しかし、まあ、あたし的にkhatzumotoさんとは違うところがあるっていうか、なんかこう、今は ‘all japanese all the time’のサポートがあるから独学できるが、大学に入る前に自信が全く無くて、クラスがなかったら、日本語を勉強し始められなかったと思う。遣る気がなかった所為かな。日本語の授業がなかったら、日本に住んでたときにも日本人とあまり話せなくて、文化に興味を持てなかっただろうと思うね。

今大学では、英語を通して勉強せざるを得ないところが多くて（日本語の授業で翻訳とかさせられてるし、他の講座でも英作文を書かなきゃいけないしね）・・・khatzumotoさんみたいに完全に自分の環境を日本語化したいけどね — もっと日本人の友達と彼氏と遊んだりして・・・卒業まで半年しか残ってないんで、我慢、我慢。

帰国してから気付いたことは、授業で習えることが極端に少なくて、日本のドラマを見たり、友達と喋ったり、本を読んだりしているお陰で、日本語を前より解るようになったね！そう思ったら、最初からkhatzumotoさんみたいに勉強したほうが良かった。

(I’m not sure that I can say this in Japanese…. so…) the problem that I have is that I know that I can almost always make what I’m trying to say understandable to whoever I’m talking to, but I’m pretty sure that my Japanese isn’t as good as it could be, partly because I’m sure that I have developed bad habits with it, and not had anybody to say ‘no, that’s wrong’. I’m not entirely sure now what I can do to correct these, or if there are even any significant problems to begin with…. I have asked my friends repeatedly to correct my Japanese, and as they do sometimes offer corrections to what I’m saying, I think that they are trying to help me, but I’m just not sure most of the time whether what I’m saying is right or not, and I’m not an amazingly confident person anyway (it actually took a lot for me to write in Japanese in this comment, because I don’t like the thought of other people who are learning Japanese (note, this doesn’t apply to native speakers at all, although I have no idea why) to judge my Japanese and think that it’s awful.. it’s stupid, I know), so I end up just getting really nervous, and maybe not being as adventurous with my language as I know that I should and could be, because I’m not sure whether I even get the basic stuff right.
Do you have any advice? I’m trying to take in as much Japanese as I possibly can and I’m trying to note down sentences etc as much as possible, and my boyfriend (who is Japanese) does correct me most of the time (unless it would spoil a moment or whatever) when I speak to him in Japanese, but I’m just not sure at all how to address the basic problems in my Japanese which I’m sure exist, or how to get over the insecurity that I have associated with them.

(this comment has ended up very rambly, I apologise! I also feel bad for only writing half of it in Japanese, I’m lazy when I’m tired)

If you have any ideas or input of any kind I would really love to hear it! 🙂 ありがとう！

tinyurl.com/2vso53

It has pretty short explanations of pretty much every pattern imaginable, and tons of example sentences- all in Japanese!

I have been thinking of using the example sentences as part of my 10,000 sentences…

Mark

Interesting grammar notes there. I can’t quite read that website you gave without resorting to a rikai-chan, though…rest assured, someday I will…khatzumoto, thanks for taking time out to explain this little quirk of japanese grammar to me – I’ve seen the られる form before and know roughly what it means, but not just the れる form. No, I don’t worry about it.

However, my question really was simply “Do you know any dictionary where you can look up the word and it gives you the exact form?”

I’m sorry if I was unclear or sound like I’m giving not trying myself, because I did try out many electronic dictionaries, all of them simply will not tell me what the various forms of the word are, only the…er…dictionary form. Not a problem with nouns and adjectives (those are easy to form), but for verbs…nightmare.

The closest thing I had was this 501 Japanese verbs book that listed out most of the forms (one page per verb) but it’s not comprehensive (I’m sure it lacked the られる form), and I’ve since had to return it.

I forgot to mention, that example sentence had a translation, it was “Can you get here by ten o’clock”, so I knew that the “can” is due to the “られ” thingy there. I just didn’t know how to actually read “来られる”, you say it’s “こられる”?

Finally…

>when they teach you rules like this, then they can be quite useful

Yeah, knowing the rule’s definitely very useful – I couldn’t figure out what “ています” was until I saw the rule explicitly written out – but imo you can’t only learn the rule – have to see examples.

Like when I was learning chemistry, instead of applying rules and exceptions I was taught to figure out which compounds are “allowed” (can be formed) I pretty much memorized the “allowed” ones. Same goes for scales, as far as I know all musicians will memorize the fingerings of all the scales rather than “construct” them while playing.

I can’t think of other examples but sometimes it’s easier to just memorize EVERYTHING than to remember rules and exceptions, especially when the number of things to memorize is not too big.

