[valzevul]

There are lots of people in the comments somehow offended by the author's genuine excitement over the method that worked well enough for them that they wanted to share it.

As someone who's never tried learning Japanese, I thoroughly enjoyed reading the deep dive and am now less afraid to check out some more serious tutorials (though I wish everyone put as much effort into explaining the system behind something so often dismissed as "just memorise it").

[monadgonad]

As someone who is fluent in Japanese, the thing is that this is not an example of a method that works well, it’s an example of a beginner coming up with an overwrought headcanon (while calling it “simple”, nonetheless!) that ultimately will hinder their understanding, as I will detail elsewhere.

If this was a similar post about programming, it would not get upvoted here because more people would recognise it for what it is: a “Monads are Like Burritos” post from a well-meaning but misguided beginner.

[danabramov]

How is this my headcanon when this is literally how it works linguistically? Please provide a counterexample.

[runarberg]

Linguistics are orthogonal to petagogy. Something can be sound linguistically but still an in optimal way to teach the same thing. If linguistics were all there was to language learning, we would all just get a grammar reference book and call it a day, but we all know that is a terrible way to learn a language.

Personally, as a beginner/early intermediate learner, what I have found works is just to allow my brain to learn this over time by reading and understanding more an more sentences. I used Genki and am aware that it thought this badly. But it was in the 3rd chapter and by the time I reached the 6th chapter I had gotten an intuitive idea anyway (とている just sounded wrong and I couldn't explain why). And I wasn't doing much output anyway so it didn't matter that I maybe confused a couple of verb endings as I recited the 2nd writing exercise og the 5th chapter of my textbook.

[danabramov]

"Headcanon" implies I made it up and it's plain incorrect. Now we seem to be litigating that it's correct within its scope but the pedagogical approach is unsound?

I'm not saying that I wrote this article for everyone. I wrote it for me and people like me. Specifically, for people who appreciate the rigorous-and-ridiculous — like teaching from the linguistical perspective while using romaji.

It's the same approach that my "Just JavaScript" course uses — it's 100% by the spec, but I'm using unconventional metaphors (like "wires" for variables instead of "boxes"). I take pride in making rigorous explanations approachable by slicing the explanation differently.

This is not for everyone. But it's also not a reason to say this shouldn't be written.

[runarberg]

I am not a native english speaker so perhaps I misunderstood what headcanon meant. But I took it to mean as expanded upon by GP, that you were a well meaning but misguided beginner and have some ideas about what works for language learners that is not expressed by language learners experts.

My personal headcanon to verb conjugation is that you know them when you know them, the shorter the explanation the better, spend more time with examples then explanations, and maybe just learn one or two forms at a time. And when in trouble, find a conjugation chart (preferably at the back of your textbook; after the glossary). My main criticism of Genki was that they should have taught the short form first (before the -masu form; 食べない and 飲んだ before 食べません and 飲みました etc.).

[danabramov]

> have some ideas about what works for language learners that is not expressed by language learners experts.

This seems like a culture clash. In programming blogging, it is completely fine to write blog posts about the mental model that works for you (as long as it doesn't contradict evidence) and then maybe it works for somebody else. The idea that I need to first get an approval from a commission of Serious Teachers That Verified Which Approaches Work Well For Learners Statistically is laughable to me.

I write for myself and for people like me, period. I do not claim this is useful to anyone but a tiny group. This tiny group is who it's written for. I explicitly say in the article that I struggled and this is what got me unstuck. If it isn't helpful, just close the tab.

[kazinator]

E.g:

> not so lucky and got a "ru" ending? check what vowel before the "ru". it it's one of -aru, -oru, -uru, then it's also a godan verb.

Wrong: 煽る (aoru) is ichidan: 煽った、煽りたい、煽らない、煽ろう、煽られる 。。。

[EdiX]

煽る is a godan verb, consistent with your example conjugations (if it was ichidan it would be 煽た、煽たい, etc)

[kazinator]

I can't remember which is which for more than five minutes!

I don't have a problem actually conjugating and don't have any tricks for it.

It comes with vocabulary. Once you have a vocabulary that contains enough verbs to hit all the cases, the rest just land in one of the cases by example.

If you know 泳ぐ (oyogu) very well, then even though you don't use 仰ぐ (aogu) very much, you just conjugate it intuitively like oyogu.

When you're speaking, there isn't enough time to go through a roster of rules.

[csande17]

I used to get these terms mixed up all the time because some textbooks use "Group 1" and "Group 2" to refer to these verbs, but Group 1 doesn't mean ichidan.

For all that I'm not totally sold on this article's idea of "stems" and "suffixes", I think it does a good job of avoiding this pitfall and correctly explaining the groups.

