When you first open up reviews does it automatically have the answer box clicked and ready to type? Not on my computer so I can’t check, but usually I can just automatically type without clicking and it’ll auto put it in the box. I may be remembering wrong however! Good idea though, with the recent UI color changes perhaps there’s an easy way to implement this if others have felt the same way too
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Yes, the answer box is ready to type without clicking.
You could make it so that clicking on the “___” just focuses the answer text box (again) though, maybe with a toast that you don’t need to click there.
True, it automatically focuses on the textbooks, but your eyes are always naturally going to be drawn towards the most focal point on the screen which is the larger, colourful context sentence. IDK just my opinion, maybe a userscript could be made to make the answer box more prominent.
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Nah it’s perfectly valid, and something I never even thought of since now it’s just second-nature to read and type at the same time after about a year of using Bunpro. Might be worth posting your idea in the script/extension thread to see if anyone has the free time to do it!
I also use Wanikani, which is also SRS but they use a lot more colour, dividers, and text to guide your eyes towards where you’re supposed to look.
I’ll probably adjust to Bunpro eventually but the amount of misclicking I’ve done is definitely slowing me down lol.
Would be nice to have a way to define what ‘troubled grammar’ for the cram session (or otherwise) means. Currently it’s giving me no matches, but there sure are some points I got wrong more than once. Maybe a slider for percentage/times of wrong answers? (‘Japanese Kanji Study’ app has a slider like that to filter reviews, example here View grammar by SRS/success rate - #3 by BORN2PEEPEE)
Generally being able to see grammar points sorted by SRS level or success rate somehow would be neat.
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I don’t know if this was suggested before, but it would be nice, if you conjugated a godan RU verb as ichidan or vice versa you would only get a hint and not an error.
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When selecting grammar in the search function it give you options such as ‘add to review’ or ‘study’ would be good to include ‘cram’ likewise when clicking on ‘cram’ from the side menu would be good to be able to search grammar rather than scrolling through 100s of grammar points to find the ones you want.
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Would be nice to have a tag for the tone or context (polite, casual, rude, towards customers, friends…) of the overall sentence, not just the prompted grammar point.
Sometimes it translates into the English sentence as well, but probably more often than not it does not.
Eg. if I’m not mistaken 今暇だから、晩ご飯を作ってあげるよ。could have a “casual” and/or “close, friendly relationship” tag.
Example sentences are great, but without context there is the danger of memorising something that’s grammatically correct but you should absolutely not use towards your boss lol. Not just in terms of grammar, also vocab. So having at least the info which context/tone the sentence in might help a bit.
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I mean, you should be able to tell from the constructions used in the sentence, and the tone.
If it’s using dictionary/plain form (る/だ) etc., it’s probably casual (like your example). If in doubt, never use these forms with someone higher up (unless they’re part of some grammar followed by a polite form).
If it’s using です/ます form (or higher), it’s probably polite.
And for even more polite/humble tone you’d use various forms of Keigo.
(If you’re still near N4, you’ll learn these forms later, and can use です/ます for now)
(the other concern is that retroactively tagging all sentences like this would be a huge amount of work, and it also depends on context anyways. If your boss is about to slip on a banana, it’s probably ok to quickly call out a warning in a simpler form, like あぶない！ (and then perhaps correct yourself with あぶないですが。。。, but i’m not an expert)
Yeah, ideally you should be able to tell which is which from having learned all the grammar of course. But yanno, we’re all still in the process of learning 
And seeing there’s the option to have the meaning of the sentence translated I feel like it’d be useful to also have the tone “translated” as well, since that is also part of the meaning (sort of).
来い, 来て and いらっしゃってください can technically all be translated the same, but then you’d lose some meaning. Sure, you can tack on some “oi!” or “would you kindly” etc to differentiate, but English doesn’t have that many ‘naturally’ different politeness levels. Having some tags would both be simpler to implement and to understand, than trying to convey the tone with Shakespearean wouldst though whatnot.
です/ます vs. だ/る are some simple basic points to look out for sure, but I presume there’s still more nuances than that? Like idk, colleagues all using です/ます, but there’s still a difference whether you’re talking to a younger/newer employee or someone more experienced? (Maybe? I don’t know but I’d presume so?) Or some expressions being more used in written language rather than conversation.
Sure, it’d certainly be a bunch of work to add all those tags. Would imo add a lot of value too though.
There the common warning to not learn Japanese through anime cause you might pick up inappropriate language. Same could happen with out of context example sentences. Heck especially with those, since I have an expectation that a textbook/learning site will teach me ‘proper’ language, unlike a some fictional fantasy story.
Added benefit: Once you have all the sentences tagged you could also filter for politness level. Feel like you struggle understanding formal stuff? Search for formal example sentences and work through a couple of those. (If there’s a search function for example sentences, no clue. If not, that’s another feature request haha.)
I don’t think such a database of example sentences with clear tone tags exists yet, so that’d be a unique selling point 
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This is true. I once talked to a girl who said to me: “would you please stop being too polite?” I replied to her saying that I thought using the です・ます was, for me, a way of not being a jackass. I realized since then that when I talked with a lot of japanese people, the majority of them only were that polite when meeting for the first time
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Yes, i’ve heard a similar story before, where a Japanese person actually considered it “rude” (for the foreigner) to continue the polite forms, because they thought they were already on a friendly level.
