I’m starting this thread in the most casual, comfortable stance possible. The purpose of it is just to practice our Japanese writing (or speaking in written form). You can just type in a sentence, preferrably with translation, and others can reply if they want to know more about the grammar point you’re using.
My idea is to utilize the vocab we’re taught here at WK and make sentences with it. I’m currently at Level 7 and N5 grammar-wise, but there are quite a lot of structures i can come up with and so i thought why not share them with others can we can correct and improve each other
So yeah, I hope people support and actually find this thread somehow helpful, and the sentences keep coming! Don’t worry about mistakes, just type out your ideas and people can comment on them
We already have the Japanese Sentence a Day thread (which is not too strict on the one sentence a day thing, it’s just write whatever you want whenever you want really), would that not already provide this?
I’ll start first (and hope that someone will reply )
Previously i learned 足首、so here goes: 私は足首にきずあとがあります。which means
I have a scar on my ankle. I kinda not know whether using
にthere is correct or not. And i wanted to be as realistic in those sentences (so that they stick to my mind better) and had to look up the word for “scar”, which i wrote in hiragana cuz i don’t know it yet.
Oh I already saw that but some sentences were hard to understand grammartically and vocab-wise. And yeah I should’ve mentioned that on the previous post which would explain my thread’s name better
Yeah it’s definitely an all-levels kind of thing. Beginners are more than welcome though, mind you!
A more beginner-oriented place might not be a bad thing, I can imagine it being intimidating when you see a three-paragraph reply full of grammar and kanji you can’t make heads or tails of.
I guess we could take the current approach with providing translations a step further and also add notes as hidden details with explanations why a specific grammar point was used. This would help not only other people studying, but also people who would like to provide feedback to narrow down on the “what A wanted to say” vs “what A actually said”.
That and I could stop writing A4 essay format replies .
Having a separate, more level-aware thread is not a bad idea, though at some point it might turn into a hybrid of Sentence a Day and the Grammar Questions thread.
I suppose we could but even with the translations that’s a thing not everbody does, and not a thing we should try to enforce, IMO - it raises the barrier to just writing stuff when you feel like it. Explaining why specific grammar was used would raise the barrier significantly beyond that, and I’m not sure it’d help much with the intimidation factor tbh since at the beginner level an explanation on why you went for の instead of こと as a verb nominaliser isn’t necessarily going to make a lick of sense.
It’s useful to include if you’re uncertain or you just want to share that information, but I don’t know if it’s necessarily useful to do always.
That’s definitely true. But I’m not sure that’s a bad thing if it helps beginners who would otherwise be intimidated get in more practice.
I wasn’t thinking of enforcing anything, but last time someone kindly requested translations for the purpose of learning and some of us thought it’s a good idea so they were included. That’s some vs none which I think is already useful .
Definitely agreed!
I think the に is correct. ある takes に to define where something is located. You can drop 私は. You’re the one talking about ankles so it’s implied it’s your ankle .
Both yours and @yamitenshi’s replies make a lot of sense to me. I only intended for this to be a place where I can practice what I just learned here (or else I’m afraid they’ll slip my mind), and have fun discussing them with people really Having extra translations is good, not adding them cause you don’t feel like it is also fine, so it’s up to everyone.
But I wanted this thread beginners-oriented because I am one, and people like me can get advice on how we utilize words and structures we learned to form a sentence. I was really hesitant and shy to start a whole thread since this felt like something big, but it is just a casual place, so I only want to emphasize on that
Oh and my sentence today(night) is: このビルを左へ曲がってください: Please turn left at that building. Which popped up in my Minna no nihongo book and I got two grammar points wrong so i thought maybe some people would find it interesting.
The “at” is used with を, and to turn in a direction is used with へ rather than で like i thought Oh and there’s also the Kanji 曲 , used with its second meaning “bend”. So, that’s it
I think quite a bit of people do that . Go nuts and have fun! If you need any help with some minor grammar or non grammar points check out the other threads, too.
No need to be shy about creating a thread, that’s what they’re for Wanting something beginner-oriented makes sense.
I re-learned something today! I was vaguely aware of this usage of を but I completely forgot about it, and initially interpreted that sentence as “please bend this building to the left” but using the wrong verb from the transitivity pair… whoops
One thing: この implies you’re close to the building - it’s not so much “that building” as much as it is “this building right here”. Might be usable if you’re pointing at a map, I’m not entirely sure about that, but if you’re talking to someone and explaining things you’d likely use あの (or その but that’s another kind of weird situation in that the listener would be close to the building you’re talking about).
For these sets of indicative words beginning in あ, そ and こ (like あの/その/この, あれ/それ/これ, etc.):
あ〜 is for things far away from both the speaker and the listener
そ〜 is for things close to the listener
こ〜 is for things close to the speaker
So for instance if you’re looking at watches and speaking with the clerk on the other side of the counter:
あの時計 is the watch all the way to the other end of the display, neither of you is close to it
その時計 is the watch on the clerk’s side of the counter but where you’re both standing
この時計 is the watch on your side of the counter, where you’re both standing
I’m not necessarily saying you’re wrong in using この, but since your translation specifically says “that building” it looks a bit off to me.
Oh yeah, that happens a lot with movement verbs. I don’t associate を with transitivity because of this.
I’m kind of wondering about the sentence, you sure it’s ビル and not 角 (corner), for instance? That would make sense - 角を左へ曲がってください
Here’s a couple of other movement verbs and them taking an object to move into:
道を渡っている - I’m crossing the street
ろうかを進んでいる - I’m continuing up/down the corridor
道を通っている - I’m going up/down the road
You can also use に instead of へ in most contexts. They’re pretty interchangeable.
Eh, yes and no. に is about the destination, へ is about direction. So when you just say you go somewhere, they mean pretty much the same thing but with a different emphasis, but you’d never use に when talking about something you did along the way there, for instance, whereas if you’re specifically talking about something that happened once/after you arrived you probably wouldn’t use へ.
Right, sorry, I should’ve emphasized I meant movement specifically. In a story I’ve been reading recently へ was used instead of に pretty freely. In similar contexts, but in textbooks or more modern texts I would see に more often. Here is the story: 小川未明 大きなかに
EDIT:
Okay, I think I’m just really tired, because I only now realized what I wrote earlier and above. へ is about movement and direction. There are some contexts where it can replace に (and vice versa) with I think the same meaning, but @yamitenshi is absolutely correct
Thank you for the detailed examples. In the text book it was 信号 instead of building, but that’s the way i normally direct people in my native language so it could sound weird in Japanese
So I’ll probably go with 角 next time I visit Japan then lol
Is the textbook Genki by any chance?
I remember it had some examples with traffic lights.
Little extra - 信号 is traffic lights more conceptually (like red light, blue/green light*, etc.). If you want to emphasize that you mean specifically the object you can say 信号機.
Hello, I’m back here to ask the difference between 曲がる and 曲げる. WK said that 曲がる is to be bent, but they gave a similar sentence with mine above:
三つ目のしんごうを、右に曲がってください。
I’m quite confused since the を is always used with an object that the subject is having an effect on. So does that sentence mean “Please have the vehicle bent at the third signal pole”? What is the right way to comprehend this sentence?
residents
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.
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Having extra translations is good, not adding them cause you don’t feel like it is also fine, so it’s up to everyone.
Oh and there’s also the Kanji 曲 , used with its second meaning “bend”. So, that’s it 
