Lesson 32: Conditionals made clear! Tara, nara - how they really work

[@eselamor]

Sometimes when explaining something that seems particularly nutty in Japanese, you'll give an example in which English does the exact same thing. While watching this video I realized that using a past conditional to express surprise happens in English too. "I went home and - well, if Sakura wasn't standing right there in my living room!" I love your channel, thank you so so much for everything you do! :)

[@bullshitdepartment]

uh, this is my first time hearing a sentence like that tbh

[@diananeg6553]

''She must've gotten in through the window. Sakura does that sometimes''. This is a truly authentic way of helping students remember the structures and I might even say that it's funny. So thank you so much for the help, Cure Dolly. You've really cleared the mess that highschool managed to do in my head with this language. Amazing work. You are an inspiration to me. You're the kind of teacher I want to become!

[@organicjapanesewithcuredol49]

Thank you so much. Teachers dedicated to presenting things in ways that are clear easy to assimilate (and fun) are what we really need. So good luck with your dream. I know you can do it.

[@vinilzord1]

I wish this playlist stays available forever on YT. It's so pleasant to watch these videos! Perfect explanation as always. Thanks for everything you do! :D

[@sirmoco]

When I saw the "pandamic" at the end, I thought this video was from this year lol

[@organicjapanesewithcuredol49]

I guess it's less funny now than it was when the video was made.

[@sirmoco]

@@organicjapanesewithcuredol49 it's still funny 先生!

[@MacCc91]

It would have been really nice to maybe have one sentence for all the conditionals and then make clear where the focus is in every sentence. Because your last videos are missing a little bit of exammples I feel like.

[@organicjapanesewithcuredol49]

I am sorry if I was a little light on examples. One sentence for each conditional would, I think be unduly "systematic" I have tried to show that each conditional has a range of meaning with certain areas in which it "specializes". There is a lot of overlap between them. In the end, learning how conditionals work has to be done by experience - that is to say, a lot of input (and preferably a lot of output too). The point of explaining their nature is to give us a framework to make that experience easier to grasp, but schematizing them too much would lead to over-generalization about each one, which would make experience _harder_ to grasp ("but on the list it says...")

[@jeomaxx7499]

Wow that's about all the conjugations i think i cant express how much im grateful sensei xD

[@niket527]

It seems like たら is roughly equivalent to the English "once." Once" can be used in the past (i.e. "Once I got home, Sakura was there.") or in the future ("Once you finish reading that book, put it away on the bookshelf.")

[@organicjapanesewithcuredol49]

In some cases that is true.

[@neobretsmith360]

Very helpful, thanks again😄

[@organicjapanesewithcuredol49]

Thank you!

[@kunslipper]

Very good. Thank you so much.

[@Giraffinator]

Sakura: *breaks into your house and dabs

[@gregorsamsa9762]

Great video. Thank you.

[@organicjapanesewithcuredol49]

And thank you for your kind appreciation.

[@nebelung1]

Hello! Is あそく an error or why is it not あそこ? :o Thanks for your videos! I watch one of your videos every day, good way to start the day :)

[@organicjapanesewithcuredol49]

Yes it's a mistype. My proofreader at this stage was not that experienced with Japanese and it's notoriously hard to spot one's own typos.

[@nebelung1]

@@organicjapanesewithcuredol49 Thanks for your reply, it's understandable :)

[@かがゆ藤]

I'm late but I think a great way of explaining the meaning is "On the circumstances/situations/conditions that..." because this works with both if and when. "When A is/was B"and "If A is/was B" both fulfill "On the conditions that A is/was B" it is conditional after all hah.

[@pond6282]

I'd like to run a sentence by you: For a little context, the person speaking is a character that is currently recovering from an illness. Her head peaks out of a door as she's looking left and right and says this: 私ったら寝てる場合じゃなかったわ。ドクターがいない内に逃げなきゃ How does ったら work in this sentence? It sounds a bit awkward when trying to apply 'when'. maybe there's some other element in the sentence that' is causing the confusion; I'm not entirely sure. Thanks for your videos, they help out a ton.

[@organicjapanesewithcuredol49]

It is a slightly disparaging of self usage. With another person it expresses a degree of exasperation and it is a bit similar here "this was no time for me to be sleeping (lazy old sausage)."

[@pond6282]

Thank you. I did think that could be what it was, but I wasn't confident enough with that assumption.

[@billyboy80]

love your video always clears up all the fog when I'm doubting a japanese concept! sasuga !

