Hi Lingq members,
Wanted to ask how to get used to speaking in a grammar that is opposite from English, which in this case is Japanese and Korean. Planning to learn how to speak in these languages soon but don’t know how to wrap my head around the grammar. Any advice would be nice!
Thank you
I’m learning Japanese and im not fluent yet but for me personally i make flash cards with sentences i want to say and then you just get used to it.
Trying to think too much about grammar for me is overwhelming. I would rather just learn how to say what i want to say and once you do that you can start to use those sentences as a base to mix and match what you know. Im still working on my speaking but just doing flash cards of whole sentences with English on the front and the Japanese on the back has helped me think more in Japanese.
One thing about Japanese in particular is that its a very context based language so a sentence can be very simple and if you dint know the context it makes it hard to understand what the speaker means at times i noticed. Also the other thing that is very odd not knowing what the speaker is saying until the end of the sentence. For instance in English i say “i like pizza” but in Japanese its “ピザが好き” in English it translates to “pizza like” so you didnt know if they hated it or liked it until the end of the sentence which throws my English brain off at times and can make you feel kinda lost with longer sentences but again i think its just something you get used to more you put it into practice and immerse as im sure you already know with Chinese.
this video explains the structure pretty good - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2q5GsB0swQ
Question:
[The main goal of language learning] is to get a bunch of input. Do you think there’s a certain point at which it’s helpful to start to look at the grammar rules?
Steve Kaufmann’s Answer:
Yes. I think, regularly.
It depends on the language of course.
Like, I haven’t— I’m not aware of any grammar rules in Japanese. None. I just— People say, you know, [speaks Japanese] — Whatever, I just hear what they say and I imitate it. However, there are languages like Slavic languages where there’s lots of grammar. Uh, whether you have conjugations and declensions.
And again if I’m— most like— most of my reading I do on LingQ, so every verb I see I can look up. We have conjugating dictionaries and I just kind of look at it just to remind myself of how that conjugates, but there’s no conjugations in Japanese.
So and since I’m not learning Japanese I don’t know— I don’t know— there are you know— compared to when I learn Japanese, nowadays you can look a word up and you can have a sort of a grammar reference tied to that word. And so you can get that constant feedback whenever you’re curious about a point of grammar.
I think the best time to go at that grammar is when you’re curious about something. So you can relate the grammar rule to something that you’re experiencing or have experienced.
Uh you can always skim a grammar book and it may remind you of some things. But if you don’t have enough experience with the language all these grammar explanations they just fly past you.
You can’t sort of: “Oh okay, now I’ve read all the rules. Now I’d understand the grammars.” That’s how it works. You have to first have that experience and then you can start tagging, identifying, and putting labels on some of the things that you have already experienced.
So yeah, you do need to review. And you’re not— like the brain’s not going to notice everything. When we say it establishes patterns it’s going to miss stuff. And so it is useful every so often to skim through a grammar book or some book that explains the language or to look up things when you’re curious.
I do that. I do it in my Persian. I do it in my Arabic. Again, Japanese— I learned so long ago. I mean those kinds of resources weren’t available back then.
It takes a lot of patience. At least with Japanese the conjugations are easier so I think Japanese is easier than Korean. I would focus on short sentences for a while. Keep it simple.
There are two different things you are talking about: Grammar and syntax.
For the latter, when I started learning Korean I just kept the word order as is. I am German, so the word order we use is quiet different from the Korean, too. But if the sentences are short at the beginning, they are understandable, even if the word order differs.
For example:
저기에 고양이가 있어요. - There cat be.
저는 친구랑 같이 음악을 들었어요. - I friends with together Musik listened.
Over time, this will work with more complex sentences, too, and you will just get used to the word order. For me it took roughly three months. I assume it might take a bit longer for the average English speaker, as German word order is more complex, too, so we are less focused on expecting a certain order. In addition, I am a mathematician, so I am somewhat used to having information beeing arranged in different ways, depending on the purpose, too.
In regards to grammar I think it is worthwhile practicing it. You don’t need to try to memorize the patterns, as this won’t work very well anyways. But practicing the structures with a good workbook can be useful. I am not that much into the Japanese grammar yet, but the Korean one is very systematic. So after a while new grammars you encounter will be more and more a composition of already known particles in combination with auxiliary verbs, so you can more and more guess the meaning. Both language feature grammar aspects that don’t exist in English, so it’s good to get an overview, at least.
For Korean I can recommend Korean Grammar in Use. I don’t have a grammar-exclusive recommendation for Japanese, but I use みんなの日本語 (minna no nihongo), which explains some of the Grammar in the respective translation book, too.
I’d recommend starting with simple sentences and built up from there over time, just as others have suggested.
