How many people got the reference behind why I used the Pokemon clips??? First person to properly explain the reference gets a high five. NOTE: Something I should have mentioned in the video is that not all persistent puzzles are caused by a word or structure having an underlying "core concept" that unifies all usages. Although this is often the case, there are also cases where a persistent puzzle is caused by a word or structure actually having multiple unrelated meanings. In these cases, the key to solving the puzzle is learning to use context to determine which meaning is being used (which will happen over time through immersion).

@MrSuwaidiSama

3 жыл бұрын

A game that you are working on to help beginners to learn Japanese by some "compelling" content.

@mattvsjapan

3 жыл бұрын

@@MrSuwaidiSama No, there is a very specific reference which you can get if you pay attention to the specific Pokemon clips I choose.

@GuestExtreme

3 жыл бұрын

Ohh it's a reference to HM moves which gym leaders give you when you get their badge, those structures likes tress and rocks can be broken afterwards opening a new path on places you already visited before. Very clever, Matt

@mattvsjapan

3 жыл бұрын

@@GuestExtreme YES! High five haha

@dorianbarber9587

3 жыл бұрын

Most of the clips seem to use HMs to expose locations which initially are unreachable but may be seen early on in the game. It's only until you push further in the game and acquire the specific HMs are you able to go back and access these locations. The HM-only areas resemble persistent puzzles and acquiring the HMs later in the pokemon journey is analogous to filling in the rest of "puzzle". (??)

"can't learn this one part of the language? learn it with this one easy tip!" the tip: LEARN THE WHOLE REST OF LANGUAGE FIRST

@k.5425

2 жыл бұрын

😂😂. There's no magic formula

@jaredwilliams6853

2 жыл бұрын

Yeah 😂, I usually just understand the meaning of the phrase the word takes part in. Or the individual meanings or words and how the grammar structure effects it when learning structures it isn’t that hard for Romance languages.

@TheRealPots

Жыл бұрын

yeah thats pretty much all i got from this video to lol 🤣

@avatar098

2 ай бұрын

You literally just have to roll with it until it “clicks”

This is such an old-school mattvsjapan video essay. Love it

@bobfranklin2572

3 жыл бұрын

Even the old school music too. It was almost nostalgic in a way

@MaximillianCallender

3 жыл бұрын

I love those kind of videos the most!

@deez3

3 жыл бұрын

Ikr

@rife133

3 жыл бұрын

Truuuu

@Emperorerror

2 жыл бұрын

These are my favorite MVJ videos, nice to see another!

Fun fact: while Japanese "kakeru" has couple of dozen of meanings, English "run" has couple of... HUNDREDS. The highest number I've found is 645 meanings but this number varies based on sources. The next word "set" has more than a hundred as well

@abdulbyrd7902

3 жыл бұрын

I never thought of that, and so does “Up”

@Ac-mw3lj

3 жыл бұрын

Most of those meanings are created by phrasal verbs, the word alone doesn't have too many (as far as I can think of)

@bobfranklin2572

3 жыл бұрын

Even just stuff like "from" or "well" can really have tons too, maybe not stuff you'd find in a dictionary, but they can really change the meaning of a sentence, give it a sarcastic tone etc. Sometimes think English needs kanji for words like "well" or "set" to differentiate its many meanings 😂

@Ryosuke1208

3 жыл бұрын

It's like the verb "Faire" in french. Or phrases in English with up and down.

@Head0.25s

3 жыл бұрын

Not exactly true, they have to be followed or be prior to it in order to make out the different morphological meanings as in: run away, run down, run up, run off, run over (something), run amok, … and so on, As for the initial word run, I could think of just seven meanings without other words: (Physically go fast) (To lead/take charge of (some group most likely)) (A round/match of a game (probably in some dungeon game most likely) (To turn on (a computer or a car most likely)) (a race) (an act of running (like some do in the morning) (A test (referring to test runs))

*Watches a lot of Anime* Subconcious-kun: I solved the puzzle for you. Me: Huh? when the fuck did you do that? Subconcious-kun: 4 months ago. Me: Why didn’t you tell me? Subconcious-kun: Because I’m busy solving puzzles.

@sp3ctum

3 жыл бұрын

Yes yes yes. This is the comment of the day right here.

@JuTakii

3 жыл бұрын

this happened to me with 気 at some point my brain just understood it given the context without thinking about it

@DANGJOS

3 жыл бұрын

Oh my God this is so gold and true! I haven't experienced it too much yet, but I feel like I'm surprised with how much I've grown in Japanese.

