Well… so you agree that it is important to learn it when you “just starting Japanese”? xD
1 Like
Good point haha
1 Like
wtf, I wouldn’t have ceded ground there xD. The implied purpose of this thread is to give advice that would save one from prolonged trouble and heartache. If it’s something nobody struggles on for very long and can master quickly…
Sorry, I picked a fight on your behalf, but you had a point imo
3 Likes
Well… why you assume that somebody starting will have such a knowledge? I have to give some credit to @atomicalex for trying to make is point in universal language of mathematic without assuming any knowledge about Japanese or linguistic whatsoever.
That remind me of important point nobody had made before:
Make sure you can understand the difference between Chinese, Korean and Japanese since it would be a shame to spend few years of studying and discover you went do Japan and try to speak perfect Mandarin to them xD
1 Like
I made this assumption? (Ans: Nope.)
As for @atomicalex, I do appreciate some formalization of language. It’s interesting to think about this in the field of computational linguistics. Besides, maybe this formalization helped him in other ways than what was characterized. For anyone interested, unlike English, which is mostly right branching but is occasionally a left-branching language, Japanese is entirely left branching, which makes it a theoretically interesting language to study computationally.
2 Likes
If it helped it implies he struggled isn’t it? So at least one person had problem with it 
I tried to find a talk I was watching about processing Japanese language (it is hard as hell) but I failed. I believe that it was by a guy that was creating technology for google to improve their services in Japan and their auto translations. If you are interested I can look for it, it was interesting.
2 Likes
There we go, this is where I can accept ceding ground xD.
2 Likes
Eh, I will need to wait for next challenger xD
F**k yeh! To go back on my own cessation, it’s something that should be fully and completely understood (and frankly I’ve never heard of anyone not getting this) after your first grammar lesson. Yes you might have difficulty using it, but there is nothing inherently difficult in this concept.
I guess after the blood and fury of the last few days on this forum I’m all outta fight.
4 Likes
Next! xD
But to be serious that probably depends on your mother tongue. I guess that for many people it can be hard to say which one means what here: 日本語の大学 or 大学の日本語? Add another の and it will get more confusing for some people. Or when you have many は. Having understanding that the most important piece of information is at the end for sure is useful when you try to decode first sentences.
They said they could have figured it out a lot earlier. This could mean it could have taken 20 minutes instead of 40 minutes, eh!
2 Likes
Option are two: some people disagree that saving 20 minute is neglectable, or it can take longer time than this. It took me for sure longer to notice that. And I believe if you are of french background then pretty much whole language is working in reverse for you (i think they put main word first and then modifiers after it).
But sure, that idea could be express in easier way than using analogy to not well known mathematics 
I am not a math expert, and I think this idea is pretty close to the truth, but I am not sure if it is 100% accurate. Japanese has really weird notation that slowly… very very slowly becomes more and more obvious. If I could describe it in the simplest way, に is the most important particle in Japanese. Most important for ‘facilitating understanding’ of long sentences. に has this awesome reality ripping power unlike any other particle. に doesnt show direction (in my opinion), it only shows location. It paints the entire comment before に as the ‘world’ in which the logic for the rest of the sentence can logically take place.
It is impossible to describe succinctly, but just try doing this when you read -
1 - pretend you have a bag, everything before に is put into that bag.
2 - whatever happens after に can only happen because you have that bag, with all it’s things inside it.
@nekoyama would be interested to get an opinion from someone that has passed N1 (I assume you have a pretty fast reading speed). When you read, what do you find your brain ‘clinging to’, to logically help you assemble sentences quickly. As I always say, I have never actually done the test, so my thoughts are always just nothing more than that.
3 Likes
You must be thinking of someone else. Please ask again when Corona is over…
I don’t know about my reading speed either, but I guess I mostly stop on verbs. This kind of ties in with the postfix idea; in Japanese, quite often the next thing after a verb completely changes the way the sentence has to be understood. So for me, verbs are natural boundaries in a sentence.
4 Likes
Could have sworn you passed N1… I must be tripping. Verbs can be tricky (for me especially when they are connected to a noun)
2 Likes
Can you give some examples (not too complicated) to illustrate what is tricky about that? I don’t know if I misunderstood some basic concepts or there is nothing tricky about it to me because of my background (in a sense it reminds me a lot of Esperanto, and Polish quite often is using similar concepts as well). To be honest understanding analogy was my most recent break through.
If you will give me examples of tricky ones I will be able to test if my “framework” is good enough, or I just misguided myself again xD
It is likely as well we are not thinking about the same thing though.
1 Like
Studying atm so can’t be bothered trying to find specific examples. But I mean the form of the verb. Especially ている, because it is more open to interpretation than other forms.
2 Likes
I was thinking you mean stuff like:
https://bunpro.jp/grammar_points/222 Verb [る] + ことがある
https://bunpro.jp/grammar_points/63 Verb[た] + こと・が・ある
If you will encounter a sentence that is illustrating your point well then please feel free to drop it here
I will be happy to find out where my understanding breaks rather sooner than later, so I will be able to start looking for new conceptualisation that is working for me 
2 Likes
That’s probably it. Both close-ups of anime faces 
3 Likes