四字熟語 or how I learned to stop worrying and love kanji

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Click the image below to go to the article from which I draw these examples from:

ヨジジュクゴとは？

Kanji can be an intimidating part of Japanese. I think it is a big reason why a lot of people give up on Japanese. If you can’t consume the written word of a language easily, that makes it hard to get a lot of immersion done compared to other languages.

I’ve talked about general kanji study tips and tricks on youtube here, here and here. I’ve also done previous blogs here and here. Today I’d like to focus on 四字熟語 【よじじゅくご】 (n) four-character compound word (esp. idiomatic). While ‘true’ 四字熟語 are idiomatic, their usage in Japanese goes much broader than in Chinese, which is where the concept comes from. The wikipedia entry is an adequate primer for the topic and I would recommend you read it if you’re unsure as to what a 四字熟語 is. The entry points out that, ‘四字熟語 is itself a non-idiomatic four-character phrase’.

So how does getting into more complicated kanji topics like this help you, the average JSL learner? I would propose 3 reasons

  • They are ubiquitous in Japanese
  • The non-idiomatic ones are easy to understand through literal breakdowns of the individual kanji
  • Attempting to read 四字熟語 helps you practice ‘kanji logic’, that is how do 漢語 (かんご) work.

So let’s go through the above linked article about train seats and look through all the 漢語 with particular focus on the 四字熟語.

行動習慣 does not have a separate entry into the dictionary, normally a hint that it is a non-idiomatic 四字熟語. I would point out that such a 四字熟語 is the combination of two words

  • 行動【こうどう】 (n,vs,adj-no) action; conduct; behaviour
  • 習慣 【しゅうかん】 (n) (1) habit; (n) (2) (social) custom; practice; convention

So it could be translated along the lines of behavioural conduct, societal conduct. This article is talking about certain strategies or behaviours that should be done to avoid aging quickly. So one strategy that I find to be successful when you see four kanji in a row, is to put the four characters into two pairs as I did in the above bullet points.

一念発起【いちねんほっき】 (n,vs) (yoji) being resolved to (do something); having a wholehearted intention
Unlike the previous entry, this is actually in the dictionary, but it still can be looked at as　一念+発起. This one actually is quite tricky as 発起 can be read as ほっき or はっき but 四字熟語 often are only allowed to be read in one way and in this case it must be ほっき and comes from a particular sect of Buddhism.

体脂肪率 【たいしぼうりつ】 (n) body fat percentage. This is a slight variation on what we have been looking at in the sense that it is a 三字熟語, or a 3 character phrase with the kanji 率, which tends to be used as a suffix to talk about rate, ratio, percentage etc.

血管年齢 is back to the more common style of adding two 漢語 together, けっかん (blood vessels) and ねんれい (age).　It could be translated to something like ‘the age of the blood’ vessels, straight after it in the article it puts 28歳, meaning ‘blood vessels aged 28’ or something similar.　

限定書籍 is another, with げんてい meaning: (n,vs,adj-no) limit; restriction and 書籍 しょせき (n) book; publication.
While doing my research about this one, I came across a new English word called a retronym. Not knowing what it was, I did what I always do first and have a guess at etymological clues in the word, principally being ‘retro’. This isn’t too far off the meaning of the word but my point is that this is exactly what you should be doing when you’re looking at kanji! Indeed it is basically the whole point of this blog today.

内臓脂肪 is another example of the Lego-like way that you can join 漢語 to one another, with 内臓 being in place of 体, therefore being read as ないぞうしぼう and meaning visceral fat (although in my head I just thought of ‘organ fat’) and is technically excess intra-abdominal adipose tissue accumulation. Now there’s a sentence I didn’t think I’d be saying today.

The last entry is (we’re still in the first paragraph of the actual article) 特別公開

  • 特別 とくべつ (adj-na,adj-no,adv,n) special; particular; extraordinary; exceptional; especial
  • 公開 こうかい (n,vs,adj-no) opening to the public; making available to the public; putting on display; exhibiting; showing (play, movie, etc.); holding (interview, etc.); open; public.

    In other words, a ‘special opening’, ‘special event’.

Takeaway

The takeaway I hope you get from this article is to see the importance of learning how to read 四字熟語 and 三字熟語. Most of the examples I gave (6 out of 7) were basically just two 漢語 together, the 7th being a 三字熟語 with a suffix. 一念発起 is perhaps considered as one set phrase but it is totally possible to break it down into two components hence why I put it in the first category.





