I see that makes sense. Would that mean putting a 〜ては on other verbs achieve a similar effect, even without adding an extra は for the contrastive? For example, if I said something like(not sure if this is good Japanese): 「君に料理してはいいよ」would this put extra emphasis on that their cooking is good?
Here, how would you go about identifying a noun phrase? I looked という up on jisho and its listed as an “Expression”, but im not quite sure what that means, other than it seems to function as a noun with its own definition, given that に関して is also listed as an expression and is it’s own thing, as mentioned earlier by previous users.
Regarding this use of から with つくる, I have personally not once seen this in any of the material I have been reading, so I’m glad you spent the extra time explaining this; it will probably have saved me some confusion down the line. Also, when used with つくる, does から have this transformation-indicating property because of its more frequent meanings that convey movement from one point to another, and maybe because of its reason-indicating meaning since in a sense they are “transforming”? Seems a little far-fetched but still worth asking.
In the sentence 大学病院の院長などでつくる団体, wouldn’t 大学病院の院長などで つくった 団体 make more sense, since the organization was already created?
Your answer was very detailed and I appreciate all the additional explanations.
Hm… not quite. You’d probably want to say 君は料理がいい (literally ‘as for you, your cooking is good’; you’d probably use this if this is a defining feature of your friend’s skillset), or more naturally, something like 君の料理はうまい・上手・おいしい (‘your cooking is delicious/skilled/delicious’; うまい can mean both ‘delicious’ and ‘skilled’). That’s how you’d compliment someone’s cooking.
Returning to your sentence though… first of all, it would probably be 君が since you need to express that 君 is doing the cooking. Secondly, 君が料理してはいいよ expresses that the act of cooking being done by 君 is a good thing, not so much that the cooking itself is good. I think it’s more of something you might say if a friend offers to cook a dish for a party. It would mean something like ‘if you cook, that works/is good’ or ‘You’re cooking? Great!’ Do you see the difference? I certainly don’t think the second は is necessary. I just wanted to point out how the は creates emphasis/a point of focus.
OK, so, first of all, what’s a noun phrase? It’s something that acts as a noun. Usually, it contains at least one noun or something that can turn a phrase into a noun, like の、こと or もの (yes, these are nouns too, but they have a grammatical function too of ‘nominalising’ i.e. turning something, usually a verb, into a noun e.g. 料理すること=‘the act of cooking’). This noun is generally preceded by a verb phrase (like in the example I just gave), an adjective or a noun followed by の. There really is no point memorising these things though. You’ll get the hang of it as you go along. I’ll just give you some equivalent examples in English:
‘The art of cooking’: noun の noun
‘Cooking that is done by top chefs’: verb phrase + noun (the verb phrase is technically known as a ‘relative clause’)
‘Sumptuous cooking’: adjective + noun
These are the sorts of noun phrases you’ll usually come across. It’s the same thing in Japanese, just that the word order might sometimes be different.
Moving on to 〜という, it is indeed a type of expression. It’s literally ’ “~”-said’ i.e. ‘that is called ~’. 新しいコロナウイルスという原因 would literally translate as ‘the reason called the new coronavirus’. However, in Japanese, it’s sometimes used like a pair of quotation marks in order to describe something using a statement. For instance, if somebody’s excuse for eating something is that no one else would eat it if he didn’t, then we might call that「オレが食べなくて、誰も食べないから」という言い訳（いいわけ) = the ‘because if I don’t eat it, no one will’ excuse. (Yes, 言い訳=‘excuse’.) Does that help?
The first time I read this was in a textbook meant for N3-N2 level students. It was designed for the old JLPT Level 2, which existed before the 2010 reform. As for which meaning of から allows this interpretation, I’m not sure, but I would say the first meaning that you mentioned makes more sense. から basically indicates a point of departure, be it a reason, a place or a point in time. You might say that someone ‘started’ from the raw material and ended up with the finished product. It indicates a progression.
