The "I found some Japanese I don't understand" thread.

[JoelMember]

Well, 天気 on its own can also mean fine weather. My dictionary gives the example 今日は天気だ = It’s fine today.

The や, incidentally, isn’t part of the sentence – it’s just a thinking noise.

Also, he speaks humblingly fast. I really gotta work on my listening skills…

[RavenTwoFiveMember]

Haha, ok, I’m not used to hearing や as a thinking thing, but makes sense now that I hear it again. But if you think he’s speaking fast there, you should see his regular news blog. http://youtu.be/71d3GBsHYQY Have fun with that.

Also, thanks for the help, even though I didn’t even hear a は in his sentence, it is possible he speaks so fast it’s either hard to notice or he just didn’t bother with it.

• This reply was modified 12 years, 1 month ago by  RavenTwoFive.

[PencilMember]

温和で優しい主人公の義理の父。

In the first part of that sentence, both 温和 and 優しい (according to Rikai-kun) mean ‘gentle’ or ‘kind’, so what exactly does 温和で優しい mean?

[JoelMember]

Reinforcement. Subtly different meanings. “Gentle and kind” would be a fair translation.

Technical linguistic bits: 温和 is a な-adjective – 温和で is the て-form, which in this case, translates to “gentle and”.

[PencilMember]

Thank you very much. =)

That sentence was from a character profile, and later on it refers to him as 主人公の義理の父親. I know that they basically mean the same thing,but what kind of nuance does 父親 possess that makes it different from 父?

[wiseguy12851Member]

I don’t understand this:

こんな夢を見た

I definitely know the 夢を見た part “I saw a dream”, or at least I hope I do — But what’s the こんな part. I have a feeling it’s one of those abstract words that can’t really be translated well since jisho.org says “such” and “like this” which both don’t seem to fit.

[Hatt0riMember]

夢を見る　is a phrase for dreaming. こんな夢を見た would be “I had this kind of dream”. “This” is probably described in previous sentence.

[JoelMember]

Yah, こんな means “this kind of X” or “such an X”, et cetera.

As for 父 versus 父親, I’m not really sure. Differing levels of formality, maybe.

[Hatt0riMember]

彼女が怒るのも当然だ。 What does も mean in this sentence?

[マーク・ウェーバーMember]

That exact sentence is on Jisho :P
http://jisho.org/sentences?jap=%E5%BD%BC%E5%A5%B3%E3%81%8C%E6%80%92%E3%82%8B%E3%81%AE%E3%82%82%E5%BD%93%E7%84%B6%E3%81%A0%E3%80%82+&eng=

There it is translated to:
It is quite natural for her to get angry.

Looking around after more sentences having this “のも当然だ” at the end, it seems like it is just one of those things that are just said how they are.

[Hatt0riMember]

Thx Mark :D I found out what the も part means. In this sentence it means “as much as”. Then, sentence would translate to something like: “It’s quite natural to be as angry as she is (given the situation)”.

[VincentMember]

For the word “mouth” http://www.textfugu.com/kanji/%E5%8F%A3/#top , If you look at the first vocab word Textfugu says “The reading is the kun’yomi [くち], as it should be, because it’s a vocab that consists of just a kanji all alone out in the open.”

but on the tofugu on/kun’yomi post it says “you’ll use on’yomi when a kanji is sitting there all on its own “

If this was an exception I would expect it to be noted in the kanji page but it says blatantly that that’s the right way. So…why?

• This reply was modified 12 years, 1 month ago by  Vincent.

[JoelMember]

It’s an exception. It’s one of those cases where the Japanese-origin word happens to just have one kanji. Other body part words are similar, like 耳 or 目, et cetera. Koichi’s only human, and probably some time passed between when he wrote the introductory page and when he wrote tha page, so he just forgot to make a specific note.

When you’re not talking about mouths, you’ll often see it as 入口 (いりぐち = entrance) or 出口 (でぐち = exit).

[PencilMember]

Sorry to abuse this thread so much, but is anyone here familiar with Japanese business terms? Specifically, I’m trying to figure out what kind of position a 会社役員　is, but none of my usual methods for figuring out vocab are working.

[thisiskyleMember]

Unfortunately I don’t know what half of these types of terms mean in English; terms like section head, director, department manager and so on. Perhaps I haven’t spent enough time in the corporate world, but I don’t know that there is a standard that all companies use. That really wouldn’t make sense given all the different functions different companies perform. Any way,
会社 means “office” and
役員 means “executive” or “officer” or “director” or some similar thing.
I guess it would mean the head of the office, a boss but not a big boss.

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