[@halgee8229]

I don't think I'm right, but ら looks a little as if it's being one of those nouns like こと or よう. 帰ったら for instance, looks just like a verb predicating a ら-thing. さくらなら looks like connective だ behaviour, with Sakura predicating a ら-thing. What these ら-things would be, I'm not sure, but the word that comes to mind is "case". The reason I don't think I'm right is that if it were a noun it ought to be connected to something else in the sentence. 家に帰ったらさくらがいた would have this ら-thing built up by the halfway point, and then *pop* new clause and the ら-thing is left floating, which wouldn't make sense. Thank you for another excellent video!

[@organicjapanesewithcuredol49]

たら is really a helper that goes onto the て-form stem of a verb. This stem can take て, た, たり, and たら (and of course their voiced, or ten-tened equivalents). The たら helper is a conditional helper. It can also be used with adjectives and the copula. More on the broader stem-system here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/q6DNZp9uYrWjrdU

[@chips1752]

but the true biggest surprise, was to see sakura dabbing when you arrived home

[@The_DoubtingThomas]

Thank you

[@ellenawesome5533]

"the pandamic" well that aged well😂

[@organicjapanesewithcuredol49]

Just think - it was just a fun word to play with back then! Times change, ne?

[@nickinlondon4644]

Could you please confirm that I've got this right? 1. The 0 and 1st conditionals are made using TO; 2. The 2nd conditional is made using either BA or TARA; 3. The 3rd conditional is made using BA; 4. Nouns are followed by NARA; 5. i-adjectives are followed by KEREBA (dropping the last i, of course); and 6. na-adjectives are followed by NARA. Yes???

[@organicjapanesewithcuredol49]

I am a little confused by your numbered conditionals here. What system are you referring to? Without knowing it is hard for me to comment on 1 to 3. 4. Yes. Nouns can be followed by nara and this is the simplest (but not the only possible) way of applying a conditional to a noun. I would recommend using it when you want to "conditionalize" a noun. 5. Yes. Adjecitves are followed by kereba (dropping the i). 6. Yes. "Na-adjectives" are nouns and so the simplest way of "conditionalizing" them is with nara, as with all nouns.

[@nickinlondon4644]

@@organicjapanesewithcuredol49 I thought you knew English grammar! The 0, 1st, 2nd and 3rd condititionals are standard English grammar. The 0 conditional is for things that are always true (if I am out Sakura climbs through my window), the 1st conditional is for things you believe are possible (if Sakura climbs though my window again I will call the police), the 2nd conditional is for things which are just a fantasy (if I was Sakura I would stop climbing through people's windows) and the 3rd conditional is for imaginary situations in the past (if Sakura hadn't climbed through the window I wouldn't have thought she was a burglar). There is also what is called the mixed conditional, which mixes the past and the present (if Sakura hadn't climbed through my window she wouldn't now be in prison).

[@stanleykparker]

Those are pretty funny examples. But I don't remember learning anything like that in English grammar class, 50+ years in the past though.

[@MikeSugs]

Would it be possible to offer transcripts of all of your videos like you did for the intransitive/transitive topic?

[@organicjapanesewithcuredol49]

Ah, that wasn't actually a transcript. The video itself was based on an article written a year or so earlier, but I may do some transcripts later. I am also planning to turn the core-structure part of this series into a book. I have been planning that since the beginning but so busy I haven't gotten much done so far.

[@jaakkohintsala2597]

i remember genki teaching なら to be like something of a "context bringer", i think it's quite intuitive way to descibe なら's function.

[@organicjapanesewithcuredol49]

That is a good description. That is very much what なら is doing in the Sakura and station examples and tends to be its special characteristic when it isn't working as a general conditional. It is also very useful for beginner/intermediate learners as a conditional that works in most cases and is very easy to use on the fly.

[@vicentemendoza2648]

I really love all of your videos explaining all of the logic behind the words Also i've got an question unrelated to the video, but i'd be glad if you could help me out, the question goes as this What is the logic behind どうして becoming into "why" Thanks for doing all you do, ily uwu(*^^*)

[@organicjapanesewithcuredol49]

Thank you so much. I am happy to be able to help you. どうして is a relatively informal way to say "why" (なぜ is more formal). It can be compared to English "how come" and interestingly is very similar in construction. "How come X" is a contraction of something like "how does it come about that X happened/is the case?". If we look at どうして we see that it is made up of どう "how" and して, the て-form of する, "do". The て-form generally means "and", often with an implication of "therefore". So どうしてX is literally something like "what-do and (therefore) X?". In other words, "by what means (action) did X come about?". The other less formal why is rather similar なんで (何で) means literally "by what means?" で being the means-of-doing marker.

