Could we please get an option to turn " 名詞 (noun)", "助動詞 (auxiliary verb)" etc. in the descriptions off

[testing]

Maybe it’s useful to some people, I don’t know. But to me, all of those kanji sequences add noise (and a fair portion of annoyance) to reading the descriptions while learning new grammar.

I honestly think that regularly having to ignore complicated words that I don’t know (and instead having to read the parts in brackets), makes the descriptions unnecessarily harder to read, and that’s the last thing that I want while concentrating on something that is already hard by itself.

Example:

vs

No other grammar source that I know does this. Either they are fully in English with only the necessary words in Japanese, or fully in Japanese, not a weird “just according to keikaku* (*) TL: keikaku means plan” mix of both.

Now that I’m ramping up my new lessons per day this is getting really frustrating. I don’t want to be annoyed at Bunpro multiple times a day.

[bunnypro]

Tbh, I agree with you.
I completely fail to process any of this stuff and usually just ignore it my bad
It does seem to obscure the point.

[toejam]

My humble advice: learn the words, you will need them when you move into more advanced grammar that bunpro doesn’t cover, or when you have questions about nuances with answers not available on the English internet.
さもないと、"「見せよ」も「見せる」の命令形ですか？「見せろ」と違いますか？"のような文章が理解できないね。ついでに、振り仮名を無効にしてみてください。頑張って！

[testing]

I don’t doubt that they will be useful for me to know at some point in the distant future, but I would like to have the option of learning them once I need them, and not now mixed in while I’m trying to learn other things from which they distract me.

Right now I don’t need them, so there are other things I’m concentrating on. Once my brain thinks “Ah, I’m reading lots of grammar in Japanese, those words are useful” I’ll have an easier time to learn them too.

[CursedKitsune]

Once you start reading grammar resources written entirely in Japanese or want to talk about learning Japanese grammar with natives then having these words really helps. Especially as the way these are translated into English varies from person to person and resource to resource whereas the Japanese doesn’t vary (unless it is like a neologism made for foreigners learning Japanese, which some textbooks do use).

Short term opinion is that simply ignoring them is fine. Maybe it’s me but Japanese words on a Japanese learning website aren’t distracting?

Long term opinion is that there should be a larger essay-like meta grammar explanations at certain way points (between each N-level, every 100 grammar points added or something) which explain some theoretical side of Japanese grammar that pulls from various examples to show overarching themes and topics. One such topic would probably be on Japanese parts of speech sometime around the middle of N4 and then a more in depth version of the same thing around the end of N3. These explanations wouldn’t be in the SRS system and would rather be there as level appropriate references. For example, with some of the jargon that is currently in Japanese, if it were explained holistically in a longer text then anytime it is referenced from then on you could simply click through to that explanation if you wanted. This would take a very large amount of work so even though it is my own idea I would want other things worked on first, as a user.

That’s a long way of saying I guess if a toggle is easy to add then that’s fine as well lol

[shankarsuresh]

I too gloss over those words to read the explanation

[Asher]

The original intention with putting these words here is that eventually they would be tied to some kind of blog type post that you would be able to click on directly from the grammar point to get an explanation of exactly what a 格助詞 or something similar is.

These types of words are useful to know because it will help you piece together how the grammar of Japanese actually works. For example what type of words do particles tend to connect to, what part of the sentence do conjunctions tend to come, etc.

I 100% agree that the best time to learn about more fundamental grammar things is when you personally become interested in it, which is a particular stage in someone’s learning that will differ on an individual basis. We just want seeing those words repeatedly to be the spark behind a thought like ‘okay, I’ve seen this word 10 times, maybe I should read a bit more about it’.

[simias]

The meaning of those words are fairly transparent from the kanji anyway, I doubt they’ll pose any issue when reading grammar from Japanese sources. Or to put it differently: if you get to a level where you can read native grammatical explanations with ease, learning these words will be trivial even if you don’t know them already.

There’s a case to be made for using native words for things that are really specific to the language (I do use the Russian words ударение and акание when talking about Russian stress and vowel reduction patterns specifically for instance, and you probably want to use “liaison” when discussing French pronunciation etc…) but 名詞 and 自動詞 and 助詞 don’t bring any interesting nuance to the explanations in my opinion.

I speak multiple languages and I’ve never seen any other grammar reference decide to randomly sprinkle the native terms for no obvious reason like this.

I don’t mind if they stay personally, it’s not a big deal, but it definitely adds noise and very little signal IMO.

[testing]

@CursedKitsune

Maybe it’s me but Japanese words on a Japanese learning website aren’t distracting?

Do you know those words (or all their kanji) already? As someone who doesn’t, they are incredibly distracting.

And it would take me a fair bit of effort with very little use to learn them. I’d probably not retain them well either, because it’s much too early for me to use them - unlike the grammar and the vocab I learn, it’s unlikely they will come up in my daily reading or my listening.

I obviously don’t mind Japanese words on a Japanese learning website when there is a point in them being there. But if I would just sprinkle random Japanese words into this post, words with kanji you don’t know, and your brain would stop at each of them, trying to figure out whether you know it and what it could mean, only to then realize that there was absolutely no point (the explanation of the words is in brackets behind it, and you have no interest in learning the word) - you would not find that distracting?

@Asher

These types of words are useful to know because it will help you piece together how the grammar of Japanese actually works. For example what type of words do particles tend to connect to, what part of the sentence do conjunctions tend to come, etc.

