As a Turkish person, I loved how Japanese is the same as Turkish! No long sentences for simple conversations, no need to specify the person every time you talk, add most things to the end of the verb, etc!
@@mattfield3371 Yep! When you directly translate Japanese into Turkish, you'll see for the 95% of the time the word order is the same as the original sentence.
True, this is called the imperative. It's a whole other tense in a lot of languages, complete with a conjugation. Japanese happens to use the standard form like English.
I found the series of videos by Cure Dolly very helpful in understanding how Japanese actually puts sentences together. She was very good at explaining complicated concepts.
@@ToKiniAndy What happened? I have found posts on Reddit and on Patreon about the cessation of Cure Dolly, but the posts are unclear as to whether it is just that the character has been dropped, or if the woman behind the character has actually died. A couple of comments say that the woman is still alive, but I have no idea how trustworthy they are.
At the beginning of my Japanese studies 9 months ago, I was in a very unique situation. I had no access to phones, computers, MP3 players, or internet for my first six months of learning. This was not by choice. All I had was textbooks. Thank god I found your channel. I am glad I didn't learn solely from textbooks for too long, so I don't have to un-learn much. But during my time off the grid, I definitely would have said "Hello, me and only me is named Kevin. My friend, the only other person in the room, and not some other person who is not my friend, is named John. This food that is the only food in front of me, is the food I will eat, as opposed to some other food that is not in the same room as me, or visible to anyone who I am in conversation with now. It is very nice to meet you"
Wowowow this is really good information! I'll definitely be watching your channel as often as I can because I learned a LOT from just this video alone! You're the person that puts the pieces of the puzzle together. Thank you so much.
Very useful video! I took as many notes as I could. I'm just finishing memorizing Hiragana and Katakana, and am moving on to basic sentences, so this is exactly the content I need right now. Arigato!
So you're saying the textbook form would sound like Zucc saying: Hello my fellow humans. I just drank a glass of water as we humans usually do throughout the day.
Whould love if you breakdown the conversation of video clips of two native person talking and breaking down conversation, you can make it like a series, like React Series where you breakdown two native talking, you can take from the interview clips which can be found on yt, or also can breakdown some anime, or live action movie conversations.
Okay, I came here to learn something about Japanese, and I knew something new about English. It always seemed to me that in English you can throw out all unnecessary words from a sentence just like in Japanese or Russian. And in Russian, you can put words in a sentence in almost any order. You can make the same sentence in such a way that it must have a pronoun in it, or you can make it in such a way that you have to drop everything from it. If you are in a state of excitement or desire to do something, you will start the sentence with a verb. If you are calm, most often with a pronoun. Tired, you'll start with a noun or the shortest form of a verb. The context of your conversation suggests the use of adjectives - adjectives will come first in the sentence. You can tell by the order of the words what kind of person you are talking to, his priorities, his mood, even if he tries to hide it all with his body language or tone of voice. The worst thing that can happen if you choose a random word order is that you'll sound like you're playing a Shakespearean role or joking or playing a medieval Russian. So for a native Russian speaker, Master Yoda speaks in literary dramatic language, but just with the strange intonations of a jolly old man.
Very interesting, idk if it's also in English, but in Portuguese we also have two types of special subjects, one is the "implied subject", where it was mentioned before but is now ommited and the "null subject", where it was never metioned in the first place and relies on context for you to make sense of it. Nonetheless, the subject IS there, just in its null form
Thank you for your video. I quite agree. But instead of talking about "zero pronoun" (a concept I still don't understand, even after watching videos like those of Cure Dolly, or read articles like Imabi), I prefer thinking Japanese is a bit like Latin. For example, when Julius Caesar said "Veni, vidi, vici" ("I came, I saw, I conquered"), the subject is inside the verb (its conjugated form lets us understand that the subject is "I"). Since Japanese verbs and adjective doesn't change with the subject, it lets me think the subject is always the same in Japanese: "it" (or "that", "what", "this", in other words, the most "neutral" subject it can be). The subject "it" is inside the verb (like 食べる) or adjective (like おいしい) or "noun + です" structure (like アンドです). It is the context, or the addition of elements like A は or A が that allows us to know the identity of "it".
Haha nice timing, I just finished reading Rubin's book the other day. It's a nice, quick read which clarifies a lot, especially the zero pronoun you brought up.
Knew where this was headed - and I've pretty much observed the same myself. Well, は is the topic particle, right? The way I always thought about it, is that there is this kind of "variable" (spot the programmer) that gets filled when you use it. And by default it is filled with either "I", "You" or "That thing" (which you know from context) This is actually not quite true, because context can override this without using は, and が can also override it sometimes, but it got me a basic understanding.
Delicous! is a sentence in english too tho? if i get given some food and i say Delicious! i dont need to say it is delicous or this food is delicous cuz its obvious so thats not unique to japanese.
Yeah, I guess the main point of difference with Japanese is that we don’t say verbs alone in English, except for commands. In Japanese we just say “Eat” in response to “Will eat?”