英語を学んでる殆どの日本人を視れば分かると思うけど、僕ら英語圏の人間より文法に詳しいにも拘らず、いざと言う時は正しく使えないのが現状。英語教科書には英語そのものより、日本語解説の量が遥かに多いというのも問いたいけどね。

Jenさんの英語も、文法を知らなくてもホボ完璧に使いこなせてるでしょう。多少、仮定法などの『「If I was」じゃなくて「If I were」』とかそういう、どちらかというとマメな所で失敗しても特に問題視できない。実はAntiMoonの奴らもそうだけど。

僕も今まで、ただ鵜呑みで『「食べれる」は駄目で「食べられる」の方がは正しい』という規則に従って来ていて、今朝からやっとその理由（ら抜き動詞の存在と特徴）を知りました。でも、その規則への服従に変わりが無い。簡単に言えば、「最初は黙って受け入れ！理由を知りたきゃ後で日・本・語・で調べるが良い」ってこと。その方が一石二鳥だしね — インプットによって真の日本語力を身に付けながら、日本語に就いての予備知識も集められる。

まあ、クラスの有用性を完全に否定したくは居ないが、やっぱりクラスで失うものは、クラスで得られるモノの方より遥かに多いとしか思えない。ていうか否定せざるを得ぬ。現時点ではね。

とにもかくにも、コメントありがとう 🙂 。

Khaz has mentioned one of his (dear? hehe) friends that used to harshly criticize his Japanese. In another post I think he specifically mentions that you need to find people who are willing to correct you.

Khatzumoto – I know that in general you are generally against lessons, but I think that when they teach you rules like this, then they can be quite useful… I think that one thing that you haven’t addressed as far as I know is the difference between child learners of a language, and adult learners – When children are learning a language, they will often figure out rules for themselves, and then try them out with other words, which leads to people learning english saying things like.. I swimmed in the ocean, and so on. Most children have parents to correct them when they say things like this, and years of schooling where they will learn when they are using the language correctly, and when they aren’t, but as an adult learner, there is generally nobody around to do that. I have tried to ask my Japanese friends to correct my Japanese when I speak to them, but I have so far only found 2 or 3 people (out of a LOT of Japanese friends) who will actually tell me where I’m going wrong rather than saying things like.. but you hardly make any mistakes! or もう十分だから, which isn’t amazingly useful.

Did you get people to correct your Japanese? Since you have approached it so that you get input of Japanese before output, your mistakes are much more likely to be more like those of a native speaker (unlike me, who has had 2 years of Japanese lessons at university before going to Japan for a year and immersing myself in the language.. I know that I still express myself strangely in Japanese sometimes, because I still have bad habits leftover from when I used to translate from English to Japanese in my head), but do you find that Japanese people are actually willing to correct you, or tell you that you’re wrong?

No, um…yeah…movies are more interesting. I mean, I don’t know…just the change, you know? If it’s not movies it’s music, if it’s not music it’s books, if it’s not books it’s face-to-face convos, if not that then dictionaries. Perhaps what matters is that no matter WHAT you do…it’s in Japanese. Hence all Japanese all the time. Any one thing can get boring, but the combination of having your entire life be in Japanese, I think that makes it, you know, essentially impossible to be bored.

To make the distinction between きたる and くる, people can (and perhaps should) write them as 来たる and 来る respectively…but that doesn’t always happen.

BTW, 来れる(これる) is the “dedicated” potential form of 来る…but, there seem to be cases in Japanese of double-loading the passive form — i.e. using the passive form as both passive and potential. So, even though there is 出れる（でれる）and people do use it, people also use 出られる（でられる), and so on. It seems to be kind of officially sanctioned [I don’t mean to make it sound evil, I just mean it has official recognition]. I don’t know either way the WHYs…And it may even be that one way is incorrect. In this case, I just do whatever I see what appears to be a majority Japanese people do: there’s no time to find out the reason for everything…no, really, there isn’t.

Also, some verbs only have a -られる potential form (no just-plain -れる)…I think…Again, I typically follow rules without necessarily knowing what they are.

If you’re curious…look up a Japanese source on it. Google these separately:
[れる　られる　可能形]
[れる　られる　可能形 ら抜き]
[れる　られる　可能形　受身]

A questioner on Yahoo知恵袋 points out that the passive of 読む is 読まれる but its potential is definitely and exclusively 読める…so…
Anyway, I don’t know why I even brought this up, but don’t worry about it! As you can see, I’ve obeyed the rules all this time without actually being “knowing” (able to recite them). Experiential knowledge vs. declarative knowledge, you could say. In speaking a language fluently, experiential knowledge will serve you much better. Declarative knowledge can always be added later, if at all.