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Comment by monadgonad | Hacker News Reader

As someone who is fluent in Japanese, the thing is that this is not an example of a method that works well, it’s an example of a beginner coming up with an overwrought headcanon (while calling it “simple”, nonetheless!) that ultimately will hinder their understanding, as I will detail elsewhere.

If this was a similar post about programming, it would not get upvoted here because more people would recognise it for what it is: a “Monads are Like Burritos” post from a well-meaning but misguided beginner.

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How is this my headcanon when this is literally how it works linguistically? Please provide a counterexample.

Linguistics are orthogonal to petagogy. Something can be sound linguistically but still an in optimal way to teach the same thing. If linguistics were all there was to language learning, we would all just get a grammar reference book and call it a day, but we all know that is a terrible way to learn a language.

Personally, as a beginner/early intermediate learner, what I have found works is just to allow my brain to learn this over time by reading and understanding more an more sentences. I used Genki and am aware that it thought this badly. But it was in the 3rd chapter and by the time I reached the 6th chapter I had gotten an intuitive idea anyway (とている just sounded wrong and I couldn't explain why). And I wasn't doing much output anyway so it didn't matter that I maybe confused a couple of verb endings as I recited the 2nd writing exercise og the 5th chapter of my textbook.

"Headcanon" implies I made it up and it's plain incorrect. Now we seem to be litigating that it's correct within its scope but the pedagogical approach is unsound?

I'm not saying that I wrote this article for everyone. I wrote it for me and people like me. Specifically, for people who appreciate the rigorous-and-ridiculous — like teaching from the linguistical perspective while using romaji.

It's the same approach that my "Just JavaScript" course uses — it's 100% by the spec, but I'm using unconventional metaphors (like "wires" for variables instead of "boxes"). I take pride in making rigorous explanations approachable by slicing the explanation differently.

This is not for everyone. But it's also not a reason to say this shouldn't be written.

I am not a native english speaker so perhaps I misunderstood what headcanon meant. But I took it to mean as expanded upon by GP, that you were a well meaning but misguided beginner and have some ideas about what works for language learners that is not expressed by language learners experts.

My personal headcanon to verb conjugation is that you know them when you know them, the shorter the explanation the better, spend more time with examples then explanations, and maybe just learn one or two forms at a time. And when in trouble, find a conjugation chart (preferably at the back of your textbook; after the glossary). My main criticism of Genki was that they should have taught the short form first (before the -masu form; 食べない and 飲んだ before 食べません and 飲みました etc.).

> have some ideas about what works for language learners that is not expressed by language learners experts.

This seems like a culture clash. In programming blogging, it is completely fine to write blog posts about the mental model that works for you (as long as it doesn't contradict evidence) and then maybe it works for somebody else. The idea that I need to first get an approval from a commission of Serious Teachers That Verified Which Approaches Work Well For Learners Statistically is laughable to me.

I write for myself and for people like me, period. I do not claim this is useful to anyone but a tiny group. This tiny group is who it's written for. I explicitly say in the article that I struggled and this is what got me unstuck. If it isn't helpful, just close the tab.

I think you may be spot on about the culture clash. Language learning takes a long time, and there are really no short-cuts nor magic solutions that will get you from zero to competent within any reasonable amount of time. This is in stark contrast with programming. If you already know a programming language, you can get reasonably acquainted with your second one by following a really good tutorial in a single afternoon (depending on the languages though).

This make a lot of language learners (including my self) extremely vary and reactive of tutorials and explainers such as these. In the language learning space, tutorials belong as chapters in a good textbook, and explainers belong in dedicated sites written by teachers who have proven their worth with dozens of other explainers (e.g. https://www.tofugu.com/). The difference is that these are meant as part of a much much much longer journey.

[Aside]: Japanese is actually my 5th language and the first that is self taught and outside the language environment. I am also a self taught programmer. I have observed that learning Japanese is in a totally different league then any programming language. I am now two years into learning Japanese, and I can barely read a kids book, and no way can I hold a conversation. At this point in my programming journey I was already writing three programming languages fluently (JavaScript, Python, and R) and was learning the 4th and 5th at the same time (Rust and Julia).

[Re: “this is what got me unstuck”]: It is quite common in the language learning space to learn things intuitively by mere exposure. And sometimes a language learner will falsely attribute some (what appears to them as a) novel approach to what got them unstuck, but what really happened is that just engaging with the language reinforced old neural pathways and they just suddenly “got it”, the novel approach could have been anything, what mattered was the engagement, not the technique. This is also true in programming, but in language learning it is extremely common. Our brains are wired to learn natural languages, and given enough exposure to the language we will learn it.

