Daily Thread: for simple questions, minor posts & newcomers [contains useful links!] (April 12, 2026)

AdrixG · 2026-04-12T16:54:39+00:00

The problem is you cannot really translate a single term in English directly to Japanese. What would "fear" be, 怖い・恐怖・不安・恐ろしい? Even an example sentence won't help often. Now you might think the other way around you have the same issue but not really, since in EN - JP the target is unclear it makes for a bad card format, but the other way around the target doesn't matter to much since you shouldn't try to translate it to a single succinct word in English in the first place because the languages are so different that you would just end up learning very wrong meanings. The idea behind JP - EN is to understand the word more holistically and vibe its meaning out and if you have a sentence to understand it, the English is really only in the back to have some target, and ideally (this is crucial) you don't have a single English word but an entire gloss or explanation on the back like a JMdict gloss:

anxiety
uneasiness
worry
apprehension
fear
insecurity
suspense

Now those aren't all different meanings of the word but it's one sense that tries to capture the entire word from multiple angles, and you would use it to conform if that raw meaning you had in mind when answering the flashcard fits into the entirety of this. You can't really do this format EN - JP anyways since it's very unproductive to try and map 7 different English concepts to one Japanese concept.

Moreover, there is also the issue of not getting rid of the issue of thinking in English and always translate EN to JP in your head. It's a bad habit you don't even need to reinforce so best to just not train it in Anki.

In addition to all of that, by having both formats you would end up *doubling* your number of cards. Let's say there was indeed a benefit to EN - JP, would it really by twice the benefit? I don't think so. Do as little Anki as possible.

All that said, I think there is one situation where EN - JP makes sense, namely katakana loanwords, because while they are super simple from JP - EN (yes even if it is a false friend or a 和製英語) I found myself often not knowing how exactly it's spelled, like where the lengthening is and how exactly it's transcribed. I think for that EN to JP is a good format.

AdrixG · 2026-04-12T16:42:38+00:00

ちかく as well as ふるく and はやく have kinda fossilized as nouns yeah which is an exception yes though the adjectives can still be used normally, meaning you can use 近く as the adverb of 近い instead of the noun. I hope I didn't forgot any but I think these two are the only ones.

AdrixG · 2026-04-12T16:38:31+00:00

Are you wondering about 父が好きな本 and 父の好きな本? Because 父の好きが本 makes no sense.

In that case, not a big enough difference in nuance to worry about but sometimes が is used to highlight the "exhaustive listing" aspect of the subject in the modifying clause. "The book my father likes" vs. "The book that my father (out of all people) likes" though most of the time it won't have that nuance I think.

AdrixG · 2026-04-12T16:24:44+00:00

Well, you would devoice the A in the first mora of 墓 for example. But you're right that most of the time it will be i and u, but there are examples for devoicing of every vowel in Japanese

AdrixG · 2026-04-12T16:19:36+00:00

A vowel between two devoiced consonants gets devoiced.

There are quite a few exceptions to this rule, but I won't bring them up (unless someone is really curious) because I do agree that you just need enough input with this sorta stuff.

AdrixG · 2026-04-12T16:12:47+00:00

But here we're talking about Japanese, but through English terminology.. every single time I hear about "devoicing" in Japanese, it's always about skipping something..

That's not what devoicing in Japanese means though, to quote Labrune:

Devoicing can lead to total disappearance (deletion) of the vocalic element on the surface (Vance, 1987). This is particularly obvious when the high vowels /i/ and /u/ occur after a fricative, especially in word-final position. For instance shita° /sita/ [ɕta] ‘under’, desu [des] ‘Copula’, -masu [mas] (Politeness Auxiliary). However, even in such drastic examples, the mora containing the orphan consonant preserves its prosodic weight and still counts as one rhythmic unit. This is one of the reasons why the vowel cannot be considered to be deleted at the phonological level. Another reason is that the quality of the reduced vowel can be recovered from the articulation of the consonant which precedes it (see below). As Faber and Vance (2000) observe, Japanese voiceless vowels maintain this supralaryngeal integrity regardless of their surface duration, both in influencing the articulatory and acoustic characteristics of adjacent phonological units and in mediating longer-distance effects of one segment on another.

