My practice sentences...

[zxuiji]

So it wasn't that I was entirely wrong on the last try but rather I was missing some affixes and what I'm assuming is a word, you could've just said that and I would've put that one on the back burner until I had read through more of the guide and found something I thought was applicable. Also I didn't know バカ was of foreign origin, I only know of it from translated manga/anime. As far as being inappropriate for trying to translate goes, as true as it may be it is still helpful for me to learn how to distinguish between different parts properly which will take time regardless of wether I finished the TK guide first or not, that distinguishing is what I want help with most, not the translation itself, even if the translation is poor/terrible as along as it carries the correct structure on a consistent basis then I can fix the translation itself when I learn more approriate words. One of the things your translation points out to me is that I was misinterpreting "what" to be a verb when in this case it is a noun and "idiot" was the adjective and I had correctly observed "john" to be the topic (didn't check if I recognised the topic on 1st try though). As far as poor translation goes it's fine when the people teaching know the intended meaning and instead focus on whether the structure elements are being identified correctly, correct grammar will follow that naturely.
I have a simple minded nature so once I can understand the element identification correctly my translations should quickly go from frequently poor to frequently reasonable.

 

[SomeCallMeChris]

I didn't know バカ was of foreign origin.

'what' is not a verb or a noun in this sentence. It's an exclamation.

バカ is not of foreign origin, but it's either written in kanji as 馬鹿 or more commonly in katakana as バカ. Loan words (excepting from Chinese) and foreign names are almost always written in katakana, but that's not the only use for katakana.

 

[Toritoribe]

So it wasn't that I was entirely wrong on the last try

The key of your mistranslation/misunderstanding is ばかが. ばか is not the subject. The subject is John, and が is disappeared behind は in my translation since ジョン is the topic at the same time. Thus, you were entirely wrong.

One of the things your translation points out to me is that I was misinterpreting "what" to be a verb

It shows that you don't understand what the verb is at all regardless of you saying verb I skipped since I already understood that to be an action towards something. You should read the wiki page I linked.

I have a simple minded nature so once I can understand the element identification correctly my translations should quickly go from frequently poor to frequently reasonable.

Judging from your translations so far, I can't agree with your statement, I'm afraid.

 

[zxuiji]

The key of your mistranslation/misunderstanding is ばかが. ばか is not the subject. The subject is John, and が is disappeared behind は in my translation since ジョン is the topic at the same time. Thus, you were entirely wrong.


It shows that you don't understand what the verb is at all regardless of you saying verb I skipped since I already understood that to be an action towards something. You should read the wiki page I linked.


Judging from your translations so far, I can't agree with your statement, I'm afraid.

I'll read the page but I don't understand how you don't agree with my statement, the fact that I'm identifying incorrectly doesn't inheritly mean the statement is wrong but rather that my understanding of how to identify nouns, adjectives and verbs is currently incorrect which had it been correct would've caused me to perform a translation that would've shown the truth of my statement.

Since the first few units of the memrise deck don't provide all the kanji I've had to guess a few with the aid of jisho.org, could someone check them via Tae Kim Deck's Words Page 1.png - Google Drive to see if any are wrong so that I can correct them before I print it off and use it as an answer sheet to check my written attempts against.

 

[mdchachi]

I give up.

The method he is using to learn actually does work. But it's much better suited for machines.
This is essentially how A.I. techniques work. You train the program over time by showing what is correct and what is incorrect. And in the end, you get something like Google Translate.
But of course it's not human intelligence. In the best case you end up with something that looks like it knows Japanese but doesn't (ie something that can pass the Turing test).
Chinese room - Wikipedia

 

[zxuiji]

Well my base problem is that I have trouble identifying the different type of elements, fixing that is basically the point of all these translation attempts. I do attempt to keep them small scale, I thought that "Give me the book" and "John, what an idiot" were small scale when I tried to translate them, since I'm still having trouble identifying those elements the result was as you saw.

 

[Toritoribe]

I'll read the page but I don't understand how you don't agree with my statement, the fact that I'm identifying incorrectly doesn't inheritly mean the statement is wrong but rather that my understanding of how to identify nouns, adjectives and verbs is currently incorrect which had it been correct would've caused me to perform a translation that would've shown the truth of my statement.

