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Learning Japanese • 日本語の勉強 |これはOTです| ゆっくりしていいぞ！
- Thread starter Resilient
- Start date
I'm following Japanese classes and while it's quite a bit difficult (I felt like laughing/crying when we did the lesson about counter words) I find kanji incredibly interesting as a way to create new words and all. I still have a bit of difficulty with some finer points of grammar though
Do you have any areas in specific that you think are weak? Maybe someone can help you (obviously not me, as I have disgraced myself)
Mainly the particles but I reckon I haven't been studying lately (I'm still doing flashcards of kanji we've reviewed in class) so I'm the one at fault here ha ha but thanks for the offer.
I bought the Marugoto A1 (mandatory for classes) but it's the Minna No Nihongo that's pretty good for self study even if it can be a bit difficult at times (English isn't my first langage so I have to do a double translation in my head sometimes)
I bought the Marugoto A1 (mandatory for classes) but it's the Minna No Nihongo that's pretty good for self study even if it can be a bit difficult at times (English isn't my first langage so I have to do a double translation in my head sometimes)
Sorry for not replying sooner. Thanks for the heads-up!
Honestly, I think I'm going to refrain from watching it. I love slowbeef, but this doesn't look like the best way to practice my Japanese.
Speaking of let's plays, I've been watching this let's play of 巨影都市, this silly disaster game where Ultraman, Godzilla, Evas and all sorts of giant monsters show up and wreak havoc in the city. They're incredibly silly, which makes for a fun let's play, and I love 牛沢's laugh (the let's player). Here's the whole playlist for those of you interested:
Yeah, I've been meaning to dabble into GoldenDict for a while. Just set it up, looks pretty clean and useful, though you obviously need your own dictionary files. I'll have to give it a more thorough shot. Thanks for reminding me.
As an alternative, you can also use the Firefox (and Chrome?) add-on Yomichan, which functions a bit like Rikaichan, except you can import any dictionary like GoldenDict. The caveat is that you can only use it within your browser obviously, but it's pretty convenient if you don't feel like installing an entirely new piece of software on your PC.
After like a month of playing Gihren's Greed, I finally decided to open up the manual and look at what the stats mean while killing time until family Christmas party. I was surprised at how easy that was; it feels like my mind's become very accustomed to working in kanji now. There are a few key terms that repeat constantly, and once I looked those up then I could breeze through most of the rest.
Of the sections I looked at, there were only a few points where I have some confusion:
The one thing that gets me is the か, which I don't think I've seen before in this sense and don't understand the function of in this sentence. Taking to the dictionary, I took it as 化, and figured it's more or less equivalent of の or こと.
Now, just going from common sense, when you hear that morale has a relationship with fatigue and attack power, you'd figure that it would combat the former and boost the latter. The thing that confused me was 受けにくくなる. It makes sense when you think of it as being difficult to receive, in the sense of being difficult for the action of retrieving to occur at all. But when I first read it, I interpreted it in the sense of "difficult to defend", as in being difficult to perform the action of retrieving. I don't know if the ambiguity is actually there or if I'm introducing it in my interpretation.
濃いほど得意地形 is the only part which I can't parse at all, which is why my attempt at translation is just some gobbledygook. Here's how the terrain affinity display looks in-game:
If the kanji doesn't appear, it can't perform the action on that terrain. If it's shaded, it can perform the action but not at full capacity. I assume that the line is referring to that, but I don't know what it's saying.
Of the sections I looked at, there were only a few points where I have some confusion:
My interpretation is "Hostile technology LV: Represents the extent of acquisition of the enemy faction's technology."
The one thing that gets me is the か, which I don't think I've seen before in this sense and don't understand the function of in this sentence. Taking to the dictionary, I took it as 化, and figured it's more or less equivalent of の or こと.
I took it as "Morale: If this numeral is high, the influence of the amount of fatigue will become hard to receive. Also, hand-to-hand combat attack power will also increase."
