Just came here to rant about: national police agency metropolitan police department metro police department police station police officer I can’t for the life of me get the first two down in my memory. I honestly think I have SRSed the wrong meaning into my brain. Every….single……..time……………I get …

You have my sympathies, these are tough :sweat_smile: Coincidentally, the current intermediate book club pick is great practice for all of these! [image] 怪人二十面相 supervillain (Intermediate Book Club) [ongoing, week 5/15] Book Clubs Welcome to the 怪人二十面相 Book…

Frankly I would just use “undo” to pass those as long as you remember that it’s police-related. Assuming that you don’t currently live in Japan, you’ll almost certainly have forgotten the distinction by the time you need it, if that time ever comes.

I just set a synonym for all of them as ‘police.’ Then you know it’s police related but can learn the actual difference whenever you interact with native material later.

[image] solo7100: metropolitan police department If it helps, 警視庁 refers specifically to the police force of Tokyo - WaniKani renders it as “Metropolitan Police Department” because that’s its official name in English, but ultimately it’s just the Tokyo prefectural police. Maybe you might cons…

I have similar catch-all synonyms for baseball terms and military titles. I had an “a-ha” moment when I realized that I don’t actually know the difference between a lieutenant, general, and wing commander in English so why would I bother learning them in Japanese?

I do get some mileage out of knowing the 尉→佐→将 hierarchy because it comes up regularly in the fiction I consume, although I certainly don’t know the specifics of what each rank means exactly, nor do I care. Well, I know 将軍, but that’s a freebie.

[image] frequent4832: when I realized that I don’t actually know the difference between a lieutenant, general, and wing commander in English This is the way.. I also don’t bother learning plants/flowers anymore than that’s what they are. If I can’t make a distinction in English, being able t…

Soggyboy’s solution of setting “police” as a synonym seems to be the way to go. When I moved to Germany several decades ago, I didn’t know how the police were organised here either. I certainly didn’t know the terminology. Maybe after 10 years I understood the system generally, but I probably would…

Police vocab rant...arg

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