actually meant ‘I won’t go from article to article’. Within articles though, I usually read everything (or I skip whatever bores me/isn’t relevant to what I need). However, I see your point. It’s much harder to skim without headers. Maybe I’ve just gotten used to the page structure, so it doesn’t bother me too much. (That and if I know what the particular grammatical sub-structure I’m looking for looks like, I just use the ‘Find’ function.)
OK, I knew Maggie was the dog, but the owner is a… man? I thought it was a woman. I believe I’ve sen a photo somewhere. Plus, her ‘helper’ is ‘Yukari’, and that isn’t a male name, is it? (I know about the concept of pen names, but – forgive the stereotyping – it’s really rare for a man to use that many colours.) Also, Gimmeaflakeman seems to run like a completely separate account on Twitter, so I strongly doubt they’re closely related. Finally, I’ve written to Maggie Sensei with questions on several occasions, and while it could have been due to my mental image of him/her, I’ve never detected anything in the Japanese that indicated a man could be behind the site. (If you have a source for this information though, by all means, go ahead and share it.)
EDIT: Here’s what I mean. This is from their “About” page"
Source: About Us – Maggie Sensei (Colours and other associated formatting warnings, as usual. Lol.)
While not specifically stated on the “About Us” section of the website, Victor has mentioned running the website and writing the lesson in the past on several occasions in his YouTube videos. That’s the only basis I have for him being the writer. Plus, he was Maggie’s owner… so…
I don’t mind romaji being included in content like this, I just really wish it was not as prominent. My eyes instantly go to the romaji, and at a glance I may already have grasped the meaning of the sentence. So then going to the kanji and kana to decipher the meaning of the sentence doesn’t work anymore
Either separating it from the non-romaji sentence (having the romaji in the description only) or making it small & subtle would work better in my opinion.
Content-wise I think it’s OK. It doesn’t have much a comprehensible overview, but I like scrolling through content like this to see what catches my eye I’ve got it bookmarked now, so it’s alright in my book!
If you go to the “Support Us” page on the website, Maggie references Gimmeabrakeman as her “human pet”… i.e. her owner. He also talks about Maggie several times in his videos. Give a few of his older videos a try and you’ll eventually stumble upon a mention.
I’ve followed this guy and his website, Maggie-Sensei, for years now. There’s no way anyone else is the writer/owner of that website
Ah, I see. Yeah, I can completely see that if you read the whole thing it’s okay (although I’d still argue it’s rather pedagogically unsound not to give any context or signposting before diving in).
The About Us page seems to say fairly explicitly that Victor promotes the site “and helps proofread the lessons occasionally”. So I doubt he is the main author.
I think it’s useful for conversational nuances that often aren’t covered by things like the Dictionary of Japanese Grammar (see the article on けど for example), but the colors and formatting are awful. I’m also not a huge fan of the “shower with examples” approach. I generally skim it when it is linked to by Bunpro for a grammar point, since those tend to have conversational nuance stuff there, but don’t use it otherwise.
Thanks for spotting this. That’s a good point. @jpkid888 I don’t need to be right, so please pardon my stubbornness – I’m not doing this for the sake of winning an argument. It’s just that it feels super incoherent with everything I’ve experienced with Maggie Sensei so far i.e. I’ll have a hard time taking it in (if it’s true). I write to him/her almost exclusively in Japanese, and like I said, the language feels quite effeminate. I wouldn’t expect a man to be polite and pleasant to such an extent, especially with all the emojis. (And there’s probably no need for anyone to be so nice when replying to my messages, because I write in keigo since Maggie Sensei is a teacher: it gives me a reason to practise these structures, which I can’t use with anyone else. I’m literally telling Maggie Sensei that I recognise his/her superior status.) In particular, Maggie Sensei has a tendency to make certain English grammatical errors that can’t simply be dismissed as typos. In particular, she has a tendency to leave out certain words that would make her sentences far more natural in English. That would be strange because Victor is clearly a native English speaker, or at least extremely fluent in English. So while she was probably Victor’s dog (it seems likely given what I’ve seen in some of his videos)… either Victor is so fluent in Japanese, Japanese English and 女性語 (feminine language use) that he can imitate a Japanese woman now, or Yukari is actually his friend (not his wife because his wife’s name is different, right?), and Maggie Sensei just became the website’s mascot at some point. If it turns out Victor is behind the site, then wow, I’m amazed, but I’ll need some time to readjust my mental image of the human teacher behind the dog. It’s hard to accept based on the exchanges I’ve had so far.
I guess we really do learn new things every day… I have always liked Victor’s ASMR channel (came cross it a few years back) but never realised until now that he is associated with Maggie-sensei.
On-topic: Agreed with others that the website is really helpful, but the presentation can be off-putting.
Based on the YTs, it looks like a team effort between Victor and Yukari…I assume they are a couple but maybe not. The video mentions that Yukari writes the lessons so she probably is responding to the blog too. The take away is that a native is checking the content which is great for a free resource and I use it all the time for cross referencing even though the format is not ideal. I didn’t know this but they had a JP version for english learners…doesn’t look kept up though.
I get the sense this dog knows more grammar than I ever will.
Yeah, it’s funny because I don’t mind Cure Dolly’s presentation but the Maggie-Sensei website just rubs me the wrong way. The content is definitely good though.
I think it’s because I did web development in the late 90’s and it looks like some kid’s Angelfire page.
This is a very common style of blog posting in Japanese, if you’ve ever stumbled across small personal blogs. It seems like they just transferred it over to English without consideration for typical English formatting.
The sooner you stop relying on romaji, the better. Sure, signs in Japan have a lot of romaji, but reading materials almost never do. If your goal is to read actual Japanese, practice becoming fluent in the kana.
I’ve never understood the purpose of romaji in online grammar resources. I imagine the set of people who don’t know kana and the set of people reading about Japanese grammar don’t overlap very much…
I think there’s a large amount of “dabblers” who we mostly don’t come into contact with on more serious resources like WaniKani. But you see lots of them asking questions on Stack Exchange about song lyrics or leaving comments on Youtube, etc.
I really like her explanations. Like others have said, her formatting and animals are a bit cringy, but a great resource nonetheless. I recommend using a platform that incorporates SRS into the grammar reviews, especially as you learn trickier grammar points like the 1,000,000 ways to say “should” that all have different nuance. Personally, I use Bunpro which has links to Maggie Sensei (among other resources) for each grammar point. I’d definitely recommend checking it out.
I’ve got it bookmarked now, so it’s alright in my book!
The spacing’s less noticeable that way.