Article breakdown of ‘Zero is too harsh? 1st year primary students getting marked down for stops, upward flicks and sweeping strokes MEXT’s opinion’

Article link:
https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/94af3649323a03d2dfb09bd850600defeccd70c1

Video readthrough of the article with translation and explanation:

0点は厳しすぎ？小1「とめ、はね、はらい」で×　文科省の見解は

0点 is read as れいてん which you can read more about here.

習字のような「とめ、はね、はらい」ができていないと、漢字ドリルは全てやり直し。テストは0点―。小学1年の担任のこうした指導に対し、保護者から「厳しすぎる」という悩みが届いた。わが子の就学を前に、どこまで丁寧に字を書かせるべきか思案している保護者は多いはず。西日本新聞「あなたの特命取材班」がウェブサイトで意見を募ったところ、保護者や教育現場からさまざまな声が届いた。字体の指導は、どこまで厳格であるべきか。

小学1年の担任
a たんにんせんせい is the homeroom/form teacher that you have generally in the morning before school actually starts in Japan. But たんにん also means to be in charge of, so in this sense this is just the teacher running the first year classes.

保護者から「厳しすぎる」という悩みが届いた
Here is an interesting usage of という, which is used to define or describe certain concepts. In this usage, なやみ is a type of trouble or worrying aspect and is being connected with が to とどいた from とどく, which means to arrive. However the parents haven’t really all directly said ‘This is troubling’ but more that from the variety of different responses, the majority opinion could be summarised as the parents/guardians being ‘troubled’ by the news. In this case, the ‘arriving’ is that these opinions have all been sent or collected by the journalist.

「習っていないのと、知って省くのは違う」

Here we see some nominalisation by the presence of the の after both verbs, and the usage of the と…は to show a contrast. ‘There’s a difference between not learning something and leaving something out’.

「同じタイプの厳しい先生がいたが、数年後は皆さん感謝していた」「高校生や大学生の指導をしているが、字が雑で読めないことがある」「大学教員として国語の入試の採点をした。とめがはねになっている場合や、雑で判別が難しい字も不正解」…。 　
冒頭の教師の指導に賛同する立場からは、こうした投稿が寄せられた。中には「とめ、はね、はらい」が不完全な字に丸を付けた担任に「小学生は基本が重要。習っていないのと、知って省くのでは意味が違う」などと訴え、指導を変えさせたという保護者も。
北九州市の小学校に30年勤務した教員は、採点の裁量は各担任にあるため、クラス間でも差は生まれるとした上で「教えた通り書けていない場合は減点し、0点にはしなかった」と自らの体験を紹介した。

雑で読めないことがある
雑, read as ざつ, refers to messiness, roughness, untidiness or miscellaneous. Useful words for remembering this would be 混雑 and 複雑. ‘There are times the characters cannot be read as they are messy/disorganised’

北九州市の小学校に30年勤務した教員は、採点の裁量は各担任にあるため、クラス間でも差は生まれるとした上で「教えた通り書けていない場合は減点し、0点にはしなかった」と自らの体験を紹介した。
北九州市 is a city in the north of きゅうしゅう, the small island on the west of Japan including 福岡, 長崎 and 鹿児島.　教えた通り is using the grammar point of ～とおり, while we see there is a difference between 減点, subtracting marks, and 0点にする which is to give a 0.

どこまで減点…文科省「各校の判断」

一方で、福岡県の小学校教員は「とめ、はね、はらい」を基準に減点することは「誤り」だと投稿した。根拠とするのは学習指導要領解説の国語編だ。字体は骨組みであるため、実際に書かれた場合は無数の形状があり、「正しい字体であることを前提とした上で、柔軟に評価することが望ましい」と書かれている。

字体 じたい is a reference to the composition of kanji characters including concepts like とめ、はね、はらい, relative sizing and other factors.

だが、文部科学省教育課程課の見解は異なる。「国語ではなく、社会や理科など他教科で書いた字は『とめ、はね、はらい』ができていないからといって、減点はしないという柔軟な評価を意味する」と説明する。

学習指導要領には「漢字の指導においては、学年別漢字配当表に示す漢字の字体を標準とする」とあり、漢字テストや書写では配当表通りの「とめ、はね、はらい」が求められるという。ただ、実際にどこまで減点するかどうかは「各校の判断」と付け加えた。

実際にどこまで減点するかどうかは「各校の判断」と付け加えた。
‘They added that in reality, how far to subtract points is up to each school’s judgement.’

