ive been tripping on the politeness levels most on bunpro. That and making mistakes between gaaru, barou, or whatever they were. Dont remember too well yet. It seems that my biggest issues are with words that sound a lot like each other with minor differences.
Its nice to start notice the grammar parts of sentences too. It feels like one could make sense of the writing but your kanji and vocab is still too weak to do it. Just too many strange symbols still. One day, one day. . .
Okay. The Gaaru’s, gaarimasu’s and such are driving me up the wall now. It feels like guesswork whether bunpro means non-keigo or keigo when it says [polite]. Half a time I input gaaru and its wrong but half a time it’s right and the prompt looks same to me. And then the darou and deshou too. Plz tell me when ther is is the other or the other. It reads the exact same to me ;_;
One thing that comes to mind (and I hope, I remember correctly*): when you’ve got a sentence with “because” (ので).As opposed to から which can be used at the end of a sentence or in the middle, ので is only used in the middle. There you can use the non-keigo for the part with the reason without it being impolite.
昨日は元気じゃなかったので、勉強しませんでした。
But I’m not learning with Bunpro so I don’t know what kind of sentences they might be asking for.
EDIT: *I obviously didn’t remember correctly >.<; edited after @Jonapedia’s reply, so no one get’s taught wrong stuff here.
Yes, assuming what you quoted is Faulkner, I find it pretentious. I have a hard time understanding what most if means and get little enjoyment out of it. Some people enjoy that type of writing, which is fine, but that of writing has always turned me off. I tend to prefer more simple writing that gets the point across more concisely. I suppose writing could be TOO simple, but generally, the easier it is to understand, the more I enjoy it. I hate having to translate it when it’s my own language. Anyway, glad you are able to enjoy that book! I hope your reviews keep going OK.
This is a blessed thread that must not die. Let it keep growing until I’m level 60 (in just about 10 years or so).
As far as I’m aware, what you’re saying is valid for ので, and not so much for から. It’s common to use forms from teineigo (i.e. polite speech) with から. It’s less acceptable to do so with ので, possibly because ので is typically already considered more formal than から. In extra polite sentences, however, it’s not rare to use です・ます+ので, though this might just be some sort of etiquette-based ‘hypercorrectness’. Also, because of the level of formality, it’s probably more appropriate to use ではない instead of じゃない. Finally, since you’re talking about ‘yesterday’, I think you should use the past tense. Thus, I think you could say
昨日は元気ではなかったので、勉強しませんでした。
昨日は元気ではありませんでしたから、勉強しませんでした。
PS: I’m not completely sure about what I said about using the past tense, but what comes before から・ので is usually a complete sentence in itself, so I don’t think there are any tense rules there that would be counterintuitive for an English speaker. Those things tend to show up in structures that are more context-dependent, like how ‘when I was watching TV’ can probably be translated as both テレビを見ているとき and テレビを見ていたとき, since the second half of the sentence will provide the temporal context (e.g. yesterday, today, right now, all the time).
Could you give us some examples of the questions that are giving you trouble? It sounds like the labelling system is really bad, but there might also be some contextual or grammatical clues that you’re missing that could help you.
Just to be clear, here are the levels of politeness for the two main verbs you’ve brought up so far (あるaru and だ・である da/dearu):
Dictionary/plain/casual – ある
Polite – あります
Respectful
a. Honorific (raising the status of the listener) – ござる (usually appears as ございます)
b. Humble (lowering the status of the speaker) – the same
Dictionary/plain/casual – だ・である
Polite – です・であります(much less common)
Respectful
a. Honorific (raising the status of the listener) – でいらっしゃる (usually appears as でいらっしゃいます) or でござる (usually appears as でございます)
b. Humble (lowering the status of the speaker) – でござる (usually appears as でございます)
By extension, だろう, which comes from であろう<-である, is plain/casual. でしょう, which looks and sounds more like です, is polite.
I strongly doubt that Bunpro is testing you on respectful speech at this point though, so you should probably just concentrate on the first two levels.
Thanks for the correction. I remembered something about sentences with “because” but totally forgot about ので. I’ll have to look that up again (hopefully it’s not in the book i lent my mum). And of course, you’re absolutely right about my example having to have past tense when using 昨日.
