[aDoBJG] N 💮 A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar

Japanese Language Book Clubs
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It is feeling a bit nostalgic reading through all the に entries, actually overall for the last couple of weeks’ worth of entries (I’m a bit behind, but anyway). Because I remember struggling with some of this. Why に vs で? Is there a difference between に and へ (didn’t come up here, but anyway)?

I don’t remember if I’ve felt much challenged by entries in the dictionary so far. (Except for when it has written very clumsy sentences.) Mostly I feel like I have sometimes asked “is it still like this?”. I guess I can be very happy for that. I have a good grounding in basic grammar.

I expect the intermediate book will be a different story entirely. :joy:

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にしては: The most surprising thing for me in this entry is the breakdown that calls は “if”. I can’t remember hearing that は can be considered/translated as “if”. Before I saw the dictionary’s breakdown, I assumed it was the contrastive は.

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Yeah, that is odd. The dictionary’s main entry for は says it originally developed from the conditional ば, but it doesn’t give “if” as one of its current meanings. So I’m not sure how much weight to put on this one-liner in the entry for にしては…

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Yeah, very weird. The contrastive は fits perfectly with the meaning too. So felt very out of the blue.

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I’d started to doubt there was much point for me to keep going through the basic dictionary, then ので to the rescue!

Not that I didn’t know ので before, but it is more that I can now better see the connection between that and のだ (as the dictionary points out). Also just a general connection between の explanatory particle and で as the means particle. It might not be etymologically correct, but in my mind it fits well to explain why ので because reason/cause. And better organizing my basic grammar knowledge is a worthwhile benefit. :smiley:

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I feel like every time I gain ground, I immediately lose it :sweat_smile:… Maybe I’ll try reading two or three a day until I’m caught up…

にちがいない

Couldn’t find any examples of this in my translations (with the kanji or without)! I thought it was interesting that if the preceding sentence-equivalent is nominalized by の, it yields more credibility to the speaker’s assertion.

The related expressions note was helpful, too. When にちがいない can be replaced by はずだ, the former is always a conjecture and the latter is the speaker’s expectation based on objective facts.

There’s the degree of probability scale again, which I think we’ve seen in a previous entry. にちがいない is the most probable, with かもしれない on the least probable end, and だろう in the middle.

にくい

I don’t think I have specific comments on this one, though I do have an example from my TJPW translations!

This is from Rika Tatsumi's comments on 2023.07.10 after TJPW did the "random drawing" to determine the match-ups for the first round of the Tokyo Princess Cup (Rika Tatsumi was paired up with Raku).

Here’s the full transcript and the full video. The sentence with the にくい actually caused me a bit of trouble when I was translating it initially, haha, though it wasn’t the にくい that was a problem.

リカ「この前の大田区でいったん夏は終わらせたんですけど、思いのほか楽しかったので、このトーナメントでセカンド・サマーを始めていこうかなと目論んでおります。初戦の相手がらくということで、一、二を争うぐらい闘いにくい相手なんですよね。なんですけど、それも思い込みかもしれないので、それを払拭したいと思います。そして究極のグランドスラムを達成したいと思います！ アルティメットです！」

Rika: “I put an end to summer in Ota City, but it was surprisingly pleasant, so I’m planning on starting a second summer in this tournament. My first opponent is Raku, and she’s the first or second most difficult opponent to fight. I say that, but maybe it’s just an assumption, so I’d like to dispel it. And I want to achieve the ultimate Grand Slam! The ultimate!”

～にしては

I found just one example of this in my translations, though I’m glad that I read this entry, because I ended up slightly tweaking the wording in my own translation. I shared something from the same post-match comments earlier in this thread, but I’ll share it again with the slightly tweaked translation:

This is from Shino Suzuki's debut match in the TJPW show on 2023.03.06, where she teamed up with (and against) her fellow members of the Up Up Girls idol group (Miu Watanabe, Hikari Noa, Raku).

Hard mode: here’s the video.

未詩「志乃ちゃんデビューおめでとう！」

Miu: “Congratulations on your debut, Shino-chan!”

ヒカリ＆らく「おめでと～！」

Hikari & Raku: “Congrats!”

志乃「（泣きながら）言葉が出ないんですけど…なんか自分の人生に起こってることじゃないみたいな感覚です」

Shino: (crying) “I’m at a loss for words… It doesn’t feel like something that’s really happening in my life.”