I think it will be best if someone else adds on to my answer after I post it, because I still struggle with tenses in relative clauses like this. Their meaning is still a little ambiguous to me. However, based on my experience so far (and also based on a question I recently asked my friend, who’s much more fluent than I am), I’d say that つくった isn’t wrong, but it creates a different nuance. First of all, strictly speaking, we don’t know if there’s only one organisation, since Japanese is a language that rarely indicates whether a noun is plural or singular. Furthermore, I’m inclined to think that multiple organisations are involved, since the article says 大学病院の院長 など i.e. people like university hospital directors. It may be referring to a whole range of medical associations. We can indeed assume that the creation of these organisations occurred in the past, but using つくった would anchor that constitution firmly in the past. In fact, I think it would mean that we don’t have any information about the current composition of the organisations. It might be possible that engineering professors had joined in subsequently. If we used つくっ ている, we would indicate that the organisations are currently composed of such people, but we also imply that the organisations’ compositions are subject to change i.e. members who are nothing like university hospital directors might soon join up. つくる, on the other hand, is something of a factual tense, and so indicates that these organisations are characterised by the fact that they are made up of hospital directors and their ilk. Or at least, that’s what I believe. It’s the difference between ‘I go to school’ (i.e. that’s a fact about me, and perhaps I have to do that because I’m a student or a teacher) and ‘I am going to school’ (i.e. I’m on the way there now, but who knows if I’ll still be doing that in a bit?).
I’ll give you a simplified version of the phrase that helped me work out the difference recently: 何でも食べる食いしん坊（くいしんぼう）vs 何でも食べている食いしん坊. The first means ‘a glutton who eats anything’. The second means ‘a glutton who is eating anything’. You would use the first to describe someone’s personality or habits. You would use the second to describe a scene before you, as in ‘You see that glutton who’s eating absolutely anything he can grab off the table over there?’ That’s the difference. The plain present form characterises something. The other forms imply a particular time period.
It’s not exactly the same verb, but I think the manner usage is close enough to できる to be enlightening.
Basically, でできる is used to refer to what something in general is made of, whereas でできている refers to what a specific object is made of. So:
ペンはプラスチックでできる。 Pens can be/are made of plastic.
（この）ペンはプラスチックでできている。This pen is made of plastic.
I’m not entirely confident in my reasoning for this but I believe the distinction occurs because the る form indicates the action in general/incomplete actions (basically it’s quite vague), whereas the ている form can be interpreted as a continuing action/state, which does make sense for a specific object, but not for the more abstract case.
Given the above, I’m not sure the た form makes sense in this context as it indicates an action in it’s entirety or a complete action rather than strictly being past tense. I’d probably interpret that as “was once made up of” if I came across it.
If you think about it, a past tense construct doesn’t make sense in English either in this context. “Pens were made of plastic” and “This pen was made of plastic” both carry strong connotations that either they aren’t made of plastic anymore, or the pen is no longer a functioning pen.
I’m inclined to believe that the distinction between でつくる and からつくる matches how できる works. So, でつくる would be when the thing your saying it’s made out of is obvious, and からつくる would be when it’s non-obvious.
Anyway, I’m not sure if I’m right, but that’s my alternative take on things.
I see, that helps. I wasn’t too confident in my example lol.
Are noun phrases the same as expressions? に関して, as I understand, is simply 関する turned into the te form. There isn’t anything nominalizing に関して to make it a noun; it’s still a verb, yet it was marked by wa. Can particles mark more than just nouns and noun phrases, such as verbs? Or are expressions just parts of speech that are frequent enough in use that they are treated as a noun with its own meaning and use? This feels kind of like a grey area to me in Japanese, but I’ve probably just not been studying enough.
What would 新しいコロナウイルスという原因 translate to in normal English? I don’t really understand the meaning of this in English or in Japanese.
This is the most frequent usage of to iu that I personally see, and the one that I think is the easiest to understand because of how straightforward it is. Thank you for the extra clarification.
I’m not sure, but I think I understand. つくった and つくっている are kind of describing the current state of the organization; that there is some definitive and observable way that it changed/ is changing, while つくる is more of a factual “catch-all”, in that instead of being used to describe a change, it’s more so used to describe a fact or idea. For example, this might not be a correct translation, but it’s sort of the same reason that “I go to school” or “学校へいく” is not really describing change but rather a fact, and that “I am going to school” or “学校へいっている” describes more so that you are going to school right now rather then the fact that you are, if that makes any sense. I think this makes the most sense in your example of 何でも食べる食いしん坊 vs 何でも食べている食いしん坊. The first is describing the fact or idea that he is a glutton, not that he is eating anything right now or anything, while the second is describing that he is eating and he is in a state of eating, rather than that he is a glutton. This is my convoluted way of trying to describe it, but when I read your examples I got that kind of feeling where you start to understand it but you can’t quite describe it in a good way. There is a lot more nuance than I thought there would be for such a simple change in tense, but it makes more sense now.