Now, just going from common sense, when you hear that morale has a relationship with fatigue and attack power, you'd figure that it would combat the former and boost the latter. The thing that confused me was 受けにくくなる. It makes sense when you think of it as being difficult to receive, in the sense of being difficult for the action of retrieving to occur at all. But when I first read it, I interpreted it in the sense of "difficult to defend", as in being difficult to perform the action of retrieving. I don't know if the ambiguity is actually there or if I'm introducing it in my interpretation.
"Attack/Movement: Unit's terrain suitability. Represented in 3 levels. Total darkness triumph terrain (P.30 reference)"
濃いほど得意地形 is the only part which I can't parse at all, which is why my attempt at translation is just some gobbledygook. Here's how the terrain affinity display looks in-game:
If the kanji doesn't appear, it can't perform the action on that terrain. If it's shaded, it can perform the action but not at full capacity. I assume that the line is referring to that, but I don't know what it's saying.
RE: the L/R N/M/NG conversation on the last page, all of these are correct. Well, more not wrong than correct. The trick is that the underlying concept of the 'r' sound has several different realizations depending on the environment. They are what are called allophones. This phenomenon is widely observed in human languages, including English and Japanese. There's some more concrete examples at the link.
It's just the question particle か being used to link a question phrase to the rest of the sentence, in this case どれだけ入手しているか (how much of the enemy's technology you've acquired). You may have seen this before, but it's how Japanese marks of things like "I don't know what I want to eat." 何を食べたいかわからない。
影響を受ける means "be affected by" or perhaps "suffer the effects of" (though without the latter's negative connotations).
〜にくくなる can often mean sometheing along the lines of "(you) suffer (something) to a lesser degree" or "it becomes less likely for X to (happen)"
I don't know the mechanics of the game but I'd take this to mean that higher levels of morale reduces the effects of your fatigue level, or if those effects are a chance to occur it would reduce the rate at which they occur.
濃い isn't darkness, it's "deepness" of shading. 濃いほど means "the deeper the shading" which in this case would actually mean the ones which are "lit up" rather than "grayed out.""Attack/Movement: Unit's terrain suitability. Represented in 3 levels. Total darkness triumph terrain (P.30 reference)"
濃いほど得意地形 is the only part which I can't parse at all, which is why my attempt at translation is just some gobbledygook. Here's how the terrain affinity display looks in-game:
If the kanji doesn't appear, it can't perform the action on that terrain. If it's shaded, it can perform the action but not at full capacity. I assume that the line is referring to that, but I don't know what it's saying.
得意 isn't "triumph" but "good at" or "suited for"
The deeper the shading, the better the unit is at handling that terrain.
Thanks TheSporkWithin . All of that makes sense. I guess I didn't interpret どれだけ as a question because the whole of the sentence it's in is a description,
Apparently it's the new "lol" because wwwww looks like grass? That's what I've gathered.
Apparently it's the new "lol" because wwwww looks like grass? That's what I've gathered.
Is there room in this thread for someone just barely starting? I'm going to order some of the books from the OP next week but I'll be going over the Hiragana and Katakana charts an hour a day to start getting disciplined into learning the language.
Yes. You can ask all your questions here and you will get beginner advice too if you need it.
Good luck. Do you have any schedule in mind? How much time you're going to invest daily and what you're going to focus on after hiragana and katakana?
Right now, I'll have 2 hours, at least, a day to do it. I have a long commute so I have plenty of time to read. Not sure about a set schedule after that other than learning some Kanji daily and going through grammar.
Get SOD on the line; we've got the new hit genre.
Feel free to ask questions if you have any. Long commutes are fantastic for learning language. I think you can get results.
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Hey guys,
I hope you've had a wonderful 2018 and are already geared up for 2019.
What did you achieve in 2018 and what are your goals for 2019?
