Awesome! Try the 日本語おもしろい playlist: 「別に」の使い方/How to Use "別に" - YouTube
It’s a bit advanced (N4, maybe), but it’s more interesting to watch than some of the more basic videos. Although you can start with those and get a feel for them.
Hope it helps. 
1 Like
It’s true that there probably aren’t any other English resources that are dedicated to that same framework. But at the same time, grammar lessons for native elementary school and middle school students are not super high level. And plenty of resources for those kids do exist out there. I think there’s an intimidation factor and also just the fact that people don’t know that they could go out and find those things, or that they might be helpful.
If someone ever does make another channel like that and doesn’t use the worst voice of all time, I’ll probably give it a hearty recommendation
Another option is I can look into translating some of the video series made for natives. Then you’d get the native teacher with English subtitles.
8 Likes
The voice really does make it tough to take seriously.
I physically cringe whenever she says よろしくお願いします at the end of a video…
I wonder if she’d allow someone to re-make her content using a normal voice. Lol.
4 Likes
I’d love to watch them even without subtitles. Which ones are they? I’m not sure I’d even be able to craft a search term for these that wouldn’t return English results.
This is a good series covering middle school grammar.
10 Likes
I read the following advice somewhere on the forum here and it worked for me: go into the video settings and change the speed to 1.5 times and turn on the subtitles. Much more tolerable.
1 Like
That’s awesome! Thanks so much.
Funnily enough, he talks like あっきー先生 from Sambonjuku. I think it’s the really clear enunciation and steady pace. From the little I watched, he sounds like a good teacher.
Guess I know where the rest of my evening is going. 
2 Likes
The only thing that’s definitely a rule is this: if you’re using い-adjective + です with nothing in between, you conjugate the adjective. For な-adjectives, there’s no past form, so you have to conjugate です. (Yes, I know someone said it wasn’t a verb. I’m not completely sure since it’s a contracted form of a verb, but I’ll just treat it as a verb because that’s intuitive.)
One thing though: if you’re dealing with plain forms (i.e. sentences in which you use だ instead of です), there technically shouldn’t be any だ after い-adjectives. In that case, since there’s nothing else there, you have to conjugate the adjective.
3 Likes
I get where you’re coming from, but I think this gloss is what causes people confusion. 寒い is the verb in this sentence (since い-adjectives can act as verbs). です just marks the sentence as polite.
nitpick
である isn’t a verb either (non of the copulas are). It’s the combination of で(particle)+ある(verb).
TBH, I’m not entirely sure where です stands. It barely even functions as a copula half the time.
2 Likes
I honestly can’t thank you enough for this. I’m up to Episode 4, and I think I understood more about ない and how to break up a sentence in the last 4 minutes than the rest of my studies.
And I do mean “understood” rather than “learned”. Although I don’t think I would have been able to follow along as well without Sambonjuku and Cure Dolly.
And, of course, WaniKani. Being able to actually read what he’s written on the board without much trouble is just the icing on the cake.
教えていただてありがとうごうざいます 
1 Like
I’ll go do some reading when I have the time. It’s perfectly possible that a copula isn’t technically a verb and all that. The only thing I know about copulas is that they’re equivalent to ‘to be’ in English, so my knowledge is incomplete. And yes, I’m aware that です seems to be nothing more than a politeness marker for い-adjectives because だ isn’t necessary in the plain form. I’m just going to say that I think either way of understanding things may be confusing for people, at the least because い-adjectives are called ‘adjectives’ and also have an adverbial form, which is something verbs don’t do in English (and frankly, the 連用形 of verbs doesn’t have the same function as the 連用形 of い-adjectives, which is their adverbial form).
If I remember correctly, the acid test is that a) verbs can stand on their own as complete grammatical sentences, and b) can’t be dropped from sentences they’re predicating.
Kinda sorta. They’re equivalency markers so the concept of being doesn’t quite fit but it’s close enough.
Copulas fail this part of the test but they do pass the following one. That’s why they have their own name. 