@twoblocksdown5464

3 жыл бұрын

@@sp3ctum cringe

@randomguyitryy

3 жыл бұрын

@@twoblocksdown5464 holy shit i see you everywhere and you're always writing the same dumbass comments

Native Japanese here. Hmmm, as always very interesting video, Matt! Here's my two cents. One such persistent puzzle in English might me the word "put." I mean it's such a simple word, but so versatile, like the Japanese かける. Put something on, put something off, put up with something, put something on the table, put something into words etc. etc. I mean, the struggling English learner can go insane! And indeed for any language learner this type of word might appear like puzzles, especially at the beginning, but I suspect these aren't really puzzles at all. At least not in the common sense of the word. I think all one needs to do--and which comes with time, with countless hours of studying and immersion and spending time with the target language--is just to memorise each and every use of the word, one by one. That's it, really. Because in the end there is no logic behind it, no magic key which solves these "puzzles." Even Japanese people use the word かける correctly, not because they have solved any puzzle or possess some secret key, but because they have internalised each and every use of this word from childhood.... At least that's what I think. Keep up the good work! 👍

@bobboberson8297

3 жыл бұрын

English is particularly bad about having verbs with countless meanings since it has phrasal verbs. For example, "to give" and "to give up" are entirely unrelated words/phrase, so as you said you just have to memorize that when you add "up" after "give" you don't get a new saying involving give, you get a new word that you need to learn.

@yoshi31713

3 жыл бұрын

@@bobboberson8297 You're right. But in the case of English, it's not just phrasal verbs. Take, for example, the word "to run." To run an errand, to run late, to run a campaign, to run a tight ship, to run a temperature, to run a debt etc. etc. The original meaning of run (to move on foot at a fast rate) has often been completely lost. This is, in many ways, exactly like the Japanese かける. One simply has to learn all of these phrases, one by one... And yeah, Japanese has TONS of them, too!

@joegriffithsmusic

3 жыл бұрын

I can see why that would be so frustrating, one of them things that you never think of when you are native. Flawless English btw!

@colonelvector

3 жыл бұрын

I was curious which English words/phrases would be persistent puzzles

@joegriffithsmusic

3 жыл бұрын

@ElectronicWasteland very well put! (Another context for the word 'put' haha)

Definitely the 了 particle in Chinese. Every time I think I have a grasp of it, it’ll come up in a situation where I never would have thought to use it.

@amagpie8239

3 жыл бұрын

是的。我也觉得词“打”有点难了解。

@werosification

3 жыл бұрын

for me, it's also anything related to past tense/completion - 了，过 etc.

@koray3774

3 жыл бұрын

i have absolutely 0 knowledge of chinese, but i think it's funny how my brain automatically just reads that as りょう

@KnightCrown

2 жыл бұрын

That's interesting. As a native speaker, ＇了＇is extremely common and we don't really think about when using it, but it really doesn't have a English replacement for it huh.

@ADeeSHUPA

2 жыл бұрын

@@koray3774 りょう 료 了

I can't be the only one that gets a smile on my face when I see a new matt vs japan video when I open the youtube app.

I never realized that persistent puzzles were that until now, I just thought certain verbs were confusing and I focused way too hard on them haha thanks Matt

Never in my language learning life have I encountered someone who can so accurately and succinctly articulate the realizations that have been bubbling under the surface of my awareness, in my case, while reaching fluency in mandarin. I truly believe that Matt's baseline level of intelligence and insight have been a big boost in his own language learning, as I've found that while immersion is indeed necessary, that doesn't preclude analytical/higher level conceptual breakthroughs from serving as speed boosters on the path to mastery.

Dude I missed this style; I was literally watching some of your old videos yesterday. GZ on the 100k man, you deserve it.

"Doch", "mal", "wohl" and other modal particles in German, that are used to reflect the mood or the attitude of the speaker and to highlight the sentence's focus.

@CassieCollision

3 жыл бұрын

I have trouble with this as well. I also have trouble with particles like im, am, um, zu, and ab, and the existence of separable verbs don't make it any easier either. I still have no clue why "Bist du noch im Bett am liegen" is correct whereas "Bist du noch im Bett liegen?" isn't. What purpose "am" has in the sentence is a puzzle to me in of itself.

@yoshi31713

3 жыл бұрын

@@CassieCollision I'm fluent in German too. "Bist du noch im Bett am liegen" is not grammatically incorrect, but it sounds very unnatural. A German would say, "Liegst du noch immer im Bett?" But yes, "Bist du noch im Bett liegen" not only sounds very unnatural, it's also grammatically incorrect.

@donpax8959

3 жыл бұрын

@@CassieCollision I think "am" here symbolizes that you're "doing" lying. Like how you're playing piano, but with lying. Lying is a thing we're doing, while piano is an instrument we're playing. So it's something like "Are you still (doing) lying on the bed?", where "am" means "doing". I hope this makes sense and helps you to understand better the function of "am" here

@eli10_a24

3 жыл бұрын

@@CassieCollision Even though im German, I don't really know why "am" is an essential part of this sentence but I know that it must be there. In these situations I always remember the german saying "Deutsche Sprache, schwere Sprache" ("German language, difficult language")

@Amaling

3 жыл бұрын

Auf, auf is the other big one for me

oh man - super pumped. Pre-watch guess - "Immerse more bro!" :D Seriously tho that works.