I'm not going to lie all of this stuff is confusing me I just want to learn the basics so I can somewhat understand the conversation and then improve from there all this Jibber jabbers a little confusing
Andy, you and Yuki literally create the best Japanese language learning content I have ever seen. Your material is absolutely essential and I recommend it to anyone looking to learn more. ありがとうございます！
Omg I will forever introduce myself in your dramatic fashion. I KNOW NOT WHO THOSE OTHER BEINGS ARE, BUT AS FOR ME, I AM KANINER! *slams glass on ground a la Thor*
Funny enough you did cover this sort of buried in...I think it was your Genki lesson 3 video. I have been slowly going through those and I totally crack up when you explained "たべます" by itself was a complete sentence, and then said it in English. Literally translated it's so funny sounding in English. But I'm glad you went into even more here. But it's awesome that you made a stand alone video dedicated to this. I love the way you explain the Japanese Language. 💜
This is incredibly fantastic. I've been learning Japanese for almost 3 years now, and I've dropped my は a while ago now, but it still makes it so much more intelligible to see this video. Also, makes me realised that all those manuals are so terrible... maybe Japanese isn't so hard to learn, it's just that the available official material is so bad that it's super hard to learn with it?
This is super helpful! I just started learning Japanese in February by a combination of Wanikani and Japanese from Zero. I've actually dropped JFZ and have found that these videos plus Wanikani are helping me so much! I'm a big nerd for grammar but I don't want to sound like a strange parody so I'm glad you have explained this!
I'm glad that it was helpful! Yeah, many textbooks are trying to be helpful, but can end up making people sound a little silly at first! Hopefully, this can help some! And future videos too. =) Thank you for watching!
If you are a grammar nerd like me, you'll find videos by Cure Dolly very insightful and a good contribution to your study from basic to more advanced grammar constructions. I found Japanese to be a very "logical" language and she explains the logic of Japanese very well. I dropped JFZ also and then only did the free levels on Wanikani and switched to Anki on my laptop with an jlpt N5 Tango deck.
I'm sorry but yuki's introduction is absolutely iconic lmao. I do not know, nor do I care to know these peasants, but I... I am the great Yuki. Ruler of the 7 kingdoms, conqueror of the deadly seas. Heroes, Villains, Gods and Devils, all crumble in my presence, you foolish mortal. lmao Also, the text book version sounds like two spy enemies and one is trying to poison the other with brownies lmao.
So is the Y Des structure used in all situations? Even when meeting someone older than you? Or a superior? I always thought this was just used with people younger or around the same age as you.
Awesome content! 🎉 Please may you help me please? 🙏 I want to practice my Japanese romaji sentence structure only, to build it up. 🧱 Do you know any workbooks, game apps, videos that only focuses on using romaji to build your sentence structure knowledge? 📝 For now, I just want to speak, converse, and read romaji romanized words. Thank you so much! ♥
The fact that I can laugh and learn makes learning so much easier and more fun. I find myself on almost 4 hours a day of japanese learning including music now. I'm hoping to be N5 by the end of July.
Russian is kinda simillar, in the sense, that you can drop the subject and the object in conversation. Though since verbs change based on person and number, it isn't as ambiguous without a context
I was expecting this to be completely new knowledge but i picked up on this sentence structure naturally when listening to japanese in anime or otherwise. Textbook/duolingo like to always shove in kore wa, etc but i'm aware it can be droped.
So Watashi wa is more appropriate for fornal introductions like in school or at work? But not required for less fornal places among people your own age
@@ToKiniAndy Any time! I signed up for your course a few months ago and have been loving it. I know creating and editing all that content takes a million years, blood, sweat and tears; so thank you thank yooooou again for giving the world such great learning material!
@@rae9841 Thank you so much for the support too! I'm glad to hear it's useful for you. As you said, we put a lot into it, and it's always relieving to hear if it's helping. ☺️🙏
Could you please explain where we should use the "masu"/ ます form verbs, since you have mentioned only る form of verbs. Please try to clarify my question, a request from India.
Yes! As a Portuguese speaker, it's totally natural to have a sentence with an 'occult' subject. It's always a hard thing to get through to my students that in English you pretty much always need a subject on every single sentence. Specially hard when trying to explain the use of 'It' in some contexts.
That's really interesting to hear! I was able to learn a bit of Spanish while I was walking around Spain many years ago, but I never got to this part. Thanks for watching!
technically it is still the standard sentence of “XはYです” but you learn to drop things from mutual contextual understanding between speaker and listener. even in english there are times where certain things are dropped in casual speech from mutual contextual understanding. example: “Shall we?” when getting up from a seat. Understood that it is “shall we get moving to the next place?” or something similar. Japanese is more convenient with its grammar structure utilizing particle pairing that you can remove chunks of the full sentence and still carry mutual understanding that it was actually still a part of the sentence just unspoken. same example as above, the japanese could be: “行く？” or “行こう？” or even “じゃ” similar to that last one in english “Well then” or just “well” or “then” even “Let's” is enough for understanding. but yeah, Let's is Let Us.
