Topic about the Japanese language.
I gave Gemini 2.5 Flash (experimental) a simple prompt and got what appears to be a good answer including a useful markdown-formatted chart (I copy/pasted it with no cleanup/edits). I don’t know enough Japanese to double check that all the information is actually correct but it looks plausible. I did confirm a few of the words that I learned from Duolingo. I’ve also found Gemini useful for explaining what the pictures in kanji represent and decent for explaining some stuff about grammar and particles (Duolingo provides very little explanation about that, but I find it easier to learn if I understand more). Gemini can also explain the individual components and literal translations of phrases that Duolingo teaches as a whole phrase with a non-literal translation.
Make a table of the ko, so, a and do japanese words
Okay, here is a table of the common Japanese “Ko-So-A-Do” words:
These sets of words are called demonstratives and are used to indicate things, places, or directions relative to the speaker and listener.
- こ (ko-) series: Refers to something near the speaker.
- そ (so-) series: Refers to something near the listener.
- あ (a-) series: Refers to something far from both the speaker and the listener.
- ど (do-) series: Used to ask questions about location, direction, or things.
| Category | Ko- (near speaker) | So- (near listener) | A- (far from both) | Do- (question) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Things | これ (kore) | それ (sore) | あれ (are) | どれ (dore) |
| Place | ここ (koko) | そこ (soko) | あそこ (asoko) | どこ (doko) |
| Direction | こちら (kochira) | そちら (sochira) | あちら (achira) | どちら (dochira) |
| Modifier | この (kono) | その (sono) | あの (ano) | どの (dono) |
| Manner/State | こう (kō) | そう (sō) | ああ (ā) | どう (dō) |
Explanation of Categories:
- Things: Used to refer to specific objects. (This one, that one near you, that one over there, which one?)
- Place: Used to refer to locations. (Here, there near you, over there, where?)
- Direction: Used to refer to directions or sometimes polite equivalents for place. (This way, that way near you, that way over there, which way/where - polite?)
- Modifier: These words come before a noun to modify it. (This [noun], that [noun] near you, that [noun] over there, which [noun]?)
- Manner/State: Used to refer to the manner or state of something. (Like this, like that near you, like that over there, how?)
There are debates about how to learn kanji. Some people favor rote memorization and arbitrary mnemonics. Others prefer trying to understand what the kanji are pictures of and their etymology. Focusing on understanding the pictures makes more sense to me and seems way more memorable to me. Most modern drawings in kanji are simplified enough that it’s hard to tell what they’re of just by looking at them, but you can learn about it. Not every kanji component has a relevant picture meaning, but a lot do. Some people claim learning about the pictures and etymology is a lot extra stuff to learn and memorize, which is unnecessary and not that useful, so it makes things harder and slower, but I’m not convinced by that claim.
Looks all correct to me. Hmm. Maybe I shouldn’t be so wary of AI stuff? idk. Anyways.
Since it just gave basic information, all of the basic stuff looks good to me. The only one I was unfamilar with was manner/state part. Well, I was familiar with どう and didn’t make a connection that there were other words related to it. I read and article and it seemed like gemini’s correct. Japanese Demonstratives: こう(Kou) • そう(Sou) • ああ(Aa) • どう(Dou)
I think a mix of both can work well. Hmm. I’ll probably share pieces of my Japanese learning journey at some point and some stuff I used and all that.
I don’t think rote memorization is good. Actually. Hmm. Wdym arbitrary mnemonics? The way I was “taught” (in quotes cause it was never direct, but I guess it is still taught to me?) was to create mnemonics for various kanji characters, but the mnemonics were based on the kanji itself.
Here’s an example from the web app WaniKani. Its an online SRS for learning kanji and vocabulary. For the kanji 思 it gives this:
In a rice paddy you find a heart and it makes you think. You think a lot of thoughts like, “Whose heart is this? Why is it in a rice paddy? Why am I thinking out loud?”
top part is rice paddy, bottom part is heart.
Hmm. Something I remember related to etymology of kanji was related to radicals. Radicals are the components of kanji. I i think I remember seeing a good amount of resources say not to bother with radicals. WaniKani, for example, creates its own custom meaning for many radicals. Is this the kind of stuff you’re talking about?
I might learn Japanese in the future. I’m currently learning Spanish. But I also want to pretty much finish English grammar before continuing with Spanish grammar.
san = 3
mnemonic: san sounds like sand, so imagine you have 3 grains of sand.
It’s arbitrary because you could have 4 grains or 100. Nothing about thinking of sand directly helps you remember the number 3.
I personally don’t like most mnemonics even when they aren’t arbitrary.
FYI Gemini and The Key to Kanji say the top of that kanji isn’t a field even though it looks like one.
Your togufu link said there are 9 ko-so-a-do word groups. Gemini gave me a table with 5 non-header rows, leaving 4 out. So that was actually misleading.
I’m listening to Learn Japanese with Music, it's easy and fun! | Earworms MMM Languages
I’m tuning it out a lot. I don’t know if it’s helping or not. I already have some familiarity with the sound of Japanese from watching subtitled anime many years ago.