@Jonapedia of course my mum got my first Genki-book but i found some worksheets from lesson 9 where から gets further introduced:
Ｑ：昨日勉強しましたか。
Ａ：いいえ、しゅくだいがなかったから、勉強しませんでした。
So it seems that you can use the short form with から when the reason precedes the result.
Unfortunately i couldn’t find any sheets for ので.
Interesting, though I’m not used to seeing this at all. My English-Japanese dictionary does give some examples for から, but there’s only one in the polite register, even if it supports what I said earlier. Guess I’ll have to take a look. Thanks!
Ok, I think I see the problem, even if this is an old post and things may have cleared up by now. I’m not sure how Bunpro’s input system works though, so I don’t know if you can choose what to input yourself or if you have to tap options on screen. Whatever it is though, miru is completely valid, but its “masu” form is mimasu. For -u verbs aka godan verbs, the form will end in -imasu. I’m guessing that Bunpro isn’t teaching you what you need to know about forming these words correctly.
Just to be clear though: in Japanese, the pattern is typically [suitable word stem] + [word ending]. I would give you an analogy, but I don’t know any Finnish and I’m not sure if there are good examples of similar things in English. Hm… ok, maybe something like ‘to lie’ vs ‘lying’. Notice how you have to change the word stem (lie → ly) when the form you want changes? Japanese is the same, except that you change the stem more for grammatical reasons than for the sake of sound or spelling.
Doesn’t Bunpro provide links to explain the way any particular grammar point works? Additionally, I believe it shows a diagram like what @Jonapedia was describing about attaching “masu” to the stem.
Basically, I don’t think it’s advisable to use Bunpro like WaniKani. On WaniKani there are a few facts, readings and meanings, listed and you just have to be able to regurgitate them when asked. (Though you can go farther as well)
With grammar, each item is a new concept that can demand a deep dive, no matter how simple it seems on the surface.
Just got to godan verbs. Bunpro gave legend that gave the conjugations as ‘imasu’. Wondered why it wouldn’t accept my answer for ‘kikuimasu’. To my surprise it is ‘kikimasu’, something that it neither showed me nor what the link to taekim told me!
Yes, it provides but it seems to be crapshoot whether or not the link to the grammar page actually gives you necessary information or enough information. As I said above, neither bunpro or their links to grammar pages actually explained the conjugations for godan verbs except the -imasu forms. With bunpro I always read the additional links to the grammar pages but those don’t help much if they don’t give enough information about the grammar. For some there are alternative pages with more information but sometimes it’s only taekim or such with short overview or, once, only japanese sources which didn’t do much good for me.
Also, I do not like at all when at study portion it asks only for the casual form, never indicating that there even is keigo form, and then on review asks for the keigo form. Only after a long while I noticed that both forms are usually listed under structure but not noted as which is which, just ‘suru - shimasu’, They could easily show both on top as ‘casual suru - polite shimasu’.
I have quite a lot of criticism on how bunpro displays the information from somewhat cryptic prompts to unlabeled information.
The labelling system is really bad. For example, at the top of the screen, when studying, it gives only casual form. The polite form it wants you to use is under structure but completely unlabeled. Of course after figuring it out one learns to look there and check whether there is polite form but if person is like me it can take a while and the polite form is guess work in the beginning due to lack of labeling and their links to taekim, wasabit etc not providing it.
Sorry, didn’t take screenshots cause I am really, really tired and lot of school work but I still had trouble with the ‘there is’, ‘right?’ and such. Also, it doesn’t always want the polite form of the word you’re trying to use. If you use darou, the polite form it wants is deshou! This connection is not said on either words grammar page. The darou page doesn’t even mention that there is a polite form for it.
Not sure if I am complete doofus and can’t read the bunpro information pages or if they’re actually pretty bad but I can say that I would display the information in quite a different way starting with showing, with labels, the casual and polite forms right in top of the screen with big hiragana so you’ll see both at first glance as the page comes up.
