Japanese Language

12:28 AM

@snailboat what is the voting problem on ELL?

12:52 AM

BTW usually when I get a downvote and there is no feedback, I try to deduce/guess what the reason might be (but as mentioned, this is sometimes very difficult)

Anonymous

People don't vote nearly enough on ELL.

Amani Kilumanga

The usual suspects are: "my premise is wrong", "I didn't address the question (missed the mark)", "I didn't add anything useful", "someone doesn't like me", "someone doesn't like my tone", "someone is supporting a competing answer (whether it be their own or someone else's)"

Anonymous

I think that downvotes without comments are rather less useful than comments explaining what's wrong.

Anonymous

I'd prefer comments or, if needed, competing answers that explain what's right.

Anonymous

But that's different from requiring a comment or competing answer.

Amani Kilumanga

1:01 AM

@snailboat Yeah, it's not obligatory. I think we are all (mostly) on the same page with that. It's decent, however.

Anonymous

I think it'd be great if people could leave more comments explaining things like that. They don't even have to come with downvotes attached :-)

Yasashii Eirian

6:27 AM

how to produce ちゅ but with tenten?

For example, て

with tenten is で。

choco

6:46 AM

ぢゅ

dyuとか

dilyuとか

dixyuもかな

「新しい顔」でググったらアンパンマンの話ばっかりだった

Yasashii Eirian

10:04 AM

@choco ありがとうchoco, it works!

Yasashii Eirian

11:11 AM

I am looking for a game to learn Kanji from N5 to N1 with English translation. Any advice is welcome. Thanks.

Andrew Grimm

11:38 AM

I sometimes get serially downvoted, and get declined by mods when I flag it, even though I wait to see if the reversal script kicks in.

StackExchange

12:08 PM

0

Q: Make the serial downvoting reversal script more active

From time to time I get serially downvoted. I wait for the reversal script to kick in, and it doesn't, and when I flag it, the mods don't do anything. It's not because the serial downvoting didn't happen, but because they can't be bothered doing anything about it. You can tell because the reason...

Dave M

1:49 PM

I wonder if anyone can help me with a (slightly) whimsical question... There was an old arcade game many years ago. The wonderfully named "Bad Dudes vs Dragon Ninja".

The 3rd level boss says something which sounds Japanese to my Irish ears. Can any confirm that it is and if so, what does he say? I have a youtube link: youtube.com/watch?v=HzTLE4c68E8

The sample in question is approx 2:07 into the video. I've been wondering about this for over 25 years now and can't tell you how happy it'd make me if someone could help...

oals

2:40 PM

Assuming you mean the sample with the echo effect, I can't make out a single word out of it.

Dave M

If I find out that it's meaningless noise, I'm going to be very, very cross.

oals

We don't have any natives active right now though. They might fare better.

Anonymous

3:05 PM

Dave M

Is there a translation for that? I offer a pack of Jammie Dodgers for whomever can get me the answer. :)

Anonymous

3:19 PM

Sorry, I just thought it was funny :-)

Anonymous

That green text isn't real Japanese.

Dave M

A thousand curses upon you! :)

Anonymous

@DaveM I'm not sure he's actually saying any real words.

Anonymous

geocities.jp/elcon_grass_special/DN.html

Anonymous

> 下水道で一人寂しく待っていたＢＯＳＳ。いきなり、分身の術 「うんわかそわか」と意味不明な言葉を口にし 計8人に分身。

Anonymous

3:31 PM

More gibberish :-)

Anonymous

But different gibberish!

Anonymous

I found that one by searching for "ドラゴンニンジャ" 意味不明

oals

一人寂しく sounds like an expression / common collocation. I wonder why I can't find it in dictionaries.

I guess it means "all alone"

Anonymous

7:28 PM

As an answerer commented, the -masu form is perhaps the worst verb form to figure out the conjugation group from. Drop it and learn the dictionary forms (iku, neru, kuru) immediately. — oals 5 hours ago

Anonymous

One of my friends was in a class where they started by teaching verbs in ～ます form, and then later they introduced the plain form and started teaching that.

Anonymous

But because of the way she was taught, she was always keeping the ～ます forms in mind as more basic, and converting to the plain form.

Anonymous

Learning that way seemed to cause problems for her long-term.

jkerian

7:56 PM

It doesn't matter

For the verbs where it makes a difference, you need to either memorize some useless technical classification for each verb ("group 1/2", "ru/u-verb", "ichdan/godan") or memorize two forms and figure the rest out from that.