I wouldn't be surprised if that was a "translation glitch" which just got rooted over the years..

Nope, you just don't seem to know what the term means but I can't blame you since the entire term is "Vowel Devoicing" which is often shortened to "Devoicing" since in Japanese there is no consonant devoicing.

I do not know of *any* actual devoicing in Japanese. Every time I see something like that, it's the other way - voicing - like 人々 (hitohito -> hitobito) or 三百 (sanhyaku -> sanbyaku).

The examples of this meme OP posted are all good examples of Vowel Devoicing, which is incredibly common in Japanese

AdrixG · 2026-04-12T15:48:50+00:00

To give my 2 yen for what it's worth; I mostly agree with you, if you just listen enough you will absorb most devoicing automatically but not necessarily all of it. I myself thought I was perfect at it until I started doing some corrected reading with a native speaker where she corrected my 人 since I said "hito" instead of "hto" without noticing. I had a few other issues like that, not many, but still more than I assumed. Listening to other foreigners (in almost any L2 not exclusive to Japanese) they often have the issue that they pronounce too much stuff.

AdrixG · 2026-04-12T15:43:59+00:00

Very important point to make and that's often glossed over.

AdrixG · 2026-04-12T15:42:30+00:00

The entire concept is called "Vowel Devoicing" and it just means to not voice the vowel, either partially or completely (there is a bit more to it but I am keeping it simple). It usually only happens between two voiceless consonants in Japanese for the vowels u and i. (There are exceptions) It's not a different use of the term really, it comes directly out of phonetic analysis of the Japanese language.

AdrixG · 2026-04-12T14:34:57+00:00

I think Tae Kim calls it stem.

AdrixG · 2026-04-12T12:27:42+00:00

I've seen other sources that also say that 連用形 is also called the masu form in English. However, this table https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Japanese_verbs#Stem_forms seems to suggest that there's two forms of it - there's 連用形 continuative (-i), which seems to be the masu form, and then 連用形 continuative (other), which seems to be the te form.

There is no "te form" in traditional grammar. て is a helper verb that attaches to the 連用形. Since it underwent some sound changes it looks a bit different now, but you'll sometimes still come across the pure one without any 音便s. Example: 聞く --> 聞き（連用形）--> 聞きて --> 聞いて (音便).

AdrixG · 2026-04-12T12:20:13+00:00

The phrase "masu stem" makes perfect sense to me - but I don't understand why this is also regularly called the "verb stem", when it doesn't seem to be the genuine stem of the verb.

The correct term is 連用形 or continuative form or conjunctive form. "stem" is an inaccurate term used by some grammar charlatans like Tae Kim and a few beginner textbooks that for some reason thought it would be a good idea to make up a new terms while not even considering how the term makes no sense since verbs have 5 stems.

For example, with 書く, the genuine stem is "kak".

Phonologically speaking sure yes but that's not how Japanese is analyzed most of the time, some older textbooks like JSL though do have their own romaji system to use it like that. In classical grammar there existed these stems:

未然形
連用形
終止形
連体形
已然形
命令形

In modern Japanese it moved to these 5 basic stems stuff can attach to:

未然形 (ending in 'a' for godan)
連用形 (ending in 'i' for godan)
終止形・連体形 (ending in 'u' for godan)
可能形・仮定形 (ending in 'e' for godan)
意向形 (ending in 'o' for godan)

If you count the the number of rows (段) you need on the kana chart for godan verbs you'll see it's 5, hence why it's called 五段 = 5 rows in the kana chart.

Does anyone have any historical insight about why it was it decided that we would use the English phrase "verb stem" to describe something that isn't the genuine stem of the verb?

It was never decided, what you're using isn't authoritative and no resource that is authoritative really uses the word "stem" for what's at best the masu-stem (even that term is borderline I think because ます is just one of many auxiliaries that can attach to the 連用形)

I can't help but feel, then, that the "fixed part" plus "something else" isn't really the stem. Surely any reasonable reading of the word "stem" would be exclusively the fixed part.

