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Well んじゃないか is a question. It’s kind of like “isn’t it?” in English. いいんじゃないかと思う – “I think it’s good (isn’t it?)”.
But yes, じゃない without ka at the end of casual sentences can be either positive or negative and the ka can be dropped from じゃないか. It can be confusing, especially in written text where you can’t hear the tone. In my experience it’s usually positive or questioning though and I don’t really think about it much anymore.
食べてくださいませんか is the same thing. It’s turning it into a negative question, which makes it sound more polite: “Won’t you please eat this?”
Though I’m sure you know all this, you’re better at explaining this stuff than I am :p
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This reply was modified 10 years, 10 months ago by
Elenkis.
It’s a double negative, hence why it becomes a positive.
Nice post, I would have just linked to this if it was me:
http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar/must
:p
It means to do something without stop (figuratively), to keep doing something on and on etc. Edict has it as “verb suffix to indicate reckless abandon to the activity”.
しゃべりまくる – Talk on and on
Beaten by Joel.
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This reply was modified 10 years, 11 months ago by
Note that 今度 can also be used for events in the near past though.
◇「今度」は現在のことだけでなく、近い過去と近い未来についても用いる。
Basically it just comes down to context.
I went from Genki 1/2 (another popular beginner textbook) to Tobira and found it the perfect step up. I was a bit thrown at first by how much Japanese it contains, but I found I could read it and the exercises were right around my level.
I gave up on TextFugu a long time go and am not really sure what it covers anymore. It still seems to be missing some beginner stuff, for example there’s a chapter on passive verbs in season 6 but unless I’m missing something Koichi still hasn’t covered causative verbs (which just seems weird to me).
The main problem I have with TextFugu is that it has pretty much 0 reading practice. You get a few really simple example sentences, but there’s none of the structured reading exercises you get in a good textbook. Genki gives you good reading exercises right from the first chapter, so you start working on your reading comprehension from the beginning with progressively more difficult articles. Which is largely why I had no problem moving on to intermediate textbooks that are mostly written all in Japanese.
I think it’s worth getting Tobira anyway, it just might take some more work if you haven’t worked on reading much.
That’s pretty much what intermediate/advanced level grammar is. You learn こと, に and なる in basic Japanese but that doesn’t necessarily teach you the nuance of ことになる vs ことにする (even if it’s logical when you think about it). It’s mostly just combining words and grammar together in ways that you aren’t likely to comprehend as a beginner. But those “special uses” turn out to be really, really common.
The nice thing about Tobira is that a lot of the reading exercises are taken from real Japanese news articles and other sources.
I think most intermediate textbooks pretty much consist of reading exercises that introduce new vocab and grammar (with brief explanations) each chapter. There doesn’t seem to be many textbooks aimed at intermediate students, but the best I know of is Tobira:
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This reply was modified 10 years, 11 months ago by
What did I read incorrectly? Your post about the two particles was mistaken and I was simply correcting that. It’s not a big deal, I just wanted to help you understand their function.
Anyway, in light of the context provided by Yamada, I’d use は for that sentence. As Joel said, it’s just another one of those cases where it depends on context.
When using wa to contrast two things you need to mention both things.
No, you do not. は is used to imply contrast without stating both elements all the time in Japanese, especially in negative sentences.
The extra emphasis of ga adds the implication.
No, it does not. It picks something out of a list and identifies it as the subject without saying anything about the other possible subjects. The other cars might be just as bad as yours, or they might be better, but it doesn’t imply either way. To imply contrast you replace が with は.
To bring up an often used example, this is why you don’t say: 目はきれいですね to a Japanese girl (you’d use が, otherwise it could be read as implying that her eyes are pretty but the rest of her isn’t).
Here’s another example, it’s a quick story Jay Rubin tells in his book ‘Making Sense of Japanese’ (which has an 18 page article on は vs が that I highly recommend):
I and a few other American scholars were at a party and one of us tried to compliment our Japanese host by saying, 今晩はおいしいものがたくさんありますね。 By this he intended to say, “What a lot of tasty dishes you’re serving us tonight.” The host laughed and remarked, “You mean I’m usually stingy on other nights?”
By putting は after “tonight”, my colleague had in effect said, “Tonight, for a change, you’re serving us a lot of tasty dishes.”
Using が is saying specifically rain in spring is what you don’t like and it implies perhaps there are rains in other seasons you do like. Using は puts the emphasis on the disliking there isn’t really any strong implications as you would get withが
が doesn’t really imply anything at all about rain in other seasons. It’s simply identifying that spring rain is what you don’t like.
は on the other hand can imply contrast “as for spring rain, I don’t like it (but I like summer rains)”.
Projector: えいしゃき (映写機)
Though プロジェクター is much, much more common and I think 映写機 refers specifically to the old school film/slide projectors rather than modern digital ones.
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This reply was modified 11 years, 2 months ago by
Context. You can be specific with 足の指 or 足指.
獅子 seems to be used for Lion in Japanese sometimes too. It’s just much less common and of Chinese origin instead of English.
Eg:
http://www.karakusamon.com/lion.html
“シシ (獅子) の別名をもち，〈百獣の王〉と呼ばれ，ネコ科ではトラと並ぶ強大な食肉類）。”
I could of course be wrong but my translation would be: “I wonder what percentage of Japanese really aren’t living their lives as corporate slaves?”
人生を送れている = living life/spending life
はたして in questions adds an “I wonder”/”Can it really be?” kind of feel to it, expressing doubt
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This reply was modified 10 years, 10 months ago by
