Japanese Language

Chocolate

12:26 AM

@Troyen あれっ？(^^ゞ

Chocolate

12:38 AM

@silvermaple 「関係を与える」？「影響を与える」じゃなく？

silvermaple

「関係を与える影響」を言わない？

Chocolate

1:07 AM

「関係を与える」がよく分かりません

関係「が」与える影響？

silvermaple

1:20 AM

あ、間違った～

Anonymous

2:09 AM

こんにちは＾＾

Chocolate

ちは

今午前2時です

眠いです^^

Anonymous

そうなんですか、ここは午後6時です

Anonymous

そろそろ寝ますか

Chocolate

午後6時・・・もうすぐご飯の時間ですね

ええ、寝ましょう^^

お休みなさい～

Anonymous

あっ！　おやすみなさい＾＾

djahandarie

3:41 AM

僕には相変わらず悔しいです、三次元で日本語を話すこと。言葉をつなぎ合わせることが出来ません。

（今授業から来ました）

ネットなら、辞書や時間があるから、なんとか出来ますが、喋ることが本当に難しいです。

Anonymous

I focus mostly on understanding rather than speaking or writing at the moment

Anonymous

I wrote a Lang-8 entry today, though. Yay, me!

djahandarie

もっと練習すれば、多分いずれもっとペラペラになるかも知りませんが、今は悔しいだけです。

Nice.

I wrote one recently.

Anonymous

I need to learn more grammar and read more. I think my Japanese gets less bizarre when I do those two things.

djahandarie

I'm really quite bad with word choice (if you couldn't tell from what I was writing just now). That tends to be what gets fixed in my writing I think and is my biggest problem (aside from not being able to read...). My last entry: lang-8.com/199095/journals/…

Anonymous

3:48 AM

This is my latest entry: lang-8.com/33541/journals/…

djahandarie

Unfortunately there isn't much "Japanese composition" in my Japanese class, since it's an intro-level class (which I have to take due to being unable to actually read and physically write kanji particularly well).

Anonymous

Ah, I haven't taken any classes, so no one's forced me to learn anything in particular

Anonymous

That may be a bad thing. I'm not sure :-)

Anonymous

I've always felt much more comfortable with self-directed study, though.

djahandarie

I agree, I like self-study as well, but mainly because I get to avoid things I don't like doing :p.

I needed language credits at my University to graduate anyways so I figured I'd pick Japanese.

It's actually helped me a lot, I couldn't put two and two together when I started last semester.

Anonymous

3:51 AM

Yay!

djahandarie

But the most important thing is that it made me get interested in Japanese grammar, so now I've gone off and learned a bunch of stuff about it.

Anonymous

I've been focusing a bit on grammar lately.

Anonymous

I set a kanji goal and I met it, so I needed another focus. I decided to work on grammar, though I failed to set a specific goal

djahandarie

I'm not too bad at grammar basics now. Enough to acceptably answer a few of the questions here at least.

japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/11135/… is what I currently wish I knew the answer to.

Not that it's really relevant in modern grammar, but it's been bugging me.

I feel like the answer lies somewhere in even older Japanese which will only lead to more mysteries.

Anonymous

Oh, interesting

djahandarie

4:01 AM

You know, I wonder if the polite 形容詞 inflection うございます actually has something to do with 形容詞 being involved with あり sometimes, since ござる and ある are tightly related in classical Japanese.

The thing that led me to that question is wondering why you have things like 重かった which differs from the usual 重いの連用形＋などなど pattern, especially because no 音便 that I was aware of could cause that.

I found out the answer was omokaritari→omokartari->omokattari->omokatta. With 重かりたり being 重く＋あり＋て＋あり itself. Which led to that あり question.

Anonymous

How does 重かった differ from 重いの連用形＋ (suffix)? Isn't it a contraction of 重くありた

djahandarie

Well, it doesn't differ, but it was not immediately clear to me what was happening, compared to 重くない for example, or really anything else you can do with modern Japanese adjectives.

The thing that is still not clear to me is why we don't have 形容詞の連用形＋た (with relevant 音便) for 過去形形容詞

Was that あり doing something semantically relevant there?

Etc.