A good example is さずけるです. You don't get my explanation. Reread our replies and re-learn how to make a polite form of verbs by yourself.

Since the first few units of the memrise deck don't provide all the kanji I've had to guess a few with the aid of jisho.org, could someone check them via Tae Kim Deck's Words Page 1.png - Google Drive to see if any are wrong so that I can correct them before I print it off and use it as an answer sheet to check my written attempts against.

食べる たべる
理性 りせい
物真似 imitation (this is a noun)
The line of 運用じょうほう doesn't make sense.
平等 Equality びょうどう (Don't you remember my previous example びょういん vs. びよういん?)
卒業式 graduation ceremony
糖尿病 とうにょうびょう

You don't need to list compound words/phrases or conjugations such like 温いお茶, 百年早い or 分からない since it's OK just "温い + お茶", "百年 + 早い" or these words could change the meaning depending on the context (e.g. the subject is not always "I" in 分からない). Also, you need to pay attention with the part of speech of the word. For instance, 不愉快 is a noun, and the stem of a na-adjective at the same time.

"Small/Simple" is not always the same as "easy." As I wrote, the imperative sentence or exclamatory sentence is not appropriate for you yet. Try to translate the following sentences, as I mentioned twice previously.

There is a book on the table.(= A book exists on the table.)
He bought this pencil in a department store yesterday.
Tomorrow, I will send her a letter in the post office.

You should start with acknowledging your mistakes instead of listing excuses. My two cents for your future replies.

 

[zxuiji]

Just remembered I bought a couple of online bi-lingual childrens books a while back, at the time I couldn't read the hirigana and katakana all that well, nor did I have much words under my belt so I couldn't identify the grammar. I'll try reading those tomorrow and analyse how the different elements are put together, hopefully that should help me get the hang of identifying the elements myself, I'll try some more mini-statements after that (by mini-statement I mean like "one summer's day")

A good example is さずけるです. You don't get my explanation. Reread our replies and re-learn how to make a polite form of verbs by yourself.

Until I can identify the elements correctly I'm not even going to bother worrying about polite and impolite forms since if I can't translate the meaning correctly then there is no point to trying adjust politness level since the reader/listener will be confused anyway.

食べる たべる

Thanks I didn't notice I had used だ, probably did it by habit as I had used it more often than た

理性 りせい

Should've made clearer that the hirigana on the right is what I see on my screen so I need the kanji equivalent of that

物真似 imitation (this is a noun)

Is it correct for the hirigana though?

The line of 運用じょうほう doesn't make sense.

That was copied from the meme provided by memrise, please use the english and hirigana to the right of it to tell me what was correct

平等 Equality びょうどう (Don't you remember my previous example びょういん vs. びよういん?)

Another instance I hadn't noticed, thanks

卒業式 graduation ceremony

I did think "graduate in style" was a weird statement, thanks

糖尿病 とうにょうびょう

Another instance of me not noticing, thanks

You don't need to list compound words/phrases or conjugations such like 温いお茶, 百年早い or 分からない since it's OK just "温い + お茶", "百年 + 早い" or these words could change the meaning depending on the context (e.g. the subject is not always "I" in 分からない). Also, you need to pay attention with the part of speech of the word. For instance, 不愉快 is a noun, and the stem of a na-adjective at the same time.

I mainly listed them as well so that I could learn the most common kanji

"Small/Simple" is not always the same as "easy." As I wrote, the imperative sentence or exclamatory sentence is not appropriate for you yet. Try to translate the following sentences, as I mentioned twice previously.

There is a book on the table.(= A book exists on the table.)
He bought this pencil in a department store yesterday.
Tomorrow, I will send her a letter in the post office.

I'll try those tomorrow

You should start with acknowledging your mistakes instead of listing excuses. My two cents for your future replies.

Haven't I already done that? I acknowledged that I misunderstood the elements which resulted in an incorrect understanding of what grammar to use, what else am I supposed to acknowledge? And what excuses? I accepted my mistakes and tried to learn from them, that's the specific point of trying to translate minor english into japanese, so that I can try to learn the correct identification and subsequently the correct handling of the elements. I'm going to bed now so until tomorrow, おやすみ

 

[Toritoribe]

Until I can identify the elements correctly I'm not even going to bother worrying about polite and impolite forms since if I can't translate the meaning correctly then there is no point to trying adjust politness level since the reader/listener will be confused anyway.

