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Post by Jembru on Oct 24, 2013 22:26:30 GMT
I never thought about it that way midori, but yeah, I guess the way we have learnt kanji IS a bit more 'native'. It's not a bad thing, it's just a different way our brains process kanji as we read, compared to the 'sit down and learn by stroke' approach! In honesty though, I'm just too lazy to study kanji properly. My anki reviews are around 200 per day on average (thanks to the app on my tablet that actually tells me), and I review certain decks between reviews! I currently have 26 different decks altogether, each with anything from 30 to 400 cards (I just checked my app to write that and almost fell off my chair! No wonder I have such horrible dark circles under my eyes ^^). Add to that, the time I try to dedicate to speaking and grammar, the fact that I work 10 hour night shifts, can't function on less than 6-7 hours sleep, and still have to look after my home and my health and honestly, there just aren't enough hours in a day to study kanji in a more controlled and formal way!
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Post by naitorii on Oct 25, 2013 0:05:17 GMT
'nother question: Are the shiny, new, EXPENSIVE editions any better than the ones I can actually afford?(old ones)
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Post by Jembru on Oct 26, 2013 5:26:33 GMT
'nother question: Are the shiny, new, EXPENSIVE editions any better than the ones I can actually afford?(old ones) They sometimes correct mistakes, typos and suchlike, when they reprint books, and in some cases, like with Japanese for Busy People, the newer editions are entirely rewritten from scratch, but as kanji don't change, I think in the case of kanji books, it shouldn't hurt to get an older edition.
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Post by Jembru on Nov 2, 2013 6:11:21 GMT
I have a grammar question that maybe one of you with decent grammar books (or indeed, better knowledge than me) could explain. There is a grammar I've noticed on enough occasions to have worked out from context what it means (I think), but I have never come across it in my studies, or seen it in sample dialogues on my podcasts or anything.
The structure is <plain past form> ぐらい I think I have heard this with a similar nuance, used after the plain present too, but I couldn't swear it.
Of course, I understand that ぐらい is 'about, approximately' and so on, but that's not the nuance I get from these sentences. This structure seems to mean more like, 'I've only___ in___' maybe a bit more like 'ほど'. Okay maybe I can't explain so how about I give an example of how I have heard this;
A)日本でお葬式に行ったごとがありますか? Have you ever been to a funeral in Japan? B)お葬式、日本ではないですね。映画で見たぐらいですね。 A funeral? No I haven't been to one in Japan. I've seen them in movies though.
Is it simply that ぐらい can also mean 'only'? Or is this an actual grammatical structure that takes on this nuance? Have I picked up the gist correctly, or does my translation seem a bit off? I'm interested in anything anyone might know about this structure, especially other example sentences because jisho.org doesn't have any at all. Oh and just for interest's sake, does it appear on the JLPT at all, or is it a bit too colloquial?
On the one hand, I enjoy learning Japanese from context, like I learnt English as a child, but on the other hand, I panic that I've misunderstood. JP and I had a really interesting conversation recently, when we realised that we both had slightly different definitions in our mind, of the English word 'impressed'. We only realised we had different understandings of this word, because we translated it differently into Japanese. I consider it more like 感心 but to JP, it can be a more emotional reaction, and so he translated it with 感動 in the context we were discussing, which I consider more like 'to be moved' in English, (I mean, just look at the kanji it is written with 'emotion' and 'move'!!!). This made me wonder if we all sometimes have subtle differences in how we understand the words of our mother tongue. It's an interesting thought, but it doesn't fill me with confidence in my ability to learn new words and grammar from context alone!
