"Can you say it another way?"

Why is this message displayed? If the answer is correct, it’s correct. I shouldn’t have to sit around and think of an equivalent grammar point or risk the sentence returning as a ghost.

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Grammar point are testing your knowledge about specific grammar point. Your review was asking about something what can be express in different ways. They try to give you hints which one are they testing in this review, but it is not easy. Sometimes the difference is as small as “very, very polite” and “extremely polite”. Bunpro is smart enough to not punish you for that and just gives you another hint. If you don’t want to be tested on given grammar you can unmark it. :grin:

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When it says “Can you say it another way?”, it means that while your answer may be grammatically correct, that grammar point that you used is not the one being currently reviewed.

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This made me laugh though xD

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Well if you’re happy to skip your practice of certain grammar points based on the fact that you already know one way to express it, then you can get it wrong, ‘oops’ it and then type in the correct answer for that review. Of course I wouldn’t recommend this, because knowing how to express yourself in a multitude of different ways depending on the situation you face is extremely important in any language, but even more so in Japanese.
I suppose they could get rid of the “can you say it another way?” thing and just mark it as incorrect but I think that would result in an increase of people oopsing and saying ‘oh yeah well I knew that really’ and typing in the correct answer, thus not really learning the grammar point.

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Bad example, but what you are asking is the same as ‘Why can’t I say ‘good’, why do I need to say it was nice, or great, or spectacular, or wonderful.’

Sure, ‘good’ will always get your point across. But if you don’t at least prctice using them all, you’ll never remember them all. I have soooo many students in Japan that use ‘good’ to describe almost every experience they have… Cause they never practice other stuff.

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That’s interesting. Can it be for similar reason you describe they overuse word “situation” because they try to translate te-form into english? I notice that Japanese overuse word いい・よく in its structures. Can it be for that reason as well?

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Why did this happen?

I quickly wrote down the answer, and did’t pay attention there is か already the end of the sentence, so I basically ask the question twice. xD

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I see ops i better give atention too XD

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It made me laughs when I notice it too. I was thinking for a second maybe I am too “poetic” or something, and then I notice ka at the end.

No special reason. Purely because they can’t be bothered remembering more descriptive words :rofl:. Nothing to do with よく。

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Just as a side note, pay attention to the hints! I cant stress this enough. I am racing through BP atm on an alternate account (about 8 grammar points per day) and I am noticing that the hints are soooooo much more specific now than when they were when I first did the course a year and a half ago. The guys have put sooo much effort into making the ‘correct’ grammar point easy to guess from the hint. So use it.

I am racing through on an alternate account just to check for spelling errors/things that could use a polish up, but honestly I noticed straight away how much most grammar points have improved in description.

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Yeah, it’s insane how much improvement the hints have seen recently, it’s a lot less frustrating to use a “wrong” grammar point compared to before :smile:

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Looking at mistakes natives makes in foreign languages is often very eye opening. Your remarks about te form was extremely useful. :hugs:

I learned so much about how strange Polish is at time by looking at my mistakes. Eg level of politeness when you do requests is strange in Polish (“Do it please” is almost offensive since there is little hint of threat in it like in “Do it or else”, but “Could you do it?” is perfectly fine even if there is no please since you leave other person with option to disagree, but just “Do it” is more friendly. Again: “Could you do it, please” could be often rude since it looks like an attempt to create a distance or sarcasm).

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OP here, I managed to get a screenshot of the particularly frustrating grammar point. Thanks for your feedback everyone, but I don’t think it would help in this situation, unless the ~始めた grammar point has a drastically different hint. For the record, the correct answer for this was 飲みだした, which I more understand to mean “suddenly started drinking” from other examples.

EDIT: I realize from the context, this could imply that it was sudden, but it’s not clear from the hint or translation directly.

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Apple dictionary may be not perfect - I have no idea - but it does not list “burst into” as one of valid translations. I know there are expression that use it like that (泣き出す -I would guess it is so because it make more sense to start crying at once than slowly) but it seems to not be standard meaning. There are positions like this though:
12 【速度を出す】
▸ 速度を出す
pick up [gain] speed.
▸ 私は時速80マイルのスピードを出していた
I was doing [making] 80 miles per hour.
13 【開始する】
▸ 彼は渋谷に店を出した⦅開店した⦆
He opened a store on [⦅英⦆ in] Shibuya.
▸ その銀行は大阪に支店を出している
The bank has a branch (office) in Osaka.
▸ 雨が降り出した
It began [started] to rain.

I hope it helps. :hugs:

See: https://bunpro.jp/grammar_points/178

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Then the problem is with how grammar is presented not with “Can you say it another way?” option xD

Somebody wiser than me has to take a stance here. I only can recommend cross referring with different sources since everybody make mistakes.

It may be just one of those cases when people explain grammar by what it tent to by translated into, not by what it means. There is a lot of that on bunpro unfortunately :neutral_face:

But after looking at examples I think I maybe onto something: it assumes “sudden” form only when we are speaking about thinks that make sense to start instantly. You can’t start running slowly, it does not make much sense for laughing as well. They even use my example with crying.