Quote:
Originally Posted by RickOShay
What is really funny is the words kind of have the exact same nuance in English.
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I really don't think so. In English it's perfectly acceptable to my ear to say "I'm studying katakana [right now]." But you would only have a two-week window in which you could say that before sounding dumb or lazy (or, to be fair, very busy).
Really, six months later you're still studying katakana?.
To my native ear, "study" carries some level of effort, and if you're literally in the middle of learning something that takes more than a few minutes to comprehend, you can use "study"
while you're learning that thing.
You would never "study" the names of three flowers, but you could "study" the scientific names of a hundred flowers.
But I think reasonable native ears could differ on this. It's borderline.
Look at this phrase:
John studied his cheating wife's face. That is a short-term activity, but implies some effort on John's part.