> For instance, traversal verbs (such as 'walk', 'run', 'fly', 'sail', etc.) are intransitive in English, but are 他動詞 in Japanese: they can be used with an object to indicate what is being walked or run over, what is being flown through, what's being sailed in, etc. As such, while in English one does not "fly the sky" or "swim the ocean" (at the very least you'd need a preposition such as "through" or "in" to make those correct English), in Japanese this is exactly what you're doing.

Source

I was going to ask this in the forum but figured it would get rejected as a repeat. Any way, can anyone enlighten as to the english equivalents of the various particles. For instance, I know that は is placed after the subject and を indicates the object,　and か changes a statement into a question but what of the other particles が、に、の、…

@Chris There are no such equivalents the majority of the time.

I recommend asking a more pointed question, or doing more self-study before asking questions about particles.

I am just asking because, while I am starting to pick up some kanji and I can muddle through the conjugations, the particles and their relations really through me for a loop when I am trying to read articles.

throw

Okay. If you allow me to rephrase that as "I'm starting to learn some words and parts of grammar like verb conjugations, but I'm still struggling with syntax.", then I would give the advice that you should (1) start listening to Japanese -- sentence-level intonation can help you get an intuitive feel for syntax and (2) read more about Japanese grammar (I have some recommendations I can give if you'd like them).

You use と as the equivalent of a coma in a list correct?

What does に indicate?

@snailboat how many different を's are there?

Sorry guys. Disregard. I just looked up a list of particle and realized its WAY too much information for the chat.　おやすみなさい

@Chris Thanks for realizing.

Hehe.

It's under = for me.

≠ and ≡ are also there.

I should be careful with making up example sentences. My に→には mistake is obvious, I should have seen that one, but I had no idea about の→より.

Well, I'm glad we have native speakers on the site.

"Reversed tilde" apparently. What's that used for?

Interesting. I think I've only seen ∼, but well, I'm sure some people write it the other way.

Damn it, I forgot my 「」s.

By the way, I was thinking of the sentence: "Houses that no one lives in are dreary."

For some reason, my brain says that should be "live", but as far as I can tell by thinking from the tree, it should be "lives".

That is to say, for some reason the verb of the relative clause wants to agree with the matrix subject.

As far as I can tell, "no one" is the culprit.

Is its number not "strong enough" or something?

It's not just that though. "A house that no one live in is dreary" is clearly wrong, so sometimes the agreement is necessary.

And "Houses that no one lives in is dreary" is also clearly wrong.

Erm, no...

Right. The weird thing is that the last one sounds right.

Anyways, the reason I brought up those other sentences was to make a point about the "short-term memory limit" you mentioned, not because I was confused about what is suppose to agree with what.

I was trying to make the point that one's brain definitely doesn't lose track of the matrix verb agreeing with the matrix subject, and one's brain definitely doesn't lose track of the the fact that the complement verb cannot be plural in the (3)rd case, but yet one's brain does lose track that the complement verb cannot be plural in the (4)th case.

Anyways, this is sort of what made me say that "no one"'s number is not "strong enough", because even though it is singular, that singularity can be overwritten by the plurality of the matrix subject.

Which is why (3) is clearly wrong, because there is no plurality to overwrite it.

(And of course, if you replace "no one" with "John" or something that is clearly singular, "Houses that John live in are dreary" sounds quite wrong.)

I'm trying to think of other sentences to see if the gap has to be an indirect object for this weirdness to arise or not.

Ah, interesting point.

Conceptually plural, syntactically singular, but when the syntactically plural "houses" shows up, the agreement happens there, and there is no conceptual disagreement in the complement to make it sound clearly wrong like in the John case...

is an argument that one could make, but that would be going too far off this one sentence. ;)

Right, there are also the weird people who insist one treating "none" like "not one" even today.

"Dogs that no one loves are sad" and "Dogs that no one love are sad" both sound wrong or at least really bad to me lol.

Probably some restriction on when/where you can use "no one". Making it annoying to think of examples.

Aha: "Jobs that no one wants are scarce." "Jobs that no one want are scare."

Same thing, and the gap is the direct object this time.

Heh. These sentences really do screw with you the more you read them.

"Jobs no one wants are scarce." "Jobs no one want are scarce"

I noticed something weird

Depending on which one you read first, the second one you read sounds wrong.

Thinking about something else for a bit seems to reset it.

Nice thought.

I wish there was some other form of agreement we could also test.

I mean, to see if it was just number agreement or all agreement that could "ignore" the "no one".

"Actors that no one want to meet are coming to town" seems slightly more marginal.

I don't know what I like anymore, but I know that earlier I wanted the "wrong" version but convinced myself to not write it by thinking about the syntax.

Oh, on an entirely different subject, I was reading the foreword of the Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary...

> "The author of this dictionary, Jack Halpern, was one of those students for whom kanji was a fascination. His first encounter with it came at the age of twenty-two, when he was in Israel. Six years later, he came to Japan to embark on developing a kanji dictionary that would help people like himself learn kanji effectively and efficiently. With much investment of time, energy, and financial resources, his efforts paid off. [...]"

He saw his first kanji when he was 22 and start writing a kanji dictionary 6 years later?

Yes, I'm seeing that now that I'm looking at his DOB on Wikipedia, heh.

Moved to Japan in '74 and published in '90. 16 indeed.

Why are my verbs losing their tenses tonight?

The weird thing is that it's definitely tensed when you're hearing the sentence in your head.

Anyways, enough thinking about this stuff tonight for me.

Off to bed, night!

Thankfully I live in my house, so I'm safe in that regard!

@3to5businessdays thanks for letting me know that.

Hm, I wonder if 一緒に isn't redundant in some ways, if it's used with 「Aと一緒に…」. At least it feels redundant to me, since the と already signifies "with" (which implies "together" for me, but maybe that's my problem).

> In English it feels wrong to say “not live” or “doesn't live”

Curious thing to say...

@AndrewGrimm I've seen the videos. It's a fish so it's not as nasty as some of the stuff out there.

@3to5businessdays I think fish is often prepared "raw". What's special about fugu?

@Earthliŋ You mean fish is often skinned/chopped up while they're still alive?

@3to5businessdays Yes, I think so. Often the head is chopped off first, so I guess you'd usually say that the fish is dead, although the body is still wiggling. The clams (and big snails) you buy wrapped in the supermarket are usually still alive and are prepared alive.

Is preparing fugu while still alive necessary, though, or just as common as with other fish? (That was my question, actually.)

well, so much for that