@tamagotalk

3 жыл бұрын

Always go back to my immersion after a Matt video feeling pumped though!

I think in Korean, something akin to your kakeru is 내다 - it has 31 English definitions, but most of them can be abstractly boiled down to ‘making something come out from something else’. But even viewing the word through that lens, in a lot of sentences, you have to abstract it down really really far in order to apply that meaning. It’s easy when coming across a persistent puzzle like 내다 at the beginning of your studies to think “ugh, 31 definitions for one word?? Why does Korean have to make things so complicated?” but one eye-opening thing I realised a while ago is that actually, the better question would be: “why does English need 31 definitions for something that’s able to be communicated and understood as one singular concept in Korean?”. Makes you think.

@thorbergson

3 жыл бұрын

Yeah, Matt really put this well: "The specific way that the world is divided up into concepts is fundamentally different for each language".

@martinatoth8201

3 жыл бұрын

@Michael Kemeter oh my god don't even mention that word in front of me hahah. i pray we both figure out 어쩌다 once and for all one day 😭 화이팅!

@user-uu5xf5xc2b

5 ай бұрын

​@@thorbergson not really. every human is born with the same capabilities for language, what you call as language is just traditions. you can choose any language and use words in any way you like. sometimes you see there are exact equivalents in different languages and sometimes there is none. if every language was fundamentally different, there would be no exact equivalents. please read more about language and don't think youtube is the place.

@thorbergson

5 ай бұрын

@@user-uu5xf5xc2b thanks, Captain Obvious

Hi. I studied linguistics with a focus on second language acquisition at uni. The immersion-based advice is great for some. But if this way of phrasing it doesn't work out for you, don't worry. There are lots and lots of ways to get over this in a way that works for your learning style. One way is treating words and concepts you don't quite understand as chunks. Instead of getting hung up on the 1000 English translations, learn how to say the thing you want to say as a chunk. That you use 掛ける when talking about putting you glasses on. That's one chunk. The next time you come across something with it, that's another chunk. Memorise them separately. Put the entire phrase into anki, write it down, make an exercise out of it where you make as many sentences with that word/concept as you can, whatever works for you. The goal is just to trick your brain into not getting overwhelmed by tackling it one chunk, phrase, word, or concept at a time. How you do that is entirely up to you.

Congrats on 100k!! And also, you instantly gave me a confidence in myself that I have never had since the beginning when it comes to these persistent puzzles so now I can enjoy my immersion more! You really are a genius Matt, thanks for everything.

Your teaching has been really influential for my Japanese learning journey, Congratulation for 100K Subs, Cheers from Indonesia.

This might be your best video yet, I felt like I was watching Vsauce, except not getting lost.

@smrtfasizmu6161

3 жыл бұрын

I would say why you still don't understand your target language is his best video. This one is pretty good too.

@Slakenji

3 жыл бұрын

@@smrtfasizmu6161 I think it’s this one for production value.

I remember the first language puzzle I solved. It was the Japanese word こと, which means "the matter". I looked at the sentences containing it and wondered why it was there. What's the matter with the matter they are discussing here? Isn't every sentence about at least one matter anyway. The word seemed to pop in and out seemingly at random. I remember one sentence in Bakemonogatari that had 3 こと in it, I thought I was going crazy. Then it finally clicked why I wasn't able to solve it, no matter how much I focused on trying to understand that one sentence/Anki card. こと meant "the matter we discussed/are discussing", which means it is a callback to something said one or two sentences earlier, I couldn't understand it by just focusing in on one sentence alone.

@nihonjoe8692

2 жыл бұрын

You just saved me a headache. 😁 こと just came up today and I had the same initial thought.

@Im-BAD-at-satire

2 жыл бұрын

あ、なる−（hikakin_mania）

@jamm6_514

Жыл бұрын

isn't koto just "thing"

@Sebastian1786

Жыл бұрын

@@jamm6_514 Sure, 'matter' and 'thing' are kinda synonyms in English. "Remember that thing/matter that happened yesterday?" But this isn't about vocab, it's more about grammar. To understand what kind of sentences uses that word to express what kind of relation. The words 物/事/様 all work pretty much identical when referring to some generic thing/event/topic. They can even be used interchangeable or totally omitted when it's clear from context what the thing is you are talking about. ⽩い物は、かわいい。& ⽩いのは、かわいい。 both mean "That white thing is cute". There's nothing wrong if you want to translate koto as "thing" in your head. As long as you understand what kind of things it usually refers to. I'll give you an example: Look up 贅沢 [luxury, extravagance​] in a Japanese-to-Japanese dictionary and you get the definition 物事 に 金銭 や 物 など を 使う こと。 That thing¹ where you use money or things² etc. on things³. Here 物事 are all the things³/products/service that it is possible to get. 物 are all the things²/valuables/favors you can use instead of money to get something. こと is the thing¹ the sentence is talking about, the word/ definition/the concept of luxury.

