Lightbulb learning moments, what were yours?

[MacFinch]

Although I would like to point out that we (all) may be wrong. Japanese history of it’s own language is sub-par at best. Especially it’s evolutionary phases.

I assume we ARE all wrong. The problem is we don’t know when it happens.

[Asher]

Yep. I have my theories that I believe. But I am more than happy to be wrong.
I do strongly recommend that book though (to anyone).

[MacFinch]

I will add it to my the list of things I have to read : >

We got nice saying I polish, I don’t know there is similar in English:

Opinie sa jak dupa. Kazdy ja ma.

Opinions are like arse. Everybody has one.

[MacFinch]

(As a side note, 手紙 didn’t always mean “letter”. It used to refer to a scrap to take notes on etc. Letters aren’t called hand paper because kanji made it easier to create the word like that. The word literally referred to paper one had on hand. It also wasn’t necessary to create a word in the first place. There already were other words that were used to refer to letters, like 尺牘 based on Chinese and specifically referring to a letter written in Chinese, and 消息 used to refer to a letter written in 女手 aka hiragana).

Actually I have chosen stupid example. Words using 訓読み readings does not prove my point anyway

[MacFinch]

One of my biggest eureka moments was realisation that you can treat Japanese grammar a little bit as if that would be language similar to Chinese. Chinese grammar is easy because it is analytical language which means you just need to analyse word order and helper words to get the meaning of given sentence.

In order to do something similar you need to look up how grammar point would be written if we would use kanji instead of kana.

examples:
無い - we got “non existence” + plus adjective marker
分から無い - 分かる in あ-stem (which is a hassle that does not happen in Chinese but nothing tragic) + we got “non existence” + plus adjective marker, so we have adjective describing lack of action or state of understanding. And if that is so then past tense should be as easy as past tense of adjectives. And it is the case.

食べ 無い方がいい - here we have 方 which means way + good. So good way is describe by state of not eating, which means it is better not to eat…

It works almost on everything although often it is not very straightforward process. Especially when verb connects with 手 (te form) because verb undergoes transformation. But overall I found it very useful in order to understand what given grammar point means.