I see, I think that matches my reasoning if I’m not misunderstanding anything. Adding that English interpretation of “was once made up of” does make sense.
Are でできる and でつかう similar enough in meaning that they are interchangeable, or do they have their own distinct nuance? They both mean the same in English, but im not sure if that applies to Japanese as well.
Just one thing before I start: is English your native language? I’m not asking this to be offensive. Your English is perfectly good, it’s just that I feel as though there are some words that you’re not too sure about, like ‘expression’, that tell me you might not be that comfortable with some terminology. Of course, it’s also possible that you’re just not used to the terms used by WaniKani and dictionaries, which can be confusing when you first start. However, I’m also fluent in French and Chinese, and I know some German and Spanish, so I’d like to know just in case my knowledge of other languages might help me better explain things to you.
No, noun phrases aren’t necessarily ‘expressions’. A noun phrase is just a block of words that acts, grammatically, like a noun, meaning that it can be the subject or object of a verb or be described by an adjective and so on. An ‘expression’ is literally just ‘a way of expressing oneself’. It’s a manner of speech, a common phrase with a well-known meaning. Nothing else. Don’t worry too much about it, it’s nothing complicated. Expressions aren’t a type of ‘part of speech’. They don’t all have the same grammatical function. That’s what a part of speech is: a category of words that all have the same sort of role in a sentence.
Some examples of ‘expressions’ in English: ‘time and tide waits for no man’ is an expression. It’s more specifically a proverb. Grammatically… it’s just a sentence. ‘Strictly speaking’ is also an expression. Grammatically, it’s a verb form and usually goes at the beginning of a sentence. ‘Splitting hairs’ is an expression, and grammatically is used either as a verb form (‘You’re just splitting hairs. Stop fussing over the details!’) or as a noun phrase (‘Splitting hairs is something that’s bound to increase your stress level. Focus on the big picture, and leave the little things alone for now.’) Once again, don’t worry about what sort of grammatical/syntactical function an expression has. That will become clear once you know what it means. ‘Expression’ just means ‘commonly used phrase’.
As for ては specifically… it’s one of those special things about Japanese grammar that you can’t really find in other languages. て, as Japanese scholars have written in books, is the one verb/adjective ending to which a lot connective particles can attach themselves. You can add a の、から、は、も… many of them can be attached to て. There are of course certain exceptions – I’ve never seen 〜てが, for instance –, but generally speaking, it’s a very flexible structure. I think the て-form’s closest cousin in English is the -ing form. They’re not identical, but they’re fairly similar, and they’re both somewhere in between a noun and a verb, depending on how they’re used. Once again, don’t worry too much about it if it seems difficult or confusing right now: just know that 〜ては exists, and know what it means. When you start reading and listening to more Japanese, you’ll start to see that it’s just a part of how て works in Japanese grammar.
Erm… I think my literal translation is the most ‘normal’ translation I can think of. I can try to explain the use of という here though: the idea is that I want to name the reason. It’s similar to saying something like ‘the so-called “new coronavirus” reason’ or ‘the reason known as “the new coronavirus”’. I agree that it’s weird. Normally, you wouldn’t use this unless you want to emphasise that the ‘new coronavirus’ is something very new, unfamiliar or strange. Even in Japanese, it would literally be ‘the “new coronavirus” reason’, with the idea that you just want describe it using that statement.
I don’t really agree with your phrasing at the beginning: つくった and つくっている don’t both describe a ‘current’ (i.e. present) state. Only つくっている does. However, yes, you’ve got the idea: they describe the state of the organisation at a particular point in time. I can tell from the rest of your elaboration that you’ve understood. Congratulations!