Matt you are a huge inspiration to me! I have been watching your videos and have been a subscriber for around 3-4 years now and I have a lot of my success in learning Japanese is a result of finding your channel. I have had countless amazing memories because of what you do. I have never commented before, but I wanted to let you know the impact you have had on my life. Keep going strong!

Your way of presenting an abstract concept so clearly and concisely is truly impressive! Japanese learners of the English language struggle with lots of those persistent puzzles as well.

I'm not really learning Spanish (since I'm a native speaker), but the only Spanish persistent puzzle I can think of is that all inanimate objects and nouns, in general, have to be referred to by gender. So you have to use male or female pronouns depending on the noun, we native speakers don't think much about it, but when asking some of my family members they didn't know why we do that. Kind of funny how a month into studying my third language I start to notice interesting things about my native one.

@aldensavon2247

2 жыл бұрын

Estoy aprendiendo español, y no pienso que el género de las palabras es un persistent puzzle, porque ya puedo entenderlo. Una palabra que me da problemas es "quedar". No sé cómo usarlo y que significa en muchos casos.

@SupremeDP

7 ай бұрын

Como nativo es prácticamente imposible adivinar cuáles son los puzzles persistentes (jaj) de tu propio idioma. También dependen mucho del idioma nativo del estudiante. Mi madre es eslovaca, y en los idiomas eslavos el uso de los artículos (LA mesa, EL cuchillo) es muy diferente a su uso en el español. A pesar de hablar español muy bien, y por más de 20 años, esto es algo que sigue sin ser 100% capaz de usar correctamente. El uso del subjuntivo es otro persistent puzzle muy común. La palabra "poner" puede serlo también.

Make more videos like this. These are my favorites! You are extremely talented in doing this style. EXTREMELY talented

This was one of the best videos I have watched, the HMs being displayed and used as well as some of the *meanings* behind the word 掛ける were very carefully thought out and its awesome. Great video.

Matt's analogies are so good and accurate for language learning and honestly in my opinion the best in the language learning community. Not only is it easy to understand but it also directly explains the topic to a perfect level.

This is exactly what I needed, I've done dedicated grammar study before immersion learning but recently thought I was an idiot for still not understanding it all and was contemplating redoing the grammar study again, now I will put more trust in immersion. Also, the editing is brilliant :)

@Ryosuke1208

3 жыл бұрын

Yeah, I think grammar is useful, but only after doing a considerable time of immersion. Kids don't learn grammar until they've had like 6 years of immersion in their native language. Doing grammar without knowing the language didn't work for me, it made no sense until after I got more familiar with my target language.

While my target language is Russian, Matt gives me the most motivation above all the polyglot channels. Matt, your brain is huge, much love.

@ht1ps555

2 жыл бұрын

my target language is Japanese then Russian. How difficult is Russian? I’m worried I have start start all the way from 0 just how I did with Japanese because of how much I forget

@maxim_ml

2 жыл бұрын

hmu about anything you want

@martaleszkiewicz5115

2 жыл бұрын

Same, I learn Finnish (and used to learn Japanese, but sadly stopped), but a lot of what he's talking about is touching upon universal struggles of language learners. Even topics like pitch accent are found in many other languages, too, e.g. Swedish, and the tips for learning and conditioning oneself to hear it are applicable when learning those other languages as well.

@aeolian951

2 жыл бұрын

Удачи тебе с ним :D

@mhv4315

Жыл бұрын

@@ht1ps555 did you end studying it? what is your native language? what's difficult about Russian for one person might be natural for another. In general it's the cases and aspects that people find hard. There's also the changing stress patterns, verbs of motion and verbal prefixes, and nuances in word order that can be a hurdle. To give you an idea, my first language is French and at university, our Russian grammar teacher started his first lecture by telling us "as everyone knows, Russian grammar is the most difficult in the world". It has this reputation among some people, but I think that's nonsense. From my perspective and in my opinion, Russian is "only" moderately difficult.

Korean also has an infamous, super similar は/が curse in its particles itself. 은/는 are taught as the topic particles, while 이/가 are taught as the subject particles. A lot of learners don’t know when to use which. Beginner learners cry over this just like how Japanese learners cry over は/が. Unfortunately, as a Korean-American, I am unable to empathize with their suffering. ;)

Great video! Classic MattvsJapan style, with engaging illustrations and insights. Glad to see you are still making videos like this. It reminds of your old video on Kanji and RTK, which is what really got me started on my Japanese language learning journey.