ヒカリ「新しいメンバーが増えて、デビュー戦にしては…」

Hikari: “We’re getting more members, and considering that it was her debut match…”

未詩「頑張ってた！」

Miu: “She did her best!”

ヒカリ「私たちがデビュー戦の頃を思い出しながら（笑）。自分のデビュー戦は負けちゃったので、新メンバーのデビュー戦は勝ちたいなって気持ちがあって」

Hikari: “I’m remembering when we made our own debut.” (laughs) “I lost my own debut match, so I wanted to win in our new member’s debut."

志乃「…楽しかったです」

Shino: “It was fun!”

未詩「素晴らしい」

Miu: “Wonderful!”

ヒカリ「楽しかったのなら問題ないです。立派になります」

Hikari: “If it was fun, then there’s no problem. You’re going to be fine.”

～にする

This is another one that I don’t think I have much to say about, but I have a fun example from almost exactly one year ago!

This was from the semifinals of the Tokyo Princess Cup on 2022.08.13 (my translation twitter account wasn't even two weeks old at the time). Miu Watanabe just beat Miyu Yamashita, the ace of TJPW, for the first time in her career, and won over a whole bunch of fans in the process.

No video for this one, since it was from the promo she cut in the ring after the match (“cutting a promo” is the pro wrestling term for a wrestler speaking on the mic/in front of a camera). Her whole promo here left a pretty strong impression on me, and wanting other people to also get to experience it was one of the things that motivated me to take my translations public.

未詩「山下さんに、勝ちましたー！ 山下さんを倒すことはデビューしてプロレスラーになって、一番最初に目標にした夢で。なかなかその当時は大きすぎる夢だったけど、いまこうして４年経って…勝つことができました！ 明日の決勝戦ではユカさんと闘うことになって。中島さんと山下さんとユカさんと闘うなんて、もうみんな強すぎよ！って思うんですけど。でも私はこの夏、先輩たちを超せる夏にするって決めたから！ だから、ユカさんも倒して、ユカさんに勝って、明日優勝したいと思います！ 明日の決勝戦も応援よろしくお願いします。今日もありがとうございました！」

Miu: “I beat Yamashita-san! Beating Yamashita-san was my very first dream after I debuted and became a wrestler. It was way too big of a dream at that time, but now, after four years… I was finally able to win! In the finals tomorrow, I’m going to face Yuka-san. Fighting Nakajima-san, Yamashita-san, and Yuka-san, everyone is too strong! But I’ve decided that this summer is going to be the summer I surpass my senpais! So I hope to defeat Yuka-san, too, to beat her and win the tournament tomorrow! Please give me your support in the finals tomorrow. Thank you again for today!”

Next up: I’ve finally reached the のs!

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No examples for the のs because I’m not going to attempt to sort through the vast number of instances in my translations, haha.

の1

The big surprise to me with this entry is that a bunch of things that I had been thinking of as distinct uses for の were lumped into the same grammatical item, and it made me realize that in some sense, these are all just の-adjectives? Here’s a Tofugu article that helped me understand the difference between な-adjectives and の-adjectives.

Note 1 alludes to the same sort of central point, which is that in AのB, Aの modifies B and indicates a specific member(s) of B among all the members of B.

Here’s Tofugu on how な and の are used for different kinds of noun modification:

So first, what is noun modification? Put simply, it’s using another word (often, but not always, an adjective) to give more information about that noun. For example:

きれいな人
beautiful person

In this example, the noun 人 (person) is being modified by the な-adjective きれい (beautiful), which tells us a characteristic or quality of the person (that they are beautiful). This type of noun modification is called “describing”, and is typical of both い-adjectives and な-adjectives. So, when a な-adjective is used to describe a noun, it uses な to do so.

Now let’s examine what noun modification looks like when we use particle の, rather than な:

きれいのヒント
beauty hints

In this example, the noun ヒント (hint) is being modified by きれい, just like in the first example. This time though, きれい is followed by の. If you’ve learned anything about particle の, you might know that it is used to express the relationship between two nouns. In our English translation of きれいのヒント, you can see that きれい is translated as “beauty” (a noun), rather than “beautiful” (an adjective), as it was in the previous example.

Wait — So if きれい a noun in this example, how is it able to modify another noun? As it turns out, nouns can modify other nouns, but in a different way than な-adjectives. Adjectives describe a quality or characteristic of a noun, whereas nouns label other nouns, telling us the type or category. So in our example, きれい does not describe ヒント (i.e. the hints themselves are not beautiful), it is telling us about the type of hints at hand. In other words, it helps us know that the hints are about beauty, not finance or dating. We’ll call this type of noun modification “labeling”, and の is frequently used to express this.