Won’t the English descriptions in the brackets do the same? If not, they should probably be updated, because a lot of people might be going by them instead.

@Asher

We just want seeing those words repeatedly to be the spark behind a thought like ‘okay, I’ve seen this word 10 times, maybe I should read a bit more about it’.

Maybe it’s really just me, but for me it’s “Okay, I’ve seen this word 100 times, I don’t have time/energy/motivation to learn it, and I really wish it wasn’t there.”

I wonder if it works for other people, or if it’s:

• People who already know the words don’t mind that they are there.
• People who don’t know the words try to completely ignore them as best as they can.

[Brand_S]

@Asher

The original intention with putting these words here is that eventually they would be tied to some kind of blog type post that you would be able to click on directly from the grammar point to get an explanation of exactly what a 格助詞 or something similar is.

As someone who has been studying Japanese in Japanese (a little, anyway), I totally see this. It’s easy for grammar to get ambiguous without knowing how to refer to the specific thing in the target language as well.

I think a blog post might be too much, but it would be helpful to mouse-over these terms and get a floating window with a quick (1–2 sentence) definition with some examples. It sounds like some common particles such as は or に have different names for different contexts in Japanese. It’s difficult to keep them straight just by reading the grammar explanations.

[Sidgr]

When it comes to Japanese terms in grammar descriptions, some find value in their presence, while others prefer a more streamlined approach. Why not introduce a toggle option that empowers learners to choose whether they want to see these terms or not? This way, everyone can customize their learning experience according to their preferences.

Additionally, providing accessible explanations or definitions for these terms, either through mouse-over tooltips or links to relevant resources, can cater to those who wish to explore their meanings without overwhelming others.

In particular a variation on this idea:

@CursedKitsune

essay-like meta grammar explanations at certain way points (between each N-level, every 100 grammar points added or something) which explain some theoretical side of Japanese grammar that pulls from various examples to show overarching themes and topics.

Seems like a high value add at some point.

[Asher]

The style of showing both the target language definition and the native language definition is fairly standard in many text books. One of the main reasons for this is that they are not exactly the same thing in both languages, so giving the impression that they are can do more harm than good. An English particle is not the same as a Japanese 助詞, and a Japanese 助詞 is not the same as an English particle. They are however the closest examples that each language has for their conterpart. This same principle applies to most other grammatical jargon as well, especially in languages that are vastly different.

Japanese learners of English will almost always be shown both, as can be seen here, before being given a brief description with examples of how things work.

This is not to say that this is the right or best way at all, of course we naturally want to be able to please as many styles of learner as possible. However, learning the terms in the native language can almost only ever be beneficial for the learner.

I think what we will plan on doing in the near future is having some kind of toggle available to turn things either on or off, but it will always be our goal to try to give each student the information that they need in order to pursue their individual interests in deepening their understanding as well.

[winningtofu]

as someone who’s only just now really starting to focus on grammar, (because of bunpro) i find the kanji super helpful and wish all the terms could be swapped to kanji (as a toggle, and hide the english as a toggle too)! the terms just make more sense in kanji and are easier to learn, i think (like what is transitivity anyways lol 自動詞／他動詞 oooohhh self move/other move).

[thomas1985]

I think the furigana is the problem, just in terms of making the text look too clunky and busy to read.

Should there be an option to hide that, like I can hide the furigana for individual words in review mode?

[CursedKitsune]

I do already know these words and kanji, yes, although even when I didn’t I still wasn’t distracted when resources used both since I would just skip over it. However, clearly people do find it distracting even if I didn’t and don’t so I’m not gonna argue with someone else’s experience since that is totally valid.

@thomas1985 I don’t have furigana so you must be able to turn it off in the settings.

[FredKore]

@Asher

Japanese learners of English will almost always be shown both, as can be seen here

Those are not the best parallel examples.
The sample texts you provided are:
Japanese Japanese Japanese Japanese (English) Japanese Japanese …

The explanations on Bunpro are written like this:
English English English Japanese (English) English English …

A good parallel example would need to be from a textbook for English speakers that is written like this:
English English English Spanish (English) English English …
English English English Swedish (English) English English …

Or, to be parallel to the Japanese text provided, the Bunpro explanation would be:
English English English English (Japanese) English English …

[simias]

Honestly reading this, I wonder if a small compromise wouldn’t simply be to write “English (Japanese)” instead of the other way around, mirroring these Japanese examples. That wouldn’t look quite as daunting for people not super familiar with kanji IMO.

Contrast:

において is a combination of the 格助詞 (case marking particle) に in, and the 接続語 (conjunction) おいて.

Versus:

において is a combination of the case marking particle (格助詞) に in, and the conjuction (接続語) おいて.

I’d wager that the 2nd example will flow better for 99% of early-to-intermediate Japanese learners than the first, despite carrying the exact same information.

I don’t feel very strongly about it though, and it would probably create a lot of churn to update all the explanations (although you could probably script a vast majority of the changes).

[simias]

Oh you just said a similar thing, I apologize for not reading through the thread before replying.

[Asher]

You are exactly right. It was my understanding that the general pain point for some users was that both the Japanese and English appear together, rather than what order they appear in. If it is actually the order itself that is troublesome, then this is an easy fix.

We were chatting a bit internally today about some other solutions as well for people that don’t want to see them at all, and will probably make a poll on the forums quite soon to gather a bit of data about what people want.

[davebp]

A toggle to switch them off would be nice.

— Dave