Go

Oh no... I keep liking dad jokes, and now my feed is mostly dad jokes. The algorithm is too effective, I just wanted a dad joke for every 10-20 posts, but now it's almost the opposite... I guess I'll have to restrain myself from liking them T.T

@ThatYuta Thank you!

@goji3da researchgate.net/publication/28…

みんなの日本語 is outdated even by textbook standards. There’s a particularly ineffective type of drill called a "mechanical drill", where you can mechanically manipulate the language without understanding the meaning. For example, changing one verb form into another is a type of mechanical drill because you can perfectly answer it without caring about the meaning. Research shows that gains from this kind of drill are so small that it’s not really worth spending much time on it. みんなの日本語 contains a lot of these kinds of mechanical drills. However, more modern textbooks typically have significantly fewer mechanical drills. So even though a lot of textbooks still have their own problems, you could say they’re not as bad as みんなの日本語 because they at least removed some of the least effective things you can do to learn Japanese. Also, even though newer textbooks still contain a lot of strange-sounding phrases, they typically remove many of the weirder-sounding phrases from みんなの日本語. And they also tend to use more up-to-date vocabulary.

I think I get what you're saying. The main idea is that there's no need to differentiate between learning the basic and learning from natural/native sources. You can directly go to natural sources from the beginning, you don't need to have gone through all the basic grammars etc.

And that was from a teacher’s perspective. From a learner’s perspective, when I dive into a new language, I actually start with native content, because native content (or native speakers) is usually what makes me want to learn the language in the first place. So I try to find easy sentences and dissect them. And if I’m a bit more serious, I try to find relatively easy native content and go through the sentences one by one, skipping things that are too difficult for me. And If I want to learn a language my friends speak, I start asking my friends. So interacting with native speakers is something I do on day one.

There are many ways to learn Japanese, and technically, a lot of things “work” in the sense that you will eventually learn something from them. But not everything works equally well. Some things are simply more effective than others. So when somebody says: “Well, this technically works.” that’s not a very good point, because doing almost anything is usually better than doing nothing. For example, imagine copying data from one spreadsheet to another. Technically, you could copy everything by selecting and copying each individual cell one by one. Or you could just select everything and copy and paste it all at once. Yes, both methods technically work. But if you can do it all at once much more efficiently, why would you choose the former approach? A lot of traditional, outdated language learning is kind of like copying spreadsheet cells one by one. And then if somebody comes along and says: “You can actually just select everything and copy it all at once,” they react like: “No, but we’ve always done it one cell at a time, and it technically works, so we don’t want to change the way we do things.” And some influencers are basically like: “Yeah, I successfully copied all my data by selecting each cell one by one, so you should do the same thing.”

I understand that B (immersion?) is definitely necessary. However, complete beginner wouldn't be able to just start talking with Japanese people. You would need some level of knowledge to interact directly with Japanese content/people (input). In your opinion, what is the best way to acquire that basic knowledge? And, if you have some opinion on this, what do you think is the bare minimum that learner need to know before engaging with real/native input?

@goji3da If you want to be more precise, it would be something like this: A: doing mechanical grammar drills that you can answer without understanding the meanings of the sentences. B: learning what grammar points mean through a wide variety of examples.

This is some kind of inverse to the rule "smile to make people like you" you'd find in books such as "How to win friends and influence people" Very useful when you find yourself needing to not be annoyed at someone.

I tried this while walking around a shopping mall. See random person, imagine them smiling brightly at me, like them. Works like a charm.

A trick if you want to like people more. Imagine them smiling brightly at you. Like they're really glad to see you. You'll like them instantly.

@heidichandesu Your honest one is similar to my mother's when she was visiting. She was just confused at how the ATM were not operating 24/7. My father on the other hand, just wouldn't accept that you were not supposed to not answer phones in trains.

The number one thing I’m asked at auditions is “what surprised you most when you moved to Japan” and tbh nothing much, I researched the hell out of everything before moving here but if I’m honest and say “hospitals closing at 5pm” it’s not interesting enough smh

For me it was reading manga. My daily conversations with my Japanese friends were... just daily conversations. We talked the weather, hobbies, food, etc. Not much variations. While reading manga though, I learned about vocabs used by mangaka and their editor. By high school students. By teachers. By novelists. By the police. And so much more. Oh, watching TV also helped me broadened my vocab by a lot!

You can learn Japanese just by talking to Japanese people, but if that’s your only method of learning, you might have trouble reaching a more advanced level. Now, depending on your goals, that may not matter at all. If you simply want to become conversational, this is not relevant. But this also applies to native Japanese speakers. If you think about it, people who read a lot of books and consume a lot of educational content tend to have larger vocabularies, use more complex sentence structures, and express themselves more articulately compared to people who don’t engage with those kinds of materials and mostly just socialize casually. And there’s nothing wrong with not reading books. Not everybody needs or wants to reach a highly advanced level in either their first or second language. The point is simply that even if you are already conversational in Japanese, there are still a lot of benefits to consuming a wide variety of input, if your goal is to reach a more advanced level.

