Japanese Language

Anonymous

1:29 AM

@ssb languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=14633

ssb

amazing

mystery solved

Anonymous

考 sure is different between Japanese and Chinese!

Anonymous

2:13 AM

The next site self-evaluation begins in about an hour

Rilakkuma

3:01 AM

Hallo from Tokyo!

Anonymous

Hello! Welcome back to Japanese.SE chat!

Anonymous

Hey everyone, this is the last day for the Site Self-Evaluation!

Anonymous

There, I pinned that :-)

Anonymous

3:18 AM

-4

A: Meaning of last "te" of saki ni itte te (先に行ってて)

先に行ってて means "he/she" said he will go first. "て" means that someone said the phrase .

Anonymous

In the review queue, most people picked "recommend deletion".

Anonymous

Not everyone.

Anonymous

Do you think I should delete it on behalf of the community?

ssb

I chose not to delete

Anonymous

We usually don't delete answers merely for being wrong

ssb

3:19 AM

after some thought

right, it's not a good answer and it is wrong

but I thought that didn't necessarily warrant deletion

Anonymous

So with the tools at hand, downvoting would normally be the right answer

Anonymous

If nothing else, people can see it at -4 and think "Ohh, I thought that て did that but I was wrong!"

Anonymous

Although

Anonymous

I hate to pile on downvotes like that

Anonymous

Okay, since there was no consensus to delete I left it alone :-)

Anonymous

3:23 AM

I didn't have as many answers in the site evaluation queue this time

ssb

I didn't have any

although I haven't been answering much lately

Anonymous

Native speakers of English sometimes write really ridiculous things about their own language

Anonymous

I was just reading where someone described a get-passive (as in "I got hit by a car") as incorrect English

Anonymous

With reasoning that made no sense to me

Anonymous

It's okay to struggle with describing stuff in your own language or any other. Describing stuff is hard! That's why people study . . . :-)

Anonymous

3:31 AM

But I wish some people wouldn't assume they're experts at grammatical description by virtue of being native speakers

Anonymous

I really like on ELL when native speakers give intuitive answers about what things mean and what sounds natural, because they're using their strengths to help people

Anonymous

But those same people sometimes make up nonsensical grammatical analyses because they haven't really studied grammar

Anonymous

And then you get silly answers that people are really confident in . . . :-)

Anonymous

I think there's a time and a place for both

Anonymous

(1) Answers from intuition, which don't necessarily require any special knowledge of grammar (or language in general), and (2) answers from a more academic point of view

ssb

3:33 AM

There are plenty of people who consider themselves "grammar nazis" but have no actual educational foundation in modern grammar

Anonymous

Yeah, a lot of those people conflate formality with correctness

ssb

perhaps we should replace "grammar" with "style"

in those situations..

Anonymous

But then how is a learner supposed to know how to speak informally? If everything that isn't formal is "wrong", then they're putting "Hey, what's up?" on equal ground with "Hello to the you"

Anonymous

@ssb I talk about formality and politeness

Anonymous

"Style" can be kind of vague

Anonymous

3:36 AM

A lot of people put stuff like "Should I use this comma?" under style

ssb

I guess "proper style" is essentially a way of describing formality

Anonymous

And that's generally not related to formality

Anonymous

So "style" is okay but we can possibly be more specific :-)

ssb

Well I certainly don't like when people put commas in places they don't belong!

Anonymous

Me, either, it's, pretty, weird

ssb

3:37 AM

Nothing gets me more riled up, than a misplaced comma!

Anonymous

You know what?

