Huh. I knew that Chinese writing migrated to Japan, but I didn’t realize a) it was so late, and b) there was no written language prior. Thanks!
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Google books features
and the first chapter, “The God Age Script”, is accessible via the “Preview.”
It’s an older title, so may be obsolete.
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I had not heard about the “God Age Script” before. I will have to look into that. It’s possible that something like that existed, but nothing of it remains, and so much of what is known as “history” from that period in Japan is impossible to separate from mythology.
ETA: It looks like I was off by about a century. Writing seems to have been introduced in the late fifth century and become common in the sixth century. There was an interstitial period when Chinese was used for writing, and I believe that anything written before the sixth century would have been directly imported from China. The earliest known text in Japanese is Kojiki, which was written over the course of 30 years starting around 680. Kojiki is a book of mythology, but it is really the only Japanese text that tells us anything about Japan in the first few centuries CE. The only other texts about that time are from Chinese people who came to Japan and described what they saw, but it is not clear where in Japan they visited.
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On the other hand…
Writing from the Age of the Gods:Language Log
With what could only be called religious passion, Japanese nativists and nationalists searched the archives of temples and shrines for the holy letters, and, in the end, they “discovered” at least a dozen varieties of exotic writing presumed to be in indigenous Japanese scripts.
The result was that these jindai moji were taught during the height of Japan’s nationalism before World War II and cited in Japanese scholarly books on the history of writing. Some “patriots” even had them inscribed on their tombstones!
Of course, all of these ‘ancient Japanese letters’ were complete fakes, and provably so, since the language they transcribed did not have the structure of Old Japanese at all, but rather that of the modern language. Today, whenever jindai moji are mentioned, their fake origins are usually pointed out.
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Yeah, that makes sense. There are so, so many artifacts and relics from that period, and you would think that at least a couple of them would have writing on them if writing had existed…
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I actually have some really good dictionary apps on my phone which let me draw kanji. Of course without proper stroke order it’s hit or miss. I’ve learned enough through the years that I generally know the patterns and failing that I can count strokes and/or work my way back from the radicals. But it’s more about the practical use cases. I’m usually ok with particles but especially with に and で they can often be unintuitive but generally make sense in context after a little explanation. I just wish Duolingo was better about explaining those things when they come up. I think the weird thing about には is just the use of a particle before は like that (even though it shouldn’t be since I use の all the time …).
This sentence in particular that came up today kind of broke my brain:
The whole が before the は seemed so weird but made sense in concept realizing the は topic marker is wrapping the が subject marker and other words that precede it. (Don’t get me started on 五月の人.) This concept was introduced out of the blue. DL hasn’t even introduced compound sentences yet and I’m really curious how it’s going to approach that … or not and just kind of randomly dump it on you. We’ll see… At least I can lean on prior knowledge for some of this but I imagine I’ll hit a wall here soon which is why I’m looking at other ways to keep my learning streak going.
I’m not a fan either. I really hate how it kind of locks you into a path for a single topic and makes you do it again and again and again. You easily can’t decide “ok I want to switch to something else for a little bit and come back to this”. It’s also much harder to go back and review old topics because they aren’t clearly delineated like before. I also really miss the stories.
And there’s just so damn many legendary levels now. In many ways it feels like a ploy to get people to pay for subscriptions by making it that much harder to advance by artificially gating progress for the free tiers.
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They’re integrated into the path now. Duolingo teased Advanced Stories on their blog.
I’m juggling a couple of languages, so if the path leads me into an impasse, I switch languages. (Recently, my first morning exercise happened to be a story with an writing exercise attached. I decided I’d rather practice German, and return when I felt I could compose a simple French sentence)
Yeah, that doesn’t seem very useful for studying how to use the language. If you have a sentence with both a は and a が, it is usually what would be a relative pronoun or relative adverb in English.
That sentence should really be translated as, “How many people are (here*) whose birthday is (in*) May.”
Note: * indicates something that is implied but not explicitly stated. The “here” could technically be “there” depending on the context.
The best explanation that I have ever heard about the difference between は and が is simply that with は, the part that comes next is more important, while with が, the part that comes before it is more imporant.
For example, look at this sentence: 「私は作者です。」
This sentence would be translated as “I am an author.” The focus is on “author.”
Compare that to this sentence: 「私が作者です。」
This sentence would be translated as “I am the author (of this book*).” The focus is on “I.”
Note: Again, “of this book” would probably be derived from context.
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I’ve heard that before, and I like that rule. が is definitely a tricky particle for sure and explanations like “oh it’s simple, は is the topic and が is the subject” are somewhat useful but not super helpful. It ultimately seems like just one of those things that needs experience and intuition (just like things like て/で when conjugating present progressive, rendaku, etc.)
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The cake is a lie. I have not run into any stories yet in my progress. Maybe they’re well hidden, maybe my settings of “no I can’t speak to my phone, no I can’t listen to you” have meant that I will never see a story again, even when I can make the effort to put aside the time and isolation required.
They promised a Practice tab as well, and I haven’t seen any sign of that either.
