Japanese Language

Anonymous

1:04 AM

It might just be because I have a headache, or because I'm not very bright, but I can't quite figure out what this question means:

Anonymous

> You then say a word in English, which happens to be a German loan word in Japanese, and translate this word on a piece of paper (in romaji and German respectively).

Anonymous

Translate means "transcribe" here?

Anonymous

I can't figure out any meaningful way to parse "say a word in English, which happens to be a German loan word in Japanese"

ssb

yeah I guess

maybe not though

"a word in English that's a German loan word in Japanese" would be.. what

Anonymous

Nothing

Anonymous

1:06 AM

But I thought "in Japanese" might be modifying "say"

Anonymous

say [ a word in English, which happens to be a German loan word ] in Japanese

Anonymous

So, maybe poodle is "a word in English, which happens to be a German loan word"

Anonymous

And they mean to regularize it to Japanese phonology: プードル

Anonymous

And then transcribe the result in romaji and . . . German??

Anonymous

Respectively?

ssb

1:09 AM

so I guess the question is asking for examples where the hepburn romanization match the spelling of the original word perfectly

Anonymous

In a word that has gone from German, to English, and then to Japanese?

Anonymous

Pudel → poodle → プードル → pūdoru

Anonymous

So that would be a fail?

ssb

these are the original examples..

サッカー = sakkaa ≠ soccer

ゲレンデ = gerende ≠ Gelände

パン = pan ≠ pain

テニス = tenisu ≠ tennis

Anonymous

They edited them out of the question?

ssb

1:14 AM

yes

Anonymous

Why mention two foreign languages if they're only going to give one column for non-Japanese?

ssb

i'm not saying that the question makes sense or is easy to understand

Anonymous

If all they want is something that looks the same in roomaji as the language it's borrowed from, someone could say ペン

Anonymous

Or バナナ

ssb

you could go ahead and write that as an answer i guess

is a question that asks for words with matching romanization/original spelling ultimately even on topic?

Anonymous

1:24 AM

Err.

Anonymous

I leave this decision to the community ;-)

ssb

ok how do I type bar letters

Anonymous

Simple! Google for macron, click to Wikipedia, and copy + paste

Anonymous

That's my half-somethinged method.

Anonymous

I'm sure other people know how to type them, but not me!

Anonymous

1:26 AM

Hello, Cako!

ssb

apparently bar refers to strikethrough text

Cako

Hey. Thanks for helping me out earlier!

Anonymous

Ah, I tried! :-)

Anonymous

Oh, I'm sorry--I thought you meant letters with a macron over them

Anonymous

I thought you were referring to earlier when I typed プードル in romaji

Anonymous

1:27 AM

Ooh, diagonal. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar_%28diacritic%29

ssb

that's what i was referring to

i was searching for 'bar letters' because i couldn't remember the word macron

and by 'that' i mean macrons, not bars, apparently

Anonymous

Ah! Thanks ssb, I can understand your edit better

ssb

@Cako I edited your question, but it's changed competely

so feel free to change it if I lost any aspects of what you originally wanted to know

Cako

Probably for the better!

Anonymous

@Cako Does the edit look like it asks what you wanted to ask?

Cako

1:29 AM

Absolutely!

Anonymous

Okay, in that case I'll upvote it :-)

Anonymous

Hmm, Kafka Fuura's explanation doesn't make sense to me

Anonymous

The technical answer is that simply, か requires 連体形 before it, and thus we have なのか (the な and の indicating 連体形). ((This is the same reason you have なのに～ etc.)) Using だか works as well for basically the same reason. Despite the fact that だ is unacceptable to use as a 連体形 in most cases, it works in others (including だか、だこと、だもの). //// Great answer though. — Kafka Fuura 11 mins ago

Anonymous

One more note: なのだか vs. なのか or だか / I would guess that the former adds that なのだ sort of explanatory/declarative/emphasis nuance to the question, because it has an additional 連体形 that it does not need for the particle か. I don't encounter なのだか very often though, so this is more just speculation. — Kafka Fuura 1 min ago

Anonymous

の isn't a 活用語の連体形, it's a 形式名詞

Anonymous

1:36 AM

And だ is a 終止形 here, I think

Anonymous

I can't make Kafka Fuura's explanation fit the grammar I have in my head

Anonymous

1:54 AM

That's okay, though. People can have their own personal grammars

ssb

i'm working on a controversial new grammar where everything is a noun

Anonymous

2:15 AM

Hah

Anonymous

My personal grammar is pieced together from various things I've read and from my understanding of how stuff gets said

Anonymous

It's not a very good grammar, but I'm working on it :-)

rintaun

2:26 AM

hello~

Anonymous

Hi!