I'm currently watching some Indian/Hindi content because netflix's been adding quite a lot of it. So fun learning about a new culture. One thing I noticed is that they have the honorific -ji. Sounds like it's similar to -san in Japanese. If someone speaks Hindi (or whatever language uses -ji) and Japanese, I would love to know how -ji and -san are similar/different.

Never understood the over the top reaction people have when meeting celebrities Last night, I had a dream where I was travelling and randomly met The Viper I think I somehow get it now...

@CafeLearner I realized this at the end of my graduate studies... After almost 5 years of replying 了解です to my professor. Only realized when I saw him say it to a student...

Common mistake foreigners make in Japanese companies: Using 了解です (ryoukai desu) with their boss. Sounds polite enough, right? It has です at the end! Wrong. It’s considered casual and can come across as disrespectful to superiors. What you should say instead: • 承知しました (shouchi shimashita) — formal “understood” • かしこまりました (kashikomarimashita) — even more formal 了解 is fine for: • Peers/colleagues at your level • People junior to you • Casual team chats But for bosses, clients, or anyone senior? Always 承知しました. Many N2 holders don’t realize this until someone quietly corrects them or they notice native colleagues never use 了解 upward. It’s one of those nuances textbooks gloss over but coworkers definitely notice. Small word choice. Big difference in how professional you seem. #BusinessJapanese #Keigo #WorkingInJapan #JapaneseLearning #JLPT #LanguageMistakes

@ThatYuta Thanks for sharing your thoughts! I haven't thought of 'intuition building' but this feels like a useful way to think about teaching.

“There is no point to introduce んです if a beginner hardly knows to distinguish は and が or に and で.” This doesn’t make sense, and here’s why. This seems to assume that particles are somehow “easier” than んです, which isn’t necessarily the case. Both are pretty difficult for learners, and it often takes a very long time to master them. This idea is probably based on the assumption that if you can answer some fill-in-the-blank particle questions, you have “learned” particles. But this absolutely does not reflect the reality of particle acquisition. (Taste-taking knowledge is different from practical skills, and in terms of grammar, there’s no straightfoward, automatic transfer of this type of knowledge.) It also seems to assume that teaching directly determines acquisition order, but decades of research, especially in grammar acquisition, show that people do not acquire grammar points in the order they are taught. Also, just because something is difficult doesn’t mean it should be absent from examples. Think about particles. Particles are difficult, but that doesn’t mean you should remove all particles from beginner examples. Not at all. The same applies to んです. Just because it’s difficult doesn’t mean it should be removed from examples. The key here is to change your expectations. Don’t expect learners to instantly master something immediately after it is introduced. This is especially true for practical language skills, which require intuition-building rather than just the ability to answer fill-in-the-blank questions, and intuition-building takes time. There is no evidence that the traditional textbook approach of “strict gatekeeping”, where you avoid using anything beyond the exact grammar points covered in the current chapter, is beneficial for language acquisition. “Strict gatekeeping” by textbooks like Minna no Nihongo is already a pretty extreme approach, and it sometimes gets implemented in classrooms where teachers actively discourage students from exploring the language on their own or using words and expressions that are not in the textbook. Even though the “content” of textbooks can be useful (because textbooks have a lot of example sentences, some of which sound absolutely fine), strictly adhering to the exact sequence regardless of students’ needs or progress isn’t beneficial. Of course, if you are teaching someone one-on-one, this doesn’t mean んです should necessarily be the very first expression you introduce. But when a communicative need arises, for example, when learners want to say something and naturally need んです to express it, then it absolutely makes sense to use it, rather than saying: “Oh, according to my syllabus, this comes after this specific grammar point, so until we cover that point, we’re not going to talk about it.” This is particularly absurd with today’s learners, who have often already been exposed to Japanese media and have heard a lot of common expressions. Telling them, “Don’t think about what you hear, just focus on the textbook,” simply doesn’t make sense.

A good band I randomly found on youtube the other day: Muque It's a fun Japanese band. I came across the video for their song 'good luck have fun'. It's a fun song!

How to get results: Habit x Time = Result If you want to learn a language, have good language related habits. For example you read in the target language everyday. If you keep this habit for 1 month, you'll start getting good at the language. If you keep at it for 1 year, you'll be a decent reader. Yes, this is obvious, so why am I bringing this up? To remind you (and myself) to be patient. Just because I'm doing a good thing today, I can't expect the result to come tomorrow. To get the result I want, I need to keep on doing it day after day after day.

If you're lost, i.e. not understanding a single thing. You need to look for lower level materials.

The level of confused you should aim for is, "hey, why are they using this word here?" or "I know how to say this for A, how can I say it for B". The 'I kind of know it, but I'm missing something' confused. Where you have some hope of improving.

Knowing a language is a great skill. It opens up new possibilities. Give you access to many new potential friends, many new books, a new culture, new ways at looking at things.