Future of Bunpro’s (missing) Grammar - Update!

Bunpro
#27

Marumori was just a random comparison as it was the first thing that came to mind. The same thing applies to many other apps and services and (as you pointed out) Bunpro itself in the past (possibly even now). The part of my post that I deleted was talking about how lifetime memberships for language learning services are, I assume, financial viable for businesses as all the wide-eyed beginners who never actually learn the language make up for the people who actually use the product for the 3-5 years it takes for them to hit N1. As such, the quality of higher level material is either neglected or it simply doesn’t exist. Writing high quality N1 material is difficult to begin with anyway. My criticisms here still apply to Bunpro as it currently is, by the way, as the N1 material is probably the least polished. For me this line of thinking actually started with Wanikani which I think is bordering on Duolingo levels of predatory and Wanikani is definitely a “complete service” so my criticism isn’t dependent on how complete or incomplete the service is.

At the end of the day basically all of these services are re-inventing the wheel to some degree so there is always a question of “how is this financially viable”. Many language learning services seem obviously non-viable from the perspective of long term growth and the ones that are viable are still trying to make money and the easiest way to do that is to fleece beginners. Something like Marumori is clearly doing this in my opinion by offering fairly expensive lifetime memberships for a service that is nowhere close to being finished and is of no value to someone who isn’t N5. Although I think Bunpro’s model probably works the same way they actually have that higher level content now which is a big big difference. I hope Marumori achieves their goals in 5 years time as well but I am just talking about the reality of what exists now. I didn’t really want to start an argument about business models as it is not really relevant (although I accidentally did, sorry) hence why I cut part of my original post out.

100% agree with this.

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#28

Fair enough, thank you for your thoughtful reply. And I would agree MM still has a lot to prove and IOUs, particularly for the experienced learners so it remains to be seen what it will turn into. And again, I don’t think it conflicts with what is done here, I can see how users would use both their grammar SRS methods. It’s a tricky balance, I didn’t want to see BP fall if got abandoned or unsupported so glad it didn’t and they seem financially healthier. I actually think their price is way under though, they could easily get away raising it IMO (but what do I know :sweat_smile:).

Another interesting comparison is https://nihongonomori.com/ they are pretty much the opposite of most services; no beginner content whatsoever (N3-N1) and entirely taught in Japanese by natives. One would think this would alienate a smaller community but actually they have a very strong non-english student presence (especially since I believe they are home based in Vietnam now). To me it makes more sense to be using Japanese to teach Japanese at this level as most content already has more fundamental definitions that can be described quite easily (and any English I find more of bother at this juncture). I think this is why flexible platforms like Anki will always have a place, because I don’t think teaching beginner material and advance material with the same methods make much sense; to me it looks like more of a platform development convenience just to fill content using the same architecture. WK does this as well and why its usefulness bottlenecks IMO learning more abstract vocab/kanji with zero context other than a silly example sentence. Maybe BP still has a chance to consider this given the additional flexibilities of the platform they have worked on already.

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#29

Try N2 grammar I am assuming? We have access to all of the Try Grammar and Vocab books, so I don’t see why we couldn’t add it. Rather than a path though, it would probably be in the form of a deck, as that will be the system we use going forward.

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#30

Hi! I’m far from being an advanced learner on here so rather than a request i am simply wondering whether or not there would be a need to add かというと〜ない as a grammar point? Or it’s simply the main かというと point being negated and there’s no real incentive to add it? Sorry if my question seems dumb, cheers.

#31

I’ve tried my best to search lessons and post so forgive me if this is already Present or covered. I think that ようで(ようでいて) “it looks as though” and ようであれば(ようならば/ようだったら) “if so” may be missing, although there are lots of similar grammar points so they could maybe fit into an already existing one.

Note on the textbook side of things, is there a precedent on what textbook people use for particular lessons? For instance if people only use 完全 for level 2 and 1 then it makes sense to prioritise that over level 5.

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#32

Here’s a grammar structure I believe is not on the list yet:
Verb[る]だけ + Verb[て]

Found it used like this

Context: The character saying this sentence didn’t know that the book they had borrowed from the library was actually a forbidden book of sorcery.

(この本は) 借りるだけ借りて、しばらく読んでいなかった。返却日が近づいたので慌てて読んでみたら、呪術書であることに気がついた。

This site has an explanation of the grammar structure: 〜だけ〜て｜日本語能力試験　JLPTにない文型 : 絵でわかる日本語

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#33

Perhaps another one for the JLPT N0 level deck, given that (at least according to the title of that website you linked) it isn’t found on any of the JLPT levels.

Seems to mean literally “Just did X and X”, which sounds weird in English, so perhaps a better translation would be “Just did X”? As in, “I just borrowed this book and for the moment I haven’t read it.” At least that’s the vibe I’m getting from it. Not sure if it’s the actual meaning though.

