Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
My entire knowledge of Tsurumi is that the characters changed trains there in an episode of Testuko no Tabi. =)
You’re leaning on the enter key?
Because the advice was “don’t ask for advice”.
Well, no. Jrc doesn’t know better. Hence the questions for help, posted in a forum designed to help, the forum of an online resource specifically meant for helping.
Anyway, it’s about time I started learning just when to whip out the “don’t feed the troll” signs. I always spot the troll about five posts too late…
Ooo, welcome. And also, congrats. What’s life like in Yokohama? =)
Incidentally, it’s こんにちは =P
… Cover over the bottom edge of your screen, so you can’t see the subtitles?
Frankly, your “helping” post was essentially “that’s a stupid question – stop trying to understand it and just learn it.” You stick your nose up at him (“are you trying to write a textbook?”), and then get surprised when it annoys him?
You’re right, it’s risky to go “this Japanese concept is this English concept” but for most of us, English is all we know, so it’s going to have to be explained in terms of English until we get the framework to understand it better. It’s unhelpful to say “don’t bother comparing”. Instead, say “there’s not really any English equivalent, but X is a good way to understand it.”
Sure, it’s true to say that linguistically speaking the languages have no common roots (and for that matter, Japanese barely even shares roots with the other Asian languages) but one thing it does have in common with languages the world over is that they’re all on the same planet, and they all need to describe the same sorts of things, so you’re going to find the same concepts popping up in both languages regardless.
Just to throw in another comment, there are state-of-being verbs in Japanese – specifically ある (for inanimate objects) and いる (for animate objects) – but they’re generally used to indicate the existence of something, the location of something, or the state of something, rather than describing the nature of something.
です is a verb-like thing called a coupla. It’s sort of a verb that goes on the end when you don’t need a verb, but it’s not in itself a verb. It’s rather like the function “is” performs in English, which is why people explain it as “です means is”. That [is] a cat. That [is not] a cat. Mind you, the über-formal version of です is でございます, which is a verb.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copula_(linguistics)#Japanese
Also, I’m gonna go against tubaman and kanjiman, here: keep asking why. Question everything. If you don’t question, you just learn by rote – asking questions helps understanding.
Aye. One passage I was given in my course notes last year had the line ニューサウスウェールズ大学は六万人ぐらいの人があります which I just looked at going “huh? There’s sixty thousand people of people?” Fairly sure it’s the only counter that uses the same kanji as the thing it counts, though. (本 the counter, incidentally, is never used to count books.)
The usage of にくい is “V-stem+にくい” , so I’ve inserted a し – that is, the stem of する. The resulting assemblage is an い-adjective, though, so rather than an “～は～をverb” structure, it’s now a “～は～がadjectiveです” structure.
It’s an auxiliary adjective – it always attaches to a verb. =) So yah, が勉強しにくい not just を勉強にくい
It’s often hard to tell just what correcters are thinking…
If you’re talking about other people’s relatives, you’ll always be more formal – おかあさん, いもうとさん et cetera. If you’re talking about your own relatives to other people, you’ll be more humble – はは、いもうと et cetera.
If you’re talking to your relatives, though, things can vary depending on what they’d prefer to be called, and whether you’re a time-traveling samurai. かあちゃん、おかあさま、ははうえ and so forth. Younger siblings will pretty much always be called by name, though.
Because I prefer to think we can all be mature and helpful people, I’m gonna stick with the primary meaning of “ding, ding”. As in, “ding, ding, ding went the trolley”. It’s fairly apparent that it’s a song lyric of some sort, I just don’t get why it keeps getting posted in lieu of actually answering a question.
The difference is that it’s following the past-tense coupla だった rather than a noun.
