日本語は話せます 🇯🇵

I got a bunch of cookbooks in Tokyo and it’s interesting how much is spelled out in kana. I’m getting quite good at interpreting simple recipes, not necessarily able to speak them yet. I know that 手羽鳥 is chicken wings but couldn’t for the life of be say how it is pronounced. (Expect I just looked it up an will probably remember てばとり).

it would be 御飯 in kanji so i guess there's some rule about that, but basically ごはん looks more slick compared to ご飯 or 御飯 and it became a standard? i mean i always wonder about why not just call it カレー飯 instead of カレーライス. just go back to writing everything in 文言文 imo.

all the foreign-isms in kana are half the fun tho

in terms of 御飯 vs ごはん, like most things japanese, it depends on the level of formality

in matters related to law or government, it's:

1. if 御 is followed by a kanji, then 御 is also written in kanji

2. if 御 is followed by hiragana, then 御 is also written in hiragana (ご or お, depending on the word obviously)

some japanese acquaintances have told me ご飯 feels more polite -- there are a handful of words where combining hiragana and kanji sound more polite than writing it only in hiragana, but you just have to memorize which words you can do this with, unfortunately

some other things others might find interesting:

* i've also been told that ごはん is a 和語（わご）term, which comes from a time when rice made up most of the japanese diet, which is why ごはん can mean "food" or "rice"

* another term for food is 食べ物（たべもの）

* ごはん and 飯 mean "cooked rice, while 米（こめ）means "raw rice"

not that it matters, but personally, i have never heard japanese people use 飯（めし） in practice

also, dylan, katakana is used for borrowed/foreign words, right? "curry and rice" as a dish seems to match up with this -- not that i believe japanese is a logical language 100% of the time

Related thread: help me learn japanese

Really came to post
リトル・リカール

And
モンキーハウスへようこそ

Messed up the first one, should be
リトル・リチャード

モンキーハウスは楽しいね ：）

Okay, this paste week started doing Duolingo in reverse, from Japanese to English and gotta say it is really helping me, particularly with kanji.

Paste, although “paste” is kind of amusing.

Perhaps spoke too soon, getting super challenging again

Just bashed my way through Conjunctions lesson - sorry, 接続詞 - and boy that was a workout

For reference: http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/complete/conditional#General_Conditional

Also really liking this Midori dictionary app.

midori is dope

and that's interesting about conditionals & duolingo -- was under the impression that DL was more for conversational basics and didn't realize it gets into grammar rules, conjugation patterns, and so on. いいね！

Don’t know if it is teaching the conditional per se, more that I have been forced to confront it when doing the reverse tree.

Another app for perusal is LingoDeer. Like Duolingo but explains grammar and has some of the social aspects of buusuu. Mercifully you can test out of the lower levels.

That looks interesting and doesn’t cost anything. Are there ads?

Almost done with the reverse tree adjectives, I mean 形容詞 lesson.

Looking forward to the present tense, I mean 現在形.

Also, over the years I have picked up and put down several Remember the Kanji book. This round I am giving it a go with Kanji Starter 1, by Daiki Kusuya.

There don’t appear to be ads. I’m not sure how it is supposed to make money, even offline seems to be free

Just came across a new term, aconative verb.

reviewed the passive form this weekend. great for complaining! 😎

Cool. Now onto adverbs, I mean 副詞.

Question: how to pronounce 鶏肉? Midori writes one thing, says another.

Question: how to pronounce 鶏肉? Midori writes one thing, says another.

So sorry for the double post. *bows deeply*

long answer: study on and kun readings

short answer: it's based on context. so whatever it says. each word/pronunciation has a (slightly) different meaning

what is the purpose of your studying japanese and how much do you want to learn, is really a question you should ask yourself, because it will influence whether you want to waste your time learning the on/kun reading for every kanji

find a good dictionary and you can know all the readings. which one to use will be based on your understanding of the context it's used in

Thanks but this is a very specific question. Midori has the pronunciation of that kanji combo as けいにく, とりにく. Then it has example sentences with the the first pronunciation written in kana above the kanji, but the spoken version seems to be saying “niwa tori niku.”

right

what i said still stands

it's not uncommon for there to be a discrepancy like that in a lot of japanese teaching material, because they just choose one reading of it to teach you

the kun reading of 鶏 is either にわとり or とり

the on reading is ケイ

if it helps, without reading the sentence, i'm pretty sure the reading is けいにく

what is probably happening is there is a soundbank of each kanji. and midori is probably calling that sound file for each kanji, without considering the context, so it is giving you one reading for each character

Yes, that may we’ll be the case, thanks. Haven’t been using the Speaking feature too heavily and just noticed this.

it's very difficult for a machine to choose the right reading for each kanji automatically if your sentences are being populated automatically, but i guess a really good software/app/learning program would be able to do it

for what it's worth, most japanese learning software is bad

ハイデル

おめでとう！頑張って新しい言葉を学んでいるね！

最高！

Tae Kim’s material was available in handy app form but it hasn’t been updated to 64bit so it doesn’t work any more.

Thanks for that.

LingoDeer is teaching me some things that I hadn’t learnt elsewhere yet. The grammar explanations are pretty good. I wish this had been around when i started.

鍋を食べながら燗酒を飲みます。
この日本酒は飲みやすいです。

Tried the placement test for that but didn't register yet so it is not keeping track of my level, I don't think.

Duolingo started throwing up some weird ones and the grammar dictionary is teaching me the differ English between male and female speech which is faair clowning my mind.

Male -何をしているんだい
Female - 何をしているの

This is why the grammar dictionary comes in 3 volumes an inch and a half thick. This is from ‘basic grammar’

皆さんおはよう。

Now I have two upcoming trips to Japan! So I need to work again in earnest on my language. I will have a look at the Genki textbooks when I am there, or if I can find them here (don't just wanna order blind online).

But have any of you tried https://minato-jf.jp🕸 ? They are run by the Japan Foundation, and are free. I have good experience with online courses so maybe I'll do this instead of duolingo, where I share some of Ed's concerns.

I have been lazy / overburdened / lazy so not yet.

わかるよ。

Have about eight nodes left on Duolingo Japanese tree and now looking it over and wonder how much grammar is really taught. Don’t seem to see any of the special purpose grammar lessons I see on other trees. Presumably this is because the grammar is so different but still

しつれいします。

立派

I just did the placement test for Minato and got 74/100 and it recommended doing courses. A2-3 or A2-4 which don’t start until the autumn but it is good to be graded.

Seems like it would be worth my while doing A2-1/2 in the interim. Repetition is really working out for me.

Lesson 11 complete

お酒は何でもいいですか。
私は日本酒がいいです。

Hm. Just noticing that Midori and imiwa? have a lot of the exact same example sentences.

Like this one, for example:

このメルマガは、昨今の語学産業界の甘言に躍らされることなく、文法解釈という古典的学習法こそ王道と信じて疑わない方のためのメルマガです。
This e-zine is for those who, unswayed by the cajolery of the modern language industry, firmly trust that the traditional learning method of grammatical analysis is the way to go.