My goals 2018
The result has been a huge improvement. Sentences that looked intimidating are either clear or easier to figure out how they are made up. Instances where sentences look intimidating are less common and my understanding of Japanese is better than before. It feels great to see all the effort paying off, being able to enjoy reading texts and less trying to figure them out every time. That doesn't stop me from making mistakes and needing help. So thank you for 2018 guys ;)
My goals for 2019
2018 also marked the start of using RTK in the last 3-4 months. For a while I believed that it was better to learn words made up of kanji instead of individual kanji based on my past experience. It's still very important to learn words but I also finally found a way to learn kanji that is suited with my learning style. Knowing kanji and how to write them is going to help dramatically in the long run. It's going to be a challenge to complete RTK1 based on my schedule but I'm hoping to get it done this year.
See my above reply. It helps to have goals and work on them. It's not going to be easy at the start. You have a lot to learn and don't know what to focus on. Focusing on kana and then kanji & grammar sounds like a plan but don't get discouraged and let all that effort go to waste. If you feel unsure about how to go further or want detailed help with your studying, feel free to discuss more here. What books did you order?
I hope you've had a wonderful 2018 and are already geared up for 2019.
What did you achieve in 2018 and what are your goals for 2019?
My goals 2018
- Get better at grammar by having a stronger foundation (= mastering the basics)
- Understanding Japanese better
- Increase my vocabulary
The result has been a huge improvement. Sentences that looked intimidating are either clear or easier to figure out how they are made up. Instances where sentences look intimidating are less common and my understanding of Japanese is better than before. It feels great to see all the effort paying off, being able to enjoy reading texts and less trying to figure them out every time. That doesn't stop me from making mistakes and needing help. So thank you for 2018 guys ;)
My goals for 2019
- Getting better at grammar (finish the basics/intermediate and start mastering advanced)
- Complete RTK1
2018 also marked the start of using RTK in the last 3-4 months. For a while I believed that it was better to learn words made up of kanji instead of individual kanji based on my past experience. It's still very important to learn words but I also finally found a way to learn kanji that is suited with my learning style. Knowing kanji and how to write them is going to help dramatically in the long run. It's going to be a challenge to complete RTK1 based on my schedule but I'm hoping to get it done this year.
See my above reply. It helps to have goals and work on them. It's not going to be easy at the start. You have a lot to learn and don't know what to focus on. Focusing on kana and then kanji & grammar sounds like a plan but don't get discouraged and let all that effort go to waste. If you feel unsure about how to go further or want detailed help with your studying, feel free to discuss more here. What books did you order?
I already did my own search and asked a friend to confirm, but just to triple check: there's no ebook version of 響け！ユーフォニウム in jpn is there? It would help immensely if I didn't have to manually use a dictionary to look up words, or could at least copy paste text.
My New Year's resolution this year is "simple" - be able to get through the copy of Frozen I bought in Japan and/or a "basic" manga with assistance from a dictionary. But be able to get through it without losing motivation or quitting due to difficulty. I am working through Genki because that seems to be the most recommended, but I'm going to try and supplement it with whatever people suggest here and/or elsewhere.
The big thing I am trying to get over after my first day is that, despite being able to recognize all hiragana and katakana, I still struggle to read words. Like, it's a VERY slow and painful process. Can I assume that this is normal and I need to push forward? And just add the words to my vocab list to practice everyday until reading them becomes second nature?
And as for kanji, I have read that Genki is not a great place to start. So I want to supplement with something and start putting those into my routine, too. I also jumped onto kanjicards.org and started looking at the Grade 1 kanji. But like, I look at 日 and there's 10 definitions there all with a bunch of other kanji. So like, what do I do? Do I make flashcards for 日 + the 10 words and memorize all those? I guess I'm a bit overwhelmed by how to start learning the kanji since they're so different from what we're used to in English.