Anonymous

I am eating habanero veggie burgers.

rintaun

that sounds delicious

consider me jealous

you just reminded me that I am (ostensibly) human and thus must eat. brb

ok. back

you know, Japan's love of mayonnaise is extremely frustrating, because mayonnaise is nasty

ssb

2:45 AM

what, you mean you don't love tuna corn mayonnaise potato pizza?

Anonymous

Mayo is something I am actually very frightened of.

Anonymous

@ssb Do you think I can clear out some of the comments from here as obsolete?

Anonymous

Is the question edited enough for you?

ssb

i went ahead and took out mine

it's suitably to my satisfaction, anyway

Anonymous

Moderators have a magical "undelete comments" power now.

Anonymous

2:51 AM

(But moderators can't undelete a comment that a regular user deleted themselves.)

Anonymous

So I can undo the deletions I just did. But anyway, I left the discussion of 「こん」 :-)

Anonymous

My dictionary says なし means ないこと。

rintaun

3:14 AM

@ssb 死ぬほうがマシだ＞＿＜

Anonymous

@ssb I see letters, but my brain can't figure out what they're supposed to represent

Anonymous

That 〜なき vs 〜なし question is pretty tough!

Anonymous

I'm looking through results for 無き in BCCWJ

rintaun

what's it called when you change kanji compounds to Japanese phrases? e.g. 通行人 ⇒ 通り行く人

ssb

for what it's worth I see あり and なし in use in modern Japanese muuuuuuch more than I see 無き

Anonymous

3:23 AM

Well, なし is a derived word from classical なし

Anonymous

なき is, I think, treated as the literary -き form of modern ない

Anonymous

Just like people write 新しき世界 when they want to sound literary/poetic, like in song titles or lyrics

rintaun

that's right, I believe

Anonymous

But I was trying to look through those BCCWJ results to see if the distribution is actually the same as ない (sans predicative position)

rintaun

like 心無き者

haha, one of the examples in the tanaka corpus is 欠点なき人はなし。 displays that distinction nicely

Anonymous

3:31 AM

That's one use of なし, which is as a formal / literary version of ない, right?

Anonymous

But then the other なし is a derived word meaning ないこと

Anonymous

And that compounds readily with nouns, and takes だ and genitive の and so on

Anonymous

After all, you can say 無しだ but not *無いだ

rintaun

it can actually compound with nouns? like 迷いなし人?

that's strange to me

Anonymous

Er, I didn't mean adnominally

ssb

3:37 AM

ahh i got it, that is a key distinction then

Anonymous

I meant it can compound with nouns, like 迷い＋なし

Anonymous

It's not 迷わなし

rintaun

oh, ok. my misunderstanding

Anonymous

Well, I wasn't clear

Anonymous

So on the one hand, you have なき and なし as formal/literary forms of the modern ない, borrowed from Classical Japanese

Anonymous

3:39 AM

And on the other hand, you have the derived noun なし, which fits in stuff like ナシだ and means ないこと

rintaun

I think the noun compounding you're talking about is consistent with its classical usage

Anonymous

Yeah, because the 終止形 didn't specify a が-role

rintaun

～だ is modern though

Anonymous

But I would guess that if なし stuck around with classical grammar, it would have been reinterpreted as a compounding noun

Anonymous

Because of the missing が

rintaun

3:41 AM

I think that 迷わなし doesn't happen (マヨはなし is ok though, and preferred) is also indicative that it's still being influenced by classical grammar

because didn't classical negation work differently than that? like with ～ぬ maybe

Anonymous

Well, 無し I think stands in for the 形容詞「無い」, not for 助動詞「〜ない」

Anonymous

Hmm

rintaun

are 形容詞「無い」 and 助動詞「〜ない」 that different? D:

Anonymous

Not very!

