<story><title>Complete Introduction to Particles in Japanese</title><url>https://www.gokugoku.app/en/post/complete-introduction-to-particles-in-japanese</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wokwokwok</author><text>I feel like the big language models have proved this style of learning a language is the wrong approach.&lt;p&gt;I learnt Japanese; I studied it for 4 years and spent a year in japan.&lt;p&gt;You know what worked?&lt;p&gt;Lots of examples of people using particles.&lt;p&gt;What did not work?&lt;p&gt;Text books explaining what the particles do.&lt;p&gt;A grammatical study of particles is only useful after you’ve gained an understanding of when you should use them &lt;i&gt;from shed loads of examples&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;It helps you refine specific fine detail points of when to use them technically, and in formal writing.&lt;p&gt;For early learning, I posit it’s next to useless.&lt;p&gt;Language is not a well designed programming language full of orthogonal concepts.&lt;p&gt;This has long been an argument, but language models &lt;i&gt;reallly&lt;/i&gt; nail down the fact that a probabilistic approach to “similar to existing examples” approach to language  is categorically superior to attempting to construct semantically correct statements from “rules”.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>woojoo666</author><text>I find that examples and technical explanations complement each other. Examples are important, but the grammar explanations help give an idea of what to focus on in the examples.&lt;p&gt;In fact I see it as a gradient. Vocabulary that stands on its own (like &amp;quot;apple&amp;quot;) is best learned through examples. Stuff that is extremely structural (like how verbs conjugate in Japanese) is much easier to learn through explanations, instead of going through examples trying to find the pattern yourself. And there is of course middle ground, like grammar particles, which are vocabulary that also obey lots of rules.</text></comment>
<story><title>Complete Introduction to Particles in Japanese</title><url>https://www.gokugoku.app/en/post/complete-introduction-to-particles-in-japanese</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wokwokwok</author><text>I feel like the big language models have proved this style of learning a language is the wrong approach.&lt;p&gt;I learnt Japanese; I studied it for 4 years and spent a year in japan.&lt;p&gt;You know what worked?&lt;p&gt;Lots of examples of people using particles.&lt;p&gt;What did not work?&lt;p&gt;Text books explaining what the particles do.&lt;p&gt;A grammatical study of particles is only useful after you’ve gained an understanding of when you should use them &lt;i&gt;from shed loads of examples&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;It helps you refine specific fine detail points of when to use them technically, and in formal writing.&lt;p&gt;For early learning, I posit it’s next to useless.&lt;p&gt;Language is not a well designed programming language full of orthogonal concepts.&lt;p&gt;This has long been an argument, but language models &lt;i&gt;reallly&lt;/i&gt; nail down the fact that a probabilistic approach to “similar to existing examples” approach to language  is categorically superior to attempting to construct semantically correct statements from “rules”.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>yorwba</author><text>Inferring rules from shed loads of examples instead of coding them explicitly is only superior for big language models because machines are faster at processing examples than humans are at implementing a comprehensive set of rules for the machines to follow. So it&amp;#x27;s a trade-off between slow and expensive human labor vs. fast and comparatively cheap machine labor.&lt;p&gt;When it&amp;#x27;s a human learning a language, that speed difference doesn&amp;#x27;t apply. When the choice is between a slow human processing a lot of examples vs. a slow human processing a small number of examples plus a description of the rule governing them, it&amp;#x27;s no longer so obvious that the first approach is better.</text></comment>