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第3週 is “week number 3″ while 3週目 is “the third week”. The difference is a bit subtle.
バス ガス ばくはつ！
食べたくありません。
食べたくないです。=P
1. My dictionary suggests ベジタリアン or 菜食主義者 (さいしょくしゅぎしゃ) – though the danger of relying on a dictionary is that I’m not entirely certain what is most commonly used in the vernacular. My ancient phrasebook has the latter, and also suggests 菜食主義者用の料理はありますか – do you have any vegetarian dishes? And お肉の代わりにXXXいただけますか – could I have XXX instead of meat?
2. My dictionary suggests シーフード. Or 魚介 (ぎょかい). Also, if you want to make your desire not to eat it more emphatic, you could try 食べられません – cannot eat.
3. あのう、XXXさんは話すのはちょっと早すぐますから、私は分かりません。 That might be a shade impolite, though.
4. Rather than “bad at it” you’d be better off with “unskilled” or “still have a lot to learn”. For example, 私は日本語を勉強していますけど、まだ上手になりません。
5. 分かりません works, yes. For added politeness, you can tack a すみませんが、 on the front, or even an あのう on the front of that.
Thought ている already meant “in the midst of”. Also, it’s in plain present tense.
And yes, ている is the plain form of ています
という = called. That is, AというB = “a B called A”. 「狼と香辛料」という本 = a book called “Spice and Wolf”.
ところ is, in this context, “on the verge of”. Or so my dictionary suggests. Not certain of that, though.
There’s seven different ways to pronounce OUGH – did you really teach them all one by one? How about O pronounced as I, as in “women”, and other fun weird pronunciations?
I’ll claim the phone. =P
Idea-joiners like “speaking of which”, “on a side note”, “on a completely different note”, “come to think of it”,etc.
But fools rush in, you know, missing? Birds of a feather. Rome wasn’t built in a day, after all. =P
What, incidentally, does “86 it” mean?
Congrats to your son, and good luck to you. If you manage to get fluent in just six months, though, do let us know your secret. =)
Where in Japan are the bride’s family from?
I suspect the eight stroke section is more of an eight-and-up stroke section, but yeah, 門 should be in it.
I used to go to school with a guy named Neil Downward.
Anyway, I’m pretty sure you’d still use the honorific when talking about a person to third parties. Unless it’s a family member (it’s a sign of humility towards others that you lower the status of your own family members).
Wow, that’s a remarkably similar name. Unfortunately, I couldn’t say for sure whether “fat” would immediately spring to people’s minds, but considering the Japanese love for puns, I suspect it might be likely. Can’t really think of any way to mitigate it – even if you shorten it to アブ, for example, that still sounds like 虻, horsefly, or half of 危ない, dangerous.
All Japanese names mean something – though usually it’s deliberate, and isn’t “fat”. To have a non-Japanese name mean something is rather a coincidence. To think of others that spring to mind, the name Sara, if transliterated as サーラ, is close to 皿 (さら), plate. The transliteration of Joe (ジョー) is an extremely common reading for kanji, and it also a name in Japanese too.
A running joke in Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei is that the main character’s name – 糸色望 (いとしき・のぞむ) – when the kanji of his surname are compressed into one, the whole name reads as 絶望 (ぜつぼう) meaning “despair”. However, I don’t know whether regular people would notice something like this, or just the occasional person whose mind moves in odd ways (like the sort of person who spots that therapist = the + rapist in English).
My vote’s on “に、さんにん”
You (or someone) did ask this exact question before, yes. I’ma go digging.
Edit: Found it. http://www.textfugu.com/bb/topic/today-i-learned/page/4/#post-23067
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This reply was modified 13 years ago by
Joel.
Why are you sure there’s an “effect because of cause” structure? This is Japanese – don’t go assuming it’ll be the same as English. There’s no need for such a structure – it has the same meaning anyway. Mind you, in casual use you can swap the order of the sentence clauses, or if you’re answering a question – “Why are you laughing?” “Because of the cat.”
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This reply was modified 13 years ago by