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#34

I guess I agree on the JLPT N0 (deck? :eyes: grammar, right? Sorry, I’m out of the loop of things around here) and I think you captured the meaning very well.

「AだけAてB」in the sense of “doing only A and not B” as described on the site with the explanation. As for literal translation on the grammar point, I’ll leave that to someone else, hahhaha.

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#35

OK, I see. Now that I read the explanation on the linked site, there’s this other nuance of only doing X and nothing else.

【説明】
「AだけAてB」は「A以外（いがい）のことはしない」「しなければいけないBをしないで、Aだけする」という意味の文型です。「A」には同（おな）じ動詞（どうし）が入り、「Aだけして、しなければいけないBをしない」「Aだけして、するべきことであるBをしない」 と言いたい時に使われます。

［例］
①山田くんは食べるだけ 食べて 、お金を払わなかった
【A】食べる
【B】お金を払う（するべきこと）
→食べて、お金を払わなかった

②彼は文句を言うだけ 言って 帰ってしまった
【A】文句を言う
【B】ちゃんと話し合う（するべきこと）
→文句を言う以外のことはしないで帰った

③娘たちは、いつも遊ぶだけ 遊んで 片付けをしない
【A】遊ぶ
【B】片付けをする（するべきこと）
→遊んで、片付けをしない

④父は言いたいことを言うだけ 言って 、部屋から出ていった
【A】言いたいことを言う
【B】ちゃんと話し合う
→言いたいことを言う以外のことはしないで、部屋から出ていった

⑤彼女は、いつも計画を立てるだけ 立てて 実行しない
【A】計画を立てる
【B】計画を実行する
→計画を立てて、実行しない

I was close, but not 100%. Seems like an easy grammar point though.

Thanks for sharing it!!

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#36

Just out of curiosity - is there any ETA for these grammar points, perhaps sometime this year, in time for the JLPT dates?

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#37

Most of these will be coming out this year! First batch is not far off, and then we will release batches probably every month or so after that.

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#38

Nice!

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#39

Perhaps I have not searched deep enough, but I have not seen the humble おります mentioned anywhere except in the forum.
Is it too rare to have a grammar point or at least a fun fact ?

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#40

I think おります is weird one. IIRC. Since it “can” be humble, or it is thought of as in Tokyo. But in some dialects or old-people talk it is normal to say instead of いる. So not sure where I would put that one. So I think it would be enough as a fun fact in another grammar point?
Or did you mean something else?

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#41

Yes that’s what I meant.
I’ve seen it several times these days so I was surprised there’s no mention of it on Bunpro.
I think I heard something like お部屋は準備がまだ出来ておりません, and it seems to be quite common in アニメ.
From what I understand it’s the grammatically correct humble progressive, but not that humble even in standard Japanese.
It certainly deserves its own point in the 関西弁deck as a casual replacement for いる, but I don’t know how much it’s used and useful otherwise.

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#42

As a mid way point, we may potentially add おる, and its various uses as one combined grammar point, not just the polite one.

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#43

I think we are missing the ~とおす grammar point. Like doing something without stop. e.g. 隠し通す

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#44

I didn’t see anyone asking for せいか, which can be either an add-in to せいで or a separate grammar point.

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#45

Just wanted to swing by here to list some grammar points I’ve seen in the wild that I couldn’t add to my Bunpro queue (yet):

  • AにAを重ねて, which has the meaning of doing “A” until success. This is just one of a heap of weird, idiomatic usages of 重ねる in Japanese, which would be cool to cover somewhere.
  • AをB(と/に)する, which means to consider A as B, or treat A as B. This is just an extension of the にする grammar point but with a direct object. Bunpro’s にする article hints at this meaning, including the transitive “to make something into, To view something as” in its definition of the grammar point, but the actual body of the article makes no mention of にする taking a direct object.
  • The verb suffix 寄り, meaning “having a tendency to” or “being close to.” This one doesn’t even have a standalone vocab entry :frowning:
  • Aとする, when it means “to feel/to look like” after a sound symbolism or word of psychological experience. Hard to figure out on your own especially in the sound symbolism case, in my opinion!
  • あえて、which means “to dare to” do something risky or to “purposely do” something trivial. Weird combination of definitions (and closeness to わざわざ) makes it more than a vocabulary word IMO.
  • の as a casual question marker
  • 百歩譲って as an idiomatic expression that means “supposing you’re right, even if that were true.”

Thank you, Bunpro team for always being so hard-working and responsive to feedback!

Edit: added 寄り which I forgot to originally include in my post

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#46

～される(が)まま(に)
to do as [passive verbed]
E.g., 言われるがまま → to do exactly as told

I wouldn’t suggest this normally as most uses of まま are intuitive once you know it but the insertion of が directly after a verb is confusing if you don’t already know similar structures (e.g., するが良い、するがために). Not sure if it comes up on the JLPT at all though.

Scrap this, it already exists! I don’t know how but I somehow missed it when searching.

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