Cure Dolly: I wish I had found her sooner

[YanagiPablo]

@Vanilla

I’m not sure breaking it down here is really even beneficial to fluid

It is!
Not necessarily conscious thinking of it (just like, I suppose in your native language you are able to analyse the grammar, yet when speaking or reading etc, you don’t consciously think “subject”, “verb”, “past tense”, etc. when you utter/read/heard the sounds)

For example, take something as しかたがない
it is precisely because I am able to break it into する[連用形]+方+が+ない that I can say or read it very fast, without risk of mixing sounds (したかながい for example).
I have had hard time getting it right for some words until I have been able to see the constitutive parts.

(and not only in Japanese, in all languages I know, the ability to break down enables much better recognition, memorisation and use.
That breaking down is not fully conscious but it is there (just like when driving a car I don’t consciously think about the movements of my feet and hands, but I know what they do, that allowed me to adapt when I meet a car where the rear march was not on the left but on the right of stick for example)

[Vanilla]

@Jonapedia

but IMO it worked out really because you had a huge amount of input, so you could keep looking things up until you remembered them/until you had, as you said, a sufficiently enhanced image. Also, it’s pretty clear you really wanted to get through those VNs Obviously it’s beneficial to have more exposure/input as a learner, but I think most Japanese learners don’t have close to even half the amount of input you had while learning (myself included).

Yeah, I don’t necessarily mean to suggest my method or anything, and was more using it as an example for why deepening your understanding of topics at scattered points in time is not a big deal imo.

As for the idea that even if they are scattered you should showcase the connection, I’m totally on board with you. I see nothing but positives in mentioning it really.

@Jonapedia

Not to boast, but as someone who started learning Japanese precisely because he had a week left before he went to Japan, and whose Japanese learning speed has been remarked on by more experienced learners and natives, I just want to point out that I was very far from the usual methods.

Not to do you dirty, but, if I heard that an intelligent person who was literate in Mandarin, already near native level in 3 languages, passionate about language learning, and about to head to Japan was cramming Japanese before they went and progressed really fast… I wouldn’t really be thinking anything about their methods at all. I would just be thinking, “well of course they went fast”. I feel like you would have gone quickly no matter what method you did so long as it would have interested you lol.

[davebp]

@Jonapedia

@pm215

I don’t really see where your view and hers differ. It’s just a memorable way to say “there is always a subject, even if it’s not written”.

For me the issue is the mental overhead of adding a ‘〜が’ into the sentence in order to work it out, along with how unnatural something like 私は私が食べます feels. It additionally doesn’t help if the learner is confused by the nuances of using は and が with a subject, because even if you might understand their functions in terms of meaning or grammar with this ‘invisible が’ explanation, you might be tempted to think, ‘The が is always there, so why should there be a difference?’

However, if this approach allows a learner to parse a sentence that was otherwise impossible to understand, sure, why not? We can live with the downsides. I just feel that ‘there is always a subject’ is the more accurate interpretation.

When I was reading both Rubin and Cure Dolly it was screaming (inside my head) that they should just say that there is always a semantic subject, but there is not always a syntactic subject. Without this distinction, the whole thing is needlessly complicated.

[sergiop]

At one point, I used this as my laptop screen background:

[spaceman0x]

Same (as OP). After four years of study (also finished Genki 1), by the end of the first video she had revolutionized my grasp of grammar. Simple, elegant, consistent, beautiful. That is Japanese grammar.

[RoseWagsBlue]

I have thought before that we need to elect a Cure Dolly Plus, Cure Drooly, eDolly, DolliWani, WaniDolli, or somesuch, to provide the same sort of intuitive insights into the fundamentals of grammar, without some of Dolly’s flaws.

With the resurgence of this topic, now is the time to find someone to do it.

[Jonapedia]

@Vanilla

I feel like you would have gone quickly no matter what method you did so long as it would have interested you lol.

I guess that’s a fair point lol. The ‘interest’ bit is important, but maybe the rest isn’t. One day, I might try picking some language isolate (e.g. Finnish) or language I really barely know for a speedrun challenge just to see what really works for me, but I think that’s gonna have to wait for the somewhat distant future

@RoseWagsBlue

With the resurgence of this topic, now is the time to find someone to do it.

I’m hoping to do something like it some time soon with a gentle introduction to some ideas from traditional Japanese grammar, and I’ve actually already started writing a sort of grammar guide on my computer. I’ve got a ton of inertia right now though, so I can’t promise when I’ll have enough material to make some useful videos. I’m open to suggestions on things to cover though! (I’ve come to realise that I’m much better at providing information when I’m asked questions, as opposed to trying to think of stuff myself.)

[Chrisstar56]

The Japanese が すき reminds me of how gustar is also used differently in spanish than like in english.

[deviprsd]

I just started and found her videos, I get the structure and with that in mind I’m trying out Genki 1. First are foremost there is a ga everywhere, well where is the ga in Greetings? For example, Ohayoo - is it “watashi ga ohayoo?” - I good morning?

[YanagiPablo]

お早う(ございます) is the polite form of 早い, to be early.

Is the subject the speaker, the listener, or both? When utered, both sides are present at the same time: (you/I/we) are early.

After some though… I think ござる is humble speech, so the subject should be the speaker (or an inclusive “we”), but someone more knowledgeable should confirm.

(In practice, of course, they are set phrases, and people don’t think about their inner meaning when using them)

[pm215]

@YanagiPablo

After some though… I think ござる is humble speech, so the subject should be the speaker (or an inclusive “we”), but someone more knowledgeable should confirm.

I think ござる for adjectives is just polite, not either honorific or humble. You can say both ありがとうございます (lit. I am thankful) and おめでとうございます (lit. you/the day is happy/auspicious).

Though really as you say greetings are fossilised sentence fragments; it’s not particularly helpful to understanding to try to analyse them grammatically. For instance in “goodbye” originally the subject here was “God”, since it’s a worn down version of “God be with you”, but that is just a curiosity that doesn’t help at all with the modern usage.

[thomasphughes]

Thanks for your recommendation of Cure Dolly. I watched the first two videos and I’m hooked!