*でつくる, you mean. I’d say that they’re almost interchangeable, but the difference in nuance is in the verbs. できる is about being ‘fully formed’, like something ‘coming out’ of an oven (after all, the kanji version is 出来る, which carries that idea). つくる is about ‘making’. Thus, the difference is that つくる, being transitive, implies the need for an agent: someone needs to do the making. できる is intransitive, and so it doesn’t require an agent. Thus, you can say 日本は１都、１道、２府、４３県でできています。(The present progressive feels more natural here. I’m not sure why. Perhaps because the administrative structure can change?) However, you can’t replace できています with 作られています (present progressive form of the passive form of つくる), because no one made Japan (unless you’re talking about the creation of the world or some sort of creation legend, in which case you could invoke a deity as the agent). I hope that makes sense.
Yes, English is my native language, but I do speak some Korean with my parents and relatives, albeit some broken Korean since I never studied it, just picked up and listened here and there. No offense taken, and I appreciate the concern. I had been thinking that if some parts of speech were listed as their own expression and had their own definition, it probably had some grammatical function or something of the like. Thinking over it now though, it would probably be stranger if they weren’t included since they are common parts of speech. I tend to overthink somethings and completely overlook other things, so yeah, as you said, im just splitting hairs over it lol. Thank you for clarifiying, I had been thinking I had some gaping hole in my Japanese.
I see, thank you for the advice. 〜ては seems common enough that I will start to understand it more as I go.
Ah, sorry, I wasn’t very clear on that. I meant more how it would sound in natural English, like how it would normally be said rather than a literal translation since the literal meaning sounded kind of weird in English, so I didn’t quite understand. I agree that this is pretty hard to translate fluidly in English though.
I can see how it sort of emphasizes whatever comes before it, since how I see it is that it sort of puts a quotation on the word, like how you would do air quotations if you were to say it in a conversation, for example: “this new ‘coronavirus’”. This kind of air quotation thing puts a negative emphasis though, kind of like how a conspiracy theorist would talk about the ‘moon landing’, like you doubt or don’t believe it. This is pretty unlike how you’ve described to iu, which doesnt seem to carry that same type of emphasis, but it’s the closest equivalent I can think of. This still sounds pretty alien to me, but as I keep seeing more Japanese I will eventually wrap my head around it.
Glad to know I was atleast on target, and thank you for the correction.
Oops, yeah, I meant でつくる. This all makes perfect sense, especially the “coming out of the oven” part since I was a little confused as to why できる would even be used here in the first place. This was really well explained and I get pretty much everything explained here. These are all the questions I have for now, but if I have any more I will ask here again or make another topic. Thank you to you and everyone who contributed. If there’s anymore that anyone would like to discuss, I’d be happy to reply.
I think @Jonapedia is struggling to come up with a natural translation because the chunk being translated is too small. If you include a bit more it becomes much easier to express naturally in English:
新しいコロナウイルスが原因で病気になった人
People who have fallen ill due to the novel coronavirus
Ah, ok, I see. Seeing ‘expression’ listed under ‘part of speech’ probably would have made me think that there was some special function too. By the way though, technically, parts of speech usually refer to things like adjectives, nouns and verbs. Here’s a little list of the ones in English to give you an idea: Dictionary.com | Meanings & Definitions of English Words. I once wrote an extremely long post (>3000 words long) on the WK forums to define ‘part of speech’ in English and Japanese. I don’t want to dig it up, but here’s a translation of my dictionary’s definition of ‘part of speech’ (品詞) in Japanese which I did for that post, if you’re interested:
Definition of 品詞
‘A classification made by sorting words based on their grammatical form, their function, their meaning and so on. In national grammar (NB: this refers to the grammar of Japanese, which is called 国語 by the Japanese), right now, normally, nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adjectival verbs (NB: like 偉大なる), prenominal adjectives (NB: like この、その and 或る), adverbs, conjunctions, exclamations, auxiliary verbs (NB: like いる、もらう and あげる), particles and the like are cited. However, on the subject of the number of parts of speech that should be fixed, for instance, [as regards] whether or not adjectival verbs should be recognised [as parts of speech], a few differences exist.’
But yes, so, the reason they’re marked as ‘expressions’ is probably so people know that they’re commonly used. Also, the sentences on ‘splitting hairs’ were just meant as examples! I didn’t really mean that you were splitting hairs! However, yes, don’t worry too much about it. You’ll get used to technical terminology as you go along. It took me a while too. It helped that my French lessons were super technical when it came to grammar (as annoying as that was when I studied French), so I had some experience when I started Japanese.