Totally unrelated, but I've recently been wondering why 即穏便 occurs for 〜う verbs (literally, ending with the kana う, not just -u verbs). E.g., 使う.

One thing I've heard is that the う turns into a consonant "w" in speech which results in a consonant-consonant sequence, causing the 即穏便 to happen, but that analysis doesn't really fit in the framework I'm used to.

Anonymous

4:21 AM

Is that a conversion error for 促音便?

djahandarie

Yeah, sorry.

Anonymous

What I read was the opposite--it doesn't turn into /w/, so much as /w/ disappears before most vowels in modern Japanese

djahandarie

verb's renyoukei + te
=
tsukaite
= { i dropped due to devoice }
tsukate

is what I'm really expecting. The "w" theory I've heard doesn't make sense to me because the renyoukei つかい definitely does not have that "w" in it and it should not appear when the devoice い is dropped.

I'm not sure what you're referring to.

Anonymous

That the /w/ sound disappears before all vowels except /a/ in modern Japanese

Anonymous

And in Classical Japanese, before /u/, I think?

Anonymous

4:31 AM

I haven't really studied Classical Japanese.

Anonymous

It sticks around in 使わない = tukaw-a-nai

Anonymous

It disappears in e.g. tuka(w)-u or tuka(w)-o-u

Anonymous

But I don't really understand this stuff well enough to be explaining it :-)

djahandarie

Oh, so the theory is that the "w" is always there hidden in the stem and only appears in the 未然形 due to the "a"? Interesting. I've only heard the theory that the "u" itself weakens into a "w". I'm not very well-versed in Japanese phonology.

That explanation works nicely for me, I think I'll tentatively adopt it. ;)

Anonymous

Hmmph. ミステリ got corrected to ミステリー on Lang-8, but the wikipedia page for ミステリー is a redirect to ミステリ :-)

jkerian

4:43 AM

am I missing something? or does this phrase certainly exist in Japanese? https://www.google.com/search?q="自転車を走る" (link hopefully working now)

Anonymous

I think this is one of those situations where my dictionaries fail me. I just checked my 集英社 as well as edict, and they both claim it's a 自動詞

Anonymous

But that appears to be a lot of results with を

Anonymous

I've found the same thing with some other verbs. I've read more than once now that Japanese don't always distinguish 自動詞・他動詞 very strictly or at all, and sometimes verbs change from one category to the other

jkerian

@snailplane Like all verbs of motion, it can use を for whatever you run along/through...

but that's different from this case

Anonymous

Oh, I wonder how you explain that in terms of grammar

Anonymous

4:51 AM

Is it still a direct object marker in those cases?

jkerian

I'd argue it is... and we actually have the same thing happen in English. "to run" is generally intransitive, but "to run the Chicago Marathon" is clearly transitive

Anonymous

Thanks, I think this is one of the holes in the basics I need to fill in :-)

jkerian

@snailplane Note that I might be totally alone in thinking of it as still being the direct-object marker... let me grab my DoBJG

Anonymous

Hey, I have that book!

Anonymous

Is it o (3)? "a particle that marks the location from which some movement begins"

jkerian

4:54 AM

It lists it as two different particles, and doesn't seem to refer to it as a direct-object marker anywhere in the o2 section

Anonymous

And o(2)

Anonymous

"A particle which indicates a space in / on / across / through / along which s.o. or s.t. moves"

Anonymous

My study buddy went through all 3 volumes beginning-to-end. (I only have the first two. I bought them a really long time ago but have never read them cover-to-cover)

Anonymous

I've read online several other people suggesting reading them that way.

jkerian

I think... at this point I would benefit from reading the basic one all the way through. I don't think it would have been good for me when I started out

Anonymous

4:57 AM

I've had a really hard time forcing myself to do that. I think I could. Usually I have no problem making myself put effort into studying

jkerian

Too much detailed information without enough context. It would be too hard to tell what the important details were

Anonymous

But right now, er, I don't really want to read them cover-to-cover, let alone all three.

