助力 (Level 8)

After studying for N3 I found that it contained most of the actual “grammar grammar” that I would learn (classical Japanese grammar and expressions not included). The “grammar” I had to learn or N2 and N1 is less “grammar”, and more like “vocabulary” and “expressions”, even though they’re taught as “grammar” in most resources, and it’s usually mostly extremely formal or literary expressions.

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Thanks for the info! Do you have any recommendations for trying to improve grammar? At the moment I’m using Tae Kim/Bunpro.

On a side note, if Chinese is your native language just want to compliment your English, it’s awesome.

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Thanks, it’s really nice of you to say so! I was actually raised bilingual, so both English and Chinese are my native languages. :stuck_out_tongue: English has always been my main language though, and my Chinese has fallen into disrepair because I haven’t really needed it for much in recent years. Perhaps I’ll get back into Chinese dramas some time in the next few months so I’ll have a good reason to use it again. At present, about all it’s useful for is a few quick dictionary/etymology searches and the occasional translation to help family members who are corresponding with people from China.

Tae Kim’s Guide is pretty good, but he apparently has a few unconventional/incorrect ideas. There are a few posts on the forums about it, like this thread:

That doesn’t mean you have to throw out his guide if it’s helping you understand Japanese grammar, but I’d suggest you supplement it with a few other things and see how other sources like textbooks describe things, just so you won’t be lost when encountering conventional terms in higher-level grammar. Here are some other resources to consider:

Textbooks

First off, I think textbooks are really worth looking into, if only because they help structure your learning. My personal favourite is Japanese with Ease from Assimil (a French publisher), but the printed English edition is currently out of print and only available on sites like Amazon. (It seems like only the French edition has been updated.) If you do decide to look for it, you’ll only need Volumes 1 & 2, because Volume 3 is a kanji learning book based on the kanji used in the lessons, and you’re already studying kanji with WK. However, it does seem like a digital course in the Japanese language for English speakers has been made available recently:

So you might want to consider it. You can try out the first seven lessons for free to see if it suits you.

Other textbooks worth looking into include Genki and Minna no Nihongo. I think Genki is easier to handle as a self-learner, as Minna no Nihongo is apparently very comprehensive, but might be overwhelming because it’s entirely in Japanese (with an explanatory volume on the side). You can check out the Tofugu reviews of several textbooks here. I personally think that Assimil’s textbook is the fastest and most efficient, making immersion accessible from day 1 thanks to targeted explanations (provided you’re prepared to grapple with some kanji, which you’re already doing with WK, and not expecting nothing but kana initially). Plus, Assimil’s course – even at ~70-80€ in printed form with recordings – is much cheaper than Genki I & II or Minna no Nihongo’s first volumes, and yet all of these textbooks aim to bring you to roughly N3 at the end of each course. However, some people find that Assimil’s grammatical explanations are too skimpy, so you’ll have to see if they’re good enough for you, and I personally expect the digital course to take some getting used to because you’ll have to learn how to use the interface.

At the intermediate level, you can start checking out books like Tobira or more or less any textbook that’s meant for ‘intermediate Japanese’. At the advanced level… there aren’t many textbooks left for some reason. My personal opinion is that the best textbooks at the advanced level are the two from the University of Tokyo that are almost entirely in Japanese: 日本への招待 (Images of Japan) and 文化へのまなざし (Facets of Culture). I haven’t really looked through my copy of 日本への招待 just yet though.

Websites

Just about any JLPT prep site (e.g. JLPTsensei.com) will help you with gaining a basic understanding of what grammar structures mean, and will also provide you with a list of things that much be worth studying. However, there is often little explanation on these sites, meaning that you’ll just have to go off the translation provided and examine how each structure is used in the example sentences.

Some better sites with more explanation include MaggieSensei.com (my personal favourite) and Wasabi-jpn.com. Beyond clicking through the grammar points for N5 and N4 though, these sites are probably best used as references when you come across something new that you need an explanation for, the reason being that they’re not structured as courses that one is meant to read linearly like Tae Kim’s Guide (or so I believe). You can try using them that way though. Perhaps it will work.