[@kaviyarasumanoharan1557]

It would be much helpful if we make a table and where we can use only one conditional and where we can use two or more conditionals Please make us a table with at least twenty examples differentiating these conditionals using different situations

[@gemgem24able]

She has emphasized a couple of times that making lists is not ideal for learning (maybe not in this playlist but in her other videos). I agree with that. When you make lists, your understanding of japanese gets stiff (I can't think of a better term. Lol). As she had said, you will learn all of that if you expose yourself enough to the language, the same way you will learn which -ru verb is ichidan or godan based on experience rather than memorizing lists. Anyway, you said this 6 months ago so it's most likely irrelevant to you now and I don't know why I even commented. Lol.

[@amazingabigail9596]

ドリー先生, I read elsewhere that たら shows that the 1st clause causes the 2nd clause in a sentence. For example, that in the sentence 'テレビ を見たら、寝た' the use of たら shows that watching TV caused the falling asleep. However, this seems to contradict what you have explained in this video. You explained that たら shows that what happens in the 2nd clause is something surprising or unexpected. For instance the sentence used in this video, '家に帰ったら、さくらがいた'. I am certain that in this sentence the first clause (家に帰ったら) did not cause the second clause (さくらがいた), which goes against what I read. I would really appreciate if you could help me understand what is going on here. Can たら have both meanings?

[@organicjapanesewithcuredol49]

The context in which たら is used can often imply that B follows causally from A, but たら in itself doesn't necessarily carry that implication. You will find plenty o sentences where A does not cause B and たら is used..

[@Козаченко-о4о]

I didn't quite understand what's the difference between と and なら when talking about conditionals that are not at doubts at all. They are fully interchangeable in this case? We can say both "冬になると寒くなる" and "冬になるなら寒くなる"？

[@organicjapanesewithcuredol49]

なら means "if". It may or may not express a doubt. When it doesn't express a doubt it is more like "since" as in "since it's you, you can do it". However it doesn't have the meaning of "when" that と has, so 冬になるなら doesn't have the meaning of "when winter comes". We need to use と for that.

[@orangegab06]

Nice! This topic is somehow harder to grasp for me than previous ones though :$ So for たら, is it correct to translate it as "if" in situations that would happen for sure in the future? Like "安かったら、たくさん買います (if it's/it was cheap / when it's/it was cheap, I will buy a lot)" I'm not sure exactly when to translate たら as "when" or "if" for situations other than those that have already happened in the past (in which case "when" is used to indicate surprise right)?

[@organicjapanesewithcuredol49]

It is important to realize that ambiguity is a part of language that we deal with every day if something is confusingly ambiguous it will usually be disambiguated in some way by the speaker/writer. More on this little-discussed but important aspect of language here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/nZTFk4aNYrCoirM

[@orangegab06]

@@organicjapanesewithcuredol49 Thank you Sensei 🙏

[@pazispeace]

Hi cure dolly sensei! hope you are doing great, I was wondering if you have any videos explaining どうせなら? I was searching it on internet but I cant find any logical answer T.T

[@pazispeace]

Hii cure dolly 先生, hope you are doing great! I have a little question, do you have a video about たり conditional? y can't find it (you put that there was one in the discription box in your video about "Ultimate structure". But as I said I can't find it, so I was wondering if this is the same as tari)

[@organicjapanesewithcuredol49]

たり is not a conditional. I haven't done a video on it yet but I probably will soon - oh did I say that? I'll check. I don't seem to have. Can you tell me where?

[@pazispeace]

@@organicjapanesewithcuredol49 Oh sorry the name of the video is *At last! The TOTAL structure of Japanese! Global principle of all Japanese word-forms. Lesson 81 * kzbin.info/www/bejne/q6DNZp9uYrWjrdU&ab_channel=OrganicJapanesewithCureDolly in the description box is ¨Conditionals playlist たり、そう etc.¨ Thanks! take al the time you need, you are such a great 先生

[@organicjapanesewithcuredol49]

@@pazispeace I realize that, but where does it say there is a video on たり? It only links the video on conditionals. I haven't made a video with たり yet.