To quickly sum up, な is used when you want to describe a noun, and の is used when you want to label a noun.

の2

The main thing that stood out to me here was the related expressions note showing why this の was different from の1 and の3. I had totally just been assuming that this use of の came from omitting the noun, but the example given in 1c shows that it really is its own thing!

Note 2 was interesting, too. I don’t know if I’ve run into this specific ambiguity before, but it’s good to look out for.

の3

I don’t think I knew that, as explained in note 1, a nominalized sentence can occur in any position where a noun phrase can appear, except in the position of B in AはBだ. In this case, こと is used. I suppose in some way it weirdly makes intuitive sense to me, though maybe that’s just from having lots of exposure to reading monolingual definitions of things that fit that format…

I’m still trying to get a feel for times where you’d use こと and times where you’d use の. The list of examples was interesting!

の4

As usual, whenever I read about gendered usage, my impulse is to look for examples of the opposite gender using it, though sadly I don’t have a particularly extensive library of transcribed speech from male wrestlers to draw on, haha, so I couldn’t find examples of male wrestlers using の as described in note 2.

のだ

It’s fascinating to me that the previous entry said that の4 is derived from のだ/のです through deletion of だ/です, and then the related expressions note says that the sentence -final particle の4 is not the same in its meaning as の of のだ…

んです was one of those things I struggled a LOT with in the very early days, because I was seeing it all over the place but didn’t realize I should be looking under explanations of, well, のだ, if I wanted to look it up, haha. There’s info out there on the internet if you search for it directly, but I had this great grammar dictionary, you see…

Now it’s one that I don’t feel like I struggle with much in reading, but I definitely do sometimes struggle with it when outputting Japanese. I’m sure I’ve gotten it wrong at least once, either using it when I shouldn’t have or failing to use it when I should have.

I do have a fun example for this one! This is from Pro Wrestling NOAH, not Tokyo Joshi Pro Wrestling. After Katsuhiko Nakajima reunited the AXIZ tag team with Go Shiozaki, I got into a bit of an argument with one of my friends, haha, about why he did it. The company put out a trailer for their reunion match (there are Japanese subs), which basically used んだ to totally confirm my interpretation. Vindicated!! :triumph:

Here's transcription/rough translation/description of what happens in the video if you're not able to catch all of it:

After beating Go in his comeback match on 2023.05.04, Nakajima comments on his pathetic state, “何だ その無様な姿は” (which, incidentally, he also commented on back during the initial betrayal, using the same wording) and then he orders Go to stand up: “立て”. The video cuts to old footage of Nakajima breaking up their tag team on 2020.08.30 (衝撃のタッグ解散から2年と247日), where he says that Go doesn’t need him anymore, “俺のこと必要としてないでしょ？” Then it cuts back to the present, where Go takes his hand, and we hear Nakajima’s voice say that AXIZ is back, “「AXIZ」復活だ”.

Then there’s a line of text overlaid onscreen: “今はお前が必要なんだ”. So it’s saying that the reason (why Nakajima reunited them) is that Go needs him now (contrastive は! It’s contrasting 今 (2023.05.04) with 2020.08.30).

I realized that between the contrastive は and the んだ in there, it was really hard to capture the exact nuance of that sentence in a translation… And if the friend I was arguing with tried plugging that into DeepL, it gives you the basic meaning, but totally loses the explanatory aspect…

In any case, it was one of those moments where I was profoundly grateful for having learned at least some Japanese. It’s always really satisfying to be able to confirm your own interpretation like that, haha.

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ので

This is another one that doesn’t really give me much trouble when reading (or translating), generally, but does occasionally give me trouble when producing Japanese and I’m not quite sure if ので or から is the right choice. I feel like I’m gradually getting a feel for it, though.

I have an exchange from my Tokyo Joshi Pro Wrestling translations with a lot of examples!

This is from the press conference on 2023.07.03 before Summer Sun Princess on 2023.07.08, leading up to Maki Itoh challenging Mizuki for the Princess of Princess Championship:

I don’t have timestamps for the part quoted below, but here’s the video and here’s the full transcript. As always, translation is mine and may contain errors.

――この試合の勝敗をわけるポイントをどう考えている？

――“What do you think will be the difference between victory and defeat in this match?”

