvious conclusion, and it's no one's fault but my own. However, while I stopped studying Japanese after Japanese class, I re-started a few months ago on studying vocabulary and kanji. This is my current process, to be specific:

1. For vocabulary, I play a game I wrote called Tangomon: Tangomon
2. For kanji, I have a list in a notebook of all words I want to be able to write in kanji (written there in hiragana). I try to regularly look at this list and either try both to recall them and write them. When I've learned a kanji to the point where I have no difficulty doing this, I cross it out. Elsewhere in the notebook (in random places), I have these kanji written down so I can find and review them if necessary.
3. Additionally, just to reinforce my kanji knowledge, I include all kanji I study as "tangojis" (words to study) in Tangomon in addition to the regular ones which are vocabulary words.

The words I study are usually either words that are directly related to kanji I want to learn (I have an easier time learning a kanji if I already know a way to read it), or words that I have a particular interest in learning for some reason. I generally try to study about 5 words at a time, and I only stop studying a word (which, in Tangomon, means converting it to a "tangokan") when I can rapidly recall it in Tangomon. Some words I'm able to learn really quickly, and some words take forever. It mostly depends on how much I'm able to use them, I have seen.

For kanji, I start learning new ones when I can recall the kanji I was studying before reliably, but I don't actually cross them out until I can rapidly connect the readings with exactly what the kanji is, and write the kanji without having to think about it.

While I'm studying something new, I also try to come up with mnemonics . For example:
  • 始め has 女 in it, and life begins with a woman.
  • For 持つ, I imagine a samurai picking up a cow.
  • For 保つ, I imagine a person (on the left) putting a box on top of a tree.
  • For 蚊, I imagine mosquitoes as insects that are really into literature.
  • For 尾, I conceptualize a tail as a flag made out of fur.
And so on.

Anyway, clearly I do studying, so I don't think studying is useless. Again, it's my fault for not making what I think about studying clear. What I actually wanted to express is that studying is a last resort, and ideally should be used as a starting point, not the only means of learning something new. I can study, and I can do it just fine. But where possible, I prefer to actually put what I'm studying into practice, because that solidifies what I'm learning much better. This is why I choose words to study based on my likeliness to use that word, and as a result, I've made some odd choices that, for me, make sense (e.g. I'm more likely to talk or think about 著作権 than a train station).

No, watching cartoons isn't doing the trick.

Something I need to clarify: I don't use anime as a means to learn. Quite the opposite: anime is one of the ends I'm working toward, because I'm sick of having to read subtitles to watch a whole lot of series I like. It's also definitely the easier one; the other one is that I would like to be able to read proper written Japanese (mostly written Japanese that can be found on the Internet, e.g. Wikipedia).

However, I do learn a lot while watching anime, and when I do learn something that way, it's always much faster. So for that reason, I wish to seek out as much exposure to Japanese as possible no matter what.

Taking "mental shortcuts" won't work.

Another misunderstanding I have caused. I wasn't taking shortcuts when listening or reading, only when speaking or writing.

Anyway, I think that is all the important stuff, for now.
 
It would help things all around if you would collect your thoughts and say what you mean to say the first time instead of subjecting us to endless rounds of clarifications, justifications, backpedaling, and apologies. Think of this as a place to practice English composition rather than as a place to indulge in unchecked verbal diarrhea; it tries the reader's patience. Said with love, even if it doesn't sound like it.

You speak of your personal habits and tendencies in relation to learning Japanese. All I can say about them is that you have a choice of continuing in them and making poor progress or of being more diligent and industrious and making good progress. That's entirely up to you.

Strictly as a matter of unsolicited personal opinion, I don't think much of your scattershot approach to what to learn. I know that after ten years (or four years and a few months... same difference) of learning it is very likely to hurt your pride, but I would suggest you get the Genki textbooks, workbooks, and audio materials and start with Lesson One and work your way through them, making sure you understand and can consistently correctly apply what was taught in each lesson before you continue on to the next one. You need to go back and build a firm foundation.

I would also suggest a more organized and structured approach to kanji studies as well.
 
Think of this as a place to practice English composition rather than as a place to indulge in unchecked verbal diarrhea; it tries the reader's patience.

Well hey, that's true. I will try to be more thoughtful about what I post from now on.

I would suggest you get the Genki textbooks, workbooks, and audio materials and start with Lesson One and work your way through them, making sure you understand and can consistently correctly apply what was taught in each lesson before you continue on to the next one. You need to go back and build a firm foundation.

I would also suggest a more organized and structured approach to kanji studies as well.

Thank you for the suggestion.
 
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