掲示板 Forums - grammar troubles

Grammar is an order of magnitude more complicated than the rest, like vocabulary. Not only do you have to remember the grammar words, but also all the rules. And you need to actually understand the sentence meaning and structure, not just individual words. It's like the difference between doing algebra and just memorizing multiplication tables.

So you have to take it slow, until you really "get it." If you go too fast, you'll just be overwhelmed. That's what the low score is telling you. You can set the schedule to review mode until you get consistently better. Then you can start learning new stuff again.

I also suggest cutting down the quiz size from the default 40. Grammar takes a lot more brain power so it gets tiring fast.

Btw, ideally, you should not memorize the phrases themselves. If you just do that, you won't really learn the grammar. You should understand why a particular grammar is used. If you get it wrong and you're not sure why, look at the comments. Most likely someone else had the same issue and it's been explained.

​Not quite. きみ + の + 神 doesn't mean "your not a god" (you're*)

きみ の 神 じゃない = "I'm not your god" / "[someone/something] is not your god", depending on the omitted subject.

きみ は 神 じゃない = "You're not a god"

[ でしょう doesn't change that core meaning ]

Note: Don't think of きみ as "buddy, pal", it's way more nuanced than that, and wouldn't make sense as a translation half the time. They carry English connotations that きみ doesn't inherently have. A lot of the time it's just "you", and this is definitely one of those cases :)

[ purely talking about the translation. The nuance is its own thing, and depends heavily on context ]

Anyway, I think you just need more practice. You *can* pick up a lot of grammar through exposure, but it's a painfully slow process. We're talking decades. I'd recommend a mix of immersion and structured study. The latter being way more impactful for a beginner.

The way I read sentences, I'd break down their structure to see what to interpret.

That sentence is fundamentally what a Japanese sentence is structured. One of the ways I'd split them is as followed:

君(きみ)の　神じゃない　でしょう。

I'm no linguist, but that is a way that linguists will split up sentences to make certain points, which makes it easier for analysis to highlight the parts and show how words interact. It's worth looking into that once in a while to see how this plays out.

Without reading/knowing the word but recognizing grammatical patterns, this merely is reduced to:

[Word 1]の　[word 2]+negative　[sentence ending(s)]

Taking out the words loses some meaning, but not the structure of what it's trying to say.

The の particle supports a relationship between word 1 and word 2. Like other particles, arranging it that way reminds me which word that particle belongs. The particle's friend. Buddy. Pal. の is a particle marking a possessive nature, which means that it also needs another friend. Buddy. Pal. So, it would be hard to move it in a different way without following the word it is meant to describe.

Word 2 also has a negative word attached to it. This isn't part of the の particle itself nor word 1. It wraps around word 2. This part applies a negative tense to that word.

The sentence ending じゃない, is just a sentence ending. It actually is something else, but that is too long of a story to cover. It's just plainly the plain meaning of saying that word 2 is not that.

As an aside, if it actually ended with です in place of でしょう, this functionally adds politeness encompassing the sentence. Otherwise, it doesn't really change the plain meaning. でしょう is just another form of です with its own meaning which establishes that particular intention of the statement.

When you're able to see the structure that aay, look up the meanings of the words, then try to fit the script dictated by how the grammar works. That would tell you what it is trying to say.