I was just wondering if you guys try to memorise all the ways to use the grammar point you’ve studied before passing it. For example, a certain grammar point uses ‘dearu’ before nouns and ‘na’ before na-adjectives. Or do you just pass the grammar point in your reviews as correct if you remember the base grammar point and its meaning itself. Reason I ask is since trying to remember every single rule behind one grammar at a time seems pretty hard compared to just remembering the base meaning of the grammar.
Sorry if this sounds badly phrased out, hope you can understand it lol.
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There is no right answer here.
I for example don’t memorize anything, just read the explanation page once and then go with the flow. I then of course get caught on tricky grammar points similar to what you mentioned, but I figure with enough practice it will eventually stick. Or maybe it won’t, but even then it’s not the end of the world.
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Second this. There’s too many rules to memorise them all. If I understand how the point fits into the sentence I move on. Just like wanikani, I use bunpro to pin words/structures in place, before eventually going on to really learn them through Japanese sources.
There’s some stuff that only sounds right in Japanese. For example, I never really understood what the word 加減 was or how it’s used until I was able to read the explanation in a Japanese dictionary.
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Like the others have said, it’s very much whatever fits your needs best. I would say that memorizing all the specific rules would be beneficial in terms of long term retention (even if you don’t end up remembering them all, a more rounded understanding will be the foundation of your memory) and would be helpful if you were expecting to get tested on the grammar or if you ever wanted to explain the grammar to someone else.
However, in my case, Japanese is a secondary focus for me and I’m only really looking to be able to read at the moment, so it suffices for me to just recognize the main idea of a grammar point and the fine details get hammered in via the SRS and encountering the grammar point in the wild. Additionally, grammar is fluid and in practical situations like speaking with natives, many things get switched up anyways and flexible understandings of grammar come in handy so you don’t get tripped up on trying to catch exact nuance, IMO.
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Don’t worry too much about learning all the rules. You’ll see them enough times to were they’ll sink in eventually. Do try to learn the gist of it though, as in である is simply a formal version of だ. That way, every time you see it, you can just substitute it with だ in your head (if that helps).
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My technique is to do 4 rounds of ghosts for every stage of every grammar point whilst still relying on the hints in English to really get that sense of being completely useless at learning Japanese. Part of the technique is to try to learn all the rules then proceed to forget thus ensuring that my stream of ghosts continues unbated.
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I need to adopt this technique right away. Genius!!
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I try to learn the rules but sometimes i just mix up some of the conjugation forms. Especially with naru and aru for example. Or to identify if the example uses a godan or ichidan verb. Before, I was thinking a lot and took my time but know I just type what I first think and gladly take ghosts if I’m wrong. I realized that it helps me a lot with complicated forms to do several ghost rounds. Cramming would be a good alternative probably.
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All of those rules become second nature after a while, like “oh of course it needs a な, it’s not a noun it’s an adjective” or “oh it’s に because it’s modifying the verb not the noun” etc. it’s comes up a lot in conjunction verses modifiers.
I would look at them, make a guess as to why those rules are the way they are, and then move on. The memorizing happens in the reviews.
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I haven’t memorized any of the rules. I try to read the full description when I add a new grammar, don’t understand it, get frustrated, fail the new reviews a few times and then get a feel for it. Then after a while I either forget it and reset that review point or next time I see it I just kinda know what to do.
Although a lot of my issue is I don’t really know what all the fancy grammar words mean so I just don’t get what it is that is being said. But frankly, I don’t know how to congugate a sentence in english but I can speak it, so really how important are the rules? Probably pretty important still but I’m not japanese, don’t want to be and I never would be if I did. So who cares if I say things like a foreigner who learned the language from internet websites and reading manga. At least I’d sound like what I am.
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I lot of details actually follow patterns and rules that are very useful to know and understand.
Like for instance, many rules rely on a specific noun (like for instance ために). Since it’s a noun, you need a “attributive form” before it, which mean a verb, an -i adjective, a -na adjective +な, or a noun with の.
Other rules (like から when expressing a cause) require a phrase. In this case, it can be a verb, an -i adjective, a -na adjective +だ or a noun + だ
It’s actually fairly simple to remember once you know how this work.
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Warning!! I am new to learning this language. I started my Japanese language learning effort almost 100 days ago and I just started using BunPro a few weeks ago. Take anything I say with a big ole grain of salt.
I don’t try to memorize all the rules, but I do try and read all the extra resources provided so that I spend more time thinking about the point I am currently adding, and maybe gain an understanding a deeper understanding for how it works. I don’t know if this actually is the best approach, but I find that when I do spend any substantial amount of time reading about a grammar point, I am much more likely to anticipate and and understand its use.
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Not really, it would just be a waste of time. While speaking you don’t have the time to think about something like that anyway, that’s far to slow. You have to use grammar intuitively and that happens by consuming a lot of Japanese media. The structures burn into your brain and you recall them while speaking and get a natural feeling whether something sounds right or not.
Bunpro is very good to get a basic understanding of the huge amount of grammar structures and to memorize them quickly to a certain degree. But after achieving that, it’s better to use your time for reading and listening to Japanese content. You won’t get fluent by memorizing rules. You’ll get fluent by actually using the language.
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