Tips for Remembering Synonyms

Bunpro
#1

I’m really, really struggling with the N3 vocab deck. I think it’s pretty common knowledge that around this point the synonyms and distinguishing their nuances becomes pretty difficult, but it seems like I’ve been struggling with the same words for the last 6 months.

I pretty much brute-forced my way through N5/N4 vocab, just failing over and over until it finally stuck, but that isn’t working now that vocabulary requires a little more…finesse. If I’m reading a book, I’m generally ok. Recognition isn’t a problem. I have quite a bit of N2/N1 vocab knowledge.

But when when speaking or filling in reviews, deciding something like what word for “life” to use is brutal. Is it 一生、命、生活、生命、暮らし、or 人生?

I know there are a lot of people past this stage in their learning. How did you do it? Do you have any tips for getting through some of these words? After 6 months of struggling with the same vocab, I’m ready to try something, anything else!

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#2

Not really a solution but my position on this is that only immersion will clean any doubt you have.
You might find explanations that will help but often a doubt will remain and will it be hard to get rid off it.
Sometimes even Japanese people struggle to explain the difference and you would also have a hard time explaining your native tongue’s synonyms to a foreigner.

Whenever I am confronted with this I try to not worry about it and I don’t search for an immediate fix. I try to be patient and accept it will pass naturally if I just let immersion do its part and it usually naturally becomes obvious.

not sure that helps !

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#3

Couldn’t agree more. Just get some more input in and be patient.

A more immediate tip would be to read some monolingual dictionary entries as sometimes these words aren’t actually synonyms (like the ones you listed aren’t all synonyms by any means) but may appear like it in a Japanese-English dictionary. Jmdict (the source for basically any Japanese-English dictionary you use) has loads of these low quality ambiguous definitions.

Sometimes words are just actual synonyms though and in those cases only seeing them in the wild will help disambiguate them properly. An example I like is 倫理 and 道徳 (ethics and morals) which are synonyms but in certain contexts or collocations they can’t be switched without sounding weird and even as a native you could argue all day about what they actually mean and if there is any difference.

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#4

the monolingual dictionary is a great tip, I have never tried that.

on a sidenote to my previous post, I’ll add that I would avoid at all cost brute forcing vocabulary, wether it is decks or flashcards, I really struggle with this personally. Brute forcing grammar points is okto me as these are just tools to figure out but I see vocabulary completely differently.

If you get enough immersion, you normally get vocabulary with an interest benefit served to you on a plate. Plenty enough to fill your daily brain input limit and the acquisition will be so much easier. For this reason I consider studying vocabulary out of context a wasted opportunity, it is really hard and leads to such confusions.

Obviously I also have plenty of synonyms issues, but I am pretty sure everyone of these are words/grammar points I didn’t get proper exposure to and that got introduced to me through studying rather than real life or exposure.

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#5

Yeah “synonym” wasn’t the best word to use to describe this. Maybe a better explanation would be I’ve always used Japanese-English dictionaries (either with no example sentences or unnatural example sentences) to look up and learn vocabulary, but they give the same basic definition for all of those words. Those aren’t cutting it any more.

So it does sound like a monolingual dictionary will help. Also more exposure. Which I’ve only really been able to effectively use for study within the last few months. Before, I knew too little to grasp the context. After all, As @stephane mentioned, studying vocabulary out of context is pretty much useless. I couldn’t agree more.

Thanks for the reply!

#6

I’ve really, really been feeling this. It’s been my biggest complaint with Wanikani lately. I’m level 58 right now so I really want to finish it (sunk cost fallacy is a real problem haha) but I’m reviewing over 100 vocabulary out of context, which is essentially useless if you’re trying to learn any sort of functioning Japanese. I’m sinking so much time inefficient study…

Thanks for the reply!

#7

Hi.

I think of Wanikani only as a way to understand some of the penumbra of meanings and pronunciations of the basic kanji. I limit my expectations to this.

I reset my Bunpro vocab after synching because the meaning richness of the “already learned words” was lost. From the new beginning, starting with N5, I paid attention to the meanings of the kanji, often looking up the compound in jisho.org to try to parse out how it was possible to derive the meaning of the vocabulary from the penumbra of kanji meanings. As you know, sometimes the logic is rather convoluted, but the time spent definitely cements the meaning.

I’m only half way through N3 and at 20 “new” words a day quite slow and tedious, but my retention seems better and when I run into a word in the wild I don’t even notice that it is a new word.

Wanikani and Bunpro (for me) work together synergistically, but neither (or both) are the end-all-end-all.

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#8

I am not familiar with wanikani (did RTK before), but I agree it is very important to use bunpro for what it is best at and not necessarily for everything.
Especially regarding vocab acquisition, I can’t think of a better method than the simple “immersion+custom flashcards decks” combination really, as basic as it sounds.

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