Hacker News Reader

"For Japanese, it's <expression> naraba <expression>. That's it. Unless? <expression> nakeriba <expression>."

There are actually a number of ways to say "if" in japanese, and the one you mention can only be used in certain contexts.

People might get your gist if you use the conditional tense for everything, but you'll be wrong a lot. The -tara/nara grammar is at least as commonly used, if not more so.

I bring this up to illustrate only that the "programming language" metaphor doesn't go very far. Japanese, like any human language, is loaded with weird, illogical exceptions.

What? You mean there's a ternary operator?

I bring this up to illustrate that the metaphor isn't perfect, but it has some legs. I meant that BNF diagrams would be easier to create and understand for Japanese than for English.

You are right that there are more forms for saying 'if'.

Then again, I've seen programmers who spell 'if' 'f-o-r'.

No, I mean that there are at least a half a dozen different ways to express "if", and they all have specific semantic uses. It is way, way more complicated than syntax.

Agreed. This [0] and the subsequent lessons go onto explain that if clauses change depending on whether something is a fact, whether it is an invitation, whether it is volitional, etc.

I've been studying Japanese for years and I am at a basic intermediate level. I still find grammar hard to read, and even harder to produce naturally. I may just be particularly thick but I think saying "you can master Japanese grammar in a matter of weeks" is pretty misleading.

[0] http://www.learn-japanese-adventure.com/japanese-conditional...

Yeah, anyone who suggests that is either exaggerating, or doesn't know as much as they think they do.

Japanese grammar is simpler than English in some ways, harder in others. Overall though, it's really, really hard.

To be fair, all things considered, if you have to learn either language from scratch from a native language that has no link[1] whatsoever to it, I think English is harder than Japanese.

1. by which I mean, in the case of English, for example, if your native language is not french, german, etc.

In fact, I think English is harder to learn for Japanese native speakers than Japanese for English native speakers.

Yeah, I can't really speculate. It seems to me that the #1 biggest obstacle for Japanese speakers of English is getting past the Japanese education system, and actually speaking. Beyond that, I don't know.

But as a general principle, I believe that learning any new language is really, really hard. The people who claim to master languages in a few weeks are usually full of it (and by "usually", I mean "essentially always".)

I don't think this metaphor has legs. "naraba" can mean other things, and there are lots of cases where you'd say "if" in English but "naraba" wouldn't work.

I certainly agree that Japanese grammar is simpler than English, and relatively easy to learn, but I don't think this case (either "naraba", or the "if/then" case generally) illustrates that.

Japanese actually has a confusing array of conditional constructions

  VERB (conjugated) + nara (or the ridiculously formal "naraba")
  VERB (conjugated) + some noun, such as baai (case)
  VERB (plain form) + to
  VERB (izenkei form) + ba
  VERB (past form) + ra

And there are complex forms such as:

  VERB (plain form) + to shitara
  VERB (plain form) + to sureba

And you can add moshi or moshimo in the beginning to increase the level of supposition.

Each has a slightly different use and meaning of course, but it's still confusing enough for me even now.

5 or 6 grammar points can go a long way? If it's that few then I guess they must be the formal forms. So you'll need at least another 5 or 6 to understand the casual forms that you would use with friends or when you're the sempai in the situation. Want to talk to kids or young adults? Better learn another 5 or 6 forms of manga styled grammar slang. And if you interact with sales clerks, listen to train announcements or want to hear other official announcements, they're going to speak keigo, so there's another "5 or 6" forms to learn.

If you're interested in learning to read Japanese, you should give it a shot. It's intimidating but pretty do-able. Set yourself up with flash cards (I suggest AnkiDroid) and you can be pretty good at reading hiragana and katakana within a week. Then, study kanji flash cards for an hour a day and you'll know all the common kanji before you know it. Try to memorize 10-25 kanji per day and you can learn all the jōyō kanji within a few months. If you spend a few minutes telling yourself a story about each radical and kanji as you study you'll have no trouble memorizing them.

What AnkiDroid cards do you use?

Kana (hiragana and katakana): https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1632090287

Kanji: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1862058740

I had an ex-colleague (a dev) who also knew Japanese well. He was doing Japanese <-> English translation part-time in the same company. Later quit software to do translation full time. When I asked him how difficult it was for him to learn Japanese, he said that Japanese grammar was very similar to Marathi grammar (which, I'm guessing, may be similar to Hindi grammar). Wonder if any one else has observed the same points as him, even for the similarity of Japanese to some other language.

I've only glanced at japanese before but after reading this article i had a similar notion.

It's as if you populate the parameters to a function by placing them in specific registers (using specific particles) and then execute the function (verb) once you're done.

I imagine this idea breaks down horribly once multiple verbs are introduced to a single sentence...

I like that you can add 'sen' at the end of a sentence to make it negative, or 'ka' to make it a question.

"Ka" at the end turns a sentence into a question, yes. You get a yes/no question, or you can swap in an interrogative pronoun if you like. This is ignoring pragmatics.

"Sen"... no. The closest is that present-tense polite (teineigo) forms of verbs change from -masu to -masen to make them negative. However, that's basically the only case that rule works. You also often end up changing the rest of the sentence, just like in English or other languages. For example, in English, indefinite pronouns will generally change when you negate, as the negative of "somebody is here" is "nobody is here", not "somebody is not here". And of course, being a natural language, it's full of exceptions (like how "everyone" doesn't follow the pattern of "everything", "every time", etc.)