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Post by MidoriAbby on Nov 4, 2013 23:39:35 GMT
JembruAh, this structure! I actually first noticed it when speaking to some of the Sensei at summer camp and it is also mentioned in my advanced grammar guide. I've actually used it recently in a Skype conversation! I'll try to explain this the way it's been explained to me plus the way I've learned how to use it (which is more by practice and naturally picking it up than studying so it might be hard to explain, sorry) So the ぐらい there is in answer to the question that uses あります, and it is talking about experience because of ことがあります。 It's like saying 'my experience is to about this degree' (the 'to about this degree' part being conveyed by ぐらい) or 'I've had around this much of that experience" So basically this is often used in response to ~ことがありますか questions they are thinking of the experience in degrees .I've had about this much of that experience. I haven't fully experienced it, but I've seen/experienced about this much through this action. So technically if I were to analyze how to remember it, the 'past tense + gurai desu' might technically come something like 映画で見たことぐらいあります。(incorporating the koto ga arimasu) talking about what degree of the 'koto' you have 'arimasu'd , if that makes any sense haha. But as you know, Japanese is famous for shortening things, getting rid of unneeded things, and implying things by leaving out parts of the grammar, or even the whole verb in some cases! since it is an answer to a 'koto ga arimasu' question, I'm guessing that's why something like 映画で見たことぐらいあります would not be commonly used. Ugh this frustrates me because i use it all the time without thinking about WHY, and when I go to explain it I'm like "....." I hope that helped a little bit! That's how I think of it and how it's been explained to me. My book kind of just explained it as 'here is the grammar for this, go with it' but my sensei explained a bit talking about experience. Only it was in Japanese because immersion camp, so lots of talk about 経験 and stuff, and I'd never thought about how to explain it in English.
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Post by Jembru on Nov 5, 2013 20:21:41 GMT
Thanks! I never picked up on the fact it has always followed a question with aru, but now you said that, it feels so familiar. I'm glad someone else had stumbled upon this. Like I say, it has so far never turned up in a textbook, even in the full text-book style version. Which book had you seen it in? Or did you mean you'd written notes for yourself?
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Post by MidoriAbby on Nov 5, 2013 20:36:40 GMT
JembruNo problem! I had forgotten exactly where I'd seen this so I went through some of my advanced study books. I saw the structure in an example in Jazz Up Your Japanese with Onomatopoeia somewhere I think, but it didn't explain the grammar so I asked my sensei at camp who then explained it.
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Post by Bokusenou on Nov 5, 2013 21:14:08 GMT
Jembru I would look at the Dictionary of intermediate japanese grammar pages 151-154. If you don't have access to it currently, try searching scribd.com for it.
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Post by Jembru on Nov 10, 2013 8:33:08 GMT
omg, omg, omg.. I didn't know where to put this, because we don't have an onomatopoeia thread here yet, but a while ago, I asked on the old forum, if anyone had heard 'ジャッパン' because I used it during the minecraft video journal entry I shared there (I hadn't learnt 爆発 yet, as I learnt this when I asked my Japanese friends how I'd say, 'the creepers blow up' so I just mimed it. They actually taught the non-Japanese group members a cool tongue-twister that uses this word, and we had fun trying it out! I just never thought to ask them about ジャッパン while we were on the subject ^^).
I learnt this word/sound from JP, who'd used it once in a playful way, to mean 'kaboom!!' but he didn't know where he heard it. We couldn't find any existence of it, and at the time, no one on the forum seemed to know either.
Well, I'm finally out of my misery. I JUST came across it in the form 'ジャッパーン' where it meant 'splash'. I'll sleep better today. I'd still like to know if it also means 'kaboom' in a less watery sense, but just knowing it exists at all, is a relief!
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Post by Jembru on Dec 12, 2013 11:28:35 GMT
Hey, as usual, I have a question. I found this in a blog written by a native speaker:
このブームでペットを飼い始めた人達の多くは、ペットに洋服を着せたり、帽子をかぶせたり、靴をはかせています。(A lot of people who started keeping a pet due to this boom, make their pet wear clothes, hats and shoes.)
I'm a bit confused about the causative forms used here. Why is it 'かぶせる’and '着せる'? I know 2 versions of the causative and none of them are like this..
かぶらせる (shortened form for godan verbs: かぶらす) 着させる
There is the causative passive, and for a second I thought it was this, because she is implying that this is a bad thing and not kind to the animal, so causative-passive forms might convey her emotional response. However, I recently practiced forming the causative passive and I only learnt this form..
かぶらせられる (short form for godan verbs:かぶらされる)
So is this another short form of the causative? Have a just missed something here?
Thanks in advance!
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Post by Bokusenou on Dec 19, 2013 1:47:55 GMT
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Post by Jembru on Dec 19, 2013 19:21:52 GMT
Sasuga Rinchan!! Thanks for finding that for me. I wonder how many other words are like this? I guess it's something to keep on the look out for. I felt sure it couldn't have been the potential form because it would have been really out of place. Although saying that, this language surprises me at every turn, so I guess you never know with Japanese.