I feel like all of the grammar resources it links and gives page references to mention this though, and checking the actual pages it pretty clearly labels だろう as casual and でしょう as formal (though I can’t say for Tae Kim, which I avoid). If you click on “more” when doing the questions it will even give you more if o like most of the orange text on the vocab.
It says that darou is casual on it’s own page and deshou as formal on it’s own page but neither page link to each other. Maybe I am just dumb for not making this connection myself. On other hand, taekim, the second of the only two readings pages it gives for darou, it gives deshou as casual and darou as more masculine.
Dunno whats up with me because bunpro shows that yes, i’ve gone through all the readings for both. I have no idea how I haven’t understood the differing levels of politness of those words despite it.
Sigh. Feel like these things should be explained like you’d explain things to five year old for me to grasp.
Neither of those explanations of でしょう is correct… だろう is plain / casual and でしょう is polite. Sometimes formality and politeness get conflated by some, but they are not the same. So it’s a bit strange to see resources conflate them. The formal version of this would be であろう. That’s not usually a form taught to beginners though.
Yeah I think Bunpro gets it for unfortunately ever taking Tae Kim as a serious source. Tae Kim is just regularly wrong
More examples of Tae Kim being wrong:
I am replying somewhat late, but I was in a similar position not too long ago.
I, too, am natively finnish speaking. However, I do not live in Finland and have been forced to learn other languages. I am currently near native level in english, and somewhat fluent in french and therefore I am learning japanese as a fourth language.
The beginning was slow. It still is, but not as slow. I struggled massively with remembering the readings, for me the meanings were very easy and I never made mistakes with them. Remembering the readings is something that will come with time. In the beginning it’ll take time to remember them, but after your brain has adjusted to this new method of learning, it’ll be much easier. A month or so ago it took me close to a week to remember even simple readings, now I can remember some instantly and others take a few reviews to get down. There are a few I struggle with but not too many.
This really is something where practise makes perfect. Just keep going, it won’t be easy. Do your reviews consistently and you’ll eventually get it down and start learning properly.
Ach, it was me conflating the two. It says it’s polite assertive on the page. Wrote that sentence from memory and made the mistake. Still, I would like bunpro to display both forms as the big hiragana so you instantly see at glance both forms.
As for the linking, bunpro has list of ‘related’ grammar words/concepts but only show the hiragana on the link and with several different links you’d have to go through each to figure out whether or not one of them is the polite form.
I admit here that some of my issues are clearly caused by my inattentiveness and patience. It became clear with these recent messages that:
Thanks for bringing these issues of tae kim to my attention! Now I know to avoid it when it comes to grammar. Let’s just hope that situations where tae kim is the only english source for grammar on bunpro will be far and in between! Maybe in those cases I just need to hope that I can eventually either find another source for the grammar or learn it through my immersion (my goal is still to learn enough kanji, vocab and grammar to be able read simple books or manga, like children’s books and such and start learning the way I learned english).
Not looking to get into an argument here, but I don’t think it’s surprising to conflate ‘politeness’ and ‘formality’, especially in the case of Japanese. I mean, I’ve never lived in Japan, so I can’t confirm this, but I feel as though there’s a whole set of protocols surrounding what to do in order to be polite in formal situations (especially when it comes to business). Formality is technically about following rules, while politeness is about being respectful, but if being polite requires following rules, then politeness and formality feel like almost the same thing. That’s my personal justification for using ‘polite’ and ‘formal’ almost interchangeably, even though I’d definitely say ‘that isn’t polite’ when commenting on a rude action, and not ‘that isn’t formal’, which would sound ridiculous.
I’m aware that technically speaking, even the plain forms aren’t universally casual: they can be used for writing, for instance, like in essays. However, well… I just don’t feel like the line between ‘formal’ and ‘polite’ is clearly drawn in Japanese? (Point me towards resources where such a line is defined, if you wish, because I haven’t come across it yet.) My personal way of seeing those forms is (with adjectives in order of decreasing suitability/preference):
だろう – plain/casual
でしょう – polite/formal, mainly for speech
であろう – formal/polite, mainly for writing
I definitely agree that であろう is more ‘formal’ than it is ‘polite’, because it seems to exist for the sake of conforming to a particular style of written Japanese, as opposed to being used to show respect. Similarly, でしょう is more ‘polite’ than it is ‘formal’, because the です・ます forms convey respect.
