Psst, Astralfox: Kotoba = Imiwa. It had a name change. =) Also, it does verb conjugations, so I’m not sure why you’d need a separate app.

Anyway, are we considering “iPod versus iPhone” or “iPod versus not getting anything?”?

The way to define group-2 verbs is the dictionary form ends in る. That’s always true, with no exceptions. You can’t say anything about the stem ending of group-2 verbs, because many also end with ~いる.

The trick comes in that the reverse is not always true – not every verb that ends in る is group-2. Some of them are group-1. Fortunately, there’s not an excessive number of exceptions. Basically the trick is to learn them. Sounding them out often helps too – often if you try to make a ます-form out of a group-1 verb using the group-2 rule, the resulting word will sound kinda silly. For example, はじまる –> はじまます sounds silly, so you can probably conclude it’s group-1. Which it is.

Here is one list of exceptions I found with only a bit of googling.

There’s also the rule “all group-1 verbs have ます-stems ending in い” which has no exceptions, but again, the reverse is not always true – as mentioned above, not all verbs with ます-stem ending in い are group-1.

Not that there’s actually anything wrong with saying 私はライアンです…

I received a random comment on a Japanese practice video I uploaded for class – no idea who it is. My query: what’s かみかみ mean? As in 「日本語かみかみだけど、上手い!」. I can get the gist, but not quite the precise meaning…

Glides are きゃ, しゅ, びょ et cetera. They’re pretty much exclusive to on-readings of kanji (and foreign loan words) and never occur in kun-readings.

Couple of points:

1. The “stem ends in い” rule for spotting group one verbs is not hard-and-fast – there’s always exceptions. 見ます (みます), to give an example, is group two. Another way to define the groups is that all group two verbs have dictionary forms ending in る (which is why they’re also called る-verbs) but again there’s exceptions. For example, 作る (つくる) is group one (which, incidentally, are also called う-verbs).

2. する compound verbs are always Noun+する – this rule is one of the exceptions to the “every rule has exceptions” rule. 勉強 (べんきょう) is a noun, meaning “study”. Generally it’s going to be two or more kanji before you reach the する/します while group one verbs ending in す tend to only have one. Without kanji, you’ll notice nouns tend to be four kana long (often with glides), while verb stems are usually only two or three, and never have glides.

3. Without kanji to help you along, or if the kanji just isn’t helping, then it’s really just a matter of remembering them case-by-case, or getting good enough to intuit it. Maybe try sounding it out, to see if it sounds a little silly.

Slightly less brutal post time:

Make your own vocab list. You know what signs you’re seeing on a regular basis, so make a list of them, look up their meanings in a dictionary (or ask someone) and make an Anki deck out of them. Use that to learn.

Rather than “は is sometimes written instead of わ”, it’s “は is sometimes pronounced ‘wa’” – specifically, when it’s acting as a particle in a sentence. The particle は (pronounced ‘wa’) is the topic particle – it indicates what a sentence is about. It also appears in conjunctions too (like それでは, meaning “well then…”) but that’s still the same particle playing some part lost in etymological history.

More info: http://www.textfugu.com/season-2/particle-ha/why/