Lesson 9: How textbooks DESTROY your Japanese: No 1 Secret! + Expressing desire: hoshii, tai, tagaru

Here is the No. 1 secret to understanding Japanese. And textbooks actually make it harder to grasp! Plus expressing desire in Japanese with tai, tagaru and hoshii - how they really work.
LESSON 9- Expressing Desire
00:01- introduction
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●00:29- why the traditional way of describing and constructing Japanese is flawed
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01:07- Japanese has non-sentient beings as the main actor of the sentence // unlike English
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01:58- example
03:29- example || particle confusions
04:55- clarification
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05:30- how often this happens || more particle confusions
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●EXPRESSING DESIRE
07:10- ほしい || "wanting" something
08:41- たい || wanting "to do" something
•
10:04- do I have to use awkward literal English translations?
11:26- particle が || 0 car
•
15:21- がる /た+がる || talking about someone's else desire
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18:27- finishing

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[matthall]

This video is very useful. Thank you. I did want to interject at your point at 12:40 where you imply that the zero-pronoun is "I". I would have thought that the implied subject is instead 食べ物が?  That's the way I thought of it anyway. "want to eat.... food!" :)

[JouzuJuls]

I've been searching for this video for months and nobody has been able to explain を vs が clearly. This video also doesn't show up in search because it doesn't have を vs が written anywhere! To anybody reading this, please help more learners find this by posting comments with "を vs が" in it so that it's more likely to show up in search when people looking for "を vs が Cure Dolly"! Thank you again Cure Dolly Sensei, rest in peace!

[MrKlumpfluff]

"And if that could happen (particles changing meaning), Japanese would become chaos. And that's exactly what it does become in the minds of many students." I confirm. Chaos was very prevalent. Thank you for a state of non-chaos.

[elmhurstenglish]

When you regarded Japanese as an animist language, it helped me visualise everything as having its own soul/will (which isn't far removed from a core aspect of Shintoism). So I shifted my view from 'me wanting to eat something' (A does B) to 'that thing IS able to make me want to eat it' (A is B).

[rafa]

I'm not someone who usually leave comments but my heart made me feel like I had to. You're amazing, Dolly-sensei. I'm fairly new here...and it makes me sad to be this late to your videos and to have found you so late. We'll miss you very much!
It really aches my heart to know that such a kind and great person is not between us anymore. That's not to mention your amazing teaching, intelligence and knowledge that you were willing to share with us.
Your "legacy" will keep helping many people immensely, advanced or not, as it's been helping someone new like me. It will carry on for sure, Sensei. Thank you very much for everything!

[BikerFromSpace]

It's like my mind is being purified

[DennisPulido]

2 things:
- I am really BLOWN AWAY at your repeated and strong emphasis on the Ga particle, something that I really think was taken for granted in most if not all the Japanese grammar resources that i have tried in the past.
- your explanation of the differences on how English sentences works vs. how Japanese sentences works finally gave me a more conclusive explanation on what "thinking in Japanese" means, an idea that somewhat vaguely made some sort of sense to me before but is now clearer than it ever was.

[aeronwolfe]

i cannot believe this even EXISTS on youtube. THIS IS THE BEST VIDEO SERIES ON JAPANESE I HAVE EVER SEEN.

[KKMDB]

I think I'm in a state of shock. These concepts in and of themselves are invaluable and mind enhancing even if language learning is not a goal. In my opinion, this is not just language learning, this is education. You have my sincerest thanks.
PS. I could have potentially wasted years of ineffectual and illusory learning, but thanks to this channel I've been saved, I think that's also why I feel shock, its like a near miss of a fatal accident. Is this Tenjin's blessing? I would like to think so.

[niri-iqtx]

The textbook Genki got me really confused on "好き" and "嫌い", because they are listed under な-adjectives, but it's said they are like verbs in English. 🤯
Would be helpful to include "unnatural sounding" translations in Textbooks as well, so students could understand the logic behind Japanese.

[Randhrick]

I'm watching your videos in order and even though I consider myself a little bit past advanced beginner I'm still learning new stuff because I learned from those textbooks.
Your videos are literally unlocking the remaining things I don't understand from grammars points I already knew .

And yes, I would call that lazy teaching it's like they don't want you to expkain the real cultural reason behind those grammar rules of Japanese instead they just show them as it is
and ask you to memorize them. Japanese language always had the reputation of being vague and mysterious (as Rubin Sensei say in his book) and I think it's because people teaching it either doesn't fully understand themself or they are repeating the way they were teached.

[language_enthusiast]

I remember reading about the zero pronoun about a decade or so ago in some old book, and I remember wishing that this information was more common to Japanese learners. Today, I'm so proud to see this kind of information being put out for all the world to see in such an easily understandable way. This kind of information doesn't just teach you grammar in a language but intuition, which is far more valuable.

[jcpshd]

I am a language teacher too and I wholeheartedly agree with your method of teaching. I do the same in my lessons, using "raw" translations to help the students figure out the logic and philosophy of the language. I wish I had watched this video when I first started to learn Japanese. As you said, it took me literally years to figure out the simple logic you have wonderfully explained here.

Please keep up the good work, thank you very much!

[chaosangel]

I feel like part of why it took me so long to sit down and really learn the language was because I was waiting for this video to exist. It's exactly the sort of consistent logical approach I needed.

[zczcbl]

this was the first time that がる　has made actual sense to me. Thank you

[dycedargselderbrother]

6:38 "Because this prejudice for putting an ego at the center of every sentence is so strong that it takes precedence over learning Japanese correctly."
For evidence of this, check out Duolingo's comment sections. It's full of people slowly realizing the translations aren't conveying true meanings only to be met with "we don't say it that way in English". Often times you might get the impression you're being schooled on English grammar rather than Japanese. They even have a popular meme phrase, 「すみません、私はリンゴです。」, which they translate to "Excuse me, I am an apple." It's an unironic version of 「私はうなぎだ。」(I am an eel).

[ITchickJess]

Thank you so much for making this video. Even after 2 years living in Japan, I couldn't figure out how to reconcile textbook translations with how particles actually worked. I think I FINALLY get it now, thank you, Dolly!

[jamesfilios]

This is probably one of the most important videos in the series in my opinion. So many people start their very first japanese lesson with this misconception and its just an uphill struggle from there.

[ericdude]

I started learning Japanese a few days ago as mostly a joke and came across this playlist, now while I have no actual grasp on vocabulary I can look at a block of Japanese text and figure out all the parts of the sentence even without understanding what it says at all. I find that amazing and it's making me want to actually continue, this is one of the best lesson courses I've ever found. You will be missed.

[lynellewhite]

It’s so odd that Japanese is taught this way, as well. Italian and Spanish have exactly the same structure, but no one would think of implying that “caffe mi piace” somehow means that mi is occasionally a subject pronoun - they simply take a paragraph to explain that italian handles “I like coffee” differently. Simple. But Japanese text books tie themselves up in knots….