Help understanding grammar

Bunpro
#1

Hello all, sorry if this is a bit long.

I’m struggling a lot with trying to understand how to use Bunpro effectively. The way I’ve learned grammar for every other language I’ve studied is through reading books and essentially grasping through repetition that words conjugated a certain way in a certain context have a rule that defines the root’s form. When you see this happen enough, you start to grasp that different tenses have certain forms associated with it, e.g. past tense “-ed” or present tense “-ing” for English.

But I can’t seem to figure out these contexts from Bunpro sentences, and to make matters worse, the vocab being used are at times words I’m unfamiliar with, so I don’t know what the base word is anyway, let alone have an idea of how to conjugate it properly. I’ve been treating Bunpro like Wanikani, adding 1 new grammar point each day, and while particles are a breeze, conjugation between tenses are an absolute mess. I typically do a read through of each new point, quiz, do whatever reviews are available, do them all again at night, then repeat the next day.

I originally imported my API key from Wanikani, found that was a huge mistake, and reset the vocab and grammar. This is very frustrating, and while I theoretically like Bunpro’s system, in practice it feels very problematic in a way that I’ve not encountered with other languages. Is Bunpro not for me or am I approaching things incorrectly?

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#2

Hello fellow user. The word being conjugated is usually on the sentence in brackets for you to conjugate. As for figuring out the context of the sentence and the grammar Bunpro wants you to use, have you tried enabling the hints? (I think these are automatically enabled anyways). They should give info on what grammar to use. I can understand that it can be hard sometimes and I sometimes find myself entering the wrong or similar grammar points regularly. In which case, if I know the grammar point that is supposed to be the correct one used, I will click the ‘oops’ button and redo it.
Also, perhaps the ‘resources’/links section next to the grammar point will help you understand the grammar point from different sources too?
I agree tenses were especially hard when I started using bunpro, but what I did was just keep a tab open and conjugate the word shown into the tense the question wanted using that, and through repetition learnt it.
Oh, and I reccomend installing yomichan or rikaikun extensions on chrome or a similar browser to help you hover over word definitions you don’t know, I think that could help you.
Best of luck!

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#3

I can completely relate to your problem. I can only tell you how I’m sort of finding my way.

I had and still have the same problem. When I do not recognise a random word in a sentence I tend to just look at the translation in the hints as long as it’s not related to me answering the question it doesn’t bother me too much and I just regard it as something that I will start to learn given some repetition (on multiple encounters).

The more immediate problem is if the question actually asks me to conjugate a verb that I don’t know. Cause this gives rise to a more immediate problem: is it an ichidan or godan verb? The rules for these types differ obviously and if I don’t know which type it is, I don’t know how to conjugate it.

So this is when I look up the verb, usually on Wanikani, and I have to say that I’ve come to remember now which verbs are which type after repetition (and there are still many more to learn).

Besides that for grammar in general I make personal notes with examples for specific grammar points I struggle with. I review these regularly (±once per week).

Last suggestion based on personal experience, use Cram. I really like this feature as it allows you to practice as much as you want. Again a form of repetition.

(PS. this is my first post on this board and actually my first post in years in general, but I felt the need to reply as your issue looked a lot like mine).

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#4

Japanese grammar is not like most European languages and thinking in terms of conjugation might be making things more difficult for you. I will give a very basic overview of Japanese grammar below but I suggest you search around on google to fill in the gaps.

Japanese is an agglutinative language which means that it uses axillary words, attached to conjugable/inflectable words, to add meaning. Auxiliary words themselves are often conjugable and you can have a long chain of aux words.

All Japanese people learn to divide words between conjugable and non-conjugable words at school. Conjugable words include 形容詞 (い-adjectives or pure adjectives), 形容動詞 (な-adjectives or adjectival nouns), and 動詞 (verbs). Note that for 形容動詞 it is the な part that is conjugable (itself being a conjugation of the copula だ) so the classification is subject to debate outside of school level grammar. Non-conjugable words include 名詞 (nouns), 代名詞 (pronouns), 副詞 (adverbs), basically everything else.

After a conjugable words it is possible to add an aux word. The aux word itself is not a conjugation, only the change to the first word is the conjugation. For example, in “行きたい” we have a conjugated form of 行く (行き) and the auxiliary adjective たい. Since たい is an adjective it is also conjugable and we can add another auxiliary word to the chain. So we can said 行きたくない, where 行き is a conjugation of 行く, たく is a conjugation of たい, and ない is an auxiliary adjective. I hope you get the idea.

Conjugable words only have so many possible conjugations due to the Japanese sound system. For example, if a verb ends with くthen it is only possible to conjugated to か、き、け、こ. Essentially the vowel sound changes only. For adjectives (い-adjectives), the い at the end will change or drop. This い was once a き so that is why the conjugated forms seemingly “add” a k sound, like く.