The best use of my time in a long time was watching this video. You are exceptionally bright is an understatement.

I read your cheatsheet. It was helpful. And a fun way of getting it.

I'm deffo guilty of this common error. Thinking stuff I see all the time is simple, so when I see it used in a different way, or to mean something different; it really throws me.

「掛ける」という単語に、25の異なる英語表現があることを、今日、初めて知りました！Thank you very much for your information 😮

"I have reached enlightenment." "Yes."

Oh and I just realized the play you did with 逃げるは恥だが役に立つ when you were talking about 掛ける lol

@mattvsjapan

3 жыл бұрын

haha first person to notice!!

Great video, using refold has helped me realize that understanding something in the language its supposed to be in makes it make so much more sense and easier. plus, congrats on 100k 🎉

I am relatively new to your channel and as I have never studied Japanese I just knew about your existence passively. I needed to know why your reputation was so good and oh boy are you crystal clear and accurate when explaining these processes. This is partly talent but it is also evident that you have spent so much time studying and caring for languages. Thanks a lot for sharing your knowledge, man. Subscribing has been an excellent idea.

Great vid as always, and congrats on reaching 100k subs. Watched your channel grow for a few years now. Its so great to see small content creators like you and Dogen become so big.

Happy 100k Matt, much love and support from the Philippines !!

Bro awesome vid, thanks! I've been trying to get my head around this for years so you just cut through all the confusion and gave me a lot of clarity on these never ending persistent puzzles. Please keep making videos! They're so informative and helpful - Azuss : )

Nice, I like this style of video too. Your talking in the background with images and videos to illustrate your points. Good explanation of Japanese grammar and unusual word usage too. Great work Matt!

Hell yeah, been waiting for more video essay style videos like this, always loved them.

Great video with amazing points!! I've been learning Korean for 5 years, and I got a good understanding of how to use 이/가, 을/를, and 은/는 after about a year and a half. But then about 3 years later, I started to get confused about it again because I noticed how natives would use it. They would sometimes take out 이/가 (similar to わ in Japanese, correct?), and I beat myself up for not understanding that for a week or so. But afterwards I took the approach of just immersing and seeing how they use it, and over time I just naturally figured out how they used it like the native Koreans. Again, love the video!! I like that you did it in your style too. 😇

You example of 掛ける made me think of the word 'read'. We can read between the lines, read the stars, a book, or even 'read' someone. A simple word, many distinct meanings.

This cheat sheet is excellent. As an intermediate learner, I was pretty lost on some of this (like かける), and it’s nice to have it finally properly introduced. The video is A+ too. This is why Refold is one of only two Patreons to which I’m subscribed.

This is exactly what I needed to hear. When I encounter one of these puzzles and can't understand them through immersion, I default to reading a grammar article about them and end up being more confused. I will try to put more faith in my immersion this time and hope for the best. Thanks as always Matt!

Congrats on 100k! Your videos are always so helpful - ありがとうMatt先生！

As someone fitting the description of being constantly worried about making so-called "basic" mistakes - this video was a godsend. It really puts things into perspective. The idea that contextual inference is the key to bridging conceptual gaps between languages, and to know that all we need to do is simply be aware of this, and be okay with the ambiguity we may encounter along the way is reassuring. Great video as always Matt!

Jeez already 100k subs! Matt’s video quality has stayed consistently good since the very beginning. I feel like the videos I go back and watch the most are the very first ones.

Thank you Matt for being so intelligent and dedicated to helping us self-learners with your explanations. I'm learning German but get so much from your videos.

@zombiedeutsch

Жыл бұрын

Any tips for german? What did you use to study?

I can't really think of a great example in Swedish but one that trips up English native speakers for ages is all the words for "before". To a Swede, it's weird that we express so many different concepts with just one word. Off the top of my head I can think of 5 Swedish words that we'd replace with "before", so a lot of English speakers who don't immerse enough end up just picking one at random for the rest of their life.

@heckincat1406

6 ай бұрын

Är det 'före' och 'innan' du pratar om? Jag håller med om att det är svårt för de allra flesta som lär sig svenska. Vet du varför det är så?

Before immersion I actually kept in mind about how animism is heavily ingrained into the Japanese language and culture, the language is completely away from the ego 9 times out of 10 while English on the other hand basically has an egocentric view of the world which causes major differences.

Always exciting when you upload a new video, keep up the good work.

i appreciate these videos so much, your genuinely an inspiration

The japanese word 心 (kokoro) is actually similar to this, it's usually translated as "heart" but it can also mean "mind" and "spirit". It's not the physical heart either which is 心臓 (Shinzoo). The thing is that kokoro is more like the core of a person or their essence in a way but in translation in english for example we would never say it like that because "you speak from your heart" is something many english-speaking people can understand, but speaking from the essence or inner core is a very foreign concept.