And I also am juggling languages. I would like to choose to practice an aspect that I’m not feeling comfortable with, and that’s not an option now. I’d like to be able to chose aspects of a language to flip between, as being a big enough change to get out of a rut, without being big enough to throw you entirely. (And changing languages entirely is a shock, when all you need or want is a gentle poke.)
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The cobblestones that have books on them are stories. I know that some languages-- e.g Japanese-- incorporate stories rather late. (And the longer courses also eventually run out of stories)
Still, this seems a rather heavy handed approach to resolving decision fatigue.
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I’m on level 20 of Japanese and have yet to see this. I’ve been going to stories.duolingo.com which still works for the old stories but they don’t count as story progress.
I’ve seen this. It’s the barbell looking button at the bottom. The problem is that the “practice” it allows you to do is determined by the day of the week and other mystery factors. You can always repeat mistakes but the other specific practice options change from day to day. It kinda sucks. The old way was much better.
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I did the i chi, ni, etc. lesson so that I could access the Japanese tree.
This seems to be the first story. There’a another in Unit 35. (Doctor Eddie)
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I scrolled back through all the prior lessons I completed and don’t see any story options. And level 35 for the next one? That’s some bullshit right there. That’ll take me months to get to. The more I use this new path system the more I hate it. It’s just too restrictive.
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I share your frustration. The only exception is the “Jump To” options under the topics. One of my major problems with Duolingo was the inability to avoid topics that aren’t useful or of interest to me. I see that a test is required first, but this is better than seeing everything greyed out with no hope of focusing on specific topics/vocabulary.
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Yeah, just because some people can’t read the script early on shouldn’t mean that learners are forced to grind…
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The problem is the test to jump ahead focuses heavily on the previous lesson content so if you try skip it, you’re going to have a really hard time unless you’re super familiar with the earlier content you’re trying to skip. I’ve done this a few times and in some cases can bullshit my way through but it’s not really satisfying and may hurt progress if that content randomly comes up later.
At least with the old system I only needed to get to level 1 to unlock new lessons. Sometimes I could test out to level 1, and others I could just do the 5 or so rounds to get there. Now I find it magnitudes much more difficult to skip ahead so I’m often stuck going through the same damn content over and over again whether I find it interesting or useful or not.
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Question for @Jesse13927 and any other Japanese experts. (Since Duolingo’s forums are locked and I can’t ask there…)
This sentence in particular:
Every time, I answer it as “do not turn off the light in this room” and every time it marks it wrong. I don’t know if it’s me or Duolingo.
If I break it down:
【この】this
【部屋】room
【の】possessive (“‘s”)
【電気】electric light(s)
【は】topic marker (“as for…”)
【消】extinguish (used idiomatically as “turn off”)
【し】do (verb)
【ません】negate the verb
So, “as for this room’s light, do not turn off”.
Nothing about who the subject is. No indication as to why it has to be “I” am not doing the thing. Am I just missing some detail here? Is this some weird colloquialism? I’ve flagged it as “my answer should be accepted” but who knows if they will correct it or not.
Anyway, I was hoping for a second opinion here.
As an aside, fuck this sentence:
I hate this one so much. Every time I comes up I get it wrong. The English translation is terrible, and it feels so inessential to learn this. Just, ugh. (And naturally there’s no explanation of the whole ほかにありません part, which doesn’t seem to translate particularly well to English anyway.)
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dewarimasen would be some sort of “without” or “not” ending – so something like that?
( i have now revealed the complete extent of my understanding of japanese )
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This is one of those key differences between Japanese and English. Japanese sentences do not need a subject if the subject can otherwise be deduced from context. If a subject is not made explicit, it is generally assumed to be the speaker. Japanese speakers do not really say “I” that much at all because it is almost always inferred. The sentence could just as easily be translated as “We do not turn off the light in this room.” or “They do not turn off the light in this room.” However, in the absence of context markers to make that clear, it would default to “I” as the implied subject.
I would even go so far as to say that overusing the word “I” when speaking is one of the classic telltale signs of a non-native speaker. As English natives, we are just so used to starting with “I.” It’s a habit that you have to really work on unlearning in Japanese to sound natural.
If you wanted to tell somebody not to turn off a light, there are many ways of doing that that would be more explicit.
As for ほかにありません, it is a very common phrase that is more often used after a verb, such as in 祈るほかありません。（“All we can do (now) is pray.” Note: The sentence does not contain “we” because it is implied.) I would translate it more naturally as, “There is no other clock as cute as this one,” but it really is idiomatic and could just as easily be translated as “This is the cutest clock there is.” ETA: On second thought, I would translate it this way for perfectly natural English: “You won’t find a clock this cute anywhere else.”
I really think that DuoLingo is relying on machine translation to some extent for these, so the translations are chonky.
ETA 2: In case you are wondering why 電気 has a topic marker (は) instead of a direct object marker (を), the topic marker also serves to make a distinction, so the speaker is making it clear that this room is unlike other rooms in that respect. The sentence could be rephrased as この部屋は電気を消しません。 and it would have the exact same meaning.
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