[@organicjapanesewithcuredol49]

PS OK I've got it! It's a typo. It says たり when it should say たら. I'll fix that now. Thank you for pointing it out.

[@pazispeace]

@@organicjapanesewithcuredol49 Oh I meant in the description box sorry

[@harveyfresh6701]

Hello Dolly Sensei, Placing my question in this video, but it involves both ば and たら. Based on the native materials that I've read/listened to, I have encountered どうしたらいい more than どうすればいい. Based on your videos, am I correct in my understanding that both can mean the same thing, the difference being when using たら, the action of した might have happened and we are emphasizing the いい/good thing that could be done; while using ば the action did not happen, and we are emphasizing the どう/how or what could be done, rather than the いい/good thing that the action might bring about? よろしくお願いします。

[@organicjapanesewithcuredol49]

While I try to show the structural differences, in a set phrase like this the two will be mostly equivalent. The ば-version is commoner overall, but I wouldn't overthink the structure here - both mean "what should I do?"

[@harveyfresh6701]

@@organicjapanesewithcuredol49 Ok got it. ありがとうございます。

[@LionKimbro]

I came to these three videos (と、ば・れば、たら・なら) trying to translate this 文, from 天地創造, and I was wondering if you would check my translation? The sentence is, "起きて　外へ出てみたら？" And I think it says, "Waking, outside (to) departing if-you-try?" I'm supposing it means something like, "How about you try getting up out of bed and going outside?" Does the -たら (I think) means, "What would happen if..?"

[@organicjapanesewithcuredol49]

Good translation. The sentence is strictly incomplete and would "properly" end with something like どうでしょう. As it stands it literally just means "If you got up out of bed and tried going outside...?" The rest ("how would that be?" or something like that) is implied.

[@sanl2210]

I decided to look for the definitions of『は』and『が』in the 新明解国語辞典 and i could understand every definition xD turns out i already knew every usage but it was still great just to be sure i wasn't missing out anything. They defined は with only 2 definitions =o its really not complicated.

[@vanessameow1902]

What about the word 何なら? I can't seem to fully comprehend what it means.

[@organicjapanesewithcuredol49]

It means much the same as よかったら

[@vanessameow1902]

@@organicjapanesewithcuredol49 分かりました。ありがとうございます。

[@Narulopo]

I have a doubt dear dolly in the manga dragon ball after Bulma hears about the age of Goku that is 14 years old, she sends him to sleep in the floor instead of together even thought she would have slept alone anyways I think and she says １４歳なんて知ったら余計だわ What could be a possible translation? I think something like When I knew you had 14 years old it is (was) excessive That could be correct? Although saying something like that in english doesn't make too much sense for me because I actually speak spanish 😸

[@arpitkumar4525]

ドーリなら、何でも分かられる！

[@edge3220]

サブスクライブして鈴を押さなかったら通知は受けない。 (Please correct me anywhere I'm wrong.)

[@organicjapanesewithcuredol49]

から is not the natural connection to use here because it is non-contrastive. Overall better would be 登録してベルをクリックしたのに、通知は受けない。 登録 is much more often used for this kind of subscription than サブスクライブ, 鈴 implies a literal small bell. The past tense for the first clause makes it clearer. As for the problem. I don't understand it. Sometimes this seems to happen. I don't have any control over KZbin's functions (sadly). It's really very annoying. You could try unsubscribing and re-subscribing

[@alfredschlicht2662]

Sensei, your video is full of good information but we really could do with a bit more examples as to grasp the differences in nuance.

[@organicjapanesewithcuredol49]

I'll try to give some more examples, but the thing is that I teach structure as a basis for immersion. Nuance is something that can't really be "taught" in the abstract. One can say things to help people grasp it better and sometimes they are worth saying, but the idea that one will learn Japanese nuance from English explanations is an illusion. That is what immersion is for: kzbin.info/www/bejne/rpmon4Cfmq2nm8U

[@alfredschlicht2662]

@@organicjapanesewithcuredol49 I'm all for immersion sensei and I don't believe English meaning would teach the nuance of Japanese words/sentences; I'll work the nuances out by myself. It's just for guidance, a starting point I might say. Thank you sensei.

[@organicjapanesewithcuredol49]

@Alfred Schlichtcock Yes I understand. There is always a lot more I could say than what I do say in each video, so I have to make a decision on what are the most vital things to include. If I get a chance to do some running commentaries on texts (like the anime walkthrough and the Alice lessons) this gives me much more of a chance to explain nuances in context.