Another example of excuse. I'm not talking about the level of politeness. The expression さずけるです doesn't exist since it's ungrammatical/incorrect. What you are saying is just like "I don't care about the conjugation form since I'm just learning about English sentence structures now" after being pointed out the mistake of an English sentence "I buyed a book yesterday." Makes sense?

Should've made clearer that the hirigana on the right is what I see on my screen so I need the kanji equivalent of that

理屈 argument/pretext/reason/theory/quibbling/pretense/logic りくつ
(Note that words in different languages are not always (or more likely "usually aren't") one to one corresponding to each other. 理屈 doesn't always mean "reason", and vice versa. The same goes to other words in your list, needless to say.)

Is it correct for the hirigana though?

That's exactly why I didn't mentioned it, as same as other words.

That was copied from the meme provided by memrise, please use the english and hirigana to the right of it to tell me what was correct

I can't say anything about what I can't understand.

 

[zxuiji]

Another example of excuse.

There's a difference between making an excuse and saying one is going to postpone dealing with an acknowledged issue

I'm not talking about the level of politeness.

I admit I should have gone with form instead of level, just a bad habit.

What you are saying is just like "I don't care about the conjugation form since I'm just learning about English sentence structures now" after being pointed out the mistake of an English sentence "I buyed a book yesterday." Makes sense?

That one is a bad example since it does make sense even if it is improperly formed

理屈 argument/pretext/reason/theory/quibbling/pretense/logic りくつ
(Note that words in different languages are not always (or more likely "usually aren't") one to one corresponding to each other. 理屈 doesn't always mean "reason", and vice versa. The same goes to other words in your list, needless to say.)

Thanks, the memrise deck only gave theory and reason but when I tried searching for theory on my kanji study app (switched to jisho on later ones) nothing with matching hirigana showed up but when I searched for reason that kanji is what showed up. Things like this are the reason I asked for help in the first place.

That's exactly why I didn't mentioned it, as same as other words.

I'll come back to that after re-reading the original statement

I can't say anything about what I can't understand.

I'll upload load a picture in a minute once I've re-read the aforementioned statement.

 

[Toritoribe]

That one is a bad example since it does make sense even if it is improperly formed

Although さずけるです is ungrammatical, it's understandable enough and beginner non-native/uneducated learners often (mis)use it, quite similar to "buyed". That's why I chose the word. Do not underestimate others' knowledge.

 

[SomeCallMeChris]

There's a difference between making an excuse and saying one is going to postpone dealing with an acknowledged issue

Maybe so, but you make a lot of excuses. And they don't even make sense. If you misspelled something, it doesn't matter why, it was still a mistake. If you mistranslated something because you 'just' didn't understand the parts of speech... what? Why even phrase it as 'I only' or 'I just'. It sounds like an excuse even at the same time that you're saying 'I "just" didn't understand the basic principles of language'.

Thanks I didn't notice I had used だ, probably did it by habit as I had used it more often than た

This and the other "I didn't notice" are examples of excuses. You typed the reading in incorrectly, and even if it was just a typo, you were unable to correctly read the hiragana you had just typed. Much more likely, that's the character you were thinking in the moment that you typed it.

Regardless of what might have actually happened in that moment, you should really automatically treat it as a mistake that you made that needs to be corrected in the future. The only thing that happens when you treat your errors as 'oh I knew that but didn't notice' is that you hurt your own learning.

These are important things. "I just", "It's only" ... no. It's not 'just', it's not 'only', these are flashing red signs that you are missing out on very fundamental issues. Pretending that they are minor convinces nobody else, and believing that yourself only hurts your own ability to learn.

 

[zxuiji]

For the question "Makes sense?" it was a bad example, I concede the point of it doesn't sound right but before I worry about sounding right I want to be able to make sense, if I were to say "wanting making sense able I" would you really be more concerned with the word unaturalness over the sense of the sentence? I doubt it, learning to make sense should always come before learning to sound natural.

By the way here is the picture Memrise (A Guide to Japanese Grammar - Tae Kim) Unit 6 unyoujyouhou.jpg - Google Drive also I now understand what you were getting at with "imitation", that imitate was a close but incorrect meaning for the hirigana/kanji.

