まだ本を読んでいません = I still haven’t read the book

まだ本を読みません = I won’t read the book for a while

The technical definition of まだ is “some state that existed in the past still remains” – which you translate as “still” or “yet”. In the first sentence, the state of “not having read the book” is still present now (読んでいない), while in the second sentence, the state will be continuing for the foreseeable future (読まない).

When you use たくさん, “still haven’t” is pretty much the only usage that makes sense, so 読んでいない.

And I’m hoping that explanation didn’t just confuse matters further. =P

I think what he was trying to say is that learning numbers won’t get you as much of a return on investment as would learning something else at that point, but since you need to learn the numbers anyway, that point is as good a place as any. And to be honest, you only ever really use numbers when you’re engaged in some sort of financial transaction, telling the time and/or date, or giving your age. Sure, you also learn to say “there are six cats”, but how often do you say something like that in English?

It’s fonts. Not all fonts have the little hat on the volcano. You didn’t miss the page where it’s explained, because it’s not. The closest anyone comes to addressing fonts in kanji (I mean, aside from the post that’s literally about a Japanese font [1]) is Hashi’s post on Tofugu [2], and even then he’s just ranting about how kanji on the internet tends to come out in Chinese. Many characters even look significantly different when hand-written, and that’s not mentioned at all (though ironically, the very kanji that Hashi uses as an example is one of these – the variants that he’s labelled “Chinese” are the handwritten Japanese form).

(Incidentally, the volcano radical and the kanji for eight are the same character.)

Edit: Ugh. What’s wrong with all the URL tags in this forum? Here’s the links I’m trying to add inline, only all footnoted now:

[1] http://www.tofugu.com/2012/09/26/japans-helvetica/

[2] http://www.tofugu.com/2012/04/04/the-sorry-state-of-japanese-on-the-internet/

• This reply was modified 12 years, 6 months ago by  Joel.

Also, you want to visit because it’s warmer than Alaska? =P

Anyway, you might enjoy Osaka Castle. It’s a concrete reconstruction of the original, but it’s now a museum all about the Seige of Osaka, when Tokugawa Ieyasu defeated the Toyotomi clan.

Aye, I was just saying the same thing – good thing I checked for ninjas this time. =P The verb being used in the example sentences is 動かす.

You might have heard the volitional form as ましょう – as in, 食べましょう. That’s the ます-form volitional, and appears quite often in anime. Not sure if/where it gets covered in TextFugu, though.

Did some more googling. Most sites – including Tae Kim and Wikipedia – don’t mention の-adjectives at all. Of the sites that do, pretty much all of them admit that they’re just nouns. One site mentions they’re functionally the same as な-adjectives (which are often call adjectival nouns anyway) except that they use の instead of な – it also uses the example of みどり, which I’ve always been taught is a noun.

My textbook doesn’t discuss them in any detail – it is, after all, an upper-intermediate-to-lower-advanced-level textbook, so that sort of grammar is probably assumed.

Soo… I’ma stick with my first comment: they’re just nouns. =)

はやく！みどりじゃないワイアを切れ！

Aye, though it’s often written in brackets – (笑). Can also be written as (w) – w for “warai”.

Dunno about any of the other common Internet TLAs, but I do know they’re big on emoticons. Like orz, or (´Д` ). Et cetera, et cetera.