Japanese Language

Anonymous

12:15 AM

@silvermaple Is it something you can look up, to see if it's right?

Chocolate

７人！

眠い・・・

寝る

じゃね

ノシ

Anonymous

12:31 AM

おやすみ〜

ssb

1:32 AM

Wow, in looking up 悲しむ for the questin hat was just posted I found it can also be 愛しむ

strange homophones in japanese.

Anonymous

1:51 AM

Hehe. That reminds me of how 愛 and 哀 both have the on'yomi アイ

ssb

and 哀しむ also exists

Anonymous

2:09 AM

Ok, so in this Wikipedia article... ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/…

Anonymous

It says: 日本語以外でも日本語の長音に当たる表記を波ダッシュを用いて用いる。

Anonymous

Is that grammatical?

ssb

seems redundant to me

oh wait

Anonymous

Well, there's two things I don't get.

ssb

yeah that's wrong

Anonymous

2:11 AM

When you say redundant, you mean 用いて用いる?

Anonymous

The two をs in a row seem weird to me.

ssb

yes, and then i noticed the double を

ok looking at it closer and thinking very carefully it might actually be ok

if you take out the strange part you get just 本語以外でも日本語の長音に当たる表記を用いる。

Anonymous

I was thinking it might be nested

ssb

i have no idea what the grammatical term for it is but

波ダッシュを用いて

yeah, would that be called a nested clause or?

Anonymous

Since there's two verbs, each verb assigns one を role

Anonymous

2:16 AM

Is what you're saying

ssb

whatever, anyway if you think of it like that then it does make sense

Anonymous

Hmm

ssb

日本語以外でも日本語の長音に当たる表記を、波ダッシュを用いて、用いる。

so it'd be like

絵をペンを使って描く

so while i guess it's grammatically acceptable I would say it's an example of poor writing.

Anonymous

I might want to turn that into a question

Anonymous

I'm worried I'm flooding JLU with questions :-)

Anonymous

2:25 AM

I started bracketing the sentence

Anonymous

I want to find software to render parse trees

Anonymous

At the risk of repeating myself...

Anonymous

I like phpSyntaxTree, but it doesn't support Japanese :-(

ssb

ask as many questions as you want

no problem with that

Anonymous

・・・表記を [ 波ダッシュを用いて ] 用いる。

ssb

2:27 AM

yeah that makes sense, i was thrown off initially by the double 用いる

Anonymous

Me too.

Anonymous

I'm not used to parsing sentences like this

ssb

grammar questions make me realize how much I need to get a proper Japanese linguistics textbook

Anonymous

I was thinking about that too

Anonymous

I'm still missing some basics, I think, so I'm trying to concentrate on filling in those gaps when I can...

Anonymous

2:29 AM

But I really like when I understand everything at a deep level

Anonymous

Which sometimes I do, in Japanese, but often I don't

ssb

Exactly, I feel so useless when I can't think of Japanese at the same conceptual level that I can think of English

Anonymous

3:03 AM

I'm reading about sentences with two をs

Anonymous

Apart from the nested/embedded clause

Anonymous

There is apparently also XをAに、YをBに保存する

Anonymous

Or so I read here: groups.google.com/group/honyaku/browse_thread/thread/…

ssb

ah yeah I've seen that pattern before

Anonymous

So now I have two double を patterns to put in my notes.

Anonymous

3:07 AM

I know that conceptually the key is that there's one verb for each を

Anonymous

and I assume in that other example it can be considered "there", but omitted

ssb

yes, the second example is just letting two を share one verb

Anonymous

XをAに[保存する] + YをBに保存する

ssb

it's like saying save 1 to jpg and 2 to png

Anonymous

Yeah, I think the technical term is gapping

Anonymous

3:15 AM

(English permits forward gapping, while Japanese permits backward gapping)

Anonymous

(intuitively obvious, I guess?)

Anonymous

4:19 AM

I guess if I see two をs in a row without a verb, I can take it as a signal that it's an embedded clause

Anonymous

...unless it seems like gapping

Anonymous

4:30 AM

They changed L points.

ssb

4:47 AM

maybe I should start using lang 8

djahandarie

Lang-8 is run by Japanese people? I never knew that.

Anonymous

Yeah, there's a bit of a focus on J-E user pairings, I think

ssb

up to now I've just been talking to random people on other sites

not anything diary focused

Anonymous

I like the site, but I don't use it enough. I'm learning in lots of other ways, though

djahandarie

It's a nice site.

Anonymous

4:48 AM

People post all sorts of things as 日記

djahandarie

I don't use it regularly but when I want to get my composition torn up I post stuff there.

Though actually no one really does much composition stuff, usually it's just fixing my broken grammar.

But in the cases my grammar is somehow correct, it's nice to get the 'style' corrections.

(This is me on there if you want to friend me, btw: lang-8.com/199095 )

(Not like I'll be correcting any of your entries though :P )

Hah. You use it way more than I do!

I usually only get one or two corrections on my posts. Usually because they are friggin' confusing.

Anonymous

I haven't posted lately, though

Anonymous

5:05 AM

Hehe, I just got 言いよう and 言おう confused.