The big thing I am trying to get over after my first day is that, despite being able to recognize all hiragana and katakana, I still struggle to read words. Like, it's a VERY slow and painful process. Can I assume that this is normal and I need to push forward? And just add the words to my vocab list to practice everyday until reading them becomes second nature?
And as for kanji, I have read that Genki is not a great place to start. So I want to supplement with something and start putting those into my routine, too. I also jumped onto kanjicards.org and started looking at the Grade 1 kanji. But like, I look at 日 and there's 10 definitions there all with a bunch of other kanji. So like, what do I do? Do I make flashcards for 日 + the 10 words and memorize all those? I guess I'm a bit overwhelmed by how to start learning the kanji since they're so different from what we're used to in English.
I don't think I have a good, verifiable measure of how much I accomplished because I don't do a standard thing like RTK and have ignored the JLPT. But last December, I had finished with Human Japanese Intermediate and built my Anki deck with the jouyou kanji and a few thousand words from a frequency list. In January, I was struggling with Anki because I limited my amount of new cards and reviews, which both caused more harm than good.
So, in this year, my vocabulary increased immensely and I went from knowing the radicals and a handful of kanji to knowing a health chunk (maybe half? haven't measured) of the jouyou kanji. Later on, I realized that my reading was slow, so I began adding sentences to my deck. Earlier in the year I felt like it was physically exhausting to go through a few pages of a shounen manga, now I feel comfortable reading through more kanji-heavy stuff.
Mostly I'm just thinking of continuing with my updated Anki as I have been, and adding listening exercise since I'm terrible in that area. Once I'm done with that, I already feel like I'm getting fairly close to where I want to be, so I can consider winding down and transitioning from study to practice. Like, just enjoying that I knowing the language and having fun making use of it, developing my skills that way. I feel like I've got a strong enough vocabulary at this point that I don't need to worry as much about actively seeking words now and can start just grabbing them as I go along, and I'm comfortable with enough of the basic grammar that I easily gain more value in seeing more sentences and get used to normal expressions than reading about them. I guess I should start looking at the JLPT too.
. . .
This is more of a thread etiquette question than anything. Do the lot of you feel like you get some benefit from other people posting sentences?
I'm continuing to pour over the Gihren's Greed manual and while I'm not finding that I have any recurring problems I can identify, there are occasional sentences here and there which I find confusing or strangely phrased. Since I've played the game quite a bit already I generally have a good idea of what the whole thing's supposed to say and I'm hardly desperate for answers. My thinking is that I'll probably just figure out most of these issues gradually as I read more Japanese and I don't really need to worry about them unless I keep running into difficulty.
But since I'm keeping all of this in Notepad anyway, I could post these sentences just as easily. So if anyone actually wants to look at them I can post them. I just don't want to come across as if I'm demanding freelance translation work if I end up posting a dozen lines from a forty page game manual.
Reading gets easier over time for a couple of reasons. Being able to recognize words and tell where the particles are in the sentence takes practice; kanji improves both of those a lot and it's one of the reasons you'll be very relieved to have learned it. With just kana you're not definitively sure what word the author meant and sometimes if it's a word at all. I also found earlier on that it was exhausting, in the sense that I would actually feel like I needed to rest after reading too much. That also goes away over time. Actually, a lot of this stuff got easier if I went in harder and forced myself to be broken in to that skill, but that might just be me.
With learning kanji, a few things. It's not immensely useful to know all of the associated sounds in isolation, and since kunyomi and onyomi are generally used in two different cases, you can just focus on learning words that have the kanji. The various definitions of 日 make more sense when you see that 日 (ひ) is the Sun, 日曜日 (にちようび) is Sunday, 日記 (にっき), 日光 (にっこう)... It's like how "day" is both a measure of time and the period where the sun is out.
I studied the kanji radicals before looking at other lists or books, which I felt helped me to mentally break the kanji up into parts that I could recognize and more easily learn. But I've heard others say that you just pick those up anyway, so I dunno if that's necessary.