 

[Toritoribe]

Sigh... Choose the one you like; 1)stop saying excuses and just learn, or 2)continue saying excuses and being captious. Remember that there is no duty we continue helping you learn Japanese. (And you don't need to hear my explanations, of course. I'll just say good luck to you in that case.)

 

[zxuiji]

? Where do you see excuses?

 

[Toritoribe]

Alright. I accept your choice. Hope someone else can answer your current and future questions. Good luck.

 

[zxuiji]

You say I made a choice but that would imply that I understood what you are deeming to be an excuse, I don't and it is rather arrogant to assume I understand when you cannot possibly know what is going through my head beyond what I post.

 

[zxuiji]

Forget the translation attempts, just found a resource to help me learn to identify those elements,
Verb, Noun, Adjective Game for Kids - English Word Type Online Practice Activity

 

[zxuiji]

Another resource I found to fill the gap of subject identification etc
Practice in Identifying Subject and Object Complements

 

[zxuiji]

Here's my crack at the first sentence

"There is a book on the table.(= A book exists on the table.)"
ほんを食卓上だ
Which if I'm right directly translates back to something like this
"book, table on, is so"

 

[Mike Cash]

Here's my crack at the first sentence

"There is a book on the table.(= A book exists on the table.)"
ほんを食卓上だ
Which if I'm right directly translates back to something like this
"book, table on, is so"

Why the hell would you be right? How the hell would you be right?

We're two months into watching you spinning your wheels and you haven't even the most basic crap that you would have learned in the first two hours if you would listen to anything anybody tells you.

Existence Verbs | Learn Japanese

 

[Mike Cash]

For the millionth time, get a textbook that explains this stuff to you, *** and quit wasting everybody's time.

This is from Lesson 4. You would have this down long ago if anybody could beat anything into that thick skull of yours.

 

[zxuiji]

That conjegation stuff I don't quite get yet so I'm ignoring/putting it aside until I least learn how to identify the SOV stuff correctly and use the particles correctly, when I can do that I'll then move onto the conjegation, an example of what I mean is that I'm learning to say "I buy this" before I move to "I am buying this", it surely is not an issue to temporarly ignore my lack of conjegation until I start to consectively get the sentences partially right. And while you're talking to me would this be the right genki book to start off with come payday? Amazon.com: GENKI I: An Integrated Course in Elementary Japanese (9784789014403): Eri Banno, Yoko Ikeda, Yutaka Ohno: Books

 

[Mike Cash]

You don't quite get it because you haven't tried it and you're not going to get it until you try it.

Japanese verbs and adjectives change (conjugate) A LOT. I mean sh!t-tons and metric buttloads they change. You can't even get started on Japanese if you can't deal with this aspect of the language. You might as well quit the excuse making and stalling tactics and face that.

You are NEVER going to begin getting the sentences "partially right" until you start reading the explanations and forcing yourself to work through it. Here we are two months into doing things your way and over 200 posts into your "practice sentence" thread and you haven't learned the first damned thing or made the slightest bit of progress. None. Zero. Nothing. There is nothing whatsoever about your "sentences" that is within a million miles of being correct.

I already told you that I retract my suggestion to buy a book. I suspect you have some rather serious learning difficulties and I very strongly doubt you are going to benefit from independent study at all. None of us have been able to get through to you. If you can't understand what we have tried to tell you or you just don't listen to people, then there is no reason to believe you will be able to understand the book and there is no reason to believe you will do anything with it except skip around through it looking at the vocabulary while learning nothing at all about how to form sentences. You need to go take a class, preferably with a very patient teacher. Even then I doubt you will listen to the teacher or learn anything. You'll just keep stalling and making excuses and telling the teacher how you think it ought to be done.

If the conjugation scares you, then you need to go find a new hobby because learning Japanese isn't going to happen for you. Japanese is constant conjugation. Never-ending conjugation.

 

[zxuiji]

So you're saying I should learn to run before I can walk is that it? I'm not saying I won't learn those but before that I want to learn to identify what I need to put where first.

Edit: I'll just come back after I have bought and received the genki book, by that time you lot will have surely cooled off.