[@wanjanhasan4873]

Literally minimized the fullscreen to check the release date after seeing the Pandamic joke at the end.

[@organicjapanesewithcuredol49]

I wouldn't have made it if I'd known. That joke didn't stand the test of time did it?

[@wanjanhasan4873]

@@organicjapanesewithcuredol49 Nah it's still funny, at least for me tho. Feels like you knew something was coming way back in 2018 Android Sensei.

[@glicogeno4550]

is this phrase correct?国へ帰ったら、会社を作るつもりです

[@organicjapanesewithcuredol49]

It is, although に is more usual than へ here (as stressing the destination rather than the journey). へ can be used in this context though, especially if you aren't expecting to return for some time.

[@glicogeno4550]

my point was not really that one. maybe i have to better understand tara. the point i don't understand is: kaettara is past, tsukuru is future, so "when (if) i returned to my country( more or less) ,i'm going to build my company. i don't get it. i'm italian, so, in my language is even more unlikely.i used the rule "辞書形＋つもり" in this exercise and i did it right, but for me, there is not consecutio temporum.

[@organicjapanesewithcuredol49]

​@@glicogeno4550 Japanese doesn't require "agreement" in time in the way that European languages do (just as it doesn't require other "agreements" like gender and quantity). たら is not restricted to past events although it tends to be used of "certain" events (of which past - therefore certainly knowable - events could be called the archetype). So, we know that 作る is non-past because it is 辞書形. We know that it is a future (intended) event because of the use of つもり (sometimes used as a an expression tactic to clarify futurity). Generally speaking Japanese sentences only mark tense once, because "agreement" is not necessary. So we can assume that the return to one's country is future along with the building of the company. We could assume this even without the つもり since 作る is non-past there is no natural use of the present function that we could infer - "am (now) building would be 作っている. 帰ったら can mean "when I return" or "when I returned" or occasionally "if I return" but can't mean "now that I have returned". Incidentally "if I return" would be 帰れば. It is not entirely impossible for 帰ったら to mean that by the strict rules of grammar but the Ambiguity Rule (which textbooks never talk about but play a very large role in all languages) require a 帰れば. See this video for the Ambiguity Rule kzbin.info/www/bejne/nZTFk4aNYrCoirM Does this clarify?

[@glicogeno4550]

maybe the problem is a little bit different. i don't think there is not consecutio temporum, it would be crazy. i think it is different. Occidental consecutio temporum is based on the current state of the talker. so, "when i will return to my country, i will do something": for me, in my current state, it's all about future. for japanese it is "when i returned to my country, i will do something" because consecutio is not about my current state, but my future state, my future context. is it the right interpretation? i remember some of your setsumei regarding that, it was about mae ni and ato de

[@organicjapanesewithcuredol49]

​@@glicogeno4550 Yes, I think that is right. A thing to remember about Japanese sentences is that they save the important information until the end. It isn't until the end that we know what happened, when it happened etc. Now this isn't 100% true in terms of _understanding_ because context might be giving us cues, but in strict _grammatical_ terms it is true. Which means that listening to Japanese (or reading it without peeping at the end of sentences) we have to listen in a somewhat different way - perhaps a more "open" kind of way. With more complex sentences we may have whole clauses that turn out to be not the thing we are talking about but just modifiers for one of the elements that we are talking about (the 主語 or the 述語 - the A-car or the B-engine). Some of them may even be modifiers for modifiers. Most European languages like to nail things down every time a verb or noun is used (tense, gender, number). Japanese is happy to leave the salient information until the end. With many compound sentences for example we don't (grammatically) know what tense any of the clauses were in until the end of the last one. I think some people think - doesn't this make it impossible to follow? And obviously the answer is "No, or Japanese people couldn't follow it". But we do need to adjust our thinking.

[@arpitkumar4525]

6:35 "Join the Pandamic". Well that didn't age well

[@organicjapanesewithcuredol49]

It didn't did it?

[@かえる77]

[@木漏れ日77]

This is getting our of hand

[@IchEsseKonsolen]

slowly getting closer to understanding why Naruto's ってばよ is a silly form of speech

[@organicjapanesewithcuredol49]

It does get said (it is apparently dialectical in some places). It is silly - a bit like 何よ which one hears quite often. It doesn't really make sense to put a conveyed-information marker after a question either, but it makes a kind of colloquial sense because you are marking a rhetorical question as such (the import is "what's this?" in the sense of not actually wanting to know but showing your disapproval of it).