I’d tend to disagree that it is still the standard sentence, as per my newer は vs. が video. は has the effect of emphasizing what comes after it, so a much more standard sentence has just a verb, or just an adjective, or just a noun + です.
@@ToKiniAndy by that standard “Let's” is a sentence of 1 word (conjunction) but it's actually a part of a longer sentence that has had the implied words dropped
@@siekensou77 If we are talking about English, of course. But trying to compare languages one to one always leads to misconceptions like this, so I don’t think it’s as 1 to 1 as you may assume. 行こう is a fully complete, grammatically correct sentence. It is not dropping anything.
@@ToKiniAndy even in cantonese, which is closer to japanese than english. dropping words in speech is not unique to japanese. to test if you are dropping parts of a sentence, try repeating “said sentence” with all “dropped” portions on the 2nd iteration included (not dropped) in all languages the second time you say it (with dropped words intact) is the same sort of emphasizing the elements for clarity or impact. this is not special to japanese except for how the grammar is structured in a way that makes it more efficient (able to convey more when less is actually written/spoken)
@@siekensou77 I'm not suggesting it is only happening in Japanese. I'm suggesting it is DIFFERENT from what's happening in English. The phrase: "行こう" - There is nothing dropped. It's just "Let's go." There is no other way to say this that means the same thing. The "Let's" part is IN the volitional conjugation (こう ・ましょう). 私たちは行こう, for example is an absolute nonsensical sentence, and would never be said. You COULD use it with dropping a location (〇〇に行こう), but this means "Let's go TO 〇〇." Which means something different than just 行こう (Let's go.) What's unique to Japanese is what Murakami Haruki's translator Jay Rubin calls the "Zero Pronoun". It's not dropped or unstated, it's just there, invisible. In the sentence 行こう this zero pronoun is being used (it's understood we mean "we") but we would never actually SAY "we". This is also why 行く and 私は行く mean DIFFERENT things. 行く - I will go. (Flat statement) 私は行く - As for me (as opposed to OTHERS), I will go. (Contrasting statement) This is the mistake that most Japanese textbooks make, and WHY the phrase 私は行く sounds so weird. It's not because it's robotic or "textbook" Japanese. It's because it's actually wrong.
Your video is awesome - your linguistic explanations are not. x ha y desu is the most basic sentence structure in Japanese. Ellipsing pronouns, subjects or objects is simply another step. It's still x ha y desu. Nothing has changed there.
I promise you that it is not. は introduces a new topic of conversation. It’s not being dropped in 肉を食べた。 What’s not shown there is the SUBJECT. The thing is 私が肉を食べた is NOT how you would want to say this “correctly”. The natural way to say this is 肉を食べた。 私は肉を食べた。 is also unnecessarily dramatic, unless the topic of (私) has not been brought up in conversation. The topic isn’t being “dropped”. It’s just not necessary. In Japanese the subject is always there, it’s just that it is usually unspoken, because marking it with が adds too most emphasis for more situations. Unless someone asked WHO ate the meat, you wouldn’t say 私が here. Long story short 肉を食べた does not equal 私は肉を食べた。 It instead equals something LIKE (私)肉を食べた。
Cure Dolly and Jay Rubin get all the credit for helping popularize online the change in the way we westerners understand Japanese grammar through our lens. Her videos on the fundamental structure of Japanese and the Zero が changed everything for me. Every sentence in japanese has a subject and a predicate. She's a legend! RIP Cure Dolly 先生!
English using commands: "Hold my beer" Spanish: "My beer has been on the floor" Japanese: "My beer was born in a secret underground bunker below the deepest point of the ocean"
I think you might benefit from the now defunct channel Cure Dolly. This person goes further into detail; adjectives are a bit special, as they have the "is" function already built into them as they are predicate adjectives that stand on their own. (The have a non-past, past and negative form) The reason you need です is to make it polite and there's no real way to make adjectives polite, like adding ます to verbs. So it's not really a matter of being "optional" as it is a matter of wanting to make it polite. The three basic structures are: Aは/が Bう (A does B) Aは/が Bだ(です in polite speech) (A is B) Aは/が Bい (Bい です in polite speech) (A is B II)
I think translate ですto it’s is a error, first you don’t need to use ですeverytime, you can use for example, 私は山田 and how you will translate without です. です it’s just politeness.
When you tell your name in a less polite way than Desu, you usually use "Yo" So, for andy, you would say "アンディよ" This is used rarely though, as most of the time, you introduce your name to people you don't know, and therefore use the polite form of "アンディです"
How does one get better at reading Japanese. My listening and speaking skills are far ahead of reading. I’ve been practicing the three writing systems, but once words hit paper… I am lost.
from what i learned elsewhere, は and が differ in what the emphasis is placed on. one refers to the preceeding word and the other focuses on the succeeding word.
