To anyone who studies Japanese. For some reason I find the grammar portion of the language to be the hardest part about it. Is this normal? (from your personal accounts). I find it easy to remember words, phrases, Kanji readings (both Kunyomi and Onyomi), and the stroke order of the kanji themselves yet I continuously struggle to remember grammar concepts and I don’t know why. So I ask whoever reads this, what is the best way to target these concepts and how would you remember them whenever you need to either apply to sentences or conjugate the many verb forms that there are? (I swear, I can’t remember all the tenses and how to identify the differences between Ichidan and Godan verbs, there’s just too many rules and divergent pathways, Lord have mercy). Sorry for the long read and thank you for taking your time to read this.
I don't even control the remember. I'd have to refresh myself repeatedly if I needed to know. That's not really a difficulty factor, but it is frustrating when I'm stopped in my tracks. I don't have a problem with learning a concept and trying it out. I would think it through, and they'd be easy to understand. But after that, poof! I'd forget some time after, and lose the train of thought in how it works. So, I'd have to push myself to do it all over again.
It's not exactly true for all cases. The stuff I do well goes slightly differently though.
For example, I would have no trouble changing tenses for verbs/adjectives that I learned. I have long forgotten the detailed basis of what I'm doing, but I somehow automatically know what to use without thinking it. I just look at whether there's some kind of okurigana at the end. Because unless it's one of the irregular/exceptions, there's just always one thing that you just add to the end. The others have the alternative, but you would simply change the okurigana before you add whatever tense you use after that. Easy and simple enough to not even have thoughts except knowing what type of tense you're doing.
For kanji, I stopped doing readings months ago. It's easier to figure out meanings, because it ends up in the vocabulary. And remembering vocabulary is essential to remember the words to use. You'd know the on/kun based on that word anyway. If you know most of the on/kun in certain words and see the same kanji for other words, you may have a better educated guess of what to read, but you'd still learn it anyway if you're not sure.
I'll give you my take as someone who's never really focused much on actively studying grammar: your ultimate goal is to develop pattern recognition to the point where you don't need to think about grammar. The only way to do that is immersion. Thus my advice is to greatly increase the amount of native content you consume, without drastically changing your current grammar study routine.
One thing I would never do is try to memorise things like conjugation charts 💀 That's such an outdated language learning method. It's just not how your brain develops natural pattern recognition. It's also really boring...
Think about any language you're fluent in, grammar just happens automatically. Trying to force that with rules alone rarely works. You need to experience the language in context, until your brain naturally develops those patterns. That's how I learned English :)
Japanese grammar is very different from most any other language you are likely to study, and the techniques you may have developed to learn other languages don’t work as well.
It’s actually not that complicated if you approach it naively, as suggested above. The other option is to take the formal approach to the extreme, and analyze the grammar from a purely theoretical perspective. This approach can be rewarding, but it requires a solid understanding of contemporary linguistic approaches to syntax.
I never realized how poorly I understood English grammar until I encountered Japanese.
Just one more thing, though it's been mentioned by other posters in a way: maybe you're trying to learn Japanese grammar by Western rules, which makes it needlesly complicated. You've mentioned tenses: Japanese has all of two of them, in fact. Exceptions? Hardly any! I'd recommend watching CureDolly's videos on YouTube for a fresh perspective on Japanese and the ways in which it can't be stuffed into standard Western language patterns.
But I promise, it's actually easy compared to them. Rather than the chess-like "if A, then B", it follows a go-like pattern. May I say it's beautiful, too.
First, grammar won't make you able to speak at a native speed. You don't have the time to think at that speed. So if that is your objective, give up on that. Grammar is useful when you can take your time. But even with that, as long as your understanding of grammar, as well as your understanding of the nuances of words, is "low", you will still make mistakes or doubt about yourself.
A simple solution to that is to immerse yourself and just... imitate native. Until it become a reflex rather than a conscious effort.
Second, there are two kind of grammar out there: School grammar and Theoritical grammar. School grammar focus on making you able to speak. Theoritical grammar on the other hand focus on how languages works behind the scene. And they will tell totally different things based on that.
One important thing to know about school grammar is... that it often lies to you. Or use tricks to make "able" to speak japanese. And sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But overall, it makes your life easier. Seriously. Renshuu, textbooks, to a certain degree CureDolly, etc teach you that kind of grammar. And as long as you don't expect perfection from them and you don't question every single details. Also don't follow multiple methods as the same time. Because from a textbook to another, there will different pedagogical decisions behind the scene. Those can confuse you too.
Theoritical grammar on the other hand don't care about you. The only goal is to find the "truth". Problem is there are a lot of different "truths" according the linguist research community. Another problem is that the english linguist research community is also biased towards a certain interpretation of japanese (while the japanese one is diversify. That one in particular is killing me but I won't develop on that. I won't develop on that because it litteraly can be harmful to your learning journey.
And one last thing, internet is not your friend. At least pedagogically. Because it's often a mix of school grammar and theoritical grammar. And within those, it's also a mix of different pedagogical intents as well as different grammar theories. It's a recipe to become confuse. Pure "School grammar" is not perfect but at least, it try to be coherent within itself in order to make your life easier. Just don't question it too much and don't try to make it stick as soon as you learn it.
Maybe what you just need is a different approach. Like むじな suggested it. I also tried CureDolly and it was good but not enough for me. So, I just completely stop to learn grammar for 8 month or something like that and just focus on learning sentences and pattern. And after that, I relearn grammar from scratch with another "school grammar" but for japanese natives. Which I found far more easier to understand and remember. It's not perfect too and the same problem that I mentioned apply here too. Also, it was less difficult than studying those western interpretations too for me. I just had to practice and remember basic sentences for a while. Those explanations are for middle schoolers too, so it's not that far (even it's not easy either and require some intuitive understanding of japanese).