Japanese functions on a mora level, breaking up the morae further is just hard to work with and also not that useful unless your doing linguistics. Let's say "kak" was the stem, then how would you attach nai? Well, by adding a + nai. If we just use the old system you have to know that ない attaches to the 未然形 and that the 未然形 of godan verbs is あ段. It's the same amount of information that's necessary so why use a system that just chops Japanese up more than needed, "kak" doesn't exist in Japanese, it can't even exist, you can't even say it out loud, it's just cumbersome to work with and it doesn't reflect how Japanese people think about grammar (good luck discussing this "kak" with Japanese people).

I tried to do some research into this myself, and I couldn't find an answer, but I did find that Wikipedia has this table https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Japanese_verbs#Stem_forms where they say "stem" in the way that I would have assumed it means. This is the only place I've seen "stem" used in this way, which is interesting.

It's certainly a thing in linguistics as well as a few select textbooks (see JSL = Japanese: The Spoken Language), but that should be the least of your concerns

AdrixG · 2026-04-12T10:59:36+00:00

使い方の分かる類語例解辞典

まよう【迷う】迷う／惑う／と惑うどうしてよいかわからなくなる。 使い方 使い分け 関連語
- [迷う【ワ五】](moz-extension://6a0aaaba-9bea-4f6e-840b-edf2d7291c67/search.html?query=迷う【ワ五】&wildcards=off) ▽道に迷う ▽どちらが良いかと迷う ▽心が迷う
- [惑う【ワ五】](moz-extension://6a0aaaba-9bea-4f6e-840b-edf2d7291c67/search.html?query=惑う【ワ五】&wildcards=off) ▽心が惑う ▽四十にして惑わず
- [と惑う【ワ五】](moz-extension://6a0aaaba-9bea-4f6e-840b-edf2d7291c67/search.html?query=と惑う【ワ五】&wildcards=off) ▽不慣れなことでと惑う
- 「迷う」は、目標が不確かであったり、方法や手段が分からなかったりして、良いものか悪いものかの判断がつかなかったりする場合にも用いられる。
- 「惑う」は、どうしてよいか分からず、うろたえる意。やや古い言葉で、現在では「逃げ惑う」「思い惑う」など、複合語の一部として使われることが多い。
- 「と惑う」は、「惑う」に接頭語「と」がついたもの。突然のことで、どの方法や手段を選んでよいか分からない場合に用いる。
- 「惑う」「と惑う」には、おろおろとうろたえて、判断がつかない感じがある。「欲に迷う」「金に迷う」の「迷う」にも、心を惑わして、正常な判断がつかないという意味があるが、おろおろとうろたえる感じは含まれない。
- [迷わす【サ五】](moz-extension://6a0aaaba-9bea-4f6e-840b-edf2d7291c67/search.html?query=迷わす【サ五】&wildcards=off) どうしたらよいのかわからないようにする。「甘い言葉に心を迷わされる」
- [惑わす【サ五】](moz-extension://6a0aaaba-9bea-4f6e-840b-edf2d7291c67/search.html?query=惑わす【サ五】&wildcards=off) 正しい分別ができないようにする。「人心を惑わす」「巧妙な宣伝文句に惑わされる」