な “adjectives” are basically nouns that can act as adjectives. Like @crihak mentioned, な is だ so you can conjugate it だった when it’s used adjectivally. Otherwise, it’s as you said.
1 Like
Not sure about that. There are cases where だ can be dropped at the end of sentences (such as immediately following a な adjective at the end of a non-past sentence).
Uh… this depends on the type of speech. It’s allowed in female speech, but is unnatural in male speech.
Are these rules only for Japanese? I don’t see how to apply them in English.
Still allowed by the grammar though right?
Yes, specifically for Japanese.
What do you mean by that?
Honestly, I have no idea since the rule I mentioned is for informal speech, and informal speech is generally not bound as strictly by grammatical rules.
This is something I was told by a friend living in Japan, and I’ve found it’s rather true. If you have a source which offers correction, by all means post it. What I meant was that it’s more acceptable for a woman to drop the だ in a sentence that would otherwise require/allow it, than for a man to do the same thing. For example,
Female speech: 大丈夫よ！
Male speech: 大丈夫だよ！
I’ve noticed since then that men often add more particles/words to make their speech sound a little sharper. For example, のか is considered a more masculine question ending than の, and かい and だい are more common as male question-ending forms. As mentioned, all this only applies to informal speech.
I just wanted to make things simple. Yes, most of them are nouns that can act as adjectives, but there are also の-adjectives which are literally just nouns being used adjectivally. If we wanted to be technical, we could go into how な is actually a remnant of なり, which is the traditional copula, and so it isn’t the same as だ in terms of origin and grammatical function, but it’s the same in terms of meaning.
It’s completely normal to not put だ at the ends of sentences for people of all demographics. It might be the case that men are more likely to use だ, I’m not sure exactly how it breaks down, but saying it’s unnatural to leave だ off of sentences is quite misleading. Ending every sentence with だ (which could possibly take a だ) will sound very strange, like the person is some hyperactive shounen anime protagonist.
OK then. I’m still not sure what the formal rules are for, say, writing in だ体, which would be (I presume) the question of ‘grammar’ that @theghostofdenzo mentioned. It’s definitely allowed by usage, but I don’t know the formal rules.
Separately, I don’t know whether or not だ・である is a verb, but I’m just hesitant to say it’s not a verb because it acts like one, or at least it contains one – ある – that gets conjugated. It is the copula, but whether or not it’s a verb… I don’t know what to say. I know that one position is that で is a copula while ある is just a dummy verb that handles the tense. なり, the old copula, is considered a helper verb by 大辞林 and 大辞泉. Ultimately though, I think it’s more important to know that である needs to be conjugated at times, regardless of what type of syntactical category it’s in.
Update: I did a little research on the whole issue of the use of 「だ」in male and female speech, and I found an article from 2000 from 信州大学 (source: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/148781589.pdf I don’t know why it’s hosted in the UK). Here’s an extract from the conclusion (まとめ; there is a final remarks section just afterwards):
…「か↑」、「かしら」、女性 語の「よ↑」、「ね」は基本体では「だ」が省略されていると考えられる。それはデス・マス体になると顕現 することから分かる。よく女性言葉では断定を意味する「だ」の省略が特微的であると言われているが、「だ」を介さずに名詞に直接する終助詞「か↑」は男性語である。また、「だ」を介する「わ↑」は女性語、 「~だよ↑」、「~だね」も汎性語である(これについては個人差が大きいとは思うが)。男性語、女性語の別 は「だ」の省略にあるのではなく、当該の語が「男性によって使用されている」または「女性によって使用されている」と見なされているからということの証左だと思われる。
Hence, it’s true that it’s more complex than simply saying ‘だ must go everywhere it possibly can in masculine speech’, but it’s nonetheless still a trend that is often commented on (「よく女性言葉では断定を意味する「だ」の省略が特微的であると言われている」). It’s not a deciding factor since (male and female) usage is king, but well, I didn’t say だ ought to be universal in male speech. My example with のか vs の was also meant to illustrate that men tend to add certain ‘masculinising’ particles to their speech, か being one of them. Stil, not everything with だ is masculine, and not everything without it is feminine.