I don’t know if anyone else feels the same way at all but I’ve come across a few of the “Caution” points in N2 grammar explanations which honestly just kind of confuse me. Although it could just be me being a bit lazy and wanting things explained to me as simply as possible.
The one I came across today which has led me to make this post is this one here:
I feel like theres been a couple of “Caution” points which have sentences in Japanese which utilise different grammar, but then the English translation is identical (and theres no indication of the nuance change) so its not really all that obvious which is the correct (or at least more natural) way of phrasing the sentence in Japanese.
Another example is this one here:
Is the top example sentence incorrect because it’s talking about the actions of the washing machine or not? The English translations lead you to believe that either sentence should work, but the text above makes me doubt whether the top example is a natural way to word it or not.
Another example like the above, but easier to figure out what is correct or not:
For this one whilst it’s fairly obvious the bottom example sentence is wrong through the translation, I don’t think it would hurt to just have something saying that “This is unnatural”. I’m a native English speaker so can pick up the why the second sentence sounds wrong, but it could perhaps be a little confusing to some users who speak English as a 2nd language.
The weird thing is that what is natural or unnatural Japanese was pointed out earlier in the N2 grammar lessons such as for the にあたり grammar point as seen here:
So it may just have been overlooked for some grammar points. But I would definitely appreciate it if the developers could look through the N2 grammar points to check if any of the explanations could do with a little more clarification, especially those with example sentences that have identical English translations.