Verb endings
One of the things that confused me the most about Japanese when I first started to learn was the difference between “desu” and “masu”. On first teaching a student Japanese, the teachers have to make a tradeoff at the very beginning. Do they want to teach how the language works? Or do they want to teach in such a way that the student can use what they know immediately without pissing people off with rookie mistakes in politeness level, etc.? Most teachers seem to do the latter, but after starting… Read More »Verb endings