「書くことが嫌い」になることを懸念

I’ve got a discussion on する・なる with the に particle here and here.

一方、小中学校に長年勤務した平嶋一臣・純真学園大客員教授（国語表現法）は、厳しい指導で「書くことが嫌い」になることを懸念する。鉛筆をうまく扱うには「指の筋肉が動作を覚えるような地道な練習が必要」だからだ。

冒頭の保護者も、小1の子どものやる気が損なわれていることを気にしていた。幼稚園や小中学校で書の出前授業をしている平嶋さんは「とめ、はね、はらい」がきっちり書けるのに越したことはないとした上で、「もう少し子どもの発達を緩やかに見守ってはどうか」と強調した。

「もう少し子どもの発達を緩やかに見守ってはどうか」
‘How about watching over children’s development with a bit more leniency?’

This is just a teaser on how I would go over an article in detail, in reality we would go through the whole article and then check comprehension with questions as well as revisiting grammar, vocab and kanji over subsequent lessons. You can book lessons with me to be able to read articles like this through the Contact page or click the below picture to go to my profile on Cafetalk and use my coupons for cheap lessons!

Min-Maxing Rabbitholes

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Checking out Japanese language learning forums reveals some common trends. I often find myself analysing people’s entire personalities through their comments. I’m not entirely sure remote psychology is a thing but I do see certain attitudes and behaviours that are unlikely to be very helpful in your language learning journey. The one I’ll focus on today is ‘Min-Maxing’.

Min-Maxing?

Min-Maxing is a an idea that comes from games, particularly RPG style games involving building a character. The basic idea is that you minimise or reduce things that won’t help you, and maximise something that will help you the most. At its core, this idea is very powerful as it involves having a sort of Platonic ideal or fully formed concept of what your ‘endgame’ or goal is. Then you consider how to reach that goal and the steps that need to be taken and the things to be avoided. If done correctly, it can lead to great efficiency, specialisation, success and above average achievement.

However it can also have the downside of the end result being unbalanced, asymmetrical or otherwise janky.

So how does this apply to language learning? One of the big issues with min-maxing things in the real world is that it is not as easy to do the 1-to-1 conversion of effort ⇒ result. Spending inordinate amounts of time to determine the ‘best’ study method would have been much better spent actually studying, even if it was inefficient. To continue the RPG analogy, the ‘grind’ must be done at some point: the words must be learnt, the grammar internalised and the immersion must take place. If you’re into your fifth article reading about which anki deck to use or typing out your huge wall of text asking for opinions on which Vtuber to watch, you’re probably better off actually opening a textbook, reading a news article or speaking to a (Japanese) native speaker.

Worked Example

In response to the question, ‘how do I learn compound kanji?’, this is a response that is worth reading (emphasis added):

It’s best if you don’t think of them as ‘compound kanji’ as much as you think of them as words. Because (usually) what comes first is the spoken word, then a writing system appears. And for that, there’s not really a ‘best way’ simply because it’s too complex of a task and learning is an individual process.

What people generally do for Japanese is use a core deck (2k or 6k), which has audio for every word. Then you start consuming native media and either relying on encountering them enough times to stick or making your own cards (sentence mining). At the same time to get familiar with kanji, you can use one of the common methods like WaniKani or KKLC that teach them to you together with words [or kanji damage -Ed].

What’s the deal with kanji anyway?

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One of the most common beginner questions I deal with is about kanji. But from experience, it it clear that even people who get to a relatively advanced level of kanji still don’t know basic things about kanji or study them really ineffectively. The treatment of kanji in most textbooks is terrible and generally consigned to a few pages at the beginning.

I’ve done a video on the kanjidamage.com system which you can find below and this will teach you basically everything needed to study kanji effectively.

The general advice is to not look at ‘learn kanji’ as a goal in and of itself. Instead, learn them as part of words. When you study a new word like say, 牛乳; learn how to read this word, ぎゅうにゅう, memorise how to write the two characters in this word, and remember that this word means “milk”, specifically cow’s milk.

