Learning Japanese From Zero

[ryanheise]

On my previous attempt at reading NHK News Easy, I gave up after two sentences. Tonight, I tried again, and this time lasted an entire paragraph and a half before throwing in the towel. Even when I look up every word, I still have no idea what the sentences actually mean. It's really frustrating. I wish there was some sort of more beginner friendly resource I could use as a stepping stone.

[...] I recommend reading Tar Kim grammar guide.

It may also help to share and keep a journal of the specific grammatical challenges you run into. I for one would love to read the story of how your understanding of these mysteries evolves over time, but I do think that writing it out and journaling it could be beneficial to you also in that you'll then have a record of the specific sentence, along with your thoughts on it, and when you see another sentence in the future with a similar grammatical feature or word or colocation, you'll be able to go back and compare the two sentences and connect some dots.

[golyplot]

I could recommend beginner reading all day but from what I read of your log, it seems you mostly focus on kanji right now. With the help of popup dictionaries, JP learners can read anything but without know any grammar, you are just going to be lost. If you want to get starting on reading, I recommend reading Tar Kim grammar guide.

I actually have read through the Basic Grammar section of Tae Kim's guide several times. The problem is that a) just reading something isn't enough to internalize it and b) any real world writing will use a lot of more advanced grammar I haven't covered yet.

Anyway, the only reason I've been mostly focusing on kanji is that I haven't found any effective tools for learning the other stuff yet.


On the bright side, when I watched my daily episode of Peppa Pig this morning (Fancy Dressup Party), I was able to understand more of it than than previous times I've seen that episode, so at least there's that.

[golyplot]

B) of course a novel is going to have more grammar than you know but are you really going to wait until you have N2-N1 grammar before touching a book or manga? I think not since you want to read now...

The goal is to start with "N+1" material and slowly work my way up. Unfortunately, the bottom rungs of the ladder seem to be underpopulated. This isn't an issue with Western European languages since an English speaker like me starts halfway to the finish line with them.

[golyplot]

It may also help to share and keep a journal of the specific grammatical challenges you run into. I for one would love to read the story of how your understanding of these mysteries evolves over time, but I do think that writing it out and journaling it could be beneficial to you also in that you'll then have a record of the specific sentence, along with your thoughts on it, and when you see another sentence in the future with a similar grammatical feature or word or colocation, you'll be able to go back and compare the two sentences and connect some dots.

How about I take a sentence from an article and try to break it down as much as possible to show what parts I can understand so far?

ＷＨＯのテドロス事務局長は１１日、新しいコロナウイルスはパンデミックになっていると言いました。そして「今までの２週間で、中国以外でウイルスがうつった人の数は１３倍、国の数は３倍になりました。これからもっと増えると思います」と話しました。

First, I'll try to figure out as much as I can without looking anything up.

ＷＨＯのテドロス
WHO (World Health Organization) something. Te-do-ro-su?

事務局長
Going by kanji, that's action-???-follow-long

は
-na adj ending

１１日、
11 days

新しい
new

コロナウイルス
coronavirus

は
topic particle

パンデミック
pandemic

に
probably a particle

なっている
some verb

と
another particle

言いました。
said (past tense, polite)

そして
and

「今まで
until now

の
particle

２週間
two weeks

で、
time particle (until two weeks ago?)

中国
China

以外
except for

で
particle

ウイルス
virus

が
subject

うつった
probably past tense of "to hit" (affected?)

人
people/population

の
数
count (number of people?)

は
topic

１３倍、
probably a counter

国の数は
count of countries (topic - wait is that two topics?)

３倍
another counter

に
particle?

なりました。
some past tense verb - possibly "learned" except written without kanji for some reason

これか
this (subject)

らもっと
???

増える
some verb ???

と
and particle?

思います」
thought (past tense)

と
and particle?

話しました。
talked about

So putting that all together, my best guess for the meaning of the sentence is "On March 11th, the WHO declared the new coronavirus to be pandemic. In the last two weeks, the number of cases outside of China has risen 13 fold and the number of countries affected has tripled. This something something something."

Of course that is mostly based on my preexisting knowledge and even then, I don't even have a guess for the last part. I'd have no idea if I was trying to just go by the Japanese words I understood.

Edit: After looking up an actual translation, I realized that I was stupid. I don't know why I thought 思います was past tense when it is obviously just the polite present tense. I guess I got trigger happy since all the other verbs were past tense.

[ryanheise]

ＷＨＯのテドロス事務局長は１１日、新しいコロナウイルスはパンデミックになっていると言いました。そして「今までの２週間で、中国以外でウイルスがうつった人の数は１３倍、国の数は３倍になりました。これからもっと増えると思います」と話しました。

Try copying and pasting that into jisho and it will more accurately break it down into words and particles, and provide dictionary lookups for each word and particle. It's not always perfect, but it will still do a much better job of identifying the word boundaries than you can as a learner.

I don't know if you would prefer to work out the patterns through your own study and observations, so I'll try not to give away anything in terms of explanations, but:

に
probably a particle

なっている
some verb

and...

に
particle?

なりました。
some past tense verb - possibly "learned" except written without kanji for some reason

both start the same way, and this is indeed a pattern. I'll leave it to you to click on the words to read the definitions.

これか
this (subject)

らもっと
???

If you check on Jisho, you'll notice that it's broken down like this: これから and もっと, and that should help a lot with dictionary lookup.

[golyplot]

Try copying and pasting that into jisho and it will more accurately break it down into words and particles, and provide dictionary lookups for each word and particle. It's not always perfect, but it will still do a much better job of identifying the word boundaries than you can as a learner.

Thanks! That will help a lot. Previously, I was just selecting portions that seemed like a word or grammar unit and Googling them. But that is tedious and less effective.

both start the same way, and this is indeed a pattern. I'll leave it to you to click on the words to read the definitions.

I would have never noticed that なっている and なりました were the same word. It's so tricky when all but the first syllable change in the different verb forms, and it takes a lot of time to mentally undo the transformations and guess at the root word.

Unfortunately, while Jisho is great for parsing the text into words and looking up unfamiliar words, I still don't understand what most of those particles are doing there, but it's still a big improvement over before.

[ryanheise]

I would have never noticed that なっている and なりました were the same word. It's so tricky when all but the first syllable change in the different verb forms, and it takes a lot of time to mentally undo the transformations and guess at the root word.

You'll probably start noticing it a lot now The variations are all like になる-, になり-, になっ-, so it's really the first two syllables to look out for, and potentially the first consonant of the third syllable (in most cases).

[golyplot]

The variations are all like になる-, になり-, になっ-, so it's really the first two syllables to look out for, and potentially the first consonant of the third syllable (in most cases).

Isn't the に a particle, rather than part of the verb though?

[ryanheise]

The variations are all like になる-, になり-, になっ-, so it's really the first two syllables to look out for, and potentially the first consonant of the third syllable (in most cases).

Isn't the に a particle, rather than part of the verb though?

I really don't bother trying to understand it grammatically, I just look for patterns. But if you were to think about it grammatically, then technically you are right. It's a bit like colocations, though, I think it's just easier to learn this particular pair together because they always go together. Trying to understand what に means is like trying to understand what "for" means in English. There may be a couple of main meanings that are easy to grasp, but it really has lots of different meanings depending on what other words its combined with, so it can be easier just to remember the larger patterns.

[golyplot]

By the way, I just learned 成る on Wanikani. It's crazy to think that one of the unknown words in that sentence I tried to translate yesterday was a word I'd be learning the very next morning. Of course, there's no way I would have been able to recognize it anyway without the kanji.

P.S. I also just learned the 倍 kanji, which would have also been helpful.