That’s just my two cents. I’m not really sure what I’m getting at, ultimately, since it seems I agree with you on most of your points… perhaps my point is that I don’t think it’s a serious issue if resources conflate the two, particularly since polite language tends to be used in formal situations, and vice versa? 丁寧語 definitely translates as ‘polite language’ and not ‘formal language’, but I’ve never seen a textbook define ‘formal’ language separately and state that it would be improper to use it in a ‘polite’ situation. Also, at the beginner level, like you said, the forms typically reserved for writing (sometimes called the である体, though I think they also include the 連用形/masu-stem being used at the end of clauses like a て-form) don’t usually come up, so there’s little risk of confusion.
My understanding, though I’ve never actually gone hunting for Japanese commentary on the structure, is that it’s acceptable. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard 「〜ないといけないから！」come up in an anime at least once, and from the mouth of a character who wasn’t presented as unintelligent or anything like that. Also, I just did a quick Google search, and 「ないとならない 」 did get used in The God of High School, which is a fairly recent anime.
However… yes, it also came up as ‘not used’ or ‘strange’ according to a few people here and there. In any case, I personally never use ないと [いけない・ならない] to begin with, so I’m not sure what to think. ないといけない definitely feels more natural since ないと is casual and いけない tends to refer to a personal sense of obligation, especially due to expecting non-action to have an unpleasant consequence on a personal level, so they feel like they fit together better. ならない is more for ‘obvious’ obligations or social expectations. However, I still think なくては and なければ are the most common and useful (they even get turned into なくちゃ and なきゃ in casual conversation, so you don’t need to learn extra expressions to understand!), with ねば coming in at the higher levels (though I really don’t think anyone says that anymore, even if it appears in writing and literature).
Ultimately though, I’m inclined to agree with your other points. They sound pretty bad (even if I haven’t seen the は and が page).
I’d say focus more on #2. I started avoiding Tae Kim’s site because 1. I heard he was sometimes wrong 2. I found it too grammar-focused and I disliked the layout. However, he’s probably not always wrong, and there are a lot of examples sentences on his site, which could be helpful. My personal favourite English resource (in text form, anyway) is Maggie Sensei’s website. Some people hate the colour scheme – maybe I’m immune to it because I’m slightly colour-deficient, so I see some colours less distinctly –, but I think the content is great, with lots of examples, simple explanations (the lady writing it is Japanese, so her English isn’t perfect, but that also means she tends to simplify things, which is good for learners) and romaji transcriptions. I mean, you shouldn’t rely on romaji too much, and you should definitely try to read whatever you can before looking at the transcription, but it’s good for beginners who haven’t got used to kana yet. Some other people like Cure Dolly’s videos. I don’t like the formatting and the mechanical android voice, and I think some of her ideas are way too controversial/far-fetched, but the content seems fairly good, so I’ll give her some credit.
Beyond these ‘Japanese teaching’ sites, you should probably also look at sites that are a little more grammar-focused. Wasabi Japan is one. You might also want to look up specific topics that you need to strengthen, like an ‘introduction to Japanese verb conjugation’. Wikiversity has good pages on that which you may want to look up:
https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Beginner_Japanese/Godan_Verbs
https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Beginner_Japanese/Ichidan_Verbs
I used these to help me along when I first started, even though my textbook actually already covered the topic. They gave me another perspective on verb stems, especially since my textbook used different terminology. The main difficulties in verb conjugation at the beginner level are
Some of the intermediate-level difficulties with verbs are
That aside, you may sometimes want to just Google stuff like ‘[verb] conjugation’ and see what comes up. If Bunpro doesn’t label what all the different forms are, then you should probably use other reference sources from time to time, because most online conjugators label everything. That aside, if there’s a structure you’re not sure about, it’s sometimes more helpful to just Google ‘[structure] grammar’ and to click on stuff like JLPT websites.
OK, I think that’s enough advice for now. Hope you don’t feel overloaded by all that. All the best!