By studying like this you’ll eventually build up knowledge of kanji, what they mean, how to write them, and what readings they have.

Studying kanji in a vacuum can be interesting, and isn’t a complete waste of time if you enjoy it, but it’s general a better use of your time to learn them in context, as part of vocabulary study.

If you wish to progress to being able to write kanji by hand, it will take a lot of work and a detailed understanding of the concepts in the above linked video. Also check out this video.

Read Japanese sentences backwards

Tip: Look for the noun and then read backwards.

One issue I see coming up a lot in my lessons is students struggling to understand ‘clauses’. I’m no linguist and there are many fancy ways to specifically talk about what exactly a clause is (and isn’t) but for the purposes of this article, clauses are like mini-sentences within a larger sentence. An introduction to what I am talking about can be read about on Tae Kim’s website

Generally you want to identify the beginnings and ends of words and clauses by the position of kanji and particles. Also, generally the types of clauses that tend to cause issues are basically just adjectives and verbs being used to describe specific ideas (generally nouns). Let’s go through an NHK Easy Article and look at a few examples.

Article here: https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/easy/k10012928001000/k10012928001000.html

交通事故になりやすい「危険なバス停」が１万か所あった

So from the headline, we already have an example. As you’re reading, you should be looking at the kanji and possible particles to try and work out where one word ends and the other starts. The first candidate for a particle に, only has found kanji in front of it, so probably not a clause. The next is が, and by the presence of 危険な we can almost be certain that バス停 is a noun (which it is, bus stop). So putting it together by working backwards from the noun, we have:

危険なバス停, a dangerous bus stop
But then, in front of that we have no particle, so it’s likely we can assume that this is part of a clause. The next part

なりやすい, easy to become
Now here we have a particle, but に is joining なりやすい to 交通事故 (こうつうじこ, traffic accident), so it becomes all part of the same clause. At this point, read it from the back.

バス停➡危険な➡交通事故になりやすい
Bus stop➡dangerous bus stop➡easy to become (involved) in a traffic accident➡ Dangerous Bus stops (where) it is easy to become involved in a traffic accident. So you can see that everything before ‘bus stop’ is being used to modify ‘bus stop’ because it’s not a usual bus stop, it is a specific idea of certain bus stops being dangerous because of the high levels of traffic accidents that occur nearby.

道を渡っていた女の子が車にはねられて亡くなりました

Again if we start scanning, first particle is を but it is just joining 道 and 渡る, but if we keep going we see a noun after the verb, 女の子 followed by が. So 女の子 looks like the noun that is getting modified by everything before it:

女の子➡道を渡っていた
girl➡crossing the road

The rest of the sentence is ‘died after being hit by a car’, therefore, ‘A girl crossing the road was hit by a car and then died’.

バス停に止まったバスが邪魔になっていた

Doing the same process here, we see a に particle which isn’t showing much, but the presence of a noun after a verb again should at least make us think of clauses. It’s not just a bus, it’s a bus stopped at a bus stop.

３年以内に人がはねられた事故があったバス停などです。

Here the first が is just showing a grammatical relationship between 人 and はねられた, but the second shows a noun following a verb so it’s likely we have a clause again. Reading backwards, ‘an accident where a person was hit by a car within the last 3 years’. However it actually goes further, because we see another noun following a verb, and so the full sentence is actually ‘bus stops where an accident where a person was hit by a car within the last 3 years’.

Hopefully this tip can help you understand grammar better and start to get into translating sentences into more natural English. Once I started doing this, I found my understanding of Japanese increased dramatically, and I hope yours will too!

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What do I need to learn Japanese?

There are so many options for learning Japanese or any language. The amount of choices can be overwhelming. As many beginners have found out, the early stages of language learning can be tough and it is easy to blame the methods, techniques or resources for the slow progress.

So what should YOU use? Of course I’m professional Japanese tutor so take my recommendations with a grain of salt, but I have experience with many different students from many different backgrounds and there are certain things that tend to work with everyone. Someone from reddit has also written this guide which I think has some very good ideas and strategies.

However before you start learning Japanese, or do anything that is going to require significant effort and time commitment, is to start off with some goals in mind. I’ve done another post where I go through the fundamentals of goal setting with language learning which I would really recommend you read and then 1) set what your own goals are and 2) how you will try to achieve them.