[kazinator]

Ichidan verbs end in "ru", but many verbs that end in "ru" are godan. Once and for all, I just have to remember that ichidan end in "ru" and drop the entire "ru" and replace it with the conjugative suffix; and so the previous kana stays the same (one column). The godan ones fracture the last kana, changing it into the four siblings in the same row (or else replace it with って or った). If we have a -ru verb and the -ru goes to -ri to make the stem, that indicates godan (帰る→帰り→帰ります); if it just drops to make the stem, godan (見る→見→見ます）. I have no need to tell which is which, other than discussing grammar with other gaijin. I would never remember that a verb is supposed to be godan, in order to then know how conjugate it; I already know how to conjugate it and so just for academics, I have to remember which pattern is classified as which conjugation.

An important aspect of vocabulary that informs you about verbs is knowing the nominal: the noun-like stem. Like when you consider 帰る, you know from your vocabulary that there is no noun-like word "kae" that is just written 帰. You know that "homecoming" is not "kae" but "kaeri", 帰り.

So from that alone you know instinctively which way it conjugates: らない、れない、りたい、った、って、ろう、。。。

And a big source of learning the stem is ... japanese polite speech with -masu.

This is how children absorb what the stems are: hearing all the verbs in -masu form.

For instance, I think that every single verb that ends in "-rimasu" in the polite form (other than just arimasu?) is a godan -ru word. Drop the masu and you have a -ri stem, which implies the word is -ru, and conjugates godan: -ranai, -renai, -ritai, -rō, -tta, -tte, ...

[csande17]

> For instance, I think that every single verb that ends in "-rimasu" in the polite form (other than just arimasu?) is a godan -ru word.

Not quite: https://jisho.org/search/%23words%20%23v1%20%3F*%E3%82%8A%E3...

[geraldwhen]

This is so obviously incorrect that I have to wonder if it was an AI response.

[stratocumulus0]

This kind of content is usually shared by people who are learning a language out of genuine interest for the first time. Most of the time it's Japanese because of the popularity manga and anime enjoy, and the challenge of learning a language that's so different from one's mother tongue. There are countless blog posts written by people to whom it "clicks" for the first time, and they excitedly run to their computer to share their novel experience. I don't see anything wrong with this, let them enjoy the moment. But if they stick to their learning routine, they will inevitably learn the truth that is that the only way to learn a language is to interact with it a lot through all possible channels - speaking, listening, reading, writing. Mnemonics may work for some time, but in the end one won't be able to actually use the language if they don't learn it intuitively. And there is also the fact that most of those people live in places where Japanese is not in everyday use, limiting their opportunities to practice it.

[euroderf]

> Mnemonics may work for some time, but in the end one won't be able to actually use the language if they don't learn it intuitively.

A crutch can be cast away gradually.

Finnish has two verbs, ottaa "take" and ostaa "buy". As a n00b I confused them all the time. So I decided that the "s" in ostaa was a dollar sign, and I used that quickly in conversation to select the right verb. And as I got quicker at it, it became "intuitive". I threw down my crutch.

[stratocumulus0]

Yes, this is a valid point, mnemonics are totally valid when you are new to a concept.

I'm learning Turkish right now for example, and the dative forms for me/you (bana/sana) perfectly fit the accusative conjugation pattern in my native Polish. So my mnemonic is explicitly "the opposite of what you feel it is".

[danabramov]

Please provide a counterexample if you think the article has a mistake or builds a system that doesn’t work.

[stratocumulus0]

I'm not claiming any of those.

[danabramov]

Ah, I see your point. I agree 100% that a system doesn’t help you get fluent, and you need to mix all kinds of activities, most of all including actually using the language to form thoughts and respond to thoughts in realtime. I didn’t mean anywhere in the article that a system like this is a replacement for these activities. I’m only saying that I find it helpful to understand how to connect a suffix to a stem from the first principles for when I forget that. I also find it illuminating to look at the linguistic system and how “nice” Japanese actually is (compared to my native language which is super messy). That’s why I wrote the article.

[danabramov]

Thanks! I’d say that a big part of the motivation for me was to show that this piece is orthogonal to the rest of the language. You can sit down and understand how to conjugate almost any word to almost every suffix in the time it takes to read this. Yes — not fluently — and not “understanding” the language — but it’s wild to me that you can do that at all! It wasn’t obvious to me that this knowledge is orthogonal to everything else.

That’s what motivated me to write about it, really. In language courses all of this is often spread out over weeks or months. I thought it would be fun to write something that you can read in one evening and map out almost the entire system. With no prerequisites.

[alinajaf]

Senior management at a Japanese tech company, 2 kids, most of my daily life in Japanese here. Can confidently talk circles around most N1s.

I agree. I had plenty of strange abstractions and crutches when starting out learning Japanese, and starting in romaji was absolutely fine. While the post wouldn't benefit me now, starting out any useful mental shortcuts to producing Japanese would have been most welcome.