My main problem with reading is that sometimes I loose track of who's talking.
When I first started Japanese it was pretty easy because the texts were pretty easy and straightforward,
but in N3 it gets a little bit trickier..
There may be text where a father is talking about his son for example and suddenly I'm like
"Wait is he still talking about his son or is he suddenly talking about himself".
There are of course a lot of grammatical ways to figure out who's talking but it takes practice to master it
and not start wondering those things when you read :P.
Is there maybe a trick people do to figure this out or is it just practice?
When I first started Japanese it was pretty easy because the texts were pretty easy and straightforward,
but in N3 it gets a little bit trickier..
There may be text where a father is talking about his son for example and suddenly I'm like
"Wait is he still talking about his son or is he suddenly talking about himself".
There are of course a lot of grammatical ways to figure out who's talking but it takes practice to master it
and not start wondering those things when you read :P.
Is there maybe a trick people do to figure this out or is it just practice?
You don't get good to start reading.
You start reading to get good.
(says the guy who hasn't read nearly as much as he should've)
Happy New Year!
You start reading to get good.
(says the guy who hasn't read nearly as much as he should've)
Happy New Year!
New duck I see! It also has a hat apparently, like the last one xD...
Happy New Year!!!!
I started learning in February of last year, from scratch. About two hours of study every day and now I passed the N3 level mock test on the JLPT website. And now I can go on to some Japanese streaming websites and at least have some basic conversations with Japanese people.
My study method was solely through anki and just speaking to Japanese people through the internet. I didn't spend any money on books. I started the Heisig deck first after learning Hiragana/Katakana which in hindsight I probably could have skipped, but it did help me a lot more because I tried to learn some words to go along with the kanji in the beginning. Next came the Core 2000 sentence deck which I finished in three months. Right now I'm doing the Nayr's core 5000 deck which has listening and reading cards of about 5000 sentences, doubling to 10,000 cards. This is still gonna take me a few months to finish but is very useful and I highly recommend it.
The biggest problem is the fact that you need to know around 10,000 words to be of the level where you can converse comfortably on most subjects and I'm probably at 2-3000 so far.
The best feeling is when you can manage to recall words for the first time correctly that you studied and use them in correct context during conversation.
My study method was solely through anki and just speaking to Japanese people through the internet. I didn't spend any money on books. I started the Heisig deck first after learning Hiragana/Katakana which in hindsight I probably could have skipped, but it did help me a lot more because I tried to learn some words to go along with the kanji in the beginning. Next came the Core 2000 sentence deck which I finished in three months. Right now I'm doing the Nayr's core 5000 deck which has listening and reading cards of about 5000 sentences, doubling to 10,000 cards. This is still gonna take me a few months to finish but is very useful and I highly recommend it.
The biggest problem is the fact that you need to know around 10,000 words to be of the level where you can converse comfortably on most subjects and I'm probably at 2-3000 so far.
The best feeling is when you can manage to recall words for the first time correctly that you studied and use them in correct context during conversation.
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Hey guys, happy new year.
I have reached 547 kanji today in RTK (starting lesson 3 tonight or tomorrow) and for 2019 I decided to start learning some vocabulary along with my studies (10 words a week) while trying (I say trying because I'm really bad at the moment at reading) read stuff in Japanese at least each day by using NHK easy news and Satori Reader etc ...
Still amazed that I was able to memorize that much at 38 years old lol.
I'm also doing grammar daily.
About a week ago I got Dragon Quest Builders 2 for the PS4, the game got furigana so it helps a lot.
The way I do it is, read the game dialogue then try to see what are the kanji I know or kana words/expression etc ... then I try to make sense of it and check the word I don't know with my phone dictionary, I use Takobot so I have an option to create word list so I created one for DQ Builders 2 .
The good news is I am able to understand much more than I thought I would just by seeing kanji thx to RTK.