Step 1: Learn Hiragana and Katakana

Nonnegotiable. I wouldn’t even bother opening a textbook, starting on a kanji study program or doing immersion before you’ve spent at least 80% of your study time on hiragana. You want to get to the point where you can read hiragana without much trouble and ideally you want to be able to write it as well. Writing it will reinforce your memory a lot more than just reading it all the time. Romaji is a crutch and WILL hold you back. The fact that many textbooks that cover basic beginners’ Japanese insist on using romaji all the way through is a terrible editorial decision and I would not recommend you ever use a textbook (or any material) that does this.

So how should you learn it? Tofugu.com has a good guide that shows you all the hiragana, has pronunciation guides and shows you how to write them. Go through it, then find some flashcard deck or one of the million free hiragana apps and drill them for a while. As soon as you start getting the hang out if, you want to go to NHK Easy and start reading articles. NHK Easy is fantastic for 2 main reasons: every article has an audio recording and an option to turn furigana (hiragana showing the reading of the kanji) off and on. So you attempt to read through the NHK Article, listening to the recorded version if you’re finding it hard to read and then playing back the audio to check you did it right.

Next you want to expose yourself to as much hiragana as possible. One way is by thinking of any Japanese word and then try and write it out in hiragana. Start with car brands (Mitsubishi, Toyota, Honda) and then move to nouns like sushi, kimono. You’ll need to start building some type of word list you can run-through something like anki with. Then you can go down that word list and look at the English column, and then try and remember the Japanese word for it, then write it in Japanese, and then refer back to your word list and compare if you wrote it down correctly. I discuss more strategies here:

Step 2: Get into grammar and kanji

Grammar and kanji will need to be done over time. There are so many strategies for pursuing grammar study and it is hard to say which is best. However a structured approach is likely to work better than an unstructured approach for most people.

Grammar is conceptually difficult no matter what language you learn, and so it is important to not try and speed through grammar guides or textbooks. Generally it is good to pick a point or so and work on it for a while, then move on to something else. At the same time you want to be trying to consume Japanese media of some description, hopefully close to your level, so that you can get experience picking out grammar and vocab that you’ve learnt.

Structured Approach

This would mean learning Japanese grammar points ‘in order’ and following one pattern with another pattern which may build on the previous. This is the general way most textbooks and classrooms will teach Japanese. If you get tutoring with someone like me, I tend to teach by JLPT level if the student has no real plan they wish to pursue. It would also mean following a grammar guide like imabi or Tae Kim.

Ideally you want to start by learning in the plain form and then the ます・です form. This is why I recommend imabi and Tae Kim.

Unstructured Approach

This would be similar to the types of immersion methods. Rather than using a textbook, you just immerse yourself in Japanese media, and try and grab sentences, vocab etc and put them into anki or other learning tools. This would be hard to do with audio-only podcast or subtitle-less TV shows but works well with written works. It has the advantages of being ‘proper Japanese’ as opposed to textbook Japanese, but the difficulty of the grammar, language will vary wildly, especially if it is a piece of media meant for adult Japanese native speakers.

Used correctly, such a method will develop your listening skills, pronunciation and speed which gets you into speaking and understanding Japanese to a near-native level, generally the best case scenario goal of most Japanese learners.

I’ve listed some resources like AJATT and you can also check out Refold.

Kanji

It’s never to early to start on kanji. I’ve talked about kanji a lot in other posts and videos but the main thing to keep in mind is to be careful about how you learn kanji. Textbooks meant for Japanese or non-Japanese speakers are generally not great. I’ve done videos on a great website called kanjidamage.com and this is one of the best ways to learn kanji, including reading and writing.

Step 4: Get a language partner

It is very important to get someone to talk to. Direct interaction via conversation is the best way to learn and practice your skills. There are many options for this, in no particular order:

  • Move to Japan
  • Get a Japanese friend, partner etc
  • Get Japanese lessons (contact me through my website or Cafetalk coupon: 0a77c3de) 👌
  • Find Japanese language meetups nearby or use VR Chat, Twitch etc to find Japanese communities

So there are some roadmaps and strategies to learn Japanese. What you do think?
Any suggestions comment below or join me on Youtube!