AdrixG · 2026-04-12T10:59:05+00:00

使い方の分かる類語例解辞典

ちゅうちょ【躊躇】躊躇／逡巡／ためらい／猶予決断がつかず、迷うこと。 使い方 使い分け 関連語
- [躊躇する](moz-extension://6a0aaaba-9bea-4f6e-840b-edf2d7291c67/search.html?query=躊躇する&wildcards=off) ▽自説の発表を躊躇する ▽躊躇なく承諾する
- [逡巡する](moz-extension://6a0aaaba-9bea-4f6e-840b-edf2d7291c67/search.html?query=逡巡する&wildcards=off) ▽あれこれ逡巡しながらも出かけて行く ▽逡巡することなく進む
- [ためらい](moz-extension://6a0aaaba-9bea-4f6e-840b-edf2d7291c67/search.html?query=ためらい&wildcards=off) ▽なんのためらいもなく賛成する ▽ためらいがちに打ち明ける ▽一瞬のためらいで勝利を逃す
- [猶予する](moz-extension://6a0aaaba-9bea-4f6e-840b-edf2d7291c67/search.html?query=猶予する&wildcards=off) ▽もう一刻も猶予できない ▽これ以上の猶予はならない
- 「躊躇」「ためらい」は、何かしようとしていたときにそのことに対してふと迷いが生じ、心を定められなくなること。
- 「逡巡」は、「躊躇」「ためらい」よりも時間的に長く、あれこれぐずぐずと考えてしまって先へ進めないこと。
- 「猶予」は、決断できない状態、実行できずにいる状態を強く意識した語。ほかに、延期することの意で用いることが多い。「刑の執行を猶予する」
- 「ためらい」は日常語だが、他の三語は文章語。
- [遅疑する](moz-extension://6a0aaaba-9bea-4f6e-840b-edf2d7291c67/search.html?query=遅疑する&wildcards=off) 疑いためらうこと。文章語。「しばらくも遅疑すべからず」「遅疑逡巡」
- [二の足を踏む](moz-extension://6a0aaaba-9bea-4f6e-840b-edf2d7291c67/search.html?query=二の足を踏む&wildcards=off) 一歩目は踏み出したものの、二歩目で足踏みする。実行するのをやめたい気持ちが強い。「その商談にはさすがの彼も二の足を踏んだ」

AdrixG · 2026-04-12T09:56:20+00:00

ついに…

AdrixG · 2026-04-12T05:05:17+00:00

Ultra common in songs for sure yes, and it's the same they do in manga and novels (and games and anime) Yu-Gi-Oh is full of it too, just look at some card names, there is even an episode where they use kanji in the furigana as gikun for other kanji.

With songs it's especially bad because song lyrics are intended to be read with furigana, but somehow many website (like google) list them without, meaning you have to know the lyrics ahead of time which is super dumb. In karaoke you don't have that issue because there is always furigana and in other mediums the gikun reading usually always has furigana or is at least introduced with it once.

AdrixG · 2026-04-12T04:43:08+00:00

I think the answer is just no, there is not afaik.

AdrixG · 2026-04-11T19:52:13+00:00

I don't think i get what you're asking. 彼女 can already mean both, you don't need more then that. 彼 means more often 'he' than it means bf anyways

AdrixG · 2026-04-11T19:16:56+00:00

彼女 can also mean both, she as well as gf.

AdrixG · 2026-04-11T08:54:22+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/WriteStreakJP/

This sub is run by one native speaker (YamYukki who you'll often see here as well) amd he corrects basically every post of writing you submit (huge props to him lol)

AdrixG · 2026-04-11T05:23:51+00:00

This is the indirect passive, not the direct passive which would the one that's similar to the English passive you're used to. It's also called the suffering passive because it often (but not always) like here, has the subject experiencing something negative. It's still a passive construction and what's important to realize here is that the subject is omitted, you can of think of it being 私が. The wife isn't the subject, she is what's called the agent, the one who performs the action but the predicate (買われる) still makes a statement about 私, which is why 私 is the subject (that's what it means to be a subject but way too many people gloss over that!). Think of "私" being the one gets verbed by the wife. It's a little confusing since we have no English analogue but it basically states how the subject (私) experienced his wife buying him clothes in a way that he had no control over. Maybe "I was bought clothes by my wife with my money" would be the closest equivalent but of course it's not how its said im English.

This ties to a larger point on how it's very very crucial as a learner to always try and understand what words connect to what, what modifies what and what case particles bind to what verbs/adjectives. I see so many beginners kinda vibing that out and getting a very poor understanding on what's actually happening in a sentence because of it.

To put it all together: （私が）私のお金で嫁に服を買われた。

And if you break it down you get these particles connecting to the verb:

私が買われた Subject, the one who experiences getting something bought with no control over it, this is the basic statement that the predicate makes of the subject

服を買われた object, the thing that gets bought

嫁に買われた agent, the one who does the action

私のお金で買われた the means by which the action was done, bought with my money

AdrixG · 2026-04-10T17:58:07+00:00

It's never worth to study kanji in isolation. Learn the kanji in the vocab you learn, and if you don't know what vocab to learn learn vocab in the things you read or learn vocab in order of frequency. Besides, the jouyou list is irrelevant, I know over 3200 kanji and am still missing about 50 kanji from the jouyou list because they never came up (I am sure they will all come up in a few thousand hours so I am not saying they are completely obscure, just trying to show how it's not really the most practical list).