Anonymous

助動詞「〜ない」 can be in construction with で in 〜ないで, if you believe in that sort of thing

rintaun

3:46 AM

hmm... but so can なし D:

Anonymous

Heeeey.

Anonymous

That's weird.

Anonymous

No one knows what the etymology of 〜ないで is, so I usually think of it as a single thingy, 〜ないで

Anonymous

Since, you know, you can't say 林檎はないで（ある）。

Anonymous

Well, that's a nonsense example

Anonymous

3:48 AM

But you can't say *無いだ。

Anonymous

But you can say 無しだ...

Anonymous

And you can say 〜ないで, but not *〜ないだ

Anonymous

Hmmph.

rintaun

hmm, interesting

Anonymous

@rintaun Ummm

rintaun

3:50 AM

I wonder which occurred earlier, ～ないで or ～なしで

Anonymous

Usually you switch around the Chinese syntax to look like Japanese, by changing to Japanese word order and inserting particles as necessary, I think

Anonymous

So for example, compare 人殺し and 殺人

Anonymous

人殺し is a Japanese compound where 人 has the semantic role of を, 人を殺す

Anonymous

殺人 takes Chinese word order and so has the verbal element サツ first, and the object ジン later

rintaun

yeah, but in this case it's pretty obviously representing an adnominal phrase, right?

Anonymous

3:52 AM

So you can change 殺人 into 人を殺す by turning it around into Japanese word order, changing the readings (ジン→ひと、サツ→ころす), and inserting the particle を to indicate the role

Anonymous

Do you like 通り行く?

rintaun

通って行く?

would that be better?

but isn't 通り行く fine?

Anonymous

Oh, is it?

rintaun

i think so

Anonymous

I guess then you could say 通り行く人

Anonymous

3:57 AM

I guess the middle dots confused me

Anonymous

(But then, I am easily confused)

rintaun

yeah sorry, I just put those there to make "word" boundaries clear

though I suppose the okurigana do that just fine in this case

Anonymous

I thought you were just listing words and not trying to put them in a syntactic relationship

rintaun

do you happen to remember the name for that process?

Anonymous

So I didn't think about it the right way

Anonymous

3:58 AM

Uh, 漢文訓読？

Anonymous

I'm not sure

rintaun

hmm, maybe

aha, 訓読【くんどく】 (n,vs) (1) kun'yomi (native Japanese reading of a kanji); (2) reading a Chinese text (kanbun) in Japanese

I think that's it

Anonymous

Yeah, because 漢語 morphology in modern Japanese comes from 漢文, and that was the (mechanical) process to transform 漢文 into Japanese

rintaun

makes sense

Anonymous

homepage3.nifty.com/huayan/doctrine/yuisinge_y.htm

rintaun

4:03 AM

one of my classes has largely been about this, but the professor, though very knowledgeable, is suuuuuuuuuuper boring

so it's been hard for me to follow

Anonymous

Ah, I don't know much about it

Anonymous

I would write an answer for the なき／なし thing, but I don't feel like I know enough about that, either

Anonymous

I'm not totally happy with the existing answers, though

rintaun

you should write one anyway!

ok, gotta run to the bank, then I'm off to class. catch ya later

Anonymous

4:17 AM

The reason I feel like 漢文訓読 isn't quite right is that modern 漢語 aren't really 漢文, but I don't know

Anonymous

I guess just 訓読?

Anonymous

I would say 漢語訓読 but it doesn't get very many hits on Google, so it's probably not a commonly used term

rintaun

7:09 AM

Ugh, I'm trying to open a bank account to transfer some money into and it's taking forEVER

I've been here for an hour :-(

apparently they're having some problem, and can't figure out what it is

Anonymous

T_T

rintaun

I'm starting to wonder if maybe I forgot to close my account three years ago, and that's what the problem is... I really hope that's not it, as I'd feel like a complete jackass and that would suck

Transcript for