Daily lessons · Day 21 of 90
You finished this day
Review: week three
Consolidate days 15 to 20
Week three took you from naming things to describing them, asking for them and reacting to what you hear. No new grammar today. This is the week pulled back out of its situations so you can see the patterns underneath, plus a longer quiz across days 15 to 20.
Adjectives, the whole system
Two types, and every form you have met:
If you can sort a new adjective into い or な the moment you meet it, everything else follows. If you cannot, every sentence containing it becomes a guess. It is worth being deliberate about this for a few weeks until it is automatic, and worth remembering that きれい and ゆうめい are the two liars.
The て-form, first contact
One form, two jobs, and a lot more coming later:
Three different patterns this week were built on the same て-form, and that is the point. You are not learning a conjugation for its own sake; you are learning the hook that ください, もいいですか, います and a dozen later patterns all hang from. When the rules arrive on day 31 you will already have a stock of examples to attach them to.
Counting, and the escape hatch
Five counters and one fallback:
The counter goes after the noun and its particle, which is the opposite of English. コーヒーを ふたつ, tickets を にまい. If you remember only the word order and ひとつ ふたつ みっつ, you can buy almost anything in Japan.
Carry over, from earlier days
Check yourself
9 questions. Nothing is saved unless you finish.