You might also want to check out Wikiversity. For example, here’s the page I used to supplement Assimil when I was learning about godan verbs, because I wanted to know exactly why the category was called (=five)段:
https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Beginner_Japanese/Godan_Verbs
Wikiversity’s explanations are a little technical at times, so they might be challenging for someone who’s not familiar with grammatical terminology, but I found that page well explained anyhow. (One caveat: I’m pretty familiar with grammatical terminology because I needed to learn a lot of it in order to study French.)

YouTube channels

There’s Real Japanese with Miku, Japanese Ammo with Misa, Japanese from Zero and Cure Dolly. I like the last one the least because some of her ideas are really controversial, but her explanations are admittedly quite intuitive and some people on these forums find her helpful. Real Japanese with Miku is apparently more to-the-point than Japanese Ammo with Misa, but I believe both teachers provide good explanations. Japanese from Zero has been recommended by some other people here, but I’ve never tried it myself.

Mindset

I just figured that I should mention that it’s important to avoid learning Japanese grammar through pure memorisation. Some structures can’t be broken down, or can only be deconstructed with a lot of finagling and twisting, and you’ll probably have to memorise what they mean individually. However, a lot of very long structures that JLPT sites present as ‘grammar points’ literally say exactly what they mean, and all you need to do is to take them apart. For example, 〜ている (the continuous tense) is probably N5 grammar, but 〜てはいられない is N2 grammar, meaning ‘can’t afford to ~’. However, it should be obvious – if you have an understanding of Japanese grammar and make an effort to break things down – that the N2 structure is 〜て+は+いられない, meaning that it’s the N5 structure with a は for emphasis/topic marking and いる transformed into いられない (negative potential form). If 〜ている means ‘to be ~ing/to be in a continued state of ~’, then being ‘unable to continue in a state of ~’ is obviously to be ‘unable to afford to continue in a state of ~’. In other words, 〜てはいられない shouldn’t even need to be taught as a distinct ‘grammar point’. Even monstrous N1 structures that apparently make no sense like さもないと can actually be broken down: さ can be written as 然, which means ‘this manner/such’ (just like そう), and from there’s, it’s pretty easy to get to「そうではないと」=‘otherwise/if such is not the case’. You just need to know the components, which are from Classical Japanese in the case of that N1 structure. Think things through and try to understand them, and see if you can recognise bits and pieces. That’s my advice.

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I think 力 often also means “ability” (as in “power/strength to do something”), like in 描写力 (ability to describe) or 視力 (eyesight). So 助力 kind of makes it sound extra “strong” or “official”? :smiley:

Would that then mean that 助力 would mean ‘the ability to help’? The reason I did that analysis was to point out that it probably not that natural as a verb. However, well… I suppose that’s a possible interpretation. I still prefer the ‘assistive force’ interpretation though, especially since you’re more likely to say that you ‘receive’ or ‘seek’ 助力 than that you increase or decrease it, or that you gain or lose it (as a quality of your own).

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Sorry to beat a dead horse, but I encountered 助力 in a book again and thanks to this topic it’s now triggering me :stuck_out_tongue:

Again, in a fairly plain dialog. (Btw, I edited it just a little bit to show more clearly who is talking to who)

Girl「ベンノさんに扱ってもらった方が安心なのですが」
Artisan「ほら、 お嬢様もこう言ってるじゃないか。頼む、ベンノさん」
Benno「う〜 ん、だが、なぁ……」
Artisan「お嬢ちゃんからも、もっと頼んでくれないか?」
Girl「ベンノさんの説得に助力するのは構いませんけれど、[Spoiler]に協力してください」

I guess I would translate it as “I don’t mind helping you persuade Benno, but please help me for [something else]”

So it’s an example of 助力 used as a verb. But as you said, with する verb I’m not sure how much the original category in Chinese really matter. ‘Assistive force’ seems basically right though, in this case not physically, but like she will put her weight to help persuading Benno

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The thing with する verbs is that you can get away with using pretty much any noun and the list of する verbs today is really mostly convention. It works the same as verbing a noun does in English. Some constructions might sound weird but the concept carries over since it’s so ingrained.

Take, for example, 魔力. It’s not technically a する verb, but 魔力する as a construction shows up a lot, especially if you read manga or LN in particular genres.

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