At some point I have to start watching Anime. I knew it from the beginning 
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Is it really? In so many manga, when a character is sniffing something there is a くんくん onomatopoeia along it… I thought it was about the same as the English “sniff” or “sniff-sniff”, which is also a bit dog-like I guess.
The dictionary definition is
［副］動物がにおいをかいだり、鼻を鳴らしたりするときの声を表す語。
I think any time it would be used for humans it would be knowingly applying that nuance.
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Looks like it depends on the dictionary though. There is no 動物 part in スーパー大辞林 (においをかいだり，鼻を鳴らしたりする声を表す語。) or 広辞苑 (においを嗅ぐために鼻で小刻みに息を吸う音。)
Still I will keep it in mind, thanks!
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The lack of specificity in an entry doesn’t necessarily mean that the usage isn’t fairly nuanced, but I think the fact that any dictionaries do specify is telling.
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I am now almost sure that’s the things you explain in your two hours video. I might watch it now for real 
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Ye I think I mentioned it somewhere in there. At this point its hard to remember what I said lol.
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(Why is this an endless video and not an endless text file, somehow I am really bad at videos 
)
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Out of my head I would say あの匂いを気づきますか? You could also say 何か嗅ぎ取りますか?
Anyways don’t sweat it, they will understand if they want. For example I’m always super happy if someone learns German and tries to express himself. Every language is difficult and failure is a part of the game!
I always recommend sentence mining after you finished Kanji RTK. Contextual learning is king (^O^)／
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Thank you, yes it looks like something along that line. In this case what confused me is probably the initial idea that “Can you smell this?” is a very easy basic expression. I was not so aware of the transitive/ intransitive problem here. And on top of it my husband seems to have a complex about his “bad nose”. He sometimes said he has a “bad nose” but I had no idea what that means because he used it in another context. So it was a shaky ground plus thin ice situation
I really have to start training output seriously. Just speaking is not enough because while talking there is no way to research phrases like many people suggested.
To be completely honest, I think I thought that the word is 匂ぐ and it is transitive. With all conjugations you could possibly imagine 
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I mean you do you, but don’t worry about every intricacy. I’ve made the same mistake with Romanian. What really matters is a lot of exposure in order to get a feeling for the language. I know that may sound weird in the beginning but it will make sense one day 
I will post (a link of) my 賭け狂い anki deck (season 1 & 2 gambling fun) when it’s finished 
. It’s good learning material after Kanji RTK. Take care!
Just a note, that 気がつく is not a transitive verb.
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OT: what do you mean by the word “input” here? I feel like it must be some sort of linguistic jargon. (Vanilla did indeed use the word, but I’m still unsure what is meant.)
Slightly more to the point, I remember my 12 year old self using my allowance money to buy a Spanish-English dictionary. When my puzzled father asked why, I responded “To learn how to speak Spanish, of course.” I remember being perplexed by his surprised laugh and eventual explanation that there was more to it than just memorizing words.
I’m no expert, but I suppose the only real way to learn phrasing is to expose yourself to as much as possible, written and conversational (which you’re clearly doing). I think, though, that making mistakes and being corrected frequently is also an important part of the process. At least I hope so!
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As someone who owns multiple English - Japanese and Japanese - Japanese dictionaries on my phone, I hope the information I will be listing below will be of some use, and apologies if this is stuff you probably are already aware of, but I figured it may be of interest to other people. Not all dictionaries are the same, so I’m surprised that this conversation has sort of been treating them as a monolith, when each have their own uses and features, including example sentences.
If you’re interested, you can buy these dictionaries through the iOS app Dictionaries. There is a sale going on right now, which only happens once a year.
For instance, the Meikyo learner’s J-J dictionary focuses on more in-depth explanations for its entries, as it is aimed at Japanese learners, and includes use cases that you may not find in English (this is especially true for different Kanji variations of vocab, which is super useful). I also appreciate that it includes the vocabulary word in the example sentences, instead of a dash like most dictionaries, which I find so distracting that I have to mentally insert the word in. It is $20.99 right now, and is normally around $30 if I remember correctly.
The Kenkyusha J-E dictionary has so many great example sentences not available in free dictionaries, and was well-worth the purchase for me (it’s normally $112, right now it’s $79). But I don’t begrudge anyone who finds this too rich for their blood.
Then you have more comprehensive J-J dictionaries like Daijirin, but I actually found Goo’s free dictionary to be just fine for covering other vocab that may not be available in other dictionaries (I’m a nerd and was curious to see if I would like Daijirin better, so I bought it while on sale, but I honestly still use Goo more than Daijirin out of habit). For comparison, the Meikyo is somewhere around 80,000 entries, where as Goo’s is about 300,000 entries (it is apparently sourced from the Daijisen dictionary), and is free. Kenkyusha is almost as large as Daijisen and Daijirin in terms of coverage.
For free stuff, and more specifically to your request about phrases, if you use Weblio (which is J-E), you can find so many example sentences along with definitions (it has a specific search function for phrases, and you can do so in either English or Japanese). ALC is also really great free J-E resource, especially for more casual words or phrases that may not be defined in other dictionaries. And again, I still use Goo’s free J-J dictionary all the time, as well.
Another trick I use to see if a sentence I’m trying to construct is putting phrases through a Yahoo! JP search (this actually yields much more relevant sources, being a search engine specific for Japanese users, as Google and other search engines can sometimes give me really off-topic results) and seeing if I can find similar constructions in the resulting pages. If I don’t, then I’m going to pretty much assume that what I tried to do was pretty strange indeed, haha.