Perhaps this was the reason it was hard to translate. But to be honest, I think the truth is that 新しいコロナウイルスという原因 is rather unnatural here. I was just trying to come up with an example of a phrase that would allow で to be interpreted as a ‘means particle’ and not as the て-form of だ・である・です. It’s not the best way to phrase things here. You’re right in saying that it’s like ‘air quotes’. However, like I said, it’s about describing something with a statement. It’s fairly common, so you’ll get used to it, I’m pretty sure.
Now, just a final thought:
That’s really interesting! Did you know, by the way, that Korean grammar and Japanese grammar are apparently quite similar? Both languages have multiple registers for respect and politeness, and Korean verb forms can change a lot to indicate different things. I don’t know much about Korean, but I have a friend who went on a school trip to Korea, and he said that the person who had the most success picking up Korean on the trip was this girl who had studied Japanese. She kept saying that she had seen similar structures in Japanese.
I think one example would be kamsa hanmida. (Really sorry if I’m spelling this wrong: I’ve never studied Korean, and I can’t read hangul.) Hanmida is the polite form of the verb ‘to do’ in Korean, and kamsa… should just be 感謝, I guess? It’s like taking 感謝する in Japanese and conjugating it respectfully, which would give us 感謝いたします. (いたす is the humble form of する, and is used to lower your status relative to that of the listener.) It’s interesting that both languages essentially say ‘to do thanks’ to mean ‘to be thankful’. Anyway, there are apparently lots of little similarities like that, so who knows? Maybe knowing some Korean will help you wrap your head around Japanese too!
I see, I’m glad to know I was on the right track. They have some similarities so it shouldn’t be a totally alien concept, and it isn’t a very complicated one, so I just need to start reading more. On that note, the main reason I’m trying to learn Japanese is so I can read Japanese light novels and manga. Right now I still need to learn the kanji first, but grammar-wise how difficult would you say the average manga/light novel is to read? I’m asking because I’m starting to get comfortable reading most of the NHK News Easy articles, and for the most part I can understand or at least grasp 70% ish on the first read and the rest after a couple more reads and reviewing it. I want to try and start reading some more native text, but the jump between Intermediate and Advanced is pretty huge, in my opinion. If you have any in between’s you know about, I’d appreciate if you could tell me about it.
Yes, I 100% agree on that. While I can’t really speak very well, when I listen to my parents and relatives speak I usually understand it well enough to where I can tell how similar it sounds to Japanese sentence structure. They share a lot of words as well, to the point where sometimes I would get confused if one word was Korean or Japanese, like for example Junbi or Kaban, which both mean “preparation” and “bag” respectively in both Japanese and Korean. There are a lot of similar words which I can assume were borrowed from Japan or Korea (not sure who did the borrowing, I don’t know the history at all) that have the same meanings.
No, it’s fine, I can’t read/write hangul either lol. The romaji equivalent can be pretty weird for some words as well, for example “Tteok-bokki”; the tteok is pronounced like と, plus k, making tok. Bokki is pronounced the same as “ボッキ”.
Yeah I agree on those similarities, and kamsa would indeed be “thanks”. There’s a shortened version of kamsa hanmida which merges both to make “kamsanmida”, which is a more casual way of saying thanks compared to kamsa hanmida. On an unrelated note, would you advise learning two languages at once? I’ve always wanted to learn Korean and get better at it but never got into it because I’m lazy. Now that I’m studying Japanese though, studying a language is a lot more fun and rewarding than I thought it would be, but I don’t want to end up studying both and being bad at both. While they are similar enough so that I can study both fairly easily, I also feel like I could get mixed up just as easily. What do you think?
Hahaha. I feel you. While I’m considering doing a degree in Japan, the first thing I intend to do when I’m fluent enough is to start reading the original version of the light novels (LNs) I like. So much gets lost in translation!
I guess it’s true that the jump between ‘intermediate’ and ‘advanced’ is huge in any language, especially because the key to true fluency at the higher levels is tons of vocabulary. Languages really are like trees: up to the intermediate level, you just need to acquire a solid foundation that includes common structures and words. Once you get past that, each language starts branching out into words and structures used in different fields.
I haven’t read a lot of Japanese fiction yet, so I can’t say for sure, but I guess I’ll just talk about whatever I have seen.