@@ToKiniAndy yea i have seen that and used it myself. very interesting and convenient to have that 1 particle essentially put contextual brackets over entire sentence fragments
0:50 "unlearn" ??? Are you implying that language is, a habit?? Do all fluent speakers of all languages "Oops! Force of habit!" with *constant involuntary outbursts* of words and sentences a la spaced repetition systems ALL DAY? What about, Every day? ... Any day? No. We do not all suffer from this condition. Language is not a habit. In fact: We speak. We speak, *when* we want, what we want, exactly, perfectly; without effort of any kind. Did you drill your way to perfection in English? No. You listened to what your parents were telling you, like they requested, and then responded in kind. Thus fulfilled the transaction, of messages. Humans, even Animals, can intuit messages without any words at all. Are you of lesser intellect than a dog? No. If you did ANY DRILLS AT ALL... it was because you had a tiny, miniscule, insignificant, SPEECH impediment. (Notice I say *"SPEECH"*, and *NOT* "Language" impediment.) Truly sir, if that is your assertion, I invite you to examine the evidence A LOT more closely. The other implication is that you believe there is an entirely separate language from Japanese, which is almost entirely like it, yet somehow, both: totally, not Japanese, yet also comprised necessarily of entirely cogent Japanese. Get off the internet and stop spreading this "Study harder!" bull. You learn a language when you understand its meanings. You forget how to do your grammar every 2 minutes because it's useless, boring, and not even remotely the same area of the brain you downright バカ.
![Yailin La Mas Viral, @kreizyk.official - Dale 2 (Remix) [Video Oficial]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/JaYHBzgqz94/mqdefault.jpg)
From now on, I will introduce myself using "watashi wa" so that I too can have wind blowing through my hair as I do so.
definitely the best reason to use watashi wa. for dramatic effect. lolol.
As a Turkish person, I loved how Japanese is the same as Turkish! No long sentences for simple conversations, no need to specify the person every time you talk, add most things to the end of the verb, etc!
I noticed that it looks like Turkish also places the verb at the end of the sentence, is that correct? I was like, wait that's like Japanese?!
@@mattfield3371 Yep! When you directly translate Japanese into Turkish, you'll see for the 95% of the time the word order is the same as the original sentence.
It's like how a command like "go" is a full sentence in English with the subject being an understood (but unsaid) "you."
I had a similar thought. "Wait. Ready? Go!" Three complete English sentences, no subject or object needed.
In fact, if you hand someone a brownie and say "Eat," that checks out just as well in English.
True, this is called the imperative. It's a whole other tense in a lot of languages, complete with a conjugation. Japanese happens to use the standard form like English.
@@himothaniel it's also a conjugation in japanese, for example if you look at stop signs you see 止まれ.
When you're finally past the basic greetings and understand everything said after years of lazy studying 😂
I found the series of videos by Cure Dolly very helpful in understanding how Japanese actually puts sentences together. She was very good at explaining complicated concepts.
Cure Dolly is great. Very sad about what happened. RIP.
@@ToKiniAndy indeed. I was also very saddened.
@@ToKiniAndy What happened? I have found posts on Reddit and on Patreon about the cessation of Cure Dolly, but the posts are unclear as to whether it is just that the character has been dropped, or if the woman behind the character has actually died. A couple of comments say that the woman is still alive, but I have no idea how trustworthy they are.
Yeah, Cure Dolly is a great resource!
@@omp199 in the description of her last video is says that after some time her condition got worse and she passed away 😟
At the beginning of my Japanese studies 9 months ago, I was in a very unique situation. I had no access to phones, computers, MP3 players, or internet for my first six months of learning. This was not by choice. All I had was textbooks. Thank god I found your channel. I am glad I didn't learn solely from textbooks for too long, so I don't have to un-learn much. But during my time off the grid, I definitely would have said "Hello, me and only me is named Kevin. My friend, the only other person in the room, and not some other person who is not my friend, is named John. This food that is the only food in front of me, is the food I will eat, as opposed to some other food that is not in the same room as me, or visible to anyone who I am in conversation with now. It is very nice to meet you"
I'm just happy I was able to follow along and understand the skit the first time through!
This is why I love language study in general. It just gets deep.
Wowowow this is really good information! I'll definitely be watching your channel as often as I can because I learned a LOT from just this video alone! You're the person that puts the pieces of the puzzle together. Thank you so much.
I'm glad to hear that you found it informative and useful! =) Thank you for watching!
i can't express how much i needed this. and it makes so much sense when explained in this way. thank you so much!
I first watched this a few weeks ago, and I came back to see how much better I could understand. And yah, improvement is being made :D
When broken down and translated literally it sounds really funny but its also super efficient.
Very useful video! I took as many notes as I could. I'm just finishing memorizing Hiragana and Katakana, and am moving on to basic sentences, so this is exactly the content I need right now. Arigato!
おもしろい！Love the mixture between lesson and skit!
よかったです！ I'm glad you enjoyed it! Thank you for watching. =)
So you're saying the textbook form would sound like Zucc saying: Hello my fellow humans. I just drank a glass of water as we humans usually do throughout the day.
