New N5 L1 Reading Discussion

Reading Discussion
#1

This is a discussion topic for the updated N5 Lesson 1 reading passages. [May 2024]

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#2

田中先生 is the goat :fire:

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#3

Even as somebody who’s only a bit less than halfway into N4, I find the fact that absolutely everything ends in either “desu” or “desu ka” strange. Was this to make it make more sense to the absolute beginners?

#4

Hello! For the following sentence, what is the grammar rule for conjugating the verb “to make” that makes it read this way? I recognize the plain form in だ at the end of the sentence, but the topic construction “bento-making” isn’t something I recognize.

お弁当作りは大変だ

Making bentos is hard!

#5

Hello and welcome!

This kind of conjugation is seen a lot in Japanese. You probably expected to see something like お弁当べんとうを作つくることが大変たいへんだ。 or お弁当べんとうを作つくるのは大変たいへんだ。 - both would translate to “making bentos is hard.”
However, お弁当作べんとうづくり would loosely translate as “bento-making”, so your sentence translates as “bento-making is hard”, which of course is essentially the same thing, but the nominalised verb becomes a standard noun.

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#6

Hi Matt, thank you very much for the thoughtful reply! To clarify, I was asking if this construct is a formal grammar point which I might encounter in a textbook (or bunpro) later in my learning journey, or if it’s colloquial Japanese which I might very well encounter in the wild but would not be taught.

I understood the meaning but was trying to determine if there was a rule like “how to nominalize a noun+wo+transitive-verb sentence fragment: remove -masu from the verb’s present polite form and ditch the wo particle”.

#7

Sorry for misunderstanding your original question!

お弁当作べんとうづくり isn’t something I ever remember being highlighted in textbooks (although it’s been a while since I looked at a Japanese language textbook!), but it falls under the broader idea of nominalisation, which you’ll obviously see in textbooks. 作つくり is the stem of the verb 作つくる, and it functions as a noun meaning “making” or “creation.” You’ll see this kind of verb-stem usage often in phrases like 絵描えかき for “drawing” or 歌作うたづくり for “songwriting.”

It’s a standard pattern in Japanese, so I wouldn’t describe it as colloquial. It’s definitely worth keeping in mind even if it’s not listed as an actual grammar “rule.”

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#8

分かりました!

Thanks for the elaboration, very helpful :slight_smile:

For any other beginners reading this thread, I found this link helpful for further reading: How to Conjugate Japanese Stem Form