This video is a great illustration of one of the biggest problems faced when learning a language by comprehensible input! The answer to any problem is almost always more comprehensible input. However, weirdly as humans we don’t like this answer, despite it being the easier option to learning something new to overcome a problem. I also think it’s one of the reasons it’s hard to persuade people to learn through comprehensible input, as they almost always want specific answers to specific problems and don’t just want to hear “‘more comprehensible input!”

Thanks for clearing things up man i felt so stupid when I come across stuff like this but know I realize its part of the process Happy 100k btw

Another great video. Stoked to see you at 100k subs too. Well deserved, man.

It's like the verb "faire" in french which it's probably used in more than 100 expressions. Like "Fais voir" literally meaning "go make see" which actually means "let me see" and a lot of other examples as well.

k, I'm kinda relieved that I'm not the only one still struggling with は and が despite being almost at an intermediate level.

Thank you for the high quality and informative content. I find your explanations very easy to understand. I'm feeling especially lucky to be studying a language you have so much framiliuarity with. Thanks for the cheat sheet!

As always, very interesting and helpful video Matt ! Keep it up !

yet another great video, i was obsessing a little too much over some jp1k definitions and now i'll just chill out a bit and just get a general idea of the definition (even if it's a bit wrong) because immersion will teach me the proper "definition"

Congratulations on 100k, Matt! Smashing it! 🥳

I really needed this thanks matt.

I found that the most difficult persistent puzzle is に. It's a very subtle trap - it seems like you can just think of it as "in" or "for", and it will work in 90% of the sentences, but it sometimes means something like "by" and it's practically impossible for a beginner to tell the meanings apart: "私は日本語をあなたに教えたい" -> I want to teach you Japanese, "私は日本語をあなたに教えて欲しい" -> I want you to teach me Japanese. It seems like just random things flip the meaning of に. EDIT: I can't even find any grammar guides\explanations that emphasize this case. A lot of them call に the "target particle", which very well can throw off a lot of people in cases like this.

CHRIS BROAD COLAB WHEN! Dogen is your only common link, please 🙏😢

Love this format; classic Matt format, new Matt insights/editing.

Really encouraging video. This definitely eased my mind. Thanks Matt.

掛ける is really difficult, but I realized that this problem would eventually be solved because I’ve been through a learning process with English already. You native English speakers have no idea how hard it is to grasp the meaning of phrasal verbs like ‘get’, ‘take’, ‘put’, ‘set’, ‘hold’… These videos are just unbelievably amazing. Gets me excited every time I watch a new one.

This is the most helpful language learning video I have found. I’ve tried learning Japanese 3 times in the past but gave up every time out of frustration and feeling I was too stupid. I’m currently learning Mandarin and I’m doing a lot better after following the Refold method and watching Matt’s videos. I wish someone had told me these things years ago, I may have become fluent in Japanese by now. If I am successful in my Mandarin studies, maybe I’ll return to Japanese one day.

@SyrenaTaylor

Жыл бұрын

@千本桜 I’ve gotten farther in Mandarin than I have in Japanese that’s for sure. I can understand most of A1 & A2 grammar, some from B1. I can comfortably read 400 characters. I have no idea how many words I know but I can kind of follow along with kids shows if I pause and relisten. It’s a slow process because of the tones complicating things though. I haven’t studied at all for the past month because I had other hobbies I wanted to do and didn’t have time for both but I’m getting back into it.

I LOVE the new video format! Very engaging, keep it up!

I love your content....Congratulations on 100k! Cheers from Australia :)

I really appreciate your content, your work is really useful and I'm grateful you were in my recommendations about a year ago

Wow. Matt that was really good. I've been studying languages for all my life (42y/o now 🤟) and I have never listened to such a clear explanation for such a common problem for lunguage learners. Amazing job. Btw....for Chinese Mandarin learners I guess the biggest persistent puzzle is probably ”了“.

An intermediate persistent puzzle in German is the use of the dative case in various everyday phrases that don't seem to make sense in English. A very advanced one is particles such as "schon". I've been learning German for three years and I don't really understand the use of schon.

I'm learning Norwegian and it's so satisfying to find sentences containing "jo" that actually change how the sentence translates into English

I did not expect this quality of a video after filling in the form

おめでとう on 100k subs! Thanks for the vids!

I am so thankful for your effort and help! この動画, ありがとう。

This is really excellent content… such a joy to watch & learn from.

