To be honest, it really depends on what they were talking about. I’ve heard it used this way as in “do you remember me?” Obviously that’s not like the sentence jprspereira wrote (which was in past tense), but I think 思い出す is probably more common with regard to people because it also has the nuance of “being reminded”. Alas, that’s the problem with studying language in a vacuum–without the full context, it becomes vague and hard to understand.
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なるほど！I seriously need to learn about こと. It’s used everywhere xD
I asked on HiNative for the differences between 思い出す and 覚えてる。Here’s the answer that I got:
Do you guys agree? 
Seems like a great way to understand both. @LucasDesu @Leebo
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Yeah, I think that’s how they’re usually described. It’s just, usually you don’t think of “remembering” a person in the 覚える sense. Maybe you’ll remember their name that way, or things about them. This is like “to commit to memory”.
So when someone says “yesterday I remembered you” I would say they are almost certainly “recalling” the person and not “committing them to memory.”
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Yep, I definitely agree Thanks again.
Which verb is the right one to use when you want to say for example “send a postcard/letter”?
EDIT: Is it 送る？
Thanks in advance 
Wouldn’t you use 思いつく (ie, 思い付く) here though?
Google gives 486,000 results for the phrase “手紙を送る”. I’d say it’s safe to use it this way. (送る is also used for skype messages and file sending, btw.)
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You could, but I don’t see why you think 思い出す can’t be used. The point is that 覚える is an entirely different kind of “remember”.
出す is the most common, I’d say
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Apart from the formality mentioned by @LucasDesu, they are entirely different parts of speech, so they appear in different contexts. 「第一」 is an adverb or a noun, whereas 「一つ目」 is an adjective.
Also, when you are constructing them, they take a different “argument”:
| Grammatical? | Counter | Number | Reading |
| Yes | 第～ | 一 | だいいち |
| No | 第～ | 一つ | だいひとつ |
| No | ～目 | 一 | いちめ |
| Yes | ～目 | 一つ | ひとつめ |
So they are quite different.
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What @Leebo said can actually be easier to understand as part of a rule.
The so-called 「た形」 is not, strictly speaking, the “past tense”. It is a perfective tense. It is used to refer to actions that have completed, which are normally in the past but could be in the future (think of the future perfect tense: “I will have eaten”). That is why you can say something like 「うちに帰った時連絡するよ」, which in English would be something like “I’ll call you when I get home” (= at the time when I have arrived).
And you can see this in several other cases too, with 「た形 + とたん」 and 「た形 + ら」 which regularly occur when talking about things in the future. They use the 「た形」 for a reason.
So, 「すみませんでした」 (or 「すまなかった」) implies that you are apologising for something that has completed (or that will be completed, at the time that the utterance takes effect), whereas 「すみません」 (or 「すまない」) does not imply that as clearly (although as far as I can tell can still be used for that).
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が vs は
お酒を飲むのが好きじゃないです
I don’t like to drink alcohol.
Why が though? Is it because of what comes after the main idea of this sentence (not liking)? Is it because I’m using 好き which always refers to the subject? (is this even true?)
日本語を話すのは簡単じゃないです。
Speaking Japanese is not easy.
Could I say it with が? I suppose that using が would make this sentence more like “Speaking Japanese is the thing that is not easy (between other options).” Am I correct?
Appreciate any help you can give
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Regarding your two examples, here’s my take.
In the first sentence, I think “I” is the implied topic, which is why it makes sense to mark お酒を飲むの with が. So it could be written as 私はお酒を飲むのが好きじゃないです. It’s just not necessary to include 私は since it obviously means that (unless context implies otherwise).
In the second sentence, it does sound like the topic is “speaking Japanese” (no implied “I” or anything like that), which is why marking it with は makes sense.
Also, if you’re interested, this is a good read.
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Not a true response to your question, but a little bit of additional information that might be useful.
In Japanese, 「好き」 is used with 「が」 because grammatically it works like the Spanish equivalent verb (I’m sure there are other examples, but that’s my native language, so bear with me).
In English, if you want to say that you like chocolate, you say … “I like chocolate”. Grammatically, “I” is the subject of the verb “to like”, and “chococate” is the direct object, or what is acted upon. So, literally, you do the liking on chocolate.
In Spanish, you’d say “me gusta el chocolate”, which is entirely different. There, the subject of the verb “gustar” is … the chocolate! And you are the indirect object, or for whom the action takes place. So, more literally, chocolate pleases you.
[Insert joke about Soviet Russia]
In this case, Japanese is more similar to Spanish than to English. When you say 「ペレイラさんはチョコレートが好き」, 「チョコレート」 is the “subject”, and 「好き」 is closer to “pleasing” than to “liking” (it’s also an adjective, and not a verb, but whatever). So it’s not you that like chocolate, but chocolate that is pleasing to you.
Unlike Spanish, though, you don’t mark the “target” of the pleasing with the indirect object (which would use 「に」), but with the topicaliser 「は」. So, more literally, that would be closer to “as for Pereira-さん, chocolate is pleasing”.
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I remember how much the が好き thing was hammered into me, which made the first time I saw を好き all the more shocking. I was watching Frozen on TV in Japan, and one of the characters says 私を好き？ and my jaw dropped from the grammar, with no relation to the content lol.
Here’s a discussion of を好き
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I have now gone back to using lang-8. Maybe. A little bit. Man, I just don’t know…the problem with lang-8 at my pitiful comprehension level is that I post something, it gets corrected, now I need to DISCUSS the correction in detail to understand it but the person correcting it and I don’t speak the same language reliably plus I am (don’t laugh it’s true it just doesn’t seem like it) painfully shy.
ANYWAY, here is my original post (don’t laugh):
私は長い間に訪問していない。
私はもっと学ぶ必要がある。
二つは長い間に暇取る。
I have got one correction…he verified sentence #1 and corrected sentence #3 to:
二つの文は時間が長くかか。
I get 二つの文, it’s like 2 units of writing and i left out the japanese equivalent (not directly i know it’s a particle showing possesion) of ‘of’. I’m good with 時間 for time period. が is… a particle? marking the subject? Not so confident with that, and totally lost on 長くかか。
Any pointers?
My girlfriend thinks it’s a typo.
Difference between 丸, 丸い, and 円い
They all mean round/circular, so what’s the difference? Why are there so many different ways to write the word round, of all words
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円い is usually for disc-shaped things
丸い is usually for spherical things
丸 is a noun
This is very common, to have different kanji disambiguate different nuances of the same word. It’s just like how in English words can have many meanings, but we don’t have a way to differentiate visually.
Here’s a site dedicated to explaining different kanji usages for the same word.
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Your girlfriend was correct! My oversight, I’m not used to lang-8 and missed a kana following the strike-thru part, it was “かかる” for 掛かる (to take (resources)) which with 時間が長く gives me “to take a long time” more or less i suppose. Makes perfect sense, I’m just so not all there on Japanese verbs and adverbs yet, along with so impatient too
Thank you sir.
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