Do you still watch any anime nowadays?
I try to watch without English subtitles for practice. Watching slice of stuff anime + rewatching old anime that I’m familiar with has helped my Japanese I feel. If there’s any anime you really liked and were pretty familiar with it may be worth watching the show in Japanese.
Oh yeah I said I was going to share my Japanese study routine. I’ll try to share some reasoning with each thing.
In this order:
1.) 1 DuoLingo lesson. I recently added this after my assignment. I kinda like it and don’t know of any alternatives for what Duo does specifically so I’m just kinda doing one lesson at a time for now (more if time permits)
2.) Kanji writing app: review and 1 lesson. I use this app on iPad:Learn Japanese! - Kanji on the App Store. It’s ok. The way it detects if you did the right stroke order is kinda jank. I’ve had scribbles go through at times and at other times it needs to be perfect. Luckily there’s an option to say that you made an error and that you actally know how to write the Kanji. Still lame tho. Main reason I use it is because I think it would help with differentiating Kanji that are similar and to give the Kanji I’m learning a stronger impression in my head.
3.) Human Japanese on the App Store - 1 Lesson. I do this if I have extra time. I’m about 3/4 of the way through (don’t have my iPad on me to check exactly). Its kinda like a textbook? It has modules on grammar points, vocabulary, and cultural notes. It got recommended as a good app for building a foundation in Japanese so I use it,
4.) BunPro - 3 grammar lessons and reviews. Its a grammar SRS. The big reason I this app over just reading grammar is because you will learn about the grammar point in a lesson and then you review that grammar point in actual sentences, which I really like.
5.) Wanikani - 5 new character lessons and review. flashcard app for learning vocabulary. people recommended against it in favor of free alternatives and things. i kinda agree, but i just like using it. its what i started my Japanese learning journey with and I think just that comfort plays a big part in me still using it.
6.) Anki Cards - 10 new flashcards and reviews. Anki is a SRS app. I’m currently going through a deck that goes through JLPT n5 and n4 sentences.
7.) Watch Comprehensible Japanese 1 video (at least). They make really good videos at differing Japanese levels that are comprehensible. Her complete beginner episodes I found pretty comprehensible immediately. I’d give them a watch. I really like her stuff.
8.) Watch an episode of anime in Japanese with Japanese subtitles. This is to practice understanding Japanese.
Getting kinda tired (not in the U.S. rn). I will share more stuff like why I came up with this routine specifically. I still remember the resources that I used at the beginning of my Japanese journey.
Oh yeah: this routine seems kind of much, and it kinda is, but I slowly built it up over time.
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That seems like a lot of different things to do. Do you like variety or think doing a lot at once is better or?
Hmm. Let’s see. I think I like the variety. How my routine came about is just slowly adding things because I didn’t want to miss learning on something and I want to incorporate it now. My routine seems pretty big but it can be cut down a lot, All you really need is grammar, vocab, and practice (in this case my preferred method is immersion, which I’ll talk about later). BunPro grammar, Anki for vocabulary, and then watching some anime.
DuoLingo was just added recently because its a different way to practice/learn than other things and I wanted to keep doing it. I think part of me wants to cover all my basis and I try to incorporate in a bunch of resources. Like in Anki I review both my own flashcards and a pre-made deck. Honestly I could get by with just the pre-made deck, finishing it, and then making my own. Or alternatively, just not use the pre-made deck because BunPro provides sentences.
Same with Human Japanese. I could drop that but since it was recommended for beginners I want to go through it to cover all my bases in my head. I do make that purely optional but yeah.
So to answer your question better: yeah it is a lot of different things. I think the variety helps me cover basis that other things don’t.
This routine is after me cutting back a lot.
Some of this sounds like doing stuff that other people said is good rather than using your own judgment. But it also partly doesn’t sound that way because it also sounds like you’ve been selective and cut out things you didn’t like enough.
I don’t think covering all your bases now is necessary. You can go back and fill in gaps later if needed. I think it’s up to you to judge if you find some of these things too repetitive with others (too much repetition is one of the main potential problems with using multiple introductory resources).
Do you do sentence mining to make your own flashcards?
Kinda, yeah. I did use a bunch of stuff, get burnt out, and cut down a lot. This has been, so far, the most sustainable routine I’ve had so far. I like it.
Ye. There’s a few details I didn’t mention that I wanna share soon about the resources.
Oh yeah one thing I do want to mention now: some resources I use because they have a clear end. Specifically, Human Japanese. I tried it out. I liked it compared to some other beginner resources I tried out. And I like how theirs an end goal to it that gives me some kind of mental comfort of “Now I know this much basic stuff for sure”.
Ye. I’m still more-or-less at the beginning of Japanese and so I use a lot of pre-made resources (such as BunPro, WaniKani, and pre-made decks) because I can’t mine cards that efficiently yet.
I can share my mining set-up for Japanese if you want.