Have you read about the lexical approach? I've been thinking about it lately, & I think it helps explain both the problem described in this video, and your ideas about language being 'not like math' & 'highly specific in arbitrary ways.' The basic idea (as I understand it) is that whereas second language learners tend to learn grammar by rules, natives have actually just acquired hundreds of thousands of individual phrases & sentences (aka lexemes), which they recombine & swap out words to say what they want to say. (Obviously natives acquire rules/patterns too, at last to some extent, but lexemes are primary in their actual use of the language.) Thus, the reason it takes so long to acquire these "persistent puzzles," is that you actually have to acquire individual examples of all the multiple use cases. For a concept that exists in your native language, you've already done that work once, & your brain can more or less map the new word/concept to the old one. But for concepts that don't exist in your native language, all that work has to be done from scratch. (Perhaps the conscious sense of there being a "core meaning" at all, is just an emergent phenomenon, with the "real" underlying unconscious representation being all these individual instantiations?) This would also explain why thousands of hours of immersion is the only way to reach near-native fluency - unless you're going to make anki cards for hundreds of thousands of sentences, with cloze deletions for every single word, how else are you going to acquire all those lexemes?

@sp3ctum

3 жыл бұрын

I think that makes sense, at least on a quick glance. I found Matt's explanations of the tricky grammar points made perfect sense and they were very easy to understand. On the other hand, the 25 jisho search results are daunting and feel clear as mud. Something must be going on here.

@AECH_CH

2 жыл бұрын

Imho you simoly shouldn't try to map Japanese to English. Sure you can do that for concrete nouns and scientific norms, but for stuff like 掛ける it just doesn't work that well. Sure it means to hang up/put on to, but it also has like 40 different definitions in Japanese dictionaries. My personal experience is that immersion solved all doubts and questions on it's own. Although knowing a single core meaning (to be able to challenge your input against it) is helping a lot.

thank you so much for this video matto

Have/has/'ve/'s is a persistent problem for many English learners. 💯 % agree with the persistent puzzle angle.

Russian has some of these too, and my mindset has generally been, "oh, I just haven't acquired all 20+ meanings of that word yet" -- but obviously the reality is there's no actual 1:1 equivalent at all. This realization takes so much 'pressure' off the process. Another great vid; thanks, Matt!

@donpax8959

3 жыл бұрын

Now I'm interested in what persistent puzzles Russian has (I'm Russian). Could you please give some examples?

@luckyluckydog123

3 жыл бұрын

@@donpax8959 I can give you a couple of examples of persistent puzzles in Russian (I'm a Russian learner). The first is the choice of verbal aspect (perfective/imperfective), especially in the infinitive. I'll give a short explanation of what this is about. Most Russian verbs (e.g., 'to buy', 'to speak', 'to help' ..,) come in pairs, with one verb of the pair having perfective aspect and the other imperfective aspect. Losely speaking the imperfective verb describes an ongoing process ('I was buying', 'I was helping'....) or an action that happens regularly ('I always buy a packet of crisps on Sundays'), while the perfective one is used for instantenous actions or actions which produce some sort of result ('the bomb went off'; 'I bought an apple'). In practice, it's very complicated an ASAIK non-Slavic languages such as English don't really have a concept of aspect for verbs in the infinitive. For example, in English I could say 'I want to eat a sandwich', but in Russian to express 'to eat' you have to chose the aspect (yest' or s"yest'). When you say you want to eat, do you mean you want to be eating the sandwich (ongoing process) or you rather mean you want to be in the state of having eaten it up (and not being hungry anymore)? For an English speaker (or Italian speaker like myself, for that matter) this is impossible to answer, or he could answer he wants both things, because has never had to think in this way. But Russians would rather use perfective aspect in this case (ya khochu s"yest' buterbrod). There is a zillion of situations where an English speaker just has no intuition. Another example: I want to buy a new bag / I don't want to buy a new bag. In English 'to buy' stays the same in the two sentences, and it is inconceivable that it shouldn't stay the same, but in Russian the perfective verb is required in the first sentence (ya khochu kupit' novuyu sumku) but imperfective in the second (ya nye khochu pokupat' novuyu sumku).

@luckyluckydog123

3 жыл бұрын

two other very difficult points of Russian grammar (IMO), which might be called 'persistent puzzles', are 1. proper use of short forms of adjectives (eg krasivyy/krasiv, novaya/nova etc) and 2. choice between genitive and accusative after negated verbs.

@donpax8959

3 жыл бұрын

@@luckyluckydog123 I think the things you named are not persistent puzzles. It's easy to understand them when you're doing input (so they're not persistent puzzles), it's just not so easy to use them in output (like "a/an" and "the" in English for Russian speakers, for example) Btw, don't forget there's also (poyest') that means pretty much the same as (s"yest') and you choose one or another depending on the context, hehe. German also has a similar thing, so it's easy to me to understand this concept in German, but it seems like Italian doesn't have verb prefixes like these

@luckyluckydog123

3 жыл бұрын

@@donpax8959 mmm what makes you think that verbal aspect is 'easy to understand when doing input' ?

This is fantastic. I have some advice for others that is quite similar to the message of this video. For learners still struggling with understanding sentences, do your best to increase your verb vocabulary. It will help you identify structure of sentences when you hear them, and knowing verbs helps a whole lot in getting a sense of what the sentence is trying to say. It helped me a lot!