タイヤロック付けたまま走り去る。

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記事を精読する Japanese Article Readthrough

Japanese grammar, vocab and kanji practice through reading an article about stealing cars with wheel locks still attached. I’d put this grammar-wise around JLPT N3, kanji/vocab JLPT N2+

Original Article: https://car-moby.jp/article/automobil…​

Tofugu article on 込む referenced 4:17​: https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/komu-compound-verbs/

Grammar of てしまう referenced 16:56: https://acejapanese.com/shimau/​

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Do you want to improve your Japanese? Do you want to get better marks in Japanese? I specialise in exam preparation and exam technique to help you get the best marks you can in the final exam for Japanese. I am from WA but I teach material which will get you top marks in all states. I also teach beginners so if you’ve always wanted to learn Japanese but don’t know where to start, start with an email to me via acejapanese@protonmail.com or checkout acejapanese.com

I run professional online Japanese lessons with proper microphone, fast internet and ability to play videos, read material, practice writing, learn kanji, learn grammar all from the comfort of your own home using Zoom. Checkout my website to learn more and to contact me! Want to speak, listen, understand, read Japanese? I am a Japanese tutor with JLPT N1 and I can teach YOU Japanese, from the comfort of your own home with professional, personalised lessons.

Going from ‘nothing’ to getting ~85% in N4 in 9 months

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I didn’t start my 10 month long exchange in Japan back in 2003 with ‘nothing’. At that point I had been through 4 years of primary school Japanese and 3 years of high school Japanese. After 7 years of Japanese study, where did I stand? I could basically read and write all the hiragana, struggled with katakana and knew maybe 20 kanji (as in I could recognise but not write, could guess at a reading that I had already memorised but could not guess variations). My vocabulary would’ve been low, maybe a few hundred words. I knew some basic grammar patterns but probably no more than 5 or 6.

However I of course thought my Japanese was amazing and I was looking forward to getting to Japan and having long conversations with my host family etc. Fast forward to arriving in Japan, and then I very quickly realised I did not understand anything, could not read anything, couldn’t even do a basic self introduction and couldn’t even pick out a single individual word when people spoke to me. That period lasted for at least 6 months, at which point I was able to recognise certain questions and respond, and it wasn’t until about month 8 when I was able to have basic conversations. At about month 10, I was feeling very confident with my Japanese, at which point my exchange was over and I went home.

AFS, the organisation that sent me to Japan, provided me with some textbooks, a translator at school(!), a tutor and lots of emotional support (I was having a hard time because I couldn’t deal with being surrounded by people constantly speaking, listening and having a good time while I sat there totally confused). I’m extremely grateful for how much AFS helped me out. They also suggested that every student go for the JLPT. Back then there were only 4 levels: 4級、3級、2級、１級. The revamp of the test slotted in an extra level between 3級 and 2級 and renamed them. So technically while I took and passed 3級, it’s roughly equivalent to today’s N4.

So what was my study schedule like? Being an exchange student living with a host family gave me a lot of free time to study. At school, I had no idea what was going on except for in Maths and English, so I used to just drill vocabulary by writing out long word lists in my textbook, covering a column and then going from J->E or E->J. I would also try and write out the kanji. I ended up dropping a few classes (Japanese history, Japanese) because these were even a struggle for all my classmates and I was never going to be able to catch up to enough kanji to have a hope of ever understanding what was going on. This meant that I was allowed to go to the library to study by myself. I used this time to go through my grammar textbooks, and when I got bored of that, I would take a book off the shelf and try and read it.

When I got home, I would try and do an hour or so of study in my room and then join my host family to hang out and watch TV. Interacting with native speakers in this environment is obviously what helps to put all the study into practice. You get to hear how Japanese people talk, react to certain questions and how certain words are only used in certain contexts. You get to see how even basic Japanese constructions can be used skillfully to convey information and really see how the Japanese mind works to create sentences. This is why immersion and sentence mining, as opposed to looking up words in a dictionary is so important.

I would constantly bombard my host mother with questions. “Is this kanji right?”, “how would I say X?”, etc. I carried physical flashcards in my pocket with certain phrases like “write that down please” so that I could always ask questions without having to rely on my memory. My host mother could speak decent English but I soon asked her to stop because there is almost no way you can progress quickly if you’re switching between the two languages. It is slightly depressing to put yourself into this type of isolation but it certainly helped my Japanese.