[@jimongtiburcio6998]

WHAT KIND OF VOICE IS THAT? OMG THAT'S NOT HELPFUL ITS WORTHLESS GRRRR. WAKARANAI

[@organicjapanesewithcuredol49]

There are full subtitles if you can't understand my voice - but I'm afraid I can't make them all-caps for you.

[@youngsterjack619]

@@organicjapanesewithcuredol49 Haha great reply

[@Yuna-xh1dd]

Hello! Thank you so much for your work. I still haven't seen all of your videos but I will watch them all because this is so useful. I'm very happy I found a channel that explains japanese from a japanese point of view, that makes things so easy!! Last time I watch a video about the top 5 difficult languages to learn, and in this top they said Japanese was like 4 or 3. They said it was so difficult because of the kanji and also because of the grammar that has a lot of illogical rules and a lot of illogical exceptions and I was like WT...? It is so logical!! (and I think so much more logical than my native language: the french) In fact, I would like to ask you a question about a japanese sentence. Besides your videos, I watch video of japanese grammar made only in japanese. They are for foreigners but there is no english explanations, everything is explained in japanese. It helps me a lot because it emancipates me from the english (or french) language and I really improved my oral comprehension a lot in a very short time. It is much less confusing without english. But sometimes it seems that not having english explanations leaves me confused on some particular aspects. And last time I encountered a sentence and I'm not sure I understood the meaning of it... 最後まで統けられないくらいなら始めからやらない方が良い I'm pretty sure it means something like: "Rather than this thing not being able to be continued until the end, it should be better not doing (the thing) from the beginning" I'm confused because my boyfriend thinks the second part means "should redo it from the beginning" and not "shouldn't do it from the beginning". And I would like to be sure which of my bf or me is right (I hope it's me ;-p) Sorry for the long post, I hope you can help me... well you already helped me a lot and I am very happy with the progress I made!! thanks! ^^

[@organicjapanesewithcuredol49]

You are right. Japanese grammar is very logical and has almost no illogical rules exceptions. In this it is very different from European languages. However the way it is taught makes it _appear_ to be full of exceptions and since people learning this way have no way to grasp the real structure it is just as hard for them as if the imaginary "exceptions" and "illogicalities" were real. Watching good Japanese-language explanations of Japanese is an excellent thing to do. You still won't learn the structure of the language because no one is teaching it (other than this unit) but it is a very good to hear Japanese discussed in Japanese. The sentence you quote does not mean anything in itself because 統ける is not a word, but I am guessing that you meant something like 続けられない. If so your interpretation is correct. I am not sure how your boyfriend would think it might mean that one should do it from the beginning, since XXないほうが良い means "better not to do XX".

[@Yuna-xh1dd]

@@organicjapanesewithcuredol49 thank you! I guess my boyfriend is still confused because he is learning japanese grammar only by learning through an anki deck short (or not so short ) sentences that are just the japanese with what would bé the english way of saying it, without any explanation, sorted by N5 to N1 and is still at n5. I guess doing this way, he has struggle understand japanese sentences if they're not exactly the same as the example je learned. Without a proper explanation of the structure, or are least an english translation ggrammaticaly wrong but much closer to the japanese structure, he'd have to learned thousands more examples if he wanted his brain to instictively understand the structure so he can understand new sentences after.

[@organicjapanesewithcuredol49]

@@Yuna-xh1dd Yes I think you are right. You can learn language by pure exposure but it takes absolutely massive exposure to do that unless you have an unusually high degree of "linguistic intuition" which most humans don't (I don't either, but then I have barely any intuition at all). That is why I believe that learning structure is so important. It doesn't negate the need for exposure. On the contrary exposure is the key to learning. But structure is the key to exposure, because it cuts a much shorter and easier path than sheer "brute force" exposure can. The AJATT-influenced idea that one can learn by massive exposure is not I think wrong. But most people who try and fail at it do so because they forget that it really is AJATT - ALL Japanese ALL the time. Some Japanese some of the time won't cut it. Unless you are prepared to give your whole life to it you need some structural help. I absolutely believe that if you are marooned on an island where only Japanese is spoken and you have no access to internet or non-Japanese media of any kind you will end up speaking fluent Japanese with no structural or other teaching. But attempting to replicate that with a few hours of Anki a day is likely to lead to disappointing results.

[@木漏れ日77]