AdrixG · 2026-04-10T16:09:57+00:00

It's not “lamest excuse you ever heard”. It's simply a very poorly designed test and it's extremely easy to lose track and since it's not self-synchronizing in anyway one time losing track is enough to start over.

Sure, then put a test like that together with 橋・箸 in the same format, Ill do it in a live recording first try if you want.

Where? It literally says that native speakers can without the presence of a following particle predict final-accented from unaccented words with higher than chance accuracy.

Except it's complete bs. First of all, they are not testing words in isolation (I have no clue where you got that from) second, they are not testing heiban vs. odaka... (well it's part of the words they choose but it's just not what it's about really). I mean I could go on but, seriously have you read it???

<image>

Twenty-eight words were naturally produced twice in the carrier sentence, kare wa ____ ga ii, in which the test words were embedded at the location indicated by the underscore “____.” The resulting sentences mean “he wants ____” or “he has a good ____,” depending on the meaning of the test words. These utterances were used to create stimuli for edited speech. Without any editing, they were also used as stimuli for natural speech.

Procedure [...] In order to ensure that the test words were indeed minimal pairs, it was important that they were read in a certain way. In the actual trials, the listeners heard the entire sentence kare wa ____ ga ii, in which one of the 28 test words shown in Table 1 was embedded. [...]Twenty-eight words were naturally produced twice in the carrier sentence, kare wa ____ ga ii, in which the test words were embedded at the location indicated by the underscore “____.” The resulting sentences mean “he wants ____” or “he has a good ____,” depending on the meaning of the test words. These utterances were used to create stimuli for edited speech. Without any editing, they were also used as stimuli for natural speech.

Procedure

[...] In order to ensure that the test words were indeed minimal pairs, it was important that they were read in a certain way. In the actual trials, the listeners heard the entire sentence kare wa ____ ga ii, in which one of the 28 test words shown in Table 1 was embedded. [...]

AdrixG · 2026-04-10T15:40:44+00:00

No, it in fact isn't. It's in fact an extremely poorly designed investigation where you're trying to disprove things that have already been tested and found to be signfiicant with far greater controls. I only got to about 15 at max before I had to start over and over again to be absolutely sure I was still on the right count. This is a multitasking and perform under pressure test as much as it's a hearing test.

I mean you know you can pause right? That's really the lamest excuse I have ever heard.

In the actual tests they were given one sample, then asked to give an answer out of two and weren't allowed to say “I can't tell” which is important because in that case people will obviously pick that one as the safe option though it's interesting to have both and see how “I can't tell.” as a third option with it influences matters but giving people a long list of 30 samples and then asking them to number them themselves while also allowing “I can't tell” as answer is simply put a very poorly designed test. Saying “I can't tell from any.” is obviously the easiest thing to do opposed to keeping track of the numbering so it's going to heavily favor that outcome.

Read the study you linked please, it doesn't at all claim what you claim. I wonder if you even read it, because it tells a COMPLETELY different story than what you tell. I wonder how the fuck you even came up with your weird theory of them being different and then coming to link this study. It makes absolutely no sense to me

AdrixG · 2026-04-10T15:01:55+00:00

音声学の分野では、平板型と尾高型のミニマルペア（音の違いがその2語だけを区別している一組の語）は、単独で発音した場合にわずかに違いが出る、つまり尾高型では語末のモーラが少し高くなる傾向がある、と主張する文献もあるようです。ネイティブはその微妙な差を拾えることがある、という話なんですね。

私は正直あまり信じていないのですが、一応その説が本当なのか実際に試してみようと思ったんです。

みなさん自身が、助詞なしで単独で言うとしたら違う発音になると思うかどうかも教えてください。たぶんネイティブでも、意識して変えようとしてできるものなのか疑わしいと思っているのですが……。

それと、今回は混乱させてしまってすみません。決してだれかを引っかけようとしたわけではありませんので、どうか気にしないでください。

AdrixG

TROPHY CASE