Haha I suppose a little. 😅
fire content, been learning from the ground up, currently at your chapter 5 lesson, great stuff man!
Whould love if you breakdown the conversation of video clips of two native person talking and breaking down conversation, you can make it like a series, like React Series where you breakdown two native talking, you can take from the interview clips which can be found on yt, or also can breakdown some anime, or live action movie conversations.
That could definitely be fun. =)
@@ToKiniAndy looking forward to it, have a good one
Okay, I came here to learn something about Japanese, and I knew something new about English. It always seemed to me that in English you can throw out all unnecessary words from a sentence just like in Japanese or Russian.
And in Russian, you can put words in a sentence in almost any order. You can make the same sentence in such a way that it must have a pronoun in it, or you can make it in such a way that you have to drop everything from it. If you are in a state of excitement or desire to do something, you will start the sentence with a verb. If you are calm, most often with a pronoun. Tired, you'll start with a noun or the shortest form of a verb. The context of your conversation suggests the use of adjectives - adjectives will come first in the sentence. You can tell by the order of the words what kind of person you are talking to, his priorities, his mood, even if he tries to hide it all with his body language or tone of voice.
The worst thing that can happen if you choose a random word order is that you'll sound like you're playing a Shakespearean role or joking or playing a medieval Russian. So for a native Russian speaker, Master Yoda speaks in literary dramatic language, but just with the strange intonations of a jolly old man.
Not even learning Japanese and found this super helpful lol
Very interesting, idk if it's also in English, but in Portuguese we also have two types of special subjects, one is the "implied subject", where it was mentioned before but is now ommited and the "null subject", where it was never metioned in the first place and relies on context for you to make sense of it. Nonetheless, the subject IS there, just in its null form
4:35 To be honest, that looks pretty good to me...
Great video!
Thank you for watching!
Thank you for your video. I quite agree.
But instead of talking about "zero pronoun" (a concept I still don't understand, even after watching videos like those of Cure Dolly, or read articles like Imabi), I prefer thinking Japanese is a bit like Latin. For example, when Julius Caesar said "Veni, vidi, vici" ("I came, I saw, I conquered"), the subject is inside the verb (its conjugated form lets us understand that the subject is "I"). Since Japanese verbs and adjective doesn't change with the subject, it lets me think the subject is always the same in Japanese: "it" (or "that", "what", "this", in other words, the most "neutral" subject it can be). The subject "it" is inside the verb (like 食べる) or adjective (like おいしい) or "noun + です" structure (like アンドです). It is the context, or the addition of elements like A は or A が that allows us to know the identity of "it".
Haha nice timing, I just finished reading Rubin's book the other day.
It's a nice, quick read which clarifies a lot, especially the zero pronoun you brought up.
It's a great book!
@4:33 hahahahaha you just earned yourself a new fan lol
Knew where this was headed - and I've pretty much observed the same myself.
Well, は is the topic particle, right? The way I always thought about it, is that there is this kind of "variable" (spot the programmer) that gets filled when you use it. And by default it is filled with either "I", "You" or "That thing" (which you know from context)
This is actually not quite true, because context can override this without using は, and が can also override it sometimes, but it got me a basic understanding.
Everyone: What's your pronouns?
Me: Zero!
Can you do a video with Ando さん back story. I feel like he has a very interesting past.
This is great. Not me using English as the second language to learn Japanese. 😂
Whoa this is good
「ゆ↓き」「アン↓ディ」と今更気づきました
どういうこと！？😆笑
@@m0n13lan もし、発音かも。
Cool video!
Thanks!
hold up is that brownie made in a rice cooker?
U have to agree that saying "nice to meet u, Yuki desu" its kidna weird for non japanese speakers, its like wondering is she Yuki or i am Yuki?
Instead of これはアンドさん、(if you were saying it, because you can’t say kore for a person) would it not be: この人はアンドさんです?
Instead of これは, you can say こちらは (or こっちは in a less polite way).
Delicous! is a sentence in english too tho?
if i get given some food and i say Delicious! i dont need to say it is delicous or this food is delicous cuz its obvious so thats not unique to japanese.
Yeah, I guess the main point of difference with Japanese is that we don’t say verbs alone in English, except for commands.
In Japanese we just say “Eat” in response to “Will eat?”
ぶれいんえくすぱんんでんぐ
It's so strange to me to hear him say たべる instead of いっただきます when accepting the food
私の名前はデーブです。 Yeah I'm gonna make this awkward for us both
hahaha
I'm not going to lie all of this stuff is confusing me I just want to learn the basics so I can somewhat understand the conversation and then improve from there all this Jibber jabbers a little confusing
Andy, you and Yuki literally create the best Japanese language learning content I have ever seen. Your material is absolutely essential and I recommend it to anyone looking to learn more. ありがとうございます！
うれしいです！ありがとうございます（●＾o＾●）
Thank you so much Andy! We hope to keep trying to make better and better content! =)
try also curedolly
Yuki’s wind blowing close up cracked me up!!! Haha! Sooo funny!