Anonymous

I'm sure I'd benefit from it.

jkerian

I got them when I was doing scanslating

For fan-translators... they should be required. For anyone else, it depends on your curriculum

Anonymous

I got them when I started studying Japanese, which was I think in 1998. My friend recommended them to me along with Japanese for Busy People volume 1 (bleck!)

jkerian

4:58 AM

When I get back... I think I'm going to take a look at o4... I don't think I quite understand that one

djahandarie

Particles still confuse me too. Some people call things like the 「英語」 in 「私は英語が分かる」 a "nominative object" which really, really, bugs and confuses me. How is it an object if it's the nominative case?

Anonymous

I went to Yaohan near Chicago (which has since become Mitsuwa) and bought the first two volumes, because those were the ones they had. I've never seen Advanced on shelf anywhere

Anonymous

(or bought it online)

djahandarie

I do like the idea of analyzing it as an object though (I personally call it a "が-marked object"). It helps me understand why things like 「私が英語が分かる」 are valid.

jkerian

@djahandarie That's actually a pretty big debate. The problem is that particular stative verbs (and basically all keiyoushi), can use が for what appears to be either subject or object

djahandarie

5:01 AM

@jkerian Yeah, the bone I'm picking is calling it the "nominative object".

Anonymous

I know people talk about different ways to classify that, but I feel like I can understand it fine without classifying it, so I haven't ever worried about it too much. :-)

jkerian

I don't get too hung up on the linguistic terminology. Western terms don't exactly line up with Japanese... and the Japanese terms are horribly inconsistent.

djahandarie

I suspect the reason I really like it is because I'm a native English speaker though. Not sure.

Anonymous

Are you thinking of 形容動詞 again?

jkerian

That's an easy example, yes

djahandarie

5:02 AM

Yeah, that is a pretty bad term.

jkerian

(especially when those are placed in the category 'words that conjugate')

Anonymous

Also, 助動詞 isn't the best term

djahandarie

Yup, 「動詞」 strikes again.

Anonymous

Damn you, 動詞!

Anonymous

I'm still learning a number of basic Japanese grammar terms.

Anonymous

5:05 AM

I've learned 5 of the 8 types of particles.

Anonymous

(I can name all eight, but I haven't really learned about three of them yet.)

djahandarie

Nice, I don't have those down yet.

The only one I remember is 準体助詞 because I was reading about them earlier.

Anonymous

Phrasal particles!

Anonymous

格助詞 are case particles

Anonymous

And 格 is, unsurprisingly, "case"

Anonymous

5:07 AM

My book disagrees with Wikipedia on exactly which particles are case particles, though.

Anonymous

I think Wikipedia has the traditional view, while my book tends to use ... hmm, what's the term for the grammar taught to foreigners?

Anonymous

日本語教育

Anonymous

So it says ナ形容詞 and イ形容詞

Anonymous

But I'm not learning exclusively from it, so it works out to roughly the same thing

Anonymous

Specifically, they pulled 「の」 out of the 格助詞 category and gave it its own section.

jkerian

5:17 AM

@snailplane heh... which の?

Anonymous

The 格助詞「の」! Sense 1 in 大辞林 dic.yahoo.co.jp/…

Anonymous

I'm just learning, but the idea of 「の」 as a case particle does seem a little weird to me, anyway. (The whole concept of case particles was based on western grammar in the Meiji era, wasn't it? Sort of grafted-on like attempting to describe English grammar in terms of Latin)

Anonymous

の doesn't quite fit my concept of "genitive case marker"

Anonymous

I read a little about that after reading Dono's description of how 「助動詞」 came to be

Anonymous

But I should probably read more about the subject before I decide to start having opinions. :-D

Anonymous

5:38 AM

books.google.co.jp/…

Troyen

6:05 AM

@Dave When the evaluation ends, would you mind posting the results summary in a meta post for us to look at? A downside of the new system is the summaries are only visible to mods and we don't get the discussion on where we're doing well and where we aren't.

SE has cleared it with the mods on some of the other sites. See the comments on meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/166397/… for more details.

Dave

6:59 AM

@Troyen Sure... but i'm not really clear on what summary you are talking about. Is this a summary that will appear after the evaluation ends? At the moment I don't see anything of much interest...

Troyen

8:02 AM

@Dave I'm told there's a mod panel somewhere that shows the voting breakdowns for each question. Who voted for what isn't really important, but if we have something like 3 people going for "excellent" and 3 people going for "needs improvement" it might be helpful to talk about it.

