Japanese Language

Rilakkuma

12:56 AM

@3to5businessdays こ二

にこにこ is nice word for this reason

Anonymous

1:47 AM

Dictionaries list とはいえ as a 接続詞 derived from a 連語

Anonymous

Which makes sense, since it can be used to begin a sentence

Anonymous

大辞林 lists とはいうものの as a 連語, but says it can be used like a 接続詞 or a 接続助詞

Anonymous

I wonder how they make that distinction between being a 接続詞 and being used like a 接続詞

Anonymous

3:43 AM

I just realized something. Hee, hee, hee.

Darius Jahandarie

4:02 AM

気持ち悪っｗ

で、何を気づいた？

Anonymous

これ → meta.japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/1293/…

Darius Jahandarie

ｗｗｗやばっ

I always feel a little weird editing the English of someone who is clearly a native speaker.

I added the subject in a few of the sentences in japanese.stackexchange.com/posts/19228/revisions, because the dropped versions sounded like they weren't in the right register for the site. But who am I to decide that, really?

I'm also becoming anal about putting some sort of quotes around Japanese which you are mentioning, since sometimes Japanese gets used as well.

As a convenient example:
"大辞林 lists 「とはいうものの」 as a 連語, but says it can be used like a 接続詞 or a 接続助詞"

jkerian

5:03 AM

@snailboat Thanks for breaking up that FAQ entry... it's needed it for a while

We should probably split Quoting and Linking as well... as they have as little to do with each other as the rest of them

Anonymous

Oh, good point, I can do that in a bit :-)

Anonymous

I've been going through that onomatopoeia book I mentioned, which I actually like a lot! It has a few unfortunate typos (does every book on learning Japanese have typos?)

Anonymous

For instance, they wrote ぜん息 for 喘息, which is totally fine (it's not a 常用漢字 anyway), but

Anonymous

The furigana over 息 say いき

Anonymous

I've noticed little typos or errors like that in pretty much every book I have on Japanese...

Anonymous

5:08 AM

Another interesting thing is that they wrote 相撲 and for furigana put す。もう

Anonymous

I have no idea why there's a 。 there!

Anonymous

It's a good book though :-)

Anonymous

I think sometimes people focus on learning vocabulary and kanji together and neglect mimetic words for which there are no kanji . . .

Anonymous

At least, I don't know nearly enough 擬態語 and 擬音語

Darius Jahandarie

Maybe they use す.もう to line up the furigana with the kanji, and accidentally typed 。 instead of .?

Or maybe they just randomly hit .

Anonymous

5:12 AM

Yeah! One of those!

Anonymous

I don't know how people specify furigana in stuff like that

Anonymous

It makes me curious

Darius Jahandarie

擬態語 and 擬音語 are a huge problem for me

Especially the ones that aren't said outloud often but are just used as SFX in manga and such.

Anonymous

I've picked up a bunch just over time, but there are always a lot more I don't know

Anonymous

I think in manga they actually make up new ones often enough :-)

Anonymous

5:14 AM

But there are patterns in sound symbolism

Anonymous

Like in English, where gl symbolizes light (glint, gleam, glimmer, glitz, glow, etc.)

Anonymous

And there are correlations between the sounds of 擬音語 and the real sounds they represent

Darius Jahandarie

"glamour"...?

Anonymous

Hmm, maybe, but that's from grammar

jkerian

lol

only to the linguistically minded

Anonymous

5:16 AM

Like, /i/ is usually a higher pitched sound and /o/ usually lower pitched, and /a/ a clearer sound

Anonymous

@jkerian I mean in terms of etymology

Anonymous

Hehe

Anonymous

Grimoire, glamour, and grammar were originally the same word

jkerian

sound-symbolism isn't really something that develops along with a words etymology though

hmm... how to say this... maybe... Given all the sources for words in a language, sound symbolism is an advantage on the "natural selection" part of language evolution... but this can be quite distinct from a common root of a particular sound to a meaning.

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