伊藤「技とか簡単な見やすいものでいうと、伊藤は渦飴を受けたことがないので。それがどれくらいのものかまだわからないので、そこかなと思ってますね。あとわからないですけど、ちょっとでも気を許しちゃったら負けだと思ってるから、気を緩まないようにしたい。ちょっとでも優しい部分とか見えちゃったりすると負けそうだから、1秒も気を緩まないことが大事なのかなと伊藤は思ってます」

Itoh: “In terms of moves and things that are easy to watch out for, I’ve never taken a Whirling Candy. I still don’t know how much damage it’ll do, so I think that’s one. I don’t know what else, but I think I’ll lose if I let down my guard even a little, so I want to keep my focus tight. If I let any soft parts show even a little, I’m going to lose, so I think it’s important not to relax even for a single second.”

瑞希「私は前回トーナメントで伊藤デラックスで負けているので、それの怖さ、腰攻めの強さっていうのはわかってます。だけど、何よりもホントに気持ちですね。心がこの人に敵わないって思ったら絶対に負けちゃうと思うので。気持ちを強く持とうと思います」

Mizuki: “I lost to the Itoh Deluxe in the last tournament, so I know how scary it is and how much pressure it puts on your back. But more than anything, it’s really about feelings. If my heart feels that I am no match for her, I’ll surely lose. So I intend to go into it with strong feelings.”

Something worth paying attention to is the のでs and からs. I noticed that Itoh used ので for talking about the factual information, like she’s never taken a Whirling Candy, so she doesn’t know how much damage it will do. Both of those statements are clear and evident to the hearer. Then she gets into her personal opinions: “I think I’ll lose if [blank]”, which she uses から for.

Mizuki used a ので for the factual information, like she lost to the Itoh Deluxe in the last tournament, so she knows how scary it is. But interestingly, she also used a ので at the end to express what seems to be a personal opinion: “If my heart feels that I am no match for her, I’ll surely lose. So I intend to go into it with strong feelings.” I guess I’m not sure why the ので is acceptable here, haha!

のに1

I’m not sure I was aware of のに not being acceptable in the examples given in the related expressions section (where only けれど（も）can be used)? 3a and 3b in particular were pretty surprising. That’s such a subtle distinction… It’s interesting, too, that けれど（も） is more objective than のに.

And there’s our friend が again, haha. It can replace のに in the examples, but the disjunctive (I looked this up! It means syntactically setting two or more expressions in opposition to each other, as “but” in “poor but happy”, or expressing an alternative, as “or” in “this or that”) meaning of が is much weaker, and it’s free from the restrictions imposed on のに.

Here's an example from Shoko Nakajima's post-match comments after she got eliminated in the Tokyo Princess Cup tournament in the quarterfinals on 2023.07.29:

Hard mode: here’s the video (the part quoted below starts around 0:34).

中島「（何をきっかけに前向きな思考に変化した？）けっこう去年のトーナメントが苦しくて。まぁベルトを持ってるのに決勝まで上がれなかったりとか。でもそこの負けを引きずるところがたぶん自分のよくないところだなっていうのに気付けたんですよ。なので、今年はできることしかできない。だから、そのできることをどんどん大きくしていければって気持ちで試合をしてたので。めちゃくちゃ悔しいですけど、悔しいけどまた成長できるって思うことにしました」

(What triggered the shift to a positive mindset?)

Nakajima: “Last year’s tournament was really tough for me. Even though I had the belt, I wasn’t able to make it to the finals. But I realized that lugging around that loss probably wasn’t so good for me. So this year, all I can do is do what I can. That’s why I was wrestling my matches with the feeling that I had to expand what I was able to do. I’m really frustrated, but my new mindset is that even though I’m frustrated, I’ll be able to grow more.”

のに2

I feel like I have a tendency to read this as nominalizer + に haha rather than as のに as its own thing, so I forget that there are technically two のにs…

The surprise to me in this entry was note 2, which says that when the のに clause is used as the topic, の is often deleted in conversation. As soon as I read that, I asked myself, “wait, have I seen this before?” and after a quick search, I can say that the answer is yes! I totally didn’t notice when reading/listening to these examples for the first time haha.

Here's from after Mizuki challenged Yuka Sakazaki for her belt at the end of the TJPW show on 2023.01.04:

Hard mode: here’s the video.

