The quick or short Language Questions Thread (not grammar)

I used to be an admin at Wikipedia. I understand how editing it works. You need a source to back up your edits. The sentence in question has a reference to the Oxford English Dictionary. If you check it and it doesn’t conform with what’s written, you could remove it, but just doing so because you’ve personally heard or not heard something is not how Wikipedia should work (or even if it was you and literally every person you know).

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Fair. It was a bad suggestion on my part.

Oh, interesting. That’s good to know.

I’ve seen white potato used in grocery stores. Here’s a listing for such an item from the grocery store I usually shop at:

https://www.heb.com/product-detail/fresh-white-potatoes/318982

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Thanks for the counterexample! It’s good to clarify these things.

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I’ve been wondering this for awhile…

Some vocabulary is simply two words stuck together with the same readings, for instance salt water is しおみず. Both しお and みず are words on their own…so can/should “saltwater” be considered a word of its own?

We have compound words in English, such as “bookstore”, but they are easy to differentiate since we typically use spaces.

In case of Japanese, since usually nouns should be connected by particle の, when that is not necessary, I think you can consider it a new word.

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Just a note on pitch accent, しおみず as one word is also pronounced differently than しお and みず separately. On their own they would be shiO and miZU, both with low to high pitch accents.

Imagine you were listing them for a recipe. You’d say them that way.

As one word it’s shiOmizu, low high low low.

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Good point, thanks!

I live in California and I have not seen “white potatoes”. I have mainly seen potatoes listed by their name like Russet or Yukon Gold. I have seen “red potatoes” and “golden potatoes”, but not “white potatoes”. I have seen “White Delights Potatoes”, but I think it’s actually meant as a proper name like Red Delicious apples or something, not a generic term. Not saying that it’s not possible at all, just not in this region.

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Noted, thanks. Everything I’ve heard about pitch accent comes from Dogen videos, I feel like I haven’t scratched the surface :sweat_smile:

I think there were some rules behind this which might be helpful to learn.
As for the Tokyo Dialect, there is only one accent in each word if the pitch drops. So after shiO the remaining mora stay low pitch.

“In-groups” are people who hold the same social position as me right?

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Not necessarily, no. Your boss, who could be of a higher social status, could be both part of your ‘soto’ or ‘uchi’ depending on the situation. These circles can be fluid and will change depending on the situational context.

This is not a fully exhaustive breakdown of this concept, as this topic is a fairly complex one, but maybe this might give you a bit more insight into how these circles work and their situational fluidity:

Here are two examples they use to demonstrate this fluidity as I mentioned above using one’s boss:

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Thank you!

Does picking out vocabulary learnt from srs to practice in conversation have an affect on the srs?

I think this is a bit of a chicken/egg question. If you’re using WaniKani or any SRS for the purpose of learning vocab to use in conversation (verbal or written), then using it in conversation would meet your goal, right? You would have practiced/learned the vocab. The SRS exists to help you learn pieces of information. If you’re able to use/have learned that information, than following the SRS perfectly is unnecessary.

Personally, if you’re learning Japanese to use Japanese, I recommend practicing vocab in conversation as much as you like (assuming you know or can figure out when too much would make you burn out).

If you want a more direct answer to your question, I think using Google Scholar or some similar academic paper database/search engine to search “spaced repetition system” would probably be a good way.

Wanikani teaches 台 as machine but on kitsun.io it is teaching it as table/stand. What is this kanji more commonly used as?

As far as I can tell, the “machine” definition is really just that 台 is the counter for machines and vehicles. I can’t find anything else where “machine” is the relevant meaning.

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thanks I will remember that to avoid any confusion in the future

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