The idea that you shouldn’t study grammar because you can’t build the sentences based on understanding the rules misses the point. Grammar study can help you understand what you are reading or listening to as input. Especially for an English speaker learning the linguistic structure of Japanese, the explicit learning of these patterns is a far straighter path to understanding than input alone.
One of the good things about learning Japanese, is that the grammar is systematic, with few irregularities. So when you learn a pattern and practice using it, you’ll find the language is very “plug-and-play”.
I started Korean almost two years ago, but decided to get into it seriously one year later. I enrolled into Lingq last year in July.
The comprehensive input helped tremendously to recognize patterns /ending particles up to a point. After a while you realize that you still don’t know what to do with these particles. And there are so so many of them. Very confusing. Very frustrating.
So, last January, I got into Talk To Me in Korean starting at the bottom: Grammar Level 1/Speaking/Writing Level 1 and then up. It was the best decision I’ve ever made and regret now not having started earlier. I made a huge jump, not only in recognizing the patterns, but also in understanding how they function. It gives you a solid fundation and the very structured way to approach the language. And you still can continue using Lingq of course. These go hand in hand. Hyun Woo Sun from TTMIK is a fantastic coach and always ready to help at a personal level.
Look into it. Give it a try. It won’t be a waste of time.
Good Luck!
If you have access to any AI tool, these do a great job at explaining rules. Early stages, maybe watch a few videos on grammar from Japanese from Zero. After that, I would look into sentence mining and using AI to break down grammar points. I wouldn’t prioritize this activity. I would focus on reading and listening to natural content and a bit of shadowing. After a few months, working with a good tutor will help. All this takes time, especially if you’re not doing this full time. No rush.
How did you avoid getting used to the grammar while learning that many words (in Korean you are beyond Advanced II if I am not mistaken). I suspect that your mandarin knowledge (and overlap to korean and japanese words) has drastically helped the process. Nevertheless, you are using LingQ and thus should encounter the words in context.
This is not meant as a criticism. Your approach must be drastically different from what I am doing in my Korean.
For Lingq, if the word is the same but in different forms, I put it as known right away since I would be able to understand the concept of it. When speaking, I do a seperate approach to learn how to speak certain grammar rules in certain context.
Honestly, Mandarin didn’t transfer much words to korean. Maybe 5% since I barely notice the differentiation. I think I use lingq differently to the average lingq user. Ideology-wise.
If you have ignored different word forms, you may need to brush up on the suffixes which can contain significant meaning. For example:
먹었어 = ate (past tense from eat)
먹었데요 = (someone) said that (someone) ate
There are different ways to get used to the suffixes. I had created my personal lexicon of endings, adding gradually new entries such as:
-잖아요 (to insist/emphasize correctness, eg. should do, must be…); … as you know
-인데 → it is and [but]
Furthermore, I used literal translations right from the start, a) for individual words and b) for whole sentences:
a) Literal translation for individual words
Example: 늦었어요 = late was
1 word with a suffix in Korean, yet 2 words in English. Keeping the word order in the literal translation makes it more intuitive. Also note that in English one might say “I am late”, but Korean uses the past tense. This is already baked in the literal translation.
[A good amount of such literal word translations are already in LingQ]
b) Literal translation for phrases / sentences
Obsttorte has already mentioned this. Using his examples:
“저기에 고양이가 있어요. - There cat be.”
I would (at least in the early stages) go one step further:
I have copied this in as a picture since the LingQ forum tends to remove the spacings between the words.
Note: The same principles should work for Japanese due to rather similar grammar structure.
This is very informative and useful! Thanks Oliver 
日语的语法有很多相似且细微的东西，这些相似且细微的东西非常难以记忆。
我建议将日语的语法书通读一遍，对所有语法有一个细微的印象，在你知道一句话中什么是词汇，什么是语法的时候，你可以通过lingq的ai助手询问该语法在句子中的意思，经过在大量的上下文和各种语法相遇，基本就可以习得，掌握一些语法，但是想要更深入，还是需要活用，造句来掌握。
我还想说点别的，我最近在看你的直播，你在lingq标记日语已知词汇的时候，速度非常惊人，在我还没有理解句子的时候你已经学习完一页了😂
这样囫囵吞枣式的学习，没有太多自己的思考，我个人感觉在走一条弯路，因为这样学习对于句子和语法只有一个浅层的接触和记忆，长期来看，会记忆很多词汇，但是并由于没有深入的学习，会有很多偏差出现，当然这完全只是我个人的看法，你不用太在意。
Kimchi Reader also offers a free list of Korean particle explainations on their website: Kimchi Reader
Also available as an Anki deck: GitHub - mathieulabs/korean-anki-decks · GitHub
Hi, I watched your live stream on YouTube. Do you only use LingQ to record words? I didn’t see you use it to listen to or watch videos.
I use LingQ only to learn words.
YouTube for listening training