[MarkSweep]

I think for a very specific audience the article is useful: an English speaker who is in the first month of learning Japanese and is having trouble understanding the basics of Japanese verb conjugation.

If you are not in that target audience, the article is not that useful. If are starting to learn Japanese, you would not start by reading this article. And once you are past your first month of learning Japanese, you have internalized how this basic part of Japanese verb conjugation works and thus the article seems hyper focused a tiny part of learning Japanese. So it’s predictable that people would point out the limited scope of the article.

I think “Aeron Buchanan's Japanese Verb Chart” offers a more complete overview of Japanese verb conjugation in a more concise form. It expects you to know how to read hiragana, which is reasonable because it’s one of the first things you learn when studying Japanese.

http://cghq.net/japanese/

[danabramov]

Intuitively I suspect that you severely underestimate how many people give up on the language somewhere in the middle of the process of learning this "basic part" in the traditional way. My aim was to show to this group that you can actually understand the entire mechanic in one evening with zero prerequisites.

[lmm]

> There are lots of people in the comments somehow offended by the author's genuine excitement over the method that worked well enough for them that they wanted to share it.

Did it work for them though? They apparently never got past the basics. So IMO it's more likely the opposite; they've distracted themselves from getting on with learning.

[danabramov]

I started learning a couple of months ago (with a couple of false starts before). What level am I supposed to be at by this point? This is so incredibly condescending I don’t even know what to say.

[lmm]

Generally before you presume to teach (a term you've used repeatedly about this post) beginners you should be at least B2 level in the target language.

[danabramov]

I wasn't aware that this community gatekeeps the word "teach" to exclude personal blog posts. I have no desire to participate in this community anymore, but you're welcome to mentally substitute it with some other word.

[raincole]

This is a quite weird article. It opens with several paragraphs about romaji, implying the target audience are not familiar with romaji/kana already. But it's way, way too early for such a reader to worry about verb conjugation.

[danabramov]

I wanted to write a weird article! My whole shtick here is that learning conjugation is completely orthogonal to learning most of the language, and you can frontload it into a single evening like this. I don’t respect the whole “it’s too early to do X” dogmas in learning and teaching, and I trust some of my readers will find useful what I find useful.

[charcircuit]

Because the whole article is built upon a straw man (it's not usually taught the way he claims) and the "method" is just a normal explanation (see this section on wikipedia).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_conjugation#Verb_grou...

[danabramov]

I’m just describing my experience learning. I understand that some compressed explanations match it, and I agree this one is good! This is not the explanation I was exposed to when trying to learn it the first time.

So you agree my explanation is correct (but unnecessarily longwinded and builds a strawman)? I’ll take that.

[charcircuit]

The straw man is how you claim it is usually taught. You claim that only 2 groups are taught when 3 get taught. You claim that you are given arbitrary tables to memorize, but it's usually explained to foreigners that you replace the last romaji to i when conjugating the verb into -masu form.

So in essence this article boils down to someone claiming that the usual explanation is confusing and then their own system turns out to be equivalent to the usual way it is explained.

And based off your comment here the reason behind doing this may be you extrapolating how you first learned it to how people usually learn it.

[danabramov]

>You claim that only 2 groups are taught when 3 get taught.

I skipped the handful of exceptions because they have no rules associated with them, you just have to memorize them. Yes, it would be 3 if I counted exceptions. I am aware that they exist; you can check their list at the end of my post.

>You claim that you are given arbitrary tables to memorize, but it's usually explained to foreigners that you replace the last romaji to i when conjugating the verb into -masu form.

I must have been unlucky. I don't remember what resource I was using but it was primarily teaching with a separate table per suffix. Maybe the pattern was called out but I missed it due to feeling overwhelmed with the tables.

>And based off your comment here the reason behind doing this may be you extrapolating how you first learned it to how people usually learn it.

That's fair — if most people don't stumble here because this is clearly explained, that's good, and it means I've overstated the "usually taught". I still find that I prefer the specific style of explanation where we consider the corresponding vowel a part of the suffix, like -(i)masu or -(a)nai, which is how some linguists view it. That is another part of the motivation for writing the article.

[csande17]

I definitely remember only learning about two groups, personally. Is the third group, like, "irregular verbs", or do some books teach "the -suru verbs" as the third group (instead of "suru" being a single irregular verb that you can attach nouns to)?

[charcircuit]

The three groups taught to foreigners are:

- u verbs / Group 1 verbs / 五段活用

- ru verbs / Group 2 verbs / 一段活用

- Irregular verbs / Group 3 verbs / 不規則動詞

>or do some books teach "the -suru verbs" as the third group (instead of "suru" being a single irregular verb that you can attach nouns to)?

In books for native speakers instead of having irregular verbs they have:

- サ行変格活用 which are the suru and noun + する verbs

- カ行変格活用 which are the kuru verbs.