And when dictionaries fail me, I find Japanese blogs to be even more helpful to explain a piece of vocab, as they will not only explain nuance and etymology of the vocab that you can’t really fit in a dictionary, but also often give really great example sentences for each use case. For instance, I encountered 昏い, another form of くらい, which you would normally see as 暗い, so I did a search asking for the difference (昏いと暗いの違い) and found this really great blog explaining the nuance between them and other forms of くらい: https://biz.trans-suite.jp/13658
Anyway, hope at least some of this was useful. TLDR, if nothing else, specifically to the point of looking for phrases, you should find Weblio really useful for that, if you don’t already use it.
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That’s what I typically do to get varied input and learn vocab from outside of my usual sources (manga, political articles) 
For instance, to learn more about weather related stuff I read/listen to weather reports, various warnings, etc.
I can definitely second this. The wealth of example sentences really helps to disambiguate similar words. It’s by far the best 和英辞典 to own, in my opinion.
I own an ancient dead-tree copy, but they used to sell CD-ROMs in EPWING format, too. Alas, they don’t support the DVD/CDROM versions any longer. I know there are copies floating around online suitable for adding to Yomichan, but I’m unaware of any way to purchase a legal copy. Their online service is currently 6,050JPY/year but I don’t think it can be wired up to work with Yomichan or whatever.
Ranting as a service
I come from the commercial world. I fully understand and support the shift toward charging for software and other information as a service (when done well). Digital intellectual property is trivially copied, but professional-caliber dictionaries and the like are incredibly difficult and expensive to create and maintain: the creators deserve to be compensated for their effort.
The old model of selling physical books wasn’t as affected by copying: while possible, copies were usually of far worse quality. The old model had a “one and done” problem, though: a customer makes a one-time transaction and is never heard from again. It was a serious problem: companies sometimes went out of business because of it (they “saturated the market” and ran out of customers).
Vendors wanting to be adequately compensated for a once-in-a-lifetime purchase had to charge eye-watering prices (textbook prices) or constantly publish “new” editions that they’d try to convince even existing customers to purchase. Most often, they’d do both.
Selling information as service rather than a product seemed like a fantastic solution: Vendors got the recurring revenue stream they are after, and customers prefer to only pay for stuff they actually use anyway.
The new model is everything online and paid for as a service. The data can remain encrypted so it can’t be trivially copied. Only authenticated customers can access the data, and they are now paying as they go. From the vendor perspective, it’s effectively the same thing as receiving an eye-watering price up front, but from the customer’s perspective they are only paying for what they use, at a much, much lower monthly/annual/whatever-period rate. Both sides enjoy the fact that customers always access the latest and presumably best information.
But this introduced a new problem: the walled garden problem. Customers were forced to use the vendor’s portal and only the vendor’s portal to access the data. Sadly, the vendors tended to put all their effort into the core information, and just slap on any crappy old user interface. Worse, they expressly tried to prevent external access or interoperation with other vendor’s products (“We can’t aid the competition!!”).
This often created situations like the current one. I want to pay Kenkyusha to use their dictionary inside of Yomichan, but there is apparently no way to do so. I’m a “customer” because I purchased their dictionary roughly 40 years ago, but I haven’t paid them anything since, and while I’d happily pay for a digital copy (once or as a service) I’m pretty sure their KOD service isn’t worth it to me (I’ve experienced my fair share of crappy Japanese UIs).
Professionally, I always advocated for minimal copy protection and open APIs. I felt strongly that vendors should compete based on the quality of the service and support they provide, as well as the quality of the information. Most importantly, always make it as easy as possible for people to use and pay you for your service, support, and information.
Lastly, take data theft seriously, but prioritize paying customers’ user experience above all else. Make it clear that you will go after and punish anyone who uses your information illegally (without a subscription), but only put minimal technical protections in place. Technical protections usually end up irritating legitimate customers more than they protect against thieves, and thieves almost certainly won’t become paying customers no matter what you do!
Unfortunately, this was usually an uphill battle to say the least (“Pfft! Most users are thieves if you give them half a chance!”). Fear is an unbelievable motivator (witness the current global situation). Far too many companies unconsciously prioritize fear of theft over all else.
Anyway, this whole rant is basically a love-letter to Wanikani. They’ve done it exactly right! There’s significant value in the raw data, yet it’s sold as a service with a well thought out API for authenticated users. They’ve created a fantastically well-designed and continuously improving user experience that they clearly care as much about as the underlying data. I’m sure they have some IP protection mechanisms in place to prevent wholesale theft of their data, but they’ve clearly got their priorities straight. If only more companies behaved this way!
End of rant. Madeleine, anyone?
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This refers to language in relation to your brain, i.e. „input“ (going into your brain) means consumption, which usually refers to reading or listening, while „output“ (coming out of your brain) means production, which usually is speaking or writing.
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Well, geez. That seems completely obvious now. Thanks!
Since the OP was about saying things in Japanese, I somehow got stuck thinking about production, so the “input” term somehow threw me.
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The problem that I was drowning in exposure from day 1 coming to Japan with my (now) husband who just switched to speaking only Japanese to me. It was so scary and overwhelming to be alone in a country so different not understanding anything that I think I developed a kind of trauma reaction
I almost understand every grammar, I have not many problems reading books, but I can’t really express myself well. It seems I put all my energy in trying to understand what is going on around me and forgot to also take care of being able to say what I want…
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Thank you, I was hoping for a dictionary recommendation…
I always used a free Japanese- German dictionary which is good only for translations the other way.
As I am not native I haven’t thought about buying a good English- Japanese dictionary so far, but it might help me now. Are you only talking about iOS (I don’t have that).
Wow, thank you.
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