I’m finding past negative and affirmative かった endings to be my evil nemesis… my teacher says he thinks I’m getting it. I’m going to drill some more and work my way through genki chapter 9. I swear I had an easier time with て形 and that is meant to be much more difficult… The rest of the book looks much easier than chapter 8 and 9, I even know some of that grammar already.
If anyone needs a study buddy for chapter 8 and 9 I’m doing drills from Yale book 1 to help. Just let me know. I’m usually able to study in the daytime Monday-thursday. Maybe we can help each other? Kanji is so much easier than grammar 
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I know exactly what you mean. I feel like I’ve gotten the hang of it but I’m still a little wary. I do conjugation drills everyday but I still feel like I met get confused. I think it’ll be fine with time but yeah for now it’s a bit hard. Also it would be amazing if we could study together!! Lmk if you want to :))
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I’m still occasionally confused as to when じゃない means no and when it actually means yes. 
It also took me a while to get the nuance of んじゃなかった (shouldn’t have done something).
Also という, though it never makes a sentence difficult to understand if you just skip over it, the actual nuance took me a while to get on a gut feeling level.
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What’s the nuance? I know the “x is called y” usage of the grammar.
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There are a lot of ways it gets used, far too many for me to bother typing out.
At any rate, as for the original question, I feel like the various topic particles vs subject marker nuance sometimes still trips me up, like how sometimes は is unnatural but が is ungrammatical so って gets used. I also don’t think I can actually use なんて as a topic particle naturally when speaking yet (though I am okay reading/hearing it).
Also, dialects and most contractions outside of ている to てる also cause me difficulty.
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It’s a bit hard to come up with examples… also I guess it’s more of a gut undertanding than something I can translate.
I may actually have been a bit overambitious in pretending I’ve actually got it down
The one you’re referring to is probably when you’re more or less defining stuff, right? Like in 〇〇という言葉 (the word X ) or という噂 (a rumor that X).
Sometimes it just also literally means “said” or “is called”, so that’s easy enough as well. Like 〇〇という人間 could mean both “people like X” or just literally “people who say X”.
I’ll dig through my anki cards and see if I can’t find something to illustrate what other nuances I mean!
…
I think it’s mostly stuff like ということ, というの or というわけ.
I feel that a lot of the time it’s probably technically the “x that is y” sense, but in practice that’s not my gut feeling of what it means… like (quote from death note) しかし…警察が偽造書というのは… (still… for a police officer to use false ID…). Not sure how I’d rephrase it without the という, but I’m also not sure I can explain exactly what it conveys.
Also, like I said I do have a gut feeling, but I can’t really put words on how ということだ or とういうわけだ differs from just だ. (Also when people say というわけで sometimes more or less as filler, I feel like I “know” what it means, but I can’t translate it to anything)
I, however have no qualms whatsoever of spending my time in nonproductive ways! 
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I see 以上 and 上で at the end of clauses all the time when I’m reading, but I still have trouble remembering their meanings. And I sometimes get them mixed up. I’m not really sure what I can do at this point. Hopefully it’ll click eventually.
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That would be awesome! I can’t figure out how to inbox people, so I’ll just give you my skype info. I’m only usually on there for my Japanese lessons but I will download it on my phone so I don’t miss your message. It’s Estellise85 if anyone else wants to practice Japanese, that’s how you can contact me
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I think some of those are coming up at the end of book 1. I know some already, but some I don’t. I really hope they don’t give me too much trouble I’ve been working on chapter 8 and 9 of Genki 1 since New Years 
Don’t worry, like I said it’s almost never critical to understanding what a sentence means.
And little by little it’ll start to make more sense from exposure.
EDIT: Also, one neat thing with language learning is that you can often just not study a lot of stuff and it’ll come on its own while you focus on what you really need to learn in order to progress. (e.g. I’ve never actually studied how to make the past tense etc depending on the last syllable. I just assumed, correctly, that if I see 飲んだ enough times I’ll know that む becomes んだ, んで etc)
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I’m with you 
i’m currently helplessly stuck on て-form conjugation and ては なら/いけ ない
i also have a hard time with these… actually all the plain or casual forms 
since im more used to ます forms than dictionary form etc.
“x is called y” is the only usage i can remember too xD i think that was covered in MNN and SKZ. but even after i finished reading SKZ N3, most grammar didnt really stick with me. T.T
im supposed to be around N4 now but i still cant get the natural feeling of ○○でしょう, which is an N5 grammar. im trying to watch as much anime as i can now hopefully i can magically get it. xD ┬┴┤_•)
This. And in general the use and abuse of the なの structure for justifications/expectations I see in manga, but nowhere else otherwise and somehow refuse to use it 
I might get used to it eventually, though…
The rest has been more or less okay. Maybe also the っけ ending used when trying to recall something from memory.
飲まなくてはいけない = literally if you don’t drink you can’t go = must drink (basically a double negative)
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thanks so much especially the song!
I think いけない will just take some time to go in properly. Will think of “you can’t not do that” from now 
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More like “you can’t go not doing X”!
Ay Mr bm69, you can’t go not learning your double negatives!
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Not much of problem reading since context usually makes it obvious but I do have a hard time knowing when to use 〜ている/〜ていた for purposes other than conveying continuous action or with the specific verbs like 住む always used that way. Like the usage that conveys something remaining in the resulting state, I get the idea but rarely think to use it myself.
Oh man my head is gonna explode ToT もっとべんきょうをしなくてはいけない。でも、ありがとうございます
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My family think I’m crazy I’m stood in the kitchen talking to my drill CD 
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Transitive and intransitive fluff
Ukemi kei structures? Don’t ask me.
I’m angry just thinking about it.