I don't really have any specifics on where that stuff is located, I just see references to "mod interface", like in the answers on meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/155739/…

Basically, the old community evaluation was very public and was done on a meta post, where each question was an answer and people would vote up or down if they felt the answer was better than other references on that subject. Plus, people could comment to justify things, or suggest ways to make our content better.

The new system uses the review queues which makes doing the evaluation easier, but hides all of the actual site feedback from everyone that isn't a mod. So we don't see that one question is getting say 7 "needs improvement" votes because the answer doesn't answer the question. Unless we manually go into every person's activity history and tally up votes. As opposed to just checking the score on the old evaluation style topic's answers.

So what I'm hoping for is a list of how each evaluation question scored, preferably the +/- breakdown. (Net isn't as helpful because a different number of people potentially evaluated each question)

If that makes sense?

Troyen

9:00 AM

ironic how the chat room is quietest with nine people

xTCx

oh why hello there ! :D

Mechanical snail

9:22 AM

@AndrewGrimm Works for me in Firefox. It correctly links to a percent-encoded URL.

Mechanical snail

9:48 AM

5

Q: Are there any papers etc analyzing Japanese as a language with noun cases rather than particles?

Japanese is often included in lists of agglutinating languages. Many (most?) agglutinating languages are analysed as having case systems. Of course cases and prepositions/postpositions fill the same role, identifying the job of nominals. I have also read that Japanese particles are pronounced ...

codebrain

10:21 AM

hey Ohayo gozaimazu

小太郎

12:52 PM

What's the difference between お嬢さん and 娘さん when referring to someone else's daughter?

Actually, I should make this a full question

小太郎

1:09 PM

0

Q: Difference between the many words for son and daughter

There are three words to refer to somebody else's daughter (According to my dictionary): 娘さん、お嬢さん、令嬢。 There are also three words to refer to somebody else's son: 息子さん、子息、坊ちゃん。 What are the differences between these words? I'll assume politeness, but in what order, and when is each more commonly ...

usage differences

xTCx

7:21 PM

Hi a quick question (which might turn into a discussion - but I didn't want to post a whole new question) ; is 不公平極まる a case of particle omission (を) ?

The full sentence: その意味では、この戦闘は不公平極まるものだ。

Anonymous

7:54 PM

Hmm. Isn't it usually が極まる and を極める?

Anonymous

I don't know how 不公平極まる formed.

xTCx

Hmm... another example is 固定表示される which I'm also not sure about... both make sense to me with を

to be honest..

by the way, I've been using yahoo dictionary since yesterday and it's so much better than the usual japanese-english dictionary!

Anonymous

Well, in that case, it looks like a compound formed by sticking two nouns together, don't you think? A lot of words in Japanese are formed that way. [ 固定 + 表示 ] される

Anonymous

Where, I think, N1 + N2 means N1 modifies N2

Anonymous

Someone else might have a better explanation :-)

Anonymous

8:06 PM

Like, 日本語 = 日本 + 語

xTCx

Hmm... legit argument. I actually parsed it as [固定][表示される] but your explanation makes a lot more sense

Anonymous

I guess sometimes nouns combine with verbs, too? Like えがく　＝　え (picture) + かく (draw)

xTCx

Ohhh good one.. didn't think of it that way...

Anonymous

(Usual disclaimer here: I'm just learning, so I might be more likely than some other people to make mistakes :-)

xTCx

maybe 不公平極まる is not a case of particle omission after all... Now that I think of it, を is when an action is done ON an object, which makes 不公平[を]極まる grammatically incorrect i guess... so "to reach an extreme unfairness" or something like that

Anonymous

8:13 PM

Did you see my question earlier about 極まる versus 極める?

xTCx

nope i didnt

wait ill check it

Anonymous

Oh, well, I was saying, I think 極める takes を, but I don't think 極まる does

xTCx

so what do you think 極まる would take then?

Anonymous

Umm, I can't think of a good particle to stick between those two words.

Anonymous

You'll have to ask someone else!

Anonymous

8:17 PM

But those words are a 自動詞・他動詞 pair

xTCx

ohhhhh right... argh i feel stupid right now -_- obviously then を is not an option

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