I have reached 547 kanji today in RTK (starting lesson 3 tonight or tomorrow) and for 2019 I decided to start learning some vocabulary along with my studies (10 words a week) while trying (I say trying because I'm really bad at the moment at reading) read stuff in Japanese at least each day by using NHK easy news and Satori Reader etc ...
Still amazed that I was able to memorize that much at 38 years old lol.
I'm also doing grammar daily.
About a week ago I got Dragon Quest Builders 2 for the PS4, the game got furigana so it helps a lot.
The way I do it is, read the game dialogue then try to see what are the kanji I know or kana words/expression etc ... then I try to make sense of it and check the word I don't know with my phone dictionary, I use Takobot so I have an option to create word list so I created one for DQ Builders 2 .
The good news is I am able to understand much more than I thought I would just by seeing kanji thx to RTK.
I saw a comment on a pic on Instagram I'm having some trouble with. It's got a new word for me, and a use of no I'm not really familiar with. The photo was of the skeletal remains of a house on a rocky island in the sea. Pardon my romaji!
"Nanka no danjyan mitai desu ne?"
I'm pretty sure "danjyan" is "dungeon"; it was in katakana. I'm guessing the guy was saying something like "It looks like a dungeon" but I don't really get the use of no. I know it can be used to turn a noun into an adjective, but I would have thought "nanka" and "danjyan" would have been reversed in that case.
"Nanka no danjyan mitai desu ne?"
I'm pretty sure "danjyan" is "dungeon"; it was in katakana. I'm guessing the guy was saying something like "It looks like a dungeon" but I don't really get the use of no. I know it can be used to turn a noun into an adjective, but I would have thought "nanka" and "danjyan" would have been reversed in that case.
See Kurita's post.
As a sidenote, the text probably said "danjon" instead of "danjan", as that's how you would say the word in Japanese (i.e. ダンジョン).
Thanks! I need to study more consistently. I can do nail flashcards but still mix up certain kana when I see them in the wild.
Ok so I have a question regarding a sentence.
So I was reading the "N3 Grammar Speed Master" textbook and I was trying to
create sentences based on the the different grammatical rules the book references.
Here is the sentence where I was trying to include the ~たところ and ~くなる
"私は会社から払われたところ、プレセントが欲しくなった"
It's a silly little sentence and what I wanted to say was ""(Just) When I got paid by the company, I wanted a present"
The reason I wanted to use ~たところ here and not something else is because I wanted to emphasize the fact that the exact moment
I got paid (i.e. saw the money on my bank account) I had this sudden feeling of wanting a present for myself.
So I asked a native japanese friend of mine about this sentence and he changed it in order to sound better
and said to me that in this case ~ので is more suitable in order for the sentence to make more sense.
Is there no way to use ~たところ in this context?
This was his sentence btw
"私は会社から給料をもらったので、自分へのご褒美が欲しくなった"
So along with the change of ~たところ and ~ので
he also made some changes that created even more questions to me.
1)He changed 払われた to もらった.Is this change in order to be more polite is it because passive voice is not used like that
in as sentence such as this?
2)He added 自分への in order to point out that it was who wanted the present.
In my sentence I specifically didn't mention it because I thought the reader would understand I was talking about myself.
Could a japanese reader misinterpret it think I was talking about someone else?
3)He changed プレセント with ご褒美 which if I'm understanding correctly is more of reward you give for something you did.
Is プレセント completely wrong in this context or is ご褒美 just a more polite word to use in this case?
So yeah, I know sometimes I make simple things look more complicated, but it always ends up like this, sorry everyone :P.
Kilrogg will probably scold me about this :)
So I was reading the "N3 Grammar Speed Master" textbook and I was trying to
create sentences based on the the different grammatical rules the book references.
