After several months of averaging 8-10 days per level, I finally did it. I fell behind. I’ve been on level 15 for over a month now, largely because I did a lot of travelling, and also have been spending more time on Bunpro, to try to get N4 grammar mastered in time for JLPT in December.
Today I started making feeble attempts to attack my 1000+ review backlog. And I noticed something which I think is new? If not, them my memory sucks more than I thought it did. But I can’t find any mention of this anywhere. See below. The vocab being presented to me is a conjugated verb (失いましょう) rather than the base form (失う). Again, I can’t remember this ever happening before.
FWIW, I use Smouldering Durtles on Android, not sure if that is related. I did find an advanced setting: “Randomise inflections in review” which is enabled. I find that mentioned here, so I guess it’s not really new. Maybe I accidentally enabled it somehow.
I put 失いましょう into the desktop WaniKani search feature and it does not show up as a result for any vocab. I likewise have never seen it (or anything else) conjugated as such on desktop WaniKani or iOS’s Tsurukame app
I’ve never used Smouldering Durtles so I can’t say 100%, but it seems almost certainly like it is an app-specific feature like you mention
I was going to try to extend the joke and suggest that 失いませんか would be even more nonsensical. But when I typed it into ChatGPT just to double check my conjugation, the robot gave me some examples that seem plausible:
Examples
そんなことをしたら、信頼を失いませんか？
→ If you do that, won’t you lose people’s trust?
この試合、負けてしまっても希望を失いませんか？
→ Even if we lose this game, won’t we lose hope?
Which made me wonder if there are actually legitimate uses for 失いましょう that I’m overlooking. Robot says:
Because “lose” is negative in meaning, it’s rarely used literally as a cheerful suggestion.
Usually it appears in metaphorical or ironic contexts, like:
過去を失いましょう。
→ Let’s lose (forget) the past.
怖れを失いましょう。
→ Let’s lose our fear.
迷いを失いましょう。
→ Let’s stop hesitating / Let’s be confident.
