Yeah, same. I struggled with なければいけない vs なければならない until I realized the hint says “almost always written” for ならない.
Now, when I get in this type of situation, I write down the competing answers along with their hint-text so I can identify what the key difference is.
These replies are super discouraging to me, someone who is learning Japanese from nothing, and using Bunpro as a tool to be able to understand and speak.
I don’t necessarily want to use my time to learn uncommon ways of speaking that might only be useful on tests.
It would be great to have a “street-smarts” track on Bunpro that would skip all such grammar points and have me focus on the core grammar actually used in the language.
Then, if I wanted to come back later and prep for a test, I could go back and add the uncommon phrases.
I have seen or heard every grammar point on Bunpro in media or in real life, barring a handful of N1 points but I will also presumably see those at some point as well. The higher up the levels you go the more written or formal grammar is taught. Everything on Bunpro is easily understandable for an educated native Japanese speaker. They just aren’t sure what Bunpro is testing for and don’t have the context that a normal user would so will normally revert to the simplest way of answering.
N5-N4 are basics and pretty much include no written language exclusive things. There’s some polite/formal stuff but it’s all extremely common in the spoken language.
N3 is still all extremely common although some things you’ll see more in writing perhaps however basically everything is used in the spoken language still.
N2 is mostly fairly common stuff. There are bits and pieces I’ve only seen in the written language I think but a large chunk is commonly used in the spoken language.
N1 actually has some things that really are firmly pretty much exclusively used in the written language. Having said that, lots of stuff is also used in the spoken language but the occasion for it is rarer. The main difficulty of N1 grammar is knowing when it should be used and what the nuance is compared to a simpler turn of phrase.
As I said, all the grammar is actually used but I do personally think a “basic conversation fast track” or something would be an interesting idea. Tae Kim’s guide is aimed roughly at that kind of thing so perhaps try the Tae Kim path, although I think it’s better to just stick to the regular Bunpro path as you’ll have to learn the rest of the basics at some point anyway.
I have no idea what your ability level is but I’d suggest finishing the N3 material if you haven’t already done so as that’s all pretty much used in the spoken language on a daily basis and then see how you feel. You could also try mining things you’ve heard spoken. If you intend to learn to read though then there are no grammar points you should avoid.
I hope that helped at least a bit and you can find what works for you.
Thank you for your very detailed reply, it was really helpful to read!
Yeah this is very accurate. Japanese folk will poke fun at online programs like bunpro, of couse, much like us native english speakers poke fun at English learning sites teaching ideas like “this is a spectacular pen” instead of saying “this is a great pen.”
While yeah, some points are gaijin traps (貴方, 下手です[seems most japanese folk use 上手じゃない as it’s less-bad connotaton]) there are many points that aren’t that, and are used very very frequently.
Previously the hint included 行く or なら and て or ば
[#]なくてはいけない v. なくてはならない - Bunpro - Bunpro Community
Rant incoming:
Not sure why they made the hint more ambiguous. Now I have to try all combos.
the hints for もし, もしかしたら and なら are the same “it’s like ば”
also, all the ‘durings’
中 間 途中 ながら I think besides ながら they all want a の somtimes, and a に most of the time. Yesterday 途中に gave me a ‘take something away from the begining’
Onething I don’t like about E=> J is all this effort trying to understand hints. for most of n5 grammar I felt like I was getting great practice on fundimentals I already understood from taking genki 1 and 2 in college over 4 years.
Moving into new N3 grammar that I haven’t learned in class is much harder. I don’t know which bucket my ‘wrong answer’ is
1 change the meaning 2 sound stilted but understandable 3 どっちでもいい. Personally, I only care about errors which change the meaning. Like mixing up させる and られる.
I see a Japanese sentence
モナは、かがみくんにも水の魔女の巻貝を見せながら、金魚のギルの話や魔女の実習へ行く話をしました。And I think
So Mona showed Kagamikun a curly shell and told him about the talking goldfish and water witch while walking to school.