Ichidan verbs will always end with いる or える sounds and there are other small rules besides this to help (two okurigana besides the kanji + iru/eru ending means it is ichidan). There are a few common exceptions but I wouldn’t stress about this and just let time do its thing.

The above information is a very quick gloss. I strongly suggest reading the Wikipedia page for Japanese grammar or googling specific things you don’t understand in what I wrote above. Japanese grammar is initially the hardest part of the language, in my opinion, as you have to totally change how you think about things and it takes a while for it to become automatic. Consuming lots of real examples will help your brain make the switch. Every sentence is made up of “grammar” so the more you read or listen to, the more intuitive grammar will become, assuming you are consuming something that is at least somewhat comprehensible. Good luck!

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#5

Thanks for the help! I do enable the tips on the screen sometimes, but frankly they feel like they are more of a hindrance than a help because I don’t necessarily understand what the tips is asking of me on some of them when they say, “translates like a verb in some cases” or something to that effect. I assume memorizing will be beneficial in that regard until I can learn not just what the conjugations are, but also how Bunpro “prompts” with the hints. I think I’ve actually been more successful with all of the hints off and just “feeling” my way through the sentences.

I’ll definitely give those extensions a try- they sound very helpful!

#6

This is also my first time posting here (or on any forum, really), so I really appreciate you taking the time to also address that the problem you had was similar. Cram is an excellent suggestion. I haven’t really explored every facet of the site yet, but you’re absolutely right that the repeated exposure will be beneficial.

Thank you again for the support!

#7

Holy smokes, what an amazing reply! Thank you so much for going into the detail of explaining some of these points.

I don’t know if I’ve just not advanced far enough in reading about grammar or what, but the info that words are being routinely compounded as they conjugate is invaluable information that I hadn’t heard yet. I was under the impression that (because most of my studying has been of vocab or particles) the conjugation worked in a similar way to Romance languages in that you simply have a stem and a root (which I guess it still does, just not in as compounded a manner). The rest of what you’ve said also makes perfect sense, and really just makes me aware that having a little notepad cheat sheet (sort of like @SoreWaMaichiru suggested) would be great for helping to sort out the possible forms for each word. Also knowing the limitations on possible roots based on consonants makes conjugation feel more manageable just by way of having some boundaries to the language.

Thank you so much for taking the time to write this out!

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#8

This may not sound the way it is intended, but you simply need to learn the basic rules of Japanese conjugation. Once you learn them, and there are MANY forms btw, you’ll be able to deconstruct ANY verb with easy (regardless of what conjugation they’re in).

A great start would be this video here (The first two parts is all you need, unless you want to watch the rest, which is excellent too):

These are just the basic conjugations, but they’ll give you a good groundwork from where to learn the rest.

HTH

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#9

I appreciate you linking the video!

I’ll definitely give it a watch and hopefully my rudimentary knowledge will be a bit better afterwards. I absolutely do need to learn the rules of grammar, it was just my understanding that Bunpro would provide that, but I think I perhaps I need a few different sources to help solidify what Bunpro is saying.

Thanks again!

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#10

I’d suggest reading up Tofugu’s explanations! They really helped me get the basics of verb conjugation, and then in a notebook I wrote down the rules and example sentences.

(Quick breakdown of what a root is in case someone doesn’t know yet: The part of the verb that you don’t change, usually written in kanji. E.g. 行く, when conjugating we change the く to other kana or remove it, so the 行 part is the root. I feel like I’ve seen somewhere that the 行き part is the root so I could be wrong, I’ll edit it if someone corrects me)

Example:
ます form
Godan
U->I + ます
Example: 行く(いく to go)ー行きます

Ichidan
+ます
Example: 見る(みる to see)ー見ます

Fukisoku/Irregular
するーします
くるーきます(来)

And with the more complex conjugations you have to write more stuff like for the て form.

て form conjugation
Godan
う、つ、る= +って
Example: 会う(あう to meet)ー会って
む、ぶ、ぬ=+んで
Example: 学ぶ(まなぶ to learn)ー学んで
く= +いて
Example:書く(かく to write)ー書いて
Note:行く(いく to go) is irregular and conjugates as 行って
ぐ=+いで
Example:脱ぐ(ぬぐ to undress)ー脱いで
す=+して
Example:話す(はなす to talk)ー話して

Ichidan
+て
Example:見る(みる to see)ーみて

Fukisoku/Irregular
するーして
来る(くる)ー来て(きて)

I hope Tofugu or this helps!
Sincerly, someone who studied Japanese for an entire year on duolingo without ever have being taught this.

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#11

Thanks for the breakdown! I admit that other than some of the blog posts they’ve made or their mnemonics for the hiragana/katakana, I haven’t used Tofugu all that much. Good to know they can also be a helpful resource for grammar!

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