Anonymous

Stupid brain

ssb

言おうとしても言いようがない

Anonymous

5:26 AM

When I read my own sentences, I can tell they don't sound right

ssb

how often do you speak to native speakers?

Anonymous

Lately, not very much.

Anonymous

I type to native speakers sometimes :-)

Anonymous

Does that count?

ssb

typing counts!

communication in general

communicate and read as much as possible

that's my motto

Anonymous

5:34 AM

I do read a lot.

Anonymous

I've been getting a lot better at understanding stuff. :-)

Anonymous

And my vocabulary's been getting better

Anonymous

6:53 AM

When I say あいにく or 残念ながら I feel like I'm apologizing to the listener

Anonymous

If I want to say "unfortunately" without being apologetic, like

Anonymous

If it was unfortunate for me but not for the listener

Anonymous

Is either word appropriate, or is there something better to say?

Anonymous

Maybe I'll make that a question.

Anonymous

運が悪い maybe...

Anonymous

6:57 AM

Well, I'm going with 残念ながら for now

Andrew Grimm

8:02 AM

What websites do you use to look up stock phrases? Currently, I've been given some stock phrases, and I'm trying to look them up.

For example, I'm trying to see whether 担当者様 is 担当者 plus 様, or an actual phrase.

Andrew Grimm

8:16 AM

(Well, not given some stock phrases, but a text that includes what I suspect are stock phrases)

Flaw

9:29 AM

@AndrewGrimm you can try alc.co.jp

I think it works quite well for searching for phrases

小太郎

12:05 PM

I saw 米国 used on a certain CD

Is the usage of that common?

Andrew Grimm

12:37 PM

Just heard about the Swedish word (or un-word) ogooglebar.

ssb

1:27 PM

@小太郎 that's the way you see it used in formal situations so yes it's pretty common. 米 is America's designated kanji.

小太郎

What about other words usually written in kana? Would they also get changed to a word with kanji instead for formal situations?

ssb

well 米国 isn't アメリカ written in kanji

米国 is べいこく

but

that's not really the point i realize

小太郎

yea I know

I'm currently thinking of two cases

1. Where the word is usually written in hirigana

such as 成る

and 2. When the word is usually written in katakana

ssb

to me I get more of a feeling of old writing rather than formal writing when I see changes like that

katakana might be avoided in formal writing though..

小太郎

Would they use ateji for usually katakana words when there is no alternative kanji?

Or would they do something like use the chinese character instead?

I think an example I've seen was 頁

ssb

1:38 PM

when writing out the full country I think it may be appropriate to use katakana

or

like if there's a katakana word they want to use

i don't think they will go to extreme lengths to avoid it

if there's a more formal alternative to a word written in katakana they might be more inclined to use it

小太郎

What about my example with 頁? and 米 as well I think

ssb

i'm not an expert on this but i've never seen 頁 in kanji like that before

小太郎

I remember seeing it on a fairly large japanese shopping website, but I can't remember where

Anyways, thanks for you help :)

Flaw

2:22 PM

@Chocolate さん. こんにちは

Chocolate

ちは

@snailplane 用いて用いる？ww

@snailplane Why is it only in English and Japanese?

Oh! I can't correct the Japanese

Chocolate

2:51 PM

@小太郎 I think we often see「米国」「英国」「日米」etc. in newspapers

and TV news headlines

(I don't remember if NHK announcers say アメリカ or 米国... Probably アメリカ)

米国>>2 characters アメリカ>>4 characters
日米>>2 日本とアメリカ>>7
Maybe 字数を少なくするため？

Anonymous

3:21 PM

@Chocolate I don't know, I think the people who run Lang-8 are Japanese and learning English

Anonymous

@Chocolate I read 用いて用いる and I got confused! :-)

Anonymous

@小太郎 Some kanji just aren't used anymore... or aren't used for some words

Anonymous

No one writes 虞, I think

Anonymous

Unless they want to seem old-fashioned

Anonymous

Or like... writing かわす as 躱す seems unusual to me

Anonymous

3:24 PM

I don't know :-)

Anonymous

Trying to think of a good example

Anonymous

Oh, how about アメリカ

Anonymous

People don't usually write 亜米利加 anymore!

jkerian

4:50 PM

heh... twitter seems to tend towards kanji density... "本因坊戦:高尾紳路九段が４年ぶりに挑戦権"

Anonymous

Yikes!

Anonymous

That looks like headlinese to me

jkerian

It is... also helps if you play go, so that you'll recognize the technical terms

Anonymous

I don't play go, but I did learn some go vocab as a side-effect of learning kanji

Anonymous

It comes in handy sometimes because people use terms from shogi/go metaphorically

Anonymous

4:56 PM

like 駒

Anonymous

5:12 PM

okinawa-zukan.com/e_Ancylomenes_adularans.htm

Anonymous

I get the ビイドロ part and the エビ part, but I'm curious about the カクレ part

Anonymous

隠れ seems to show up in a bunch of shrimp names, ◯◯カクレエビ

Anonymous

in Periclemenes and Ancylomenes at least

Anonymous

a-ha

Anonymous

It's an 亜科

Anonymous

5:19 PM

I just noticed it said that :-)

Anonymous

Wikipedia doesn't list that 亜科

Anonymous

It's Pontoniinae

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