👀✨
I enjoyed making that and got a lot of laughs myself. heh
That windswept cut-away of Yuki was dope AF production!
I had a ton of fun with that. hehe
Omg I will forever introduce myself in your dramatic fashion.
I KNOW NOT WHO THOSE OTHER BEINGS ARE, BUT AS FOR ME, I AM KANINER! *slams glass on ground a la Thor*
LONG LIVE KANINER!
Funny enough you did cover this sort of buried in...I think it was your Genki lesson 3 video. I have been slowly going through those and I totally crack up when you explained "たべます" by itself was a complete sentence, and then said it in English. Literally translated it's so funny sounding in English.
But I'm glad you went into even more here.
But it's awesome that you made a stand alone video dedicated to this. I love the way you explain the Japanese Language. 💜
You're right, I definitely have here and there! I'm also glad I finally got around to making the specific video for it. Thanks for watching!
Yuki's dramatic self-introduction absolutely MAKES this video. Thanks for providing great educational content in a fun and easy-to-digest way!
照れるなあ(*´ω｀*)
Thank you for watching! I'm glad that you enjoyed that clip!
It really made me lol 😁
I love how y’all talk super slow. I’m sure intermediates find it slow and annoying, but it’s fantastic for us beginners
This is incredibly fantastic.
I've been learning Japanese for almost 3 years now, and I've dropped my は a while ago now, but it still makes it so much more intelligible to see this video. Also, makes me realised that all those manuals are so terrible... maybe Japanese isn't so hard to learn, it's just that the available official material is so bad that it's super hard to learn with it?
I learned with organic japanese by curedolly from the beginning. She introduces the zero-pronoun in the first lessons
This is super helpful! I just started learning Japanese in February by a combination of Wanikani and Japanese from Zero. I've actually dropped JFZ and have found that these videos plus Wanikani are helping me so much! I'm a big nerd for grammar but I don't want to sound like a strange parody so I'm glad you have explained this!
I'm glad that it was helpful! Yeah, many textbooks are trying to be helpful, but can end up making people sound a little silly at first! Hopefully, this can help some! And future videos too. =)
Thank you for watching!
If you are a grammar nerd like me, you'll find videos by Cure Dolly very insightful and a good contribution to your study from basic to more advanced grammar constructions. I found Japanese to be a very "logical" language and she explains the logic of Japanese very well. I dropped JFZ also and then only did the free levels on Wanikani and switched to Anki on my laptop with an jlpt N5 Tango deck.
@@franckvincent5190 oooh I will have a look, thank you for the recommendation. I hope your studies are going well by the way!!
@@jessicarosemalone7374 Thanks
Okay, you got me with the overly dramatic skits. That was pretty funny.
This was helpful, thank you! Looking forward to more of them.
I enjoyed making those as well. We're going to have to make these more regular! haha
This is very interesting. I had no idea some of those things could seem so dramatic.
I didn't used to realize either. You learn something new every day! =)
That "Making Sense of Japanese" book is a winner.
@@ToKiniAndy It does make sense when I think about some of what I've read about Japonic linguistics.
I'm so glad I've found your channel recently, this content is awesome :)
Thank you!!
Finally became 上手 thanks to this video 🇯🇵
Also +1 for Making Sense of Japanese! Great recommendation!
Glad to hear it! And congratulations on officially being Jozu!
楽しかったですよ！ありがとうございました！
見てくれてありがとう！
Those “overly dramatic” videos were just ✨perfection✨ 😂😂😂
I'm sorry but yuki's introduction is absolutely iconic lmao.
I do not know, nor do I care to know these peasants, but I... I am the great Yuki. Ruler of the 7 kingdoms, conqueror of the deadly seas. Heroes, Villains, Gods and Devils, all crumble in my presence, you foolish mortal.
lmao
Also, the text book version sounds like two spy enemies and one is trying to poison the other with brownies lmao.
Finally Jay Rubin先生 getting the recoginition he deserves!😭🔥
Jay Rubin is a boss.
So is the Y Des structure used in all situations? Even when meeting someone older than you? Or a superior? I always thought this was just used with people younger or around the same age as you.
Awesome content! 🎉
Please may you help me please? 🙏
I want to practice my Japanese romaji sentence structure only, to build it up. 🧱
Do you know any workbooks, game apps, videos that only focuses on using romaji to build your sentence structure knowledge? 📝
For now, I just want to speak, converse, and read romaji romanized words.
Thank you so much! ♥
The skits of the unnatural textbook versions of these sentences cracked me up 😂
I'm glad you found them as amusing as I did when making them! =)
As a native English speaker, saying something akin to ‘please be good to me’ seems like quite an unusual thing to say when meeting someone
The fact that I can laugh and learn makes learning so much easier and more fun. I find myself on almost 4 hours a day of japanese learning including music now. I'm hoping to be N5 by the end of July.