And google translate says “Mona also showed Kagami-kun the water witch’s snail and told her the story of Gil the goldfish and going to the witch’s training”
I, as an English speaker can see the part I don’t know is
“魔女の実習へ行く話をしました”
I might change my reviews to reading for this reason.
Honestly I go so fed up that I switched the reviews to recognition and reveal rather than input. It’s annoying.
Had no idea you could do that so I went and did the same. I’ve been speaking Japanese daily for 3 years and this makes is even harder to fill in some ambiguous reviews as there are 5-6 or even more different ways that you can say the same thing, so I not only have to deal with the ambiguousness of choosing between 2 or 3 of the things we studied up to that point, but I have all sort of random grammar that I learned outside of bunpro flowing into my head and making things 10 times as hard as I just can’t remember what I studied on bunpro and what not, so sometimes I write even 10 answers and I always get “lets try a different grammar point” before I even get to the more specific suggestions…
This is the exact problem that I kept having
I also have this issue when doing reviews - especially the vocab decks.
Lately, my strategy has been to be more forgiving to myself when reviewing. If my input is marked wrong, I’ll hit “undo” and put in a different answer. This way, if I can eventually get it right (without revealing the answer), it’ll still be marked correct. I’ll only mark it as incorrect if I get the spelling wrong, or can’t think of the word. It sounds like that’s a common strategy.
寄る is the bane of my existence in these reviews…
Coming from WaniKani where the cards are Japanese → English, I am finding it more difficult to distinguish words. However, I do prefer the English → Japanese cards here, as I often find it tricky to recall words I learned on WaniKani without seeing the kanji first. When talking to other people, I often know that I learned a particular word in Japanese, but struggle to recall the word itself without that visual prompt.
Anyway, I’d love to see more hints and context added to the decks. For now, I’m just using the “trial by fire” approach with Bunpro 
I think it would be nice if we could have a customizable hints that can show for each grammar point.
I think we all build our own mental models around how we learn Japanese, and I don’t think there’s going to be a single keyword/hint that works for everyone.
I always have a good laugh when I put in an answer and it says something like “let’s use more polite grammar” and I try like ten other ways to say what it’s looking for and keep getting the same message so I give up and put in a completely wrong answer and find out all it wanted was for me to use “です” instead of “だ”
JUST came to gripe about how trying to figure out which ‘must’ form it wants is driving me absolutely nutbars. Especially when the ‘hint’ or description of the grammar point on-screen says “formal” and then the prompt says “can we try something less formal?” You JUST TOLD ME… !!!
Maybe give me a scenario. I’m writing a formal thesis. I’m talking to my boss. I’m talking to my friend. (Not that I fully know the difference yet, but I could learn to associate the one it wants with the prompt eventually)
In fact I think it would be ok to straight up put in the hint, “use ~nakerebanaranai this time”. Once I can easily do each on command, maybe THEN worry about which to use when.
There is a website called kaniwani (https://www.kaniwani.com/), which is basically the inverse of wanikani - it syncs up with wanikani levels and then gives you those world english → japanese. It can be helpful for getting wanikani words into your head, as wanikani itself is really just meant to be a kanji learning platform
Yeah, I’ve actually tried using that website before!
The issue ended up being that there were way too many synonyms, so it became very frustrating trying to cycle through all known words when prompted with the English word. I guess that’s the beauty of Kanji
Of course everyone has their own learning style, but i just try to supplement WaniKani with Bunpro and other resources. That’s been helping to strengthen my vocabulary recall.
It used to have the hint ‘think なる’ or ‘think 行く’, now I just always try both
なくていけない/なければならない
Not just ‘try again’, but wrong. It’s maddening.
Seriously here, was “Negative, Standard” supposed to clue me in not to answer with -nai to? I’m genuinely open to the idea that there is a difference, but I can’t seem to catch on to what the difference in the prompts is. If it DID want “-nai to” would it say ‘Casual’ instead of ‘Standard’ or something? And what is ‘Negative’ supposed to mean here?
Negitive refers to ない, as for the rest, I’ just as confused as you.
That happened to me a lot I got so angry lol, now I’m chilling with the Reading mode