Thanks indeed for the cheat sheet. It really crystallizes all the vague understandings I've been slowly developing over the years. I agree completely with the explanation in the video. As other people have commented, English has lots of these one-word-with-a-million-"definitions" -- think about "get" or "have".

That jigsaw puzzle metaphor was brilliant

The fact that you gave this cheat sheet out for free makes me realize that it’s so normalized to monetize knowledge that it makes me grateful that it’s free.

Linguistics is so fascinating. Untranslatable words with hundreds of near-miss translations. This is why it's a good rule of thumb to just accept the ambiguity and immerse more. I've changed my approach in Anki to now not fully understand words, and to at best, understand the single context I found a given word from immersion. This way I'm not spending 3,000 hours searching up definitions and racking my brain to figure out wtf I'm reading. A while ago, I tried making anki cards with only pictures as my definition, but I realized it took me way longer to remember anything. Now I latch onto an english definition, and accept the inaccuracies so I can finish the cards faster. That way I can get the truer meaning from more immersion, and less straining in Anki. Sometimes it takes trying and failing a seemingly good theory to realize the first method was fine. Translating Japanese into Mentalese seemed like a better way to learn cards, but my lack of experience with new words made it get in the way of being able to quickly assess whether I was right or wrong, thus hindering deliberate practice, thus taking time away from immersion. Immersion is so incredibly powerful, it's really hard to accept that it's often just better than most forms of study. Like, we want to study, but we end up digging a hole and wasting time.

I’m learning Yemenite Arabic and I’ve experienced so many phrases that simply don’t translate into English For example: ما عليك وانا (ma A’laik wana) which literally means “what’s on you, and I am….” It makes no sense word wise so I just remember it means “don’t worry I can take care of myself. Another phrase is ايك ساعك (ayak s’Ak) which until today I don’t know what the two words mean. I just know the phrase means leave room for the meal or like don’t stuff yourself there’s still more food

Great video again Matt! I like the way you are using the video to underline your points abstractly or alluding to them. For example when you showed the meditating monks when talking about listening and listening to the persistent puzzles "until they suddenly make sense". I think that learning a language has a lot of parallels to meditation actually.

Completely agree with how you described it. I also like to think of it as the "image" that people of that language have in their head when describing reality. This is another reason why I find it valuable to listen to how speakers of your target language (i.e. Japanese) speak in your native language (i.e. English). In the example of 掛ける at 4:36 , I could imagine a situation where a Japanese person *might* possibly say "The issue was placed on (or put on) the meeting." It would sound strange to us, but not because the words or grammar are wrong. The concept isn't even incorrect, not if you think about it. It's just because that's not the precise "image" English speakers have in their heads when talking about discussing something in a meeting (at least Americans in the 21st century). I feel like this is probably a big reason why I love languages. Like the blind man example you used, different languages describe reality from different "angles", and it's really cool to notice your own "angle" in your native language. Just my thoughts on the matter, sorry for the rant 😅

Been binge watching Matt's videos. Just picked up japanese after 10 years of letting go. Love the whole immersion idea. Learned english this exact same way when I was a kid: mom used to watch everything with subs (in our native language, but 90% of people I know used to watch the dubbed version), english songs, then MMORPGs (ever got scammed by someone on Tibia or MU? lol). And when me and my sister were like 4-5 we used to watch over and over the same 3 Disney VHS tapes that taught english using songs. I still don't know all the technical stuff about grammar and I still have a pretty strong accent, but it was all natural. I never sat down to actually study english. Gonna try to replicate this with japanese (but with way more intent and effort). Thank you for all the videos!

Lately one of my favorite immersion activities for reading are the 4k Tokyo walking videos all over youtube. I'm finally starting to make some sense of all the signs and advertisements. It's fun, engaging, and it's useful immersion since I'm trying to learn as much as I can before a trip.

atsuさんの動画から飛んできました。すごく勉強になりました！今まで英語を必死に日本語に訳してなんかモヤモヤしたりうまく当てはまらなくてしっくりこないことが多かったのですが、謎だったのですがこの解説でスッキリしました！ 日本語字幕がめちゃくちゃ上手でビックリしました！😆日本人より日本人！

exactly the video I needed Matt. The timing couldn't be better

This was very insightful, thankyou for this video!

Spanish native speaker here. Back in the day it took me around ten years to "grasp" English. Now I'm studying Chinese through materials destined for English speakers. My mind is filled with grammar (which I love) in three languages, if you don't count my approaches to Korean before getting into Chinese. I don't know. I just enjoy the ride and listen to very good Taiwanese hip hop all the time. 😁 Some day it'll click and I'll be immensely happy.

Dude, Im in completely love with your editing!