I would study on the weekends, most of the school day, after school and constantly approach people who had learnt to speak English, to get tips on how to get better at language study. I started to notice a common theme, the people who were really good at languages didn’t so much study them, but made it part of their life. They listened to ‘western’ music, watched ‘western’ movies, made friends with native English speakers (many people sought me out once they heard there was a native English speaker living in their neighbourhood) and so on. It taught me that trying to drill grammar, vocab and make sentences like:

SATOU WILL EAT SUSHI
SATOU ATE SUSHI
SATOU DIDN’T EAT SUSHI

… gets boring pretty quickly. It’s a necessary but not sufficient condition. By and large, the eureka moments never came with my nose deep in a textbook. They happened when I was struggling through trying to say the most basic of things, and then getting a correction from a Japanese speaker. They happened when I was watching TV and someone said something and then did an action and then realising that the link between what they said and what they did. They happened when I would listen to how my host family, classmates, whoever interacted with each other.

So yeah, I studied almost every day for 10 months, sometimes up to 6+ hours a day. I also was surrounded by Japanese 24/7. Can I point to a single thing and say: ‘Do this for instant Japanese improvement!’? No. But without a holistic approach, you’re not going to get there. So that means watching a English subbed anime once a week or doing 15 minutes of app study a week is not going to get you to your goals in your lifetime.

Set goals. Work towards them. Here are some non-negotiable ones:

If you find that you are not good at self-directed learning, contact me through the contact tab or via cafetalk below where I am offering several coupons. I have been through every single which way to learn the language, and I’ll be able to tailor make a study plan for you that will help with your weaknesses and improve your strengths.

ようになる・ようにする with verbs

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This is a N4 grammar point that is often one of the trickier ones for people to get their head around. However it is so common in Japanese that you would do well to learn it as it will be used in a wide variety of circumstances, including all the way to the top levels of JLPT and of course in any context which Japanese is used.

TL;DR

This grammar is used to talk about changes in state, either with intention or by circumstance. It gets variously translated as, ‘make an effort to’; ‘it became that’; ‘do things in a way so that’ etc. There are two main drivers of this meaning, the first being the choice of に＋する or に＋なる and the second being the joining to a verb via the よう.

になる vs にする

I’ve discussed this grammar point (as well as the more complete ようになる・ようにする) in a previous post and video. This will be going over much the same ground but focusing on the verb usage with new example sentences.

The difference between になる・にする is of course we are dealing with なる, the verb To Become, and する, the verb To Do. The introduction of the に particle, sometimes referred to as the Target Particle, shows that the ‘target’ of the verb is the part coming before the に.

This means that it is a difference between something ‘becoming’ something, versus something is ‘done’. This is the key point, generally when you are dealing with になる, the situation is coming about without your choice or volition, whereas にする generally connotes that a conscious choice occurred.

Some common usages of these are good to reference. For example, if you were at a restaurant and looking at the menu and then see something you want, the normal way to say this would be

からあげにする
I’ll have karaage

Keep in mind you wouldn’t be saying this when actually ordering the food. As する is a verb, all the regular changes can apply to it.

あしたにしよう
Let’s do it tomorrow

になる however is used to show when things ‘become’ something else. For example

べんごしになる
become a lawyer

勉強になるゲーム
games that become study (a reference to educational games)

Why the よう？

The short answer is that Japanese has a rule against putting two verbs together. So that means when we want to use the meaning of になる・にする with a verb something must go in between. As the whole point of this grammar is to emphasise the change in state/circumstance, よう is used. Some of you may be familiar with よう as in from のような or similar. It is technically the same word, i.e ‘appearance’.

様 よう (n-suf,n)
(1) (uk) appearing …; looking …;
(2) way to …; method of …ing;
(3) form; style; design;
(4) like; similar to; (n)
(5) thing (thought or spoken); (P)

At this stage, I generally make the point that when you talk about change in state using this grammar in Japanese, you are literally describing that it ‘appears’ that that state has come about or you’ve made a choice to make it that way. In this way, the meaning of the word ‘appearance’ is still strong.

Let’s look at some examples to get a feel for how this works in reality. This is a common grammar point in NHK Easy articles so you can look there for more examples. As always, I recommend getting a browser plugin called rikaichan (or similar) to read kanji.

ようになる

観光目的で毎年来るようになります
It became that people come to (somewhere) every year with the purpose of sightseeing.