Here is the sentence where I was trying to include the ~たところ and ~くなる
"私は会社から払われたところ、プレセントが欲しくなった"
It's a silly little sentence and what I wanted to say was ""(Just) When I got paid by the company, I wanted a present"
The reason I wanted to use ~たところ here and not something else is because I wanted to emphasize the fact that the exact moment
I got paid (i.e. saw the money on my bank account) I had this sudden feeling of wanting a present for myself.
So I asked a native japanese friend of mine about this sentence and he changed it in order to sound better
and said to me that in this case ~ので is more suitable in order for the sentence to make more sense.
Is there no way to use ~たところ in this context?
This was his sentence btw
"私は会社から給料をもらったので、自分へのご褒美が欲しくなった"
So along with the change of ~たところ and ~ので
he also made some changes that created even more questions to me.
1)He changed 払われた to もらった.Is this change in order to be more polite is it because passive voice is not used like that
in as sentence such as this?
2)He added 自分への in order to point out that it was who wanted the present.
In my sentence I specifically didn't mention it because I thought the reader would understand I was talking about myself.
Could a japanese reader misinterpret it think I was talking about someone else?
3)He changed プレセント with ご褒美 which if I'm understanding correctly is more of reward you give for something you did.
Is プレセント completely wrong in this context or is ご褒美 just a more polite word to use in this case?
So yeah, I know sometimes I make simple things look more complicated, but it always ends up like this, sorry everyone :P.
Kilrogg will probably scold me about this :)
Jesus, I've made quite a reputation for myself, huh? I guess this is 自業自得...
Eien1no1Yami If you don't mind me being honest, I wasn't even sure what the sentence in English meant in the first place, so it figures that the Japanese translation of that was even more obscure to me.
In short:
- たところ is more about an event that happened suddenly as a direct follow-up to the first part of the sentence. In other words, it's a temporal relationship: one thing happened, then another happened right after. It would work if you were to say "Just as I got paid, my boss called to tell me I'm fired" or something, but you can't use it the way you did because the implied relationship between "I got paid" and "I wanted to treat myself" is one of causation. That's why your friend used ので instead.
- 払われた doesn't work because it's pure passive. It almost sounds like you had no part in it, and you're suffering from receiving payment whether you like it or not. It's way too matter of fact. Kinda like saying "I was given payment" or something lol
- 自分への is because, if you don't specify, even in the English sentence, we have no idea who you're talking about. That's why I said "I wanted to treat myself"
- プレセント feels wrong... And again, so does "present" in English in this case (hence "treat myself"). プレセント is an actual gift. ご褒美 is a treat, a reward.
Hope this helps.
Eien1no1Yami If you don't mind me being honest, I wasn't even sure what the sentence in English meant in the first place, so it figures that the Japanese translation of that was even more obscure to me.
In short:
- たところ is more about an event that happened suddenly as a direct follow-up to the first part of the sentence. In other words, it's a temporal relationship: one thing happened, then another happened right after. It would work if you were to say "Just as I got paid, my boss called to tell me I'm fired" or something, but you can't use it the way you did because the implied relationship between "I got paid" and "I wanted to treat myself" is one of causation. That's why your friend used ので instead.
- 払われた doesn't work because it's pure passive. It almost sounds like you had no part in it, and you're suffering from receiving payment whether you like it or not. It's way too matter of fact. Kinda like saying "I was given payment" or something lol
- 自分への is because, if you don't specify, even in the English sentence, we have no idea who you're talking about. That's why I said "I wanted to treat myself"
- プレセント feels wrong... And again, so does "present" in English in this case (hence "treat myself"). プレセント is an actual gift. ご褒美 is a treat, a reward.
Hope this helps.
Thanks for replying Kirogg and taking your time.
First of all I understand why you would struggle to understand the meaning of this sentence even in English because
even in my own native language it sounds weird and I don't think I would have said something like this in actual speech.
It was really a random sentence I came up with just by trying to include - たところ.