I'll make a note of this somewhere, maybe in my Chococat grammar cards, so I don't forget about it.
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Post by Jembru on Dec 30, 2013 9:46:31 GMT
Got a quick question. My friend's husband asked me to translate a short message for him, so he could email her family and thank them for their lovely gifts. I gave him a translation and then said I'd put it on lang-8 if he wanted a 'native speaker approved' version, as I was pretty sure there would be specific expressions used in letter writing that I won't know (having, you know, never studied formal Japanese). The tweeked letter came back lovely, although I'm a little worried it is too formal (can letter's to one's in-laws BE too formal?), because I intended to write 'is this respectful' as in, not a rude way to address them, but went for 'sonkei', which they then assumed was meant to say 'sonkeigo' (it wasn't, I just didn't know how to say 'respectful' so took a guess) and thus went on to make it super honourific. I'm not sure if it is because of this misunderstanding, or that such a message SHOULD be really polite. Still, they'll be so flattered by his note, that I doubt my friend's family will complain.
What I really wanted to ask though, was about a line I wrote. All of the corrections changed the meaning of my sentence, so something I've written much be out of place, but I can't see where and I don't want to pester the people who already took the time to correct my post. I thought someone used to lang-8 might have a keener eye for this kind of error and be able to tell me what went wrong..
I wanted to write.. 'my friend who doesn't know Japanese, wants to send a message to his Japanese wife's family. I wrote this as...
私の日本語が知らない友達は日本人妻の家族にメッセージを送りたいです。
Yet the corrections changed it to things like..
私が日本語ができることを知らない日本の友だちの家族にメッセージを送りたいと思っています。
Okay, they didn't all change the meaning quite THAT much, but others had it that my friend wanted to write to his wife AND family, which he doesn't.
So is there a particle or something in my original sentence, that has confused the meaning so much? It's not that big a deal, but I DO often stack modifiers into the same sentence like that, so I need to understand how to make it clear just which modifier is modifying which noun. In past lang-8 posts, people have suggested splitting clauses into separate sentences, to make it easier to follow, but I can't see how I could have done that here. Unless I'd said, 'My friend wants to send a message to his wife's family. However, he doesn't know Japanese.' I think they might have still assumed his wife is in Japan too though. :s
This language gives me a headache!
Oh but on the bright side, thanks to this lang-8 post, I managed to tick off my whole weekly study checklist just in time! I was so far behind at one point that I thought I was going to have to write last week off. So I'm pretty pleased my friend's request came in just in time! ^^
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Post by Jade on Dec 30, 2013 11:16:23 GMT
Umm, I think they're assuming that your friend doesn't know you know Japanese? What I'm getting from 私が日本語ができることを知らない日本の友だちの家族にメッセージを送りたいと思っています。 is 'I want to send a message to my Japanese friend's family who don't know I speak Japanese'. So they definitely misunderstood what you asked! 私の日本語が知らない友達は日本人妻の家族にメッセージを送りたいです。 I think maybe it's the は? Maybe 「日本語がわからない友達が妻の日本の家族にメッセージを送りたいです。」 could get the meaning across a bit better? Or 「友達が妻の家族にメッセージを送りたいですが、彼は日本語が分かりません。」 could be easier lol
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Post by Jembru on Dec 30, 2013 14:20:29 GMT
Hmm, yeah, that could have been the problem! The translation I shared was the one that changed the meaning the most. The other translations I received were similar, but the stranger of the two was.. 日本語が分からない友達が日本人の妻と彼女の家族に日本語でメッセージを送りたいそうです。That time, they at least got that I intended my friend was the subject of the final verb at least. I wondered if using 'no' made it unclear as to whether I meant 'my Japanese' or 'my friend'?
It could also be the wa as you suggest. Ga should have been used anyway actually, even if that didn't cause the misunderstanding, because I was introducing the topic of my post. Still, when I read Japanese, even though I'm only a learner, I naturally assume whether ga or wa is used, that what is before it, is what the rest of the sentence is about. Surely a Japanese person would have assumed that too, as the other two did?
The other two people just changed wa to ga and added 'sou' for speaking about another person. Except that one of them, for no conceivable reason, added an extra, untrue detail about my friend also sending the message to his wife (who he lives with here in the UK and I at no point implied lived with her family in Japan).
I love lang-8, but sometimes you really have to be careful that the corrections mean what you originally intended to say!
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