Yeah share. I’ve only done premade decks for Spanish and currently I’m only doing immersion (mostly because Spanish isn’t that high priority, otherwise I would do some grammar as well). I’m interested in sentence mining because it seems like a good mix of SRS and immersion. I think the better you get the better immersion gets, and I can listen to audiobooks by Sanderson now so I’m not sure whether I want to do sentence mining though. Still, I’m leaning towards that it would be more efficient with sentence mining.
FYI these people have an interesting method for teaching Spanish which I think has some good points and benefits. It can be used in conjunction with another method or alone.
Basically, the idea is to start with grammar, prepositions and conjunctions first. They say the content words like verbs, nouns and adjectives are relatively easy to learn and tend to have 1-1 translations so it’s not that confusing. They say you can begin learning with hybrid sentences using English content words. The hard part of Spanish is learning the grammar and sentence structure differences including prepositions and conjunctions that don’t map 1-to-1 to English.
A good 1-1 mapping is: and → y
But there’s no 1-1 mapping for a very common important English word: that. Sometimes it’s que, sometimes eso, and I think there are more. This can be really confusing for English speakers who see those different things as one word, when it’s really separate meanings of the English word and therefore makes sense that it could translate into different words.
Another confusing issue is when to use por or para, both of which can translate as for.
Also Spanish puts direct object pronouns before verbs, uses articles more, uses grammatical gender way more, puts many adjectives after nouns, uses “de” (of) to connect adjectives more than English, and splits the English verb “is” into two verbs, one very approximately used for permanent stuff and one for temporary.
Also you can’t have implied “that” in Spanish like you can in English. So “I think you’re cool” translates to “I think que you’re cool” as a hybrid sentence with English content words. This can be quite hard for people who haven’t studied English grammar but should be easier if you’ve made grammar trees with implied “[that]” nodes.
Their basic idea is to learn all that stuff first and start thinking in terms of Spanish grammatical structures, which gets the hard part over with and lets you actually understand and create proper Spanish sentences, then learn content words after. Also words like “que” and “de” are used far more often than content words like “blue” or “dog” so it makes sense to learn more frequently used words first. Also they said if you’re trying to talk to someone who only speaks Spanish and you just know some content words you won’t really be able to talk to them coherently, but if you know Spanish grammar and structure but your vocabulary is missing a lot of nouns, verbs and adjectives you could maybe communicate some.
I think a similar approach could also be relevant for Japanese but I don’t know a specific resource that does it. I did notice Cure Dolly (who Eternity linked) starts with particles and grammar stuff, not content words, for her big Japanese learning playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSvH9vH60Ig&list=PLg9uYxuZf8x_A-vcqqyOFZu06WlhnypWj
I think 1-1 mappings work great with flashcards. It’s worse when on the one side you have por and on the other side “for, by, through”, and you actually need conceptual understanding for when to use each.
I think the more precise distinction is characteristic (permanent) vs state (temporary). Mostly they match up but you can have temporary characteristics and permanent states. For example you can be in an angry state (estar) or you can be characterized as an angry person (ser), but you’re not angry all the time even tough you’re an angry person. Or you can be in a permanent state like being dead.
I looked around a bit and it seems like state doesn’t totally capture estar either. I’m not totally sure. Also some people and dialects disagree on which to use for some cases. An example is being married.
Some things would come off really weird for English speakers like darse cuenta, which directly translated is “to give oneself account”, but means “to realize”. A more direct but understandable translation would be “to give oneself an account (New Ox: a report or description of an event or experience) of something”. So you could understand the logic of it even though it seems very unusual to you.
Things like those are very good to have explained to you.
I would recommend Spanish — Language Transfer. It’s understanding based. The downside is he doesn’t use grammar terminology and the episodes aren’t marked with any content description. I just now discovered there’s a PDF transcript, so I’ll use that to revisit some episodes and get started again.
Early on he tells you about English-Spanish cognate patterns like tion → ción, and you keep the rest of the word like in: information → información. You would pick up on that but it’s a nice boost in the beginning.
I think grammar is the hard part while vocabulary is the time consuming part. Lot’s of foreign speakers will use correct content words but use the grammar of their native language.
If you want to do immersion you need quite a lot of vocabulary though. This video says for some easy dialogue you need around 3000 words:
I stopped doing flashcards at around 2100 words and after a long Spanish break I could pretty much understand Dreaming Spanish intermediate videos. I have since done pure input and can now listen to Elantris, read Harry Potter and watch YouTube videos. Not with perfect understanding, but perhaps I understand 85-90%? It varies. Unfortunately I don’t know how much I did in terms of hours but it has been ca. 1.5 years since I started with Spanish again. And only in a few stretches did I do focused practice by reading graded readers. So I learned quite a lot by just watching random Dreaming Spanish videos and other more difficult content.
Perhaps it’s best to do 1-1 mapping flashcards → sentence mining → pure input. Or maybe sentence mining would be beneficial for the stage I’m in as well. Maybe some low frequency words are still important but difficult to get through input only.
If you do SRS flashcards and input you would ideally want your input to affect your SRS schedule. You can get this with LingQ, but I stopped using it because it felt too cumbersome.