Let's talk about manga first: manga is probably easier to read in general than LNs.
The sentences are generally shorter and less complex, so you probably won’t need as much grammatical knowledge. I don’t think they’ll be much harder than NHK News Easy articles in terms of grammar. Slightly harder in some cases, perhaps, and you’ll have to fill in the missing particles yourself, since they’re often dropped in informal speech. Still, the most challenging thing about reading manga is dealing with slang and non-standard Japanese e.g. common contractions. Also, I believe manga have a greater tendency to transcribe certain accents/regional dialects as they are, which could be harder to decipher in a manga since there’s no narrator to comment on the accent. One example: 分からへん instead of 分からない in Kansai dialects. That’s not the only possibility, by the way: わからん is also possible in some Kansai dialects, and around Tokyo, you’re more likely to get わかんない instead. There’s a lot of informal speech in manga, and so the issue is that you need to know your way around these things in order to understand what’s going on. Of course, it’s also a good way to discover the diversity of Japanese dialects, so it’s not a bad thing, but you may need someone to explain these things to you.
Light novels are on a higher level, I feel. Sentences are usually longer, and word usage is much more varied, especially verbs. Many LN writers have quite a large vocabulary, and it's not uncommon to find furigana in the margins for rare kanji. (Most of them aren't *that* esoteric: I can still read them because of Chinese. However, they're probably marked because they're not jōyō kanji.) As for how hard they are to read... it really depends on the writer.
I’ve only tried reading novels from two series so far: Konosuba and The Rising of the Shield Hero. I haven’t finished a single book from either. However, what I can tell you is that I feel that Shield Hero is probably a little harder to read. The reason is that Shield Hero’s author uses much longer relative clauses in general. You remember my ‘glutton that eats anything’ example? That was based on a sentence in Shield Hero Volume 18. The original sentence was something like ‘I wanted them to learn from the demons with a huge appetite who ate whatever meal was set in front of them’. However, since Japanese tends to provide information is the opposite order from English, what you had was more like ‘put-out-meals-eat-huge-appetite-demons [object] learn-from-example (I) want’. You had to realise that that was one whole block related to ‘huge appetite demons’ in order to understand the sentence. Konosuba sentences are generally simpler, with shorter relative clauses, but a lot of the sentences involve the protagonist’s internal monologue, which can be hard to follow for an English speaker because Japanese uses commas (、) and と to break the blocks up instead of using quotation marks and separate sentences. For instance, in English, we would say, ‘Why did I think she was a goddess? Because…’ In Japanese, you could get (and I saw this a few minutes ago while scanning through the web novel i.e. draft version of Konosuba in search of a good example) ‘Why I thought she was a goddess if we’re talking about that, because…, so she must be a real goddess I ended up thinking.’ You have to separate the thoughts from the words indicating what he was doing (e.g. ‘thinking’, ‘seeing’) and how his reasoning worked, and you have to make these distinctions yourself because quotation marks may not be used.
I’m not really sure if there are ‘in-betweens’. I mean, there certainly are, but I don’t know much about them. NHK news articles, especially the ones meant for the Japanese public, are a good way to acquire more vocabulary. They’ll also allow you to get used to the sort of long sentences that you might have in an LN, since NHK uses a fair number of long relative clauses per article. However, if you really want to get used to the sort of words that will be used in LNs without trying to plough through an LN, you’ll have to watch anime, especially adaptations of LNs. There’s really no faster way to learn the words used in fiction (especially in the fantasy genre), including slang, which can help you with manga too. (Another alternative is playing Japanese games, but I haven’t tried that, so I can’t say for sure.) You can start with English subtitles, but if you want to know exactly what’s being said, you can search (in Japanese) 「[anime name] [episode number]話 感想」. You can add ‘anicobin’ after that if you want, because that’s the blog I prefer. These words will usually bring up reaction blogs for that episode in Japanese. Anicobin’s format is screenshots + transcriptions of what was said in each scene + tweets from Japanese viewers, so it’s almost as good as having the episode script in front of you. Yet another thing you can consider is reading simpler fiction, like Kiki’s Delivery Service. (There’s a book club for that on the forums. It shouldn’t be very hard to find.) Some of these books are children’s books, but they usually don’t use long relative clauses and the like. The grammar is simpler, and there aren’t many kanji. However, descriptive vocabulary can still be very wide, which is a good way to learn new words.