That seems like the best diagnosis so far for what’s happening in the thread and gives me some peace. I guess it also means I’ll try to keep my future explanations to myself because intersecting with a community with these norms is highly unpleasant. I wouldn’t say I regret writing this post, but this whole discussion killed my joy about sharing further on this topic.

That's a real shame. Personally I thought it was a great article and the concept of the stem struck a chord.

The trick with posting this sort of stuff (or finding out someone else posted your stuff) to forums, particularly this one, is to never read the comments. Ignorance really is bliss.

E.g:

> not so lucky and got a "ru" ending? check what vowel before the "ru". it it's one of -aru, -oru, -uru, then it's also a godan verb.

Wrong: 煽る (aoru) is ichidan: 煽った、煽りたい、煽らない、煽ろう、煽られる。。。

煽る is a godan verb, consistent with your example conjugations (if it was ichidan it would be 煽た、煽たい, etc)

I can't remember which is which for more than five minutes!

I don't have a problem actually conjugating and don't have any tricks for it.

It comes with vocabulary. Once you have a vocabulary that contains enough verbs to hit all the cases, the rest just land in one of the cases by example.

If you know 泳ぐ (oyogu) very well, then even though you don't use 仰ぐ (aogu) very much, you just conjugate it intuitively like oyogu.

When you're speaking, there isn't enough time to go through a roster of rules.

I used to get these terms mixed up all the time because some textbooks use "Group 1" and "Group 2" to refer to these verbs, but Group 1 doesn't mean ichidan.

For all that I'm not totally sold on this article's idea of "stems" and "suffixes", I think it does a good job of avoiding this pitfall and correctly explaining the groups.

Ichidan verbs end in "ru", but many verbs that end in "ru" are godan. Once and for all, I just have to remember that ichidan end in "ru" and drop the entire "ru" and replace it with the conjugative suffix; and so the previous kana stays the same (one column). The godan ones fracture the last kana, changing it into the four siblings in the same row (or else replace it with って or った). If we have a -ru verb and the -ru goes to -ri to make the stem, that indicates godan (帰る→帰り→帰ります); if it just drops to make the stem, godan (見る→見→見ます）. I have no need to tell which is which, other than discussing grammar with other gaijin. I would never remember that a verb is supposed to be godan, in order to then know how conjugate it; I already know how to conjugate it and so just for academics, I have to remember which pattern is classified as which conjugation.

An important aspect of vocabulary that informs you about verbs is knowing the nominal: the noun-like stem. Like when you consider 帰る, you know from your vocabulary that there is no noun-like word "kae" that is just written 帰. You know that "homecoming" is not "kae" but "kaeri", 帰り.

So from that alone you know instinctively which way it conjugates: らない、れない、りたい、った、って、ろう、。。。

And a big source of learning the stem is ... japanese polite speech with -masu.

This is how children absorb what the stems are: hearing all the verbs in -masu form.

For instance, I think that every single verb that ends in "-rimasu" in the polite form (other than just arimasu?) is a godan -ru word. Drop the masu and you have a -ri stem, which implies the word is -ru, and conjugates godan: -ranai, -renai, -ritai, -rō, -tta, -tte, ...

> For instance, I think that every single verb that ends in "-rimasu" in the polite form (other than just arimasu?) is a godan -ru word.

Not quite: https://jisho.org/search/%23words%20%23v1%20%3F*%E3%82%8A%E3...

Good catch: the -riru verbs, where the -ri isn't coming from the godan conjugation of ru, but is part of the stem before the -ru.

None of these are ever other than ichidan? If we imagine a -riru verb that is godan, it would have to go to -ririmasu.

That sounds like something only a ditzy weather girl called Ririko would say, for a gag. :)

FWIF, the "#words #v5r ?*りる" search does come up two hits:

The first one is 手を借りる, which is a classification error; it is a compound verb that conjugates exactly like 借りる by itself.

The second one is a curiosity: ラリる -- to get high on drugs. Supposedly godan, so it does give us ラリります, etc.

Wikipedia page on it with some etymology/origin notes: https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/ラリる

Well, apologies to Ririko there!

This is so obviously incorrect that I have to wonder if it was an AI response.

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