If you only learn one form when learning a new verb, you're in trouble... it doesn't matter which form it is

Anonymous

The way I learned was pretty inefficient, but I just sort of picked it up.

jkerian

Personally I tend towards memorizing ~masu form and past tense, but it doesn't matter all that much, you just need to learn two forms

Anonymous

I probably should have spent time studying grammar earlier on :-)

Dan Hulme

@jkerian is that always true? I thought there was only a problem with u verbs that end -ru

jkerian

@DanHulme : Well... since the point is disambiguation, you need to learn it for the ru verbs too :)

Anonymous

8:00 PM

Yeah, you can't really get 運ぶ wrong. I mean, you can, but not from thinking it's a vowel-stem verb :-)

Anonymous

So it's only in the cases where you can't tell just by looking.

Anonymous

And those are the verbs ending in /iru/ or /eru/ in citation form, like 居る and 要る.

Anonymous

@jkerian I guess the citation form and negative form are the first ones that pop into mind for me.

Anonymous

So, i-ru → i-nai but ir-u → ir-anai

Anonymous

But if you use the forms you said, you'll get 行く・請う・問う right.

jkerian

8:07 PM

It was so long ago that I don't remember the original motivation... but there is some possibility that 行く was part of the development

Then again... 行く is weird regardless... you really do need to just remember that it's an exception

Anonymous

Yeah.

Anonymous

Like with almost any language, you just have to memorize the irregular and defective verbs.

Anonymous

@Blavius There are a number of other irregular verbs, but they're traditionally lumped into one of the first two categories. I'm not sure why. — snailboat ♦ 19 mins ago

Anonymous

I suppose that if you just ignore 音便 (and the degree of fusion the 活用形 have with their hosts), you can view that as secondary.

Anonymous

So 行く has the regular 連用形「行き」 as in 行きたい, but when you combine it with 接続助詞「て」, the expected 行きて changes to 行って.

Anonymous

8:14 PM

Which is a pretty clumsy analysis.

Anonymous

But it does fit the history of the language.

jkerian

wouldn't it normally have gone to いいて, analogously to 聞いて?

Anonymous

If you take verbs as having an 音便形, then 行く does have an irregular form.

Anonymous

@jkerian Right, same thing there: 聞く becomes 聞きたい, so we can see that 聞く has a regular 連用形, but instead of the expected 聞きて, we get 聞いて.

Anonymous

So in this analysis, the process of 音便 is irregular with 行く, but regular with 聞く, while the actual forms of both verbs are considered regular.

Anonymous

8:20 PM

I don't really like that analysis, though. It seems simpler to suggest that one 活用形 has split into two.

Anonymous

8:33 PM

Besides 行く, 問う, and 請う, other verbs not considered irregular include なさる, くださる, いらっしゃる, and おっしゃる, along with くれる and ある and いう, and the set of verbs like 愛する.

Anonymous

For those four verbs, なさる・くださる・いらっしゃる・おっしゃる (along with ござる if you want to consider that verb to still exist), the 連用形 and 命令形 are irregular.

Anonymous

For くれる there's no regular imperative, and for ある only negative ～ぬ can attach, not ～ない.

Anonymous

Verbs in the class 愛する belongs to are undergoing a change from (e.g.) ai=su to ais-u

Anonymous

So that most people say 愛する ai=suru but instead of 愛しない they say 愛さない ais-anai.

Anonymous

In each case an argument can be made that they're regular, but I feel that makes things more complicated than they should be.

Andrew Grimm

9:17 PM

I'm glad that Snailboat is one of the moderators.

Anonymous

I'm sorry, I can't do anything about two downvotes, even if they occur only a minute apart. They aren't considered serial downvoting.

Anonymous

In general, Stack Exchange really doesn't want to reverse people's votes. It takes some fairly extreme circumstances to SE to consider doing so.

Anonymous

I try to mark flags like those as helpful personally, and I try to look into them when I can and, a number of times, I've passed the information along to SE employees.

Anonymous

Diamond moderators can't reverse votes. They can't even look at individual votes and see who cast them. All we can do is pass them onto SE employees and ask them to take a look.

Anonymous

And usually when I do so, SE chooses not to reverse them.

Anonymous

9:23 PM

To get those two votes reversed, you'll have to successfully convince Stack Exchange staff to change the way the system works.

Anonymous

I know you're unhappy right now, but please don't think that we're just not bothering to take action. There isn't any action we can take.

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