瑞希「（決戦まで２カ月以上あります）私、前回のタイトルマッチでいままでになったことのない感情になって。それってすごく説明できない感情で。またこの感情が始まるのかなって思ったらアレだけど、でも私たちは仲良しなので。信頼を持って…尊敬もしてるし、２カ月私は絶対ウカウカしてられないから。ユカッチを超えるには、自分のすべきことを全部しなきゃいけないし。ホントに頑張るって言葉だけじゃ全然足りないくらい頑張らないと越えられないから…（涙）２カ月、ずっと超えたいと思ってたから。２カ月だけじゃないし、全部ぶつけたいなと思います」

(There are more than two months until the title match)

Mizuki: “In our last title match, I felt emotions that I have never felt before, feelings that I can’t explain. I’m wondering if I’ll start having those feelings again… but the two of us are really close. We really rely on each other and have a lot of respect for each other, and for these two months, I definitely can’t be careless. In order to surpass Yuka-chi, I have to do whatever it takes. Just saying that I’m really going to do my best isn’t enough, and if that’s all I do, I won’t be able to surpass her…” (cries) “In two months… I have been wanting to surpass her for a long time. It’s not just two months. I think I want to hit her with everything I’ve got.”

The distinctions that the related expressions note talks about that are between Vますに and のに, and between ために and のに, make a fair amount of intuitive sense to me. It’s interesting, though, that a sentence like I.2 can imply that the speaker shouldn’t have used time and money going to Ginza to see a movie, haha.

～のは ～だ

I can’t remember if I ever properly learned this as its own grammar point or if I just picked it up intuitively. The part of this entry that really stood out to me was note 5, which says that normally the の clause takes は, marking the entire clause as presupposed, old, unimportant information, and the element between のは and だ represents a new, important piece of information. But sometimes the の clause takes が, marking the clause as new, important information. In this case, the element between のが and だ indicates unimportant information.

(It’s kind of funny to me that the example they chose was about making robots. It’s funny to imagine a circumstance where the “I’m making” part of the clause is important and the “a robot” part is unimportant.)

The related expressions note pointed out that this construction should not be confused with the の used as a nominalizer, which is a problem that had not occurred to me until that moment… I understand after reading that section the distinction between the two examples they use, but that one is a bit tricky.

I’m not going to try finding an example of this one because there are too many のはs and のがs that are not this, haha, and I don’t want to play that sentence restating game with each of the examples I do manage to find that possibly fit the bill… :sweat_smile:

And that’s the last of the N’s! I’m a little bit closer to being caught up!!

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Finished the aDoJG Anki deck. The advanced one was a REAL chore to get through, however it did put together for me that the more advanced grammar is largely a sum of smaller parts that was taught in the Beginner and Intermediate dictionaries. If I had to recommend anyone do anything, Basic and Intermediate are all you need and maybe once you feel like you truly mastered those and just wanna learn something more, go for the advanced dictionary.

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The Advanced dictionary has an Index at the back that covers all of the entries in all three volumes. I find this very useful.

At the moment I’m using the Advanced dictionary as a source of abundant extra example sentences to supplement the SKM (新完全マスター) N2 Grammar book, which has only a small number of example sentences for each topic.

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SKM + these books is probably a lethal combo.

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Is that in a good or bad way?

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Great way.

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How come your level doesn’t show anymore

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I set it up that way on my Forum settings because I’m not actively doing WK on the site anymore.

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What did you use to get the rest of your cards? (Assuming you export to Anki), I might do so in the future

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I used Yomichan and Anki integration. They have 2 tabs, one for vocab and one for kanji, so you can just set up the Kanji one how you like and click the kanji part of the word and add away!

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If you want my card style too I recommend installing the KanjiStrokeOrders font

Anki Card Design:

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<div style='font-family: Noto Serif CJK JP, serif; font-size: 24px;'><b>意味：</b><br>{{edit:Meaning}}</div>

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<div style='font-family: Noto Serif CJK JP, serif; font-size: 24px;'><a href="https://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/srch/all/{{Front}}+/m0u/">Goo Jisho</a></div>

<div style='font-family: Noto Serif CJK JP, serif; font-size: 24px;'><a href="https://www.wanikani.com/kanji/{{Front}}">WaniKani</a></div>

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Thanks for that! I really use Anki for so much more and I prefer it in general especially being able to just customize it however I like. Might pull the trigger and just important the last 40 levels I need to do as I’m more efficient in Anki too since you don’t have to type the answers.

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I’m still working out the issues with importing the Stroke order font so you can see it in AnkiDroid, but on PC/AnkiWeb everything seems fine.