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How far along in Bunpro are you, if you don’t mind me asking? I ask not to laugh or say you’re stupid or anything lmao, but pretty early in the journey you will learn points that are specifically polite or casual, and clearly stated. Furthermore, sentences will have a [casual] or [polite] message at the top indicating which way you should be thinking. Finally, something I get wrong a lot LOL is making a sentence too casual, and Bunpro will literally tell me no, look at X/Y/Z in the sentence that says it’s formal, change your stuff now.
I think I’ve said this before, but these are all really good things to be thinking about but I really do believe once you keep chugging along you’ll start to (hopefully) answer some of your own questions. Not to say Bunpro can’t be improved or anything, but adding more tools to your arsenal of grammar is going to open up a lot of things really quickly. I think there’s a really good mix of formal/informal here, I’ve skimmed through friends’ Genki/etc. textbooks and man that is quite a way to speak hahaha, eventually they learn how to hone it down via absorbing nuances and contextual implications.
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I understand your wish, Ochamame, and it would be a great addition (though a lot of work), but I agree with Born2, you’ll learn all of this in Bunpro at some point, and besides polite/casual Bunpro also has extra hints for whether something is more common in writing or in speaking.
Until then, for the most part, the general politeness is as simple as seeing whether the sentence has Keigo or not (です/ます is also keigo, specifically teineigo), you’ll learn the more subtle differences later. If you wanted to, you could take all the keigo grammar points and add them to your reviews ahead of time. A lot of the even more humble/respectful grammar uses お as a prefix or special verbs like でございます for to be.
You could probably add this for sentences until mid-N3 or so, because after that you won’t need it anymore.
Also, if you just use です/ます, and people see you’re not perfect at Japanese yet, it should usually be fine, it’s polite enough.
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Just added the last MnN1 point to reviews. Went through MnN1 and 2 a couple years ago and still vaguely remember most grammar, but forgot a lot of the details, so let’s say my current level is about N4 (or maybe a very bad N3, idk lol). Also meaning sure, I can probably often gauge whether a sentence is formal or casual. (Certainly when it’s a case of です vs だ.) But not always, and probably usually not quite how casual/polite it is.
Of course once you learned everything you’ll understand everything, including politeness. That’s… obvious. But until then being made aware of the nuances you don’t yet understand would be great?
I’m the kind of person who doesn’t just learn by reading grammar rules, but also just by picking up stuff that I hear/read. Which presumably a lot of people do. Seeing you mention “absorbing nuances and contextual implications.” That’s exactly what I’m looking for. Can’t understand nuances about context when there is no context given.
Of course instead of a simple “rude” tag all the sentences could also be rewritten to describe the context. “‘Come here!’ the man shouted angrily.” But that would probably be even more effort haha.
Having a note on the tone of a certain grammar in its explanation is great, but seeing it over and over in example sentences helps solidify that connection even more. And again, there may be sentences that could grammatically be used with various people but maybe have a word in them that colours them more polite/casual.
Maybe those tone tags could be 1. optional, and 2. only be revealed after answering, in case they’re too much of a hint/to make you think yourself.
@Saimin I’m less concerned about not knowing all the Keigo yet, sorry if I phrased that unclear. It’s more those subtle differences that go beyond です/ます vs だ/る.
I use the same basic grammar level of politeness with everybody at work, colleagues at my own ‘level’, young trainees, shift leaders and up to the head of department. But beyond which second person pronoun to use there’s still a LOT of subtle differences, most of which I probably couldn’t even consciously point out (cause who thinks about their own language that much haha). And seeing Japanese culture/language seems to have a lot more emphasis on social hierarchy than German culture/language I’d presume it’d be similar there.
Ofc I could pull the baka gaijin card, but yanno, I’d rather try and not end up accidentally being rude to people one way or the other in the first place
Funny story, caution strong language:
Went out with a group of international students for drinks. One of the non-native English speakers called another guy a cµnt cause he ordered a weak drink. Which, sure, technically the same meaning as pµssy, but slightly different usage eh. Nuances matter lol. Even if this one is offensive either way, but I guess one more/differently than the other.
(Idk if rude language is allowed here? Lemme know if not.)
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@Shuffleblast I think that’s my fault, sorry. I reported that behavior as a bug…It might functionally be easier to click a single toggle, but right now visually it looks like there are 2 distinct buttons to push, not a single toggle.
While we’re piling on the tabs, does anyone else think the background of the Hourly | Daily should be the same shade of blue as the tabs above for Paths | Reviews? I never paid much attention up until now, but the light blue with white font is a little hard to read. That said, I like the two tabs myself. It isn’t like they change positions when you click them lmao and it always defaults to Hourly
[Feature Request]
For grammar points that could reasonably be confused with others, it would be nice that if you answered with the other, incorrect grammar point that the after-answer review state would recognize that, and let you look at both grammar points - the correct one and the related one that you answered with, so you could see how they differ and gain a better understanding of which to use and when.
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I kinda miss the progress bar around my avatar in the Bunpro header. 
For me it was a quick and convenient way to check current progress.
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