If I would say it properly in English it would be something like "The moment I received my payment, I felt this sudden urge to buy myself a present"
But my goal is just to create a simple sentence using - たところ.
Now let's touch some of your comments, I numbered them in order to reference them easier.
1)You say
but the thing is that I don't really want to emphasize on the cause but rather focus on the timing of this event, this specific moment.
2)I'm not quite sure how it is implied that I'm "suffering from receiving payment" or something like that.I mean yeah, it is a matter of fact because
you receive your payment every month, it's like business as usual.Again don't try to figure out why I suddenly wanted to buy something if it's business as usual, I just did.
3)I understand of course that by adding this bit it makes it more clear to whom you're talking to but I wanted to have a sentence as short as possible
so I omitted that part albeit I admit, it makes it more ambiguous.
4)You can say "I want a present" in English.If you just say this in English though it definitely implies that you except someone else to give you something not yourself :P.
Oh boy, the message ended up long again, sorry about this...
I feel like as that one non-French guy in this thread I should also support that the original sentence did feel weird as given in English. I assumed before your explanation that the present was for someone else and that it was just a quirk of timing, like maybe you got paid just before somebody's birthday and you're like "oh shit I got to get them something now don't I". You can use it for something you're buying yourself, but you'd probably state that explicitly because it's a weird assumption to make about something you're calling a present. And I guess some of the sense of weirdness comes from causality; it's a little different if all the money in the bank is making you feel this way or if it's just something that happens.
As for the "pure passive" and "suffering payment" thing, I guess what Kilrogg is getting it is that by turning into a passive action, it seems like you're just minding your own business and then payment suddenly happened to you somehow.
As for the "pure passive" and "suffering payment" thing, I guess what Kilrogg is getting it is that by turning into a passive action, it seems like you're just minding your own business and then payment suddenly happened to you somehow.
Then you would not use たところ anyway. Maybe something like 瞬間? Honestly, the idea you're trying to express is better conveyed through causation I feel, but maybe 給料をもらった瞬間、自分へのご褒美をする気分になった would work. Honestly though, you'd have to run this by a native/better speaker than me because I'm not even confident about this at all. The point is: there are a ton of ways to express your idea, but if you're dead set on saying it with the notion of "the moment I got paid, I felt like treating myself", then using phrases like たところ and the the word プレゼント definitely won't cut it.
Because that's how it is in Japanese. The passive form in Japanese really implies passiveness, as in being subjected to something, or, in some cases, suffering from it. I really can't say much else. Like... that's just how it is. You probably don't see how that's the way it works because you haven't seen it in the wild enough to realize it, and/or you're thinking in English or your native language.
See L Thammy and RangerBad's replies. It's just weird, even in English.
You're intellectualizing/strategizing this too much, and getting in over your head by trying to use words and expressions you haven't mastered yet. If you can't say something or are not familiar with it enough, that's okay. Either try to say it another way, with words you do know better, and that come somewhat naturally to you, or better yet: instead of trying to say things that are too complicated for you for now, get more Japanese immersion :). Think of it this way: your passive knowledge of a language will always be ahead of your active ability to use it. So it doesn't really make sense to try and make sentences using words whose nuances you don't fully grasp yet, does it? It sounds to me like it's a bit early for you to start focusing on writing/speaking. Try to listen and read more. And skim through a grammar book (without trying to memorize everything; just a cursory understanding of the most common rules will already help you tremendously). It'll all make sense in time.
In class we did like the school kids usually do on the first class in the first classes of the year, we did some calligraphy to write " あけましておめでとうございます " and the boar.
The ink in my calligraphy pen ran out so I did a terrible, terrible job at it ha ha.
The ink in my calligraphy pen ran out so I did a terrible, terrible job at it ha ha.
Thanks Kilrogg duly noted.
I'm really sorry if I sounded aggressive or something..
So I guess I'll stop creating sentences for now.
I mean are they even worth it?
Do other people do this for exercise?