So this type of sentence is using this grammar to emphasise that people come every year to a place for sightseeing (notice how 毎年来るよう is all together). This means that perhaps people came to someplace (being Japanese, the actual place was mentioned a sentence before so as it is obvious from context it is now dropped) occasionally for some purpose but now are coming every year for sightseeing. This could be perhaps the place has become more developed, the cultural value has increased or any other multitude of reasons.

子供が生まれてからというもの、命の大切さを以前より考えるようになった。
Ever since my child was born, I have started thinking deeply about the importance of life more than before.

考えるようになった is ‘it became that I think’ and is being modified with 命の大切さを以前より ‘more than before [think about the] importance of life’. So here, it is true that this person has changed their thinking, but it’s not due to a conscious choice to do so. It is more because the environment has changed ie the birth of a child, that has lead to a shifting of priorities etc.

体が硬い人でもベターッと開脚できるようになるストレッチ方法
The stretching method to do the splits smoothly even for inflexible people

This sentence brings up a good point, that often you will see verbs in the potential form being used for this grammar, as often a ‘change in state’ is brought about due to a new ability. Here for example, doing the splits is not just ‘done’, because most people are not that flexible. They can’t just ‘do it’. But this is about the stretching method that you do so that it brings about a change in circumstance, namely that you’ll become able to do the splits. Interestingly this book/video seems like a bit of a phenomenon in Japan and is basically the only result you get for the word ベターッと.

ようにする

Microsoft Edge が自動的に起動されないようにする
Stop Microsoft Edge starting automatically

Generally the first thing you want to keep in mind is that we can see にする on the end, so we know it’s going to involve a choice. So we’re doing something or making a choice, so that it ‘doesn’t start automatically’ (自動的に起動されない). What is the thing that doesn’t start? Microsoft Edgeが

As mentioned above, generally as にする is involving a choice, you are doing something so that something happens or, in this case, so that something doesn’t happen.

悪夢を見ないようにする方法
A method to stop having nightmares

Notice that the phrasing in Japanese is to not ‘see’ nightmares, which is why you should always being trying to consume Japanese native material rather than translating from English phraseology.

自分を絶対評価で見るようにすれば、他人のことは気にならなくなります。
If you evaluate yourself on a total scale, you will stop caring about what other people do.

Here すれば is the provisional form of する, basically setting up a ‘if’ or ‘when’ statement.

Conclusion

I hope this explanation and examples help you get your head around this very useful grammar point. If you’d like more personalised tutoring, you can always contact me via the contact page or acejapanese@protonmail.com. Also check out my youtube channel for more Japanese lessons and leave a like, comment and subscribe!

“When will I stop translating in my head?”

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At the beginner stage of learning a second language, often you find yourself much slower than everyone else. This is because you hear what someone says in Japanese, try and remember it, then go through each word individually, parse the grammar and then maybe end up with an understanding of what was asked to you.

In the meantime, you’ve been standing there for 10 seconds or so in total silence.

So how can you stop doing this? The key is understanding that eventually you have to think in Japanese. You can’t spend time translating to English, then back to Japanese. It’s why when people go to live in Japan with the goal of improving their Japanese it can be so eye-opening.

Personally, it was not enough to go to Japan, I had to be firm with everyone around me and ask them not to communicate in English anymore. I also limited my time on the computer (because I would just chat in English and send emails) and I also stopped watching any English media on TV. This does result in feelings of loneliness, helplessness and isolation. It can be very jarring to suddenly not be able to understand anyone or anything, even the most basic of questions. Luckily I was with a host family who were very kind.

So how did I start to improve? It started with some basic phrases I would use around the house and school. One of the most useful ones was,

お風呂に入ってもいい？

Once this type of sentence gets in your head (which will happen if you repeat it every night) you start to notice you can swap some things out and use that same grammar. You start to notice that お風呂に入る means to take a bath, and the てもいい is a type of permission. Combined with textbook study, you see other permutations of this ‘permission’ sentence.

ドーナツ食べてもいい？公園に行ってもいい？And so on. At this point, you start to realise that one of the main things holding you back is how quickly you can make that てform. Luckily, your textbook has a list of all the てforms, so you start to just rote learn them.

Let me put it to you this way: rather than insisting on translation, it’s better to find out how Japanese people would express their thoughts and copy that.