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Ok so they are all pretty much normal uses of the number seven. I thought you might have some more exotic uses of the number seven.
We were looking for exotic uses? Um… 七屋. 七夕. I guess. Also, a fun one for eight is 八百屋.
“I’d like to buy seven bananas, please”
I’d say either shichi or nana is fine here, using the hon counter.
ななつ also works.
I have no idea what seven wives for seven brothers would be in Japanese, is that like seven brides for seven brothers?
Oh yeah, brides. I knew that.
Seven samurai appears to use shichi
On the other hand, the title of 山田くんと七人の魔女 (“Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches”) is read as “nananin”
“My phone number is 555-7777.”
I think either is fine here.
Actually, phone numbers always use specific readings, to avoid confusion. For 7, it’s always なな.
So my rule was use nana, except where you should use shichi.
Looking at the above, I don’t really see where my rule falls down.
Well no, but like you said, “use なな, except for where you don’t” is so self-evident it’s never going to fall down. I could also say “use しち, except for where you don’t”, and I’d be equally correct.
I can’t really see what point you were making though.
Did you have a point?
More countering your strange query of “Is there really that many places to use the number seven?” That’s going a whole step further than “when am I ever going to use trigonometry in Real Life?”
Oh, nice. Might have to find the time to browse that site a bit. =)
Is there really that many places to use the number seven? Or do you mean in compound kanji?
“I’d like to buy seven bananas, please”
“Next Thursday is seven days away.”
“This evening, I’ll be watching Seven Wives for Seven Brothers… or The Seven Samurai.”
“My phone number is 555-7777.”
“The politician swindled seven million yen.”
“What do you get when you multiply seven by nine?”Yes, there are many places to use the number seven. Or, for that matter, numbers full stop.
Its been explained as shi means death in Japanese, and so Japanese people prefer not to use shichi, except when they do.
I don’t think し as a homophone for “death” has anything to do with the use of なな over しち (only the use of よん instead of し for 四). If they disliked し enough to not use しち then they wouldn’t use, say, します (the polite form of “to do”).
I also don’t think なな is as prevalent over しち as you seem to think.
It’s like saying people from London and Dallas can’t communicate because they speak English differently.
You’ve evidently never tried to speak to a Glaswegian. =P
七 is a bit of a weird one in that its readings tend to be fairly interchangeable. 四 as well, to a lesser extent. But yeah, that’s one of a number of places where Koichi appears to contradict himself and doesn’t really explain why. Another that often comes up is that he teaches 一人 = ひとり and 二人 = ふたり but doesn’t explain that these two are the exceptions, so when he throws 七人 at people, they (rather logically) expect it to be ななり when actually it’s しちにん.
However, I seem to have already run into an exception to this early on, in one of the sentence decks given to me by TextFugu (TextFugu Sentences 006), and there wasn’t any explanation about it.
The Golden Rule of Japanese: every rule has exceptions. Including this one. =)
Yah. Sadly, I don’t recall there being a class on the appropriate use of swear words and curses during my uni degree…
すぎる is an auxiliary verb – it attaches only onto verbs or adjectives. Fortunately, much/many is an adjective – 多い. So お風呂では水が多すぎる
Other adjectives/verbs may work also. =)
Well, it means “drop dead”, basically.
Usage has never really been my strong point, but that’s not something I’d ever say to people in English…
入る is a different verb to 入れる – the former is intransitive (“to enter”) and the latter is transitive (“to put [something] in”). I’m talking about conjugations of the same verb – past tense, negative, continuative, imperative, potential, et cetera. 入れる – 入れない – 入れた – 入れなかった et cetera – in all of these cases, the 入 is read as い.
(Of course, it’s slightly confused by the fact that there’s also an intransitive 入る that’s read as いる, but I’m not sure how often that tends to get used.)
語 (ご) = language
英語 (えいご) = English
スペイン語 (すぺいんご) = SpanishEt cetera.
So much that I end sentences with prepositions ON PURPOSE.
This is the kind of sentence up with which we will not put.
Alternately, it’s also not too long after the start of the school year, so perhaps we’re just getting a surge, and in six months we’ll start filling up with Americans and Europeans again. =P
あ、そうですか
Out of idle curiosity, what was the manga in question? And what was your original comment?
And your take on the translation? =)
People say “these Arabs are scary”, because they’ve never spoken to an Arab, (but) if they meet with Mr Mohammed and talk, then definitely, they won’t be scared, I think. Because Arabs are very kind and fun people, if Japanese people meet them and speak with them, then they will come to like them a lot.
Because there aren’t many Arabs in Japan, everyone’s image of them only comes from scary videos on TV.
If more Arabs come to Japan, this image will change, I think.