Anonymous

A Japanese friend of mine who is learning English made what is now my favorite comma mistake

Anonymous

She wrote an ellipsis with commas,,,

ssb

I have seen that before actually

Anonymous

Oh, neat,,,

ssb

3:38 AM

and it's strange to me because Japan does use ・・・！

Anonymous

……！

Anonymous

I want …… to be centered but it's down at the bottom

Anonymous

At least on my screen

ssb

… … …

Anonymous

テスト・・・・・・

Anonymous

3:39 AM

How come my dots are further apart than yours?

ssb

…

Anonymous

> and it's strange to me because Japan does use ・・・！

Anonymous

and it's strange to me because Japan does use ・・・！

Anonymous

Oh

Anonymous

does use ・・・！　テスト・・・

Anonymous

3:40 AM

What is going on here? I typed ・ both times

Anonymous

But it's closer together on the left

ssb

are they different?

Anonymous

Is it just my browser?

Anonymous

The ones after テスト are full-width characters on my screen

Anonymous

But the ones after use are half-width, it looks like

ssb

3:41 AM

really?

Anonymous

I'm so confused!

ssb

they're all half width to me

Anonymous

Hold on, let me screen cap

ssb

テスト・・・

・・・

Anonymous

use・・・

Anonymous

3:42 AM

ssb

I bet I know why

At least for me if I type てすと・・・

and then convert

it changes the ・・・ to ・・・

wait

Anonymous

Haha!

ssb

Never mind

I don't know if I'm right about this anymore..!

テスト･･･

Anonymous

in English Language & Usage, 54 secs ago, by tchrist

Oh, that I can explain.

Anonymous

in English Language & Usage, 40 secs ago, by tchrist

There is a notion of characters whose widths are ambiguous.

Anonymous

3:46 AM

in English Language & Usage, 21 secs ago, by tchrist

When used in the context of East-Asian wide characters, they are to be represented as wide ones, but when used with narrow characters, as narrow.

Anonymous

in English Language & Usage, 17 secs ago, by tchrist

However, U+30FB ‹・› \N{KATAKANA MIDDLE DOT} is not one of those, at least in Unicode v6; they may have changed that. In v6, it has the character property East Asian Width=Wide

Anonymous

He's explaining further in the ELU chat

ssb

4:07 AM

I was on the right track

still, interesting

so the character itself changes width based on.. the characters around it?

・・・　･･･

I can choose the katakana ellipsis but my IME will always default to the normal one

however you saw a difference before where I saw none

Might the hiragana middle dot be the same way, and the variable width just isn't implemented in Windows?

Anonymous

4:38 AM

@ssb We found browser-OS combinations where 1. it's sometimes wide, sometimes thin, 2. it's always wide, 3. it's always thin

Darius Jahandarie

5:22 AM

@snailboat Maybe one way to test if that いう is middle voice is seeing if you can use -(r)are- with it. AFAIK middle voice and -(r)are- are incompatible.

Anonymous

Let's see if I can clarify my terms. I don't think Japanese actually has a middle voice. I think it has active and passive. So here, I'm borrowing the term to mean "active in form but passive in meaning"

Anonymous

What would you say is an example, then, of a middle construction in Japanese that we can use to test if it's incompatible with -(r)are-?

Anonymous

I was thinking naively that if you added -(r)are- you might just replace a middle construction with a plain ol' passive

Darius Jahandarie

Some intransitive middle voice verbs are 割れる and 見つかる, I think.

Maybe 分かる?

Anonymous

Ah, I see what you're saying

Anonymous

5:31 AM

You were just re-reading The Passive in Japanese: A Cartographic Minimalist Approach?

Darius Jahandarie

Yes! Earlier today. I made a note to mention this.

There's a short section on it in the paper somewhere, I assume you've just found it.

Anonymous

Yes, it wasn't fresh in my mind

Darius Jahandarie

I would not be surprised if most of the a<->e verbs (is there a good name for them?) were middle voice for the intransitive one.

Anonymous

6:07 AM

Hmm, I need to read more about voice in Japanese

Darius Jahandarie

I wish I could use color in my answers...

Anonymous

6:29 AM

It would be nice if there were more markup options

Anonymous

Interlinear glosses would be nice for the language sites

Anonymous

Tables would suffice for that, and maybe they'll fix the missing table problem when they eventually switch to the forthcoming standard Markdown

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