I don't think it's a problem provided you're prepared to take measures to keep them separate as much as possible, and provided you feel you're able to productively study both of them at the same time.
I started German and Spanish at the same time, and I was also studying French at school during that period of my life. I made some mild grammatical gender mistakes in French because of Spanish, but most of the time, I could tell when something was Spanish and when something was French, so it wasn’t a huge problem even though the two were very similar. I honestly think that the bigger risk is that of taking structures that are present in one language and using them in the other because they seem natural to you, but you can reduce that risk by avoiding direct translations as much as possible. Plus, neither Korean nor Japanese is your native language, so you’re not as likely to make these ‘copy and paste’ errors since you usually think in English.
I personally think that Japanese and Korean still sound fairly different, and there are certain sounds which aren’t shared (e.g. I believe Korean has something like an English L, with the tongue rolled back. Japanese doesn’t, since the Japanese R is actually more like a tapped Spanish R). I’m also fairly sure that the two languages have different rhythms, even if I’ve mixed Japanese up with Korean before. (I was less fluent back then.) In any case, you’ll have the chance to hear your parents and relatives speak Korean, so that should help reinforce what belongs in the ‘Korean box’ and what doesn’t. However, if, after trying it out, you feel like learning two languages at once is too much work, then you might want to just focus on one. It’s possible that you’ll feel like you’re progressing too slowly while juggling two languages. The only way to know is to experiment and see how things turn out.
Yes, I agree. I think the best way to enjoy any literature is to read it in is native language, since like you said, a lot is lost in translation.
I see, that’s an interesting way to phrase it. I suppose for now I should focus on making my foundation stronger.
Yeah, in the end it really depends on the writer. The light novels I want to read the most are Overlord and That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, which is both very descriptive about the environment and things about economy and such. They’re probably at the same level as the normal NHK Web News articles in terms of vocabulary and length of clauses. I’ve never personally read any untranslated light novels, but from your example I can definitely see that I should at least be able to read some normal NHK Web News articles, especially for the ones I want to read. The Konosuba example is quite interesting, but I think it shouldn’t be too hard to get the gist of.
I see, that’s fine. I suppose the best way is to just jump into it. Personally, I prefer reading over watching anime, so I will definitely check out that blog you mentioned. Reading Japanese comments is another thing I enjoy doing since they are like little snippets of real Japanese, and blogs tend to have a lot. I want to start diving into more advanced content so I might not read books like Kiki’s Delivery Service, although I will definitely have it as an option if I want to test my understanding or if the advanced stuff is too much for me right now.
Yeah, definitely agree. I’ve seen those dialects you’ve mentioned in some Japanese anime and games like Yakuza 0. Getting used to the native and informal speech should come naturally with lots of reading.
I see, thank you for the advice. Seeing that you’ve studied 3 at once, it’s definitely possible with the right methods. For now, I think I will stick with Japanese until I’m confident enough to start learning a different language. I don’t want to end up being bad at both, though I might consider studying both later.
Oh, Overlord! I’m not a fan (it’s a bit too dark for me, as much as the world-building is great), but I have a friend who really likes the series, and I’ve watched the anime. I’ve also looked at some of the translations, and they’re really long (for an LN). You probably should read NHK articles if that’s what you want to read, because there’s definitely going to be a lot of political and economic terms. I also wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a bit of archaic stuff, like how Shalltear says でありんす for であります＝です – that’s actually something Edo courtesans used to say. Either way, all the best on getting there! Overlord seems like quite a complex story, but I’m sure it’ll be rewarding when you start to understand.
Expressions aren’t a type of ‘part of speech’. They don’t all have the same grammatical function. That’s what a part of speech is: a category of words that all have the same sort of role in a sentence.
I can try to explain the use of という here though: the idea is that I want to name the reason. It’s similar to saying something like ‘the so-called “new coronavirus” reason’ or ‘the reason known as “the new coronavirus”’. I agree that it’s weird. Normally, you wouldn’t use this unless you want to emphasise that the ‘new coronavirus’ is something very new, unfamiliar or strange. Even in Japanese, it would literally be ‘the “new coronavirus” reason’, with the idea that you just want describe it using that statement.