Proverb of the Day

[istephenyu8790]

Jpod101 has a word of the day feature, which is very nice, but I believe it can do better with a proverb of the day as well.

I got this idea recently when visiting another learning site. Unfortunately, most sites don't offer native audio to play the pronunciation of words as Jpod101 does.

Learning proverbs offer a glimpse of culture, provide memorable key phrases, and are just good lessons in general. It is also an avenue by which foreign language learners learn to think like native speakers of the language. After all, with easily memorable phrases, grammar will naturally transfer like osmosis rather than as a strict set of guidelines.

Sorry another edit: another reason - to add on to thinking like native speakers of the language, it also entails thinking less literally of the words and more figuratively. Perhaps teaching a proverb a day may require an actual lesson write-up, in which case it is not that convenient. But if that is the case, I strongly suggest more proverb lessons!

[community.japanese]

istephenyu8790-san,
kon'nichiwa!
Thank you very much for a wonderful suggestion!
You're right; there're a lot of things we can see and learn from proverbs.
Especially for upper level learners, it is always good to learn proverbs so that they can have witty conversations
as well I'll share your post with my team and discuss about it. Thank you very much!

Natsuko(奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com

[cloa513ch2629]

I don't think a proverb as far as learning Japanese is that useful. Confucian proverbs would be quite complex and limited usefulness - but equivalent expressions to English like to kill two birds with one stone, or translations of concepts like hand-washing if there is a direct equivalent. These are difficult to find or just plain non-existent in online dictionaries and other sources.

[team.relationships]

cloa513ch2629-san kon'nichiha!

As Natsuko-san said, it'd be useful for upper levels learners.
Under this level, it's interesting, but it's too hard to get the meaning of everything.
I think that some proverbs as : 七転八起 is easy to explain and translate. (and this is one of my favorites)

That's true it's really hard to find on Internet, I mainly found these ones in my Japanese books!
Thank you for your comment!
Cheers
Mélanie
Team JapanesePod101.com

[cloa513ch2629]

www.jisho.org lists that as having two pronounciations- which one is standard?

しちてんはっき

ななころびやおき

With the meaning- the vicissitudes of life; ups and downs in life; always rising after a fall or repeated failures

[community.japanese]

cloa513ch2629-san,
strictly speaking, 七転八起 should be しちてんはっき and 七転び八起き is ななころびやおき, but
we usually use ななころびやおき in any conversations (i.e. both casual and formal).

Natsuko(奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com