Russian is kinda simillar, in the sense, that you can drop the subject and the object in conversation. Though since verbs change based on person and number, it isn't as ambiguous without a context
Really very easy to understand when u put in this way. Thank you so much for this informative video 💐💐
Already knowing what they were saying in the beginning of the video. 😎
I was expecting this to be completely new knowledge but i picked up on this sentence structure naturally when listening to japanese in anime or otherwise. Textbook/duolingo like to always shove in kore wa, etc but i'm aware it can be droped.
So Watashi wa is more appropriate for fornal introductions like in school or at work? But not required for less fornal places among people your own age
Love the dramatic wind on Yuki especially! Thank you as always for the great videos and teachings!
Thank you for watching!
@@ToKiniAndy Any time! I signed up for your course a few months ago and have been loving it. I know creating and editing all that content takes a million years, blood, sweat and tears; so thank you thank yooooou again for giving the world such great learning material!
@@rae9841 Thank you so much for the support too!
I'm glad to hear it's useful for you. As you said, we put a lot into it, and it's always relieving to hear if it's helping. ☺️🙏
Im so glad i found this m.f channel
Could you please explain where we should use the "masu"/ ます form verbs, since you have mentioned only る form of verbs. Please try to clarify my question, a request from India.
As a Spanish speaker, zero pronoun is nothing new 😂 only my classmates have issues with learning Japanese bc of that.
Yes! As a Portuguese speaker, it's totally natural to have a sentence with an 'occult' subject. It's always a hard thing to get through to my students that in English you pretty much always need a subject on every single sentence. Specially hard when trying to explain the use of 'It' in some contexts.
That's really interesting to hear! I was able to learn a bit of Spanish while I was walking around Spain many years ago, but I never got to this part. Thanks for watching!
In Spanish a simple “¿Quieres?” is a complete and correct sentence. It makes it easier to understand what Japanese is doing.
XD 4:36 was pretty funny. i guess alot of beginner Japanese speakers sound pompous XD
So the pronoun+wa particle is always there, but it's just invisible?
technically it is still the standard sentence of “XはYです” but you learn to drop things from mutual contextual understanding between speaker and listener.
even in english there are times where certain things are dropped in casual speech from mutual contextual understanding. example: “Shall we?” when getting up from a seat. Understood that it is “shall we get moving to the next place?” or something similar.
Japanese is more convenient with its grammar structure utilizing particle pairing that you can remove chunks of the full sentence and still carry mutual understanding that it was actually still a part of the sentence just unspoken.
same example as above, the japanese could be: “行く？” or “行こう？” or even “じゃ”
similar to that last one in english “Well then” or just “well” or “then” even “Let's” is enough for understanding. but yeah, Let's is Let Us.
I’d tend to disagree that it is still the standard sentence, as per my newer は vs. が video.
は has the effect of emphasizing what comes after it, so a much more standard sentence has just a verb, or just an adjective, or just a noun + です.
@@ToKiniAndy
by that standard “Let's” is a sentence of 1 word (conjunction)
but it's actually a part of a longer sentence that has had the implied words dropped
@@siekensou77 If we are talking about English, of course. But trying to compare languages one to one always leads to misconceptions like this, so I don’t think it’s as 1 to 1 as you may assume.
行こう is a fully complete, grammatically correct sentence. It is not dropping anything.
@@ToKiniAndy
even in cantonese, which is closer to japanese than english. dropping words in speech is not unique to japanese.
to test if you are dropping parts of a sentence, try repeating “said sentence” with all “dropped” portions on the 2nd iteration included (not dropped)
in all languages the second time you say it (with dropped words intact) is the same sort of emphasizing the elements for clarity or impact.
this is not special to japanese except for how the grammar is structured in a way that makes it more efficient (able to convey more when less is actually written/spoken)
@@siekensou77 I'm not suggesting it is only happening in Japanese. I'm suggesting it is DIFFERENT from what's happening in English.
The phrase: "行こう" - There is nothing dropped. It's just "Let's go." There is no other way to say this that means the same thing. The "Let's" part is IN the volitional conjugation (こう ・ましょう).
私たちは行こう, for example is an absolute nonsensical sentence, and would never be said.
You COULD use it with dropping a location
(〇〇に行こう), but this means "Let's go TO 〇〇." Which means something different than just 行こう (Let's go.)
What's unique to Japanese is what Murakami Haruki's translator Jay Rubin calls the "Zero Pronoun". It's not dropped or unstated, it's just there, invisible. In the sentence 行こう this zero pronoun is being used (it's understood we mean "we") but we would never actually SAY "we".
This is also why
行く
and 私は行く mean DIFFERENT things.
行く - I will go. (Flat statement)
私は行く - As for me (as opposed to OTHERS), I will go. (Contrasting statement)
This is the mistake that most Japanese textbooks make, and WHY the phrase 私は行く sounds so weird. It's not because it's robotic or "textbook" Japanese. It's because it's actually wrong.
5:48 Ya'all are cracking me up with this
Your video is awesome - your linguistic explanations are not.
x ha y desu is the most basic sentence structure in Japanese.
Ellipsing pronouns, subjects or objects is simply another step.
It's still x ha y desu. Nothing has changed there.
I promise you that it is not.
は introduces a new topic of conversation. It’s not being dropped in 肉を食べた。
What’s not shown there is the SUBJECT. The thing is 私が肉を食べた is NOT how you would want to say this “correctly”. The natural way to say this is 肉を食べた。
私は肉を食べた。 is also unnecessarily dramatic, unless the topic of (私) has not been brought up in conversation.
The topic isn’t being “dropped”. It’s just not necessary.
In Japanese the subject is always there, it’s just that it is usually unspoken, because marking it with が adds too most emphasis for more situations. Unless someone asked WHO ate the meat, you wouldn’t say 私が here.
Long story short 肉を食べた does not equal 私は肉を食べた。
It instead equals something LIKE (私)肉を食べた。
Cure Dolly and Jay Rubin get all the credit for helping popularize online the change in the way we westerners understand Japanese grammar through our lens. Her videos on the fundamental structure of Japanese and the Zero が changed everything for me. Every sentence in japanese has a subject and a predicate. She's a legend! RIP Cure Dolly 先生!
true, im still sad cure dolly passed away :__) her grammar lessons were one of a kind.
does Ando-san need lotion?
I really like these bite-sized lessons
Glad to hear it!
This is pretty similar to Literary Chinese.
English using commands: "Hold my beer"
Spanish: "My beer has been on the floor"
Japanese: "My beer was born in a secret underground bunker below the deepest point of the ocean"
I think you might benefit from the now defunct channel Cure Dolly. This person goes further into detail; adjectives are a bit special, as they have the "is" function already built into them as they are predicate adjectives that stand on their own. (The have a non-past, past and negative form) The reason you need です is to make it polite and there's no real way to make adjectives polite, like adding ます to verbs. So it's not really a matter of being "optional" as it is a matter of wanting to make it polite.
The three basic structures are:
Aは/が Bう (A does B)
Aは/が Bだ(です in polite speech) (A is B)
Aは/が Bい (Bい です in polite speech) (A is B II)
This is really helpful! Thank you
dude i would pay to take classes w u what in the world thank u sm
Watched.
Thx for the video ~
すてきなビデオ！良い勉強の方法だと思う！
I think translate ですto it’s is a error, first you don’t need to use ですeverytime, you can use for example, 私は山田 and how you will translate without です. です it’s just politeness.
When you tell your name in a less polite way than Desu, you usually use "Yo"
So, for andy, you would say "アンディよ"
This is used rarely though, as most of the time, you introduce your name to people you don't know, and therefore use the polite form of "アンディです"
How does one get better at reading Japanese. My listening and speaking skills are far ahead of reading. I’ve been practicing the three writing systems, but once words hit paper… I am lost.
In the end, it's by struggling to read. Lots!
from what i learned elsewhere, は and が differ in what the emphasis is placed on. one refers to the preceeding word and the other focuses on the succeeding word.
Yes, that is one of the main differences. Though は emphasized the proceeding phrase, not just word.
@@ToKiniAndy
yea i have seen that and used it myself. very interesting and convenient to have that 1 particle essentially put contextual brackets over entire sentence fragments
I feel like I need to give 100 likes to this video!
I feel like I need to give 100 likes to this comment!
Subbed, Good Stuff
Thanks Mikey! Glad it was helpful. =)
People who told me duolingo is shit are stupid. It started me of with Y desu instead of Kore wa y desu at least.
Funny how Japanese doesn’t like pronouns while native English speakers are obsessed with them lol
I like Japanese more
0:50 "unlearn" ??? Are you implying that language is, a habit?? Do all fluent speakers of all languages "Oops! Force of habit!" with *constant involuntary outbursts* of words and sentences a la spaced repetition systems ALL DAY? What about, Every day? ... Any day? No. We do not all suffer from this condition. Language is not a habit. In fact: We speak. We speak, *when* we want, what we want, exactly, perfectly; without effort of any kind. Did you drill your way to perfection in English? No. You listened to what your parents were telling you, like they requested, and then responded in kind. Thus fulfilled the transaction, of messages. Humans, even Animals, can intuit messages without any words at all. Are you of lesser intellect than a dog? No. If you did ANY DRILLS AT ALL... it was because you had a tiny, miniscule, insignificant, SPEECH impediment. (Notice I say *"SPEECH"*, and *NOT* "Language" impediment.) Truly sir, if that is your assertion, I invite you to examine the evidence A LOT more closely.
The other implication is that you believe there is an entirely separate language from Japanese, which is almost entirely like it, yet somehow, both: totally, not Japanese, yet also comprised necessarily of entirely cogent Japanese.
Get off the internet and stop spreading this "Study harder!" bull. You learn a language when you understand its meanings. You forget how to do your grammar every 2 minutes because it's useless, boring, and not even remotely the same area of the brain you downright バカ.
you sound quite annoying