Japanese Language

Anonymous

12:52 AM

Questioning the universality of the syllable: evidence from Japanese by Laurence Labrune (2012)

Anonymous

4:21 AM

The entire list of starred messages at the right is about "the SAD"

@jkerian the answer was absent at the time so didn't provide anything at all. Now it's been undeleted again so I gave it the bounty.

jkerian

@snailboat not quite... someone thought my self-tagging with fooding was star-worthy

@hippietrail confusing ><

@snailboat That looks a lot like Jordan's JSL notation. If so, the ones that look confusing (rising after a previous rise) indicate different pitch transition options

Anonymous

@jkerian Can't be.

Anonymous

It says "kòókóó, heiban", which says explicitly it's unaccented

Anonymous

It's just a way of writing LHHH

Kaji

4:36 AM

@snailboat For what it's worth, I can definitely understand the frustration of people when they've put their best they know into an answer and then get told "it's wrong, fix it", but they don't have any idea where to start doing so.

jkerian

how... odd

Anonymous

@Kaji Sometimes it takes a lot of effort (and would take several comments' worth of writing) to explain how to fix something

Anonymous

I think that わけ here is usually written in kana. I'm not sure about your "have sense" translation. I think the literal translation of 訳{わけ} is closer to "reason" (理由) but I don't think it should be taken literally in this construction. — snailboat ♦ 9 hours ago

Anonymous

I didn't really explain what the right answer was here. I don't think that's wrong of me

Anonymous

That would involve, well, writing my own answer.

hippietrail

4:38 AM

when there's such a ton to fix maybe pointing out the biggest or beginnerest thing to fix first

Kaji

@snailboat True, but it's at least offering advice on what's wrong.

That's different than just saying "think about it" or "that's completely wrong", which just leave everyone confused and call for downvotes

(when the person making the call may, in fact, be mistaken himself...)

jkerian

@Kaji It seems to me that this conversation is drifting all over the place. The conversation on meta was about "rude comments", which is actually a completely different conversation than anonymous downvotes

Anonymous

Oh, can you point to one of those comments?

Kaji

I'm sure I can pull something up. Give me a moment.

Anonymous

If a comment is Not Constructive, you can flag it as such.

Anonymous

4:41 AM

Remember, moderators don't necessarily see everything that happens on the site.

hippietrail

by some personal definition of "completely"

jkerian

@hippietrail Well... 'rude comments' actually have solutions. Unfortunately we're kindof stuck with anonymous downvotes unless we decide to do something like leave the stack exchange network as a community...

hippietrail

such comments always seem to be made by people with more invested in the site than me so i hadn't wanted to go around accusing my potential teachers of unconstrucitveness while i was just getting the feel of the place

only stuck if you're accepting defeat against changing the anon downvote culture without trying

jkerian

@hippietrail If something strikes you as insulting, please do flag it. If it's just 'nonhelpful', try to ask for details.

hippietrail

other smaller SE sites managed to control them be appealing to the community. big sites like SO are another kettle of fish.

jkerian

4:44 AM

@hippietrail Anonymous voting (in both directions) is considered a feature of the platform, not a bug of the culture. This has been discussed more times than you would believe on the central meta-site.

hippietrail

having meta conversations to address issues is also a feature of the platform

Anonymous

@hippietrail Funny, the other SE sites I participate in have more negativity, not less...

hippietrail

so is a comment system that lets us say whatver we want

jkerian

Ironically, the last time I was in a major argument over voting on this site... it was against people who were freaking out about upvotes :/

hippietrail

so is a moderation system that lets a few people go clean up the comments

@snailboat: really? am i just lucky? (-:

Anonymous

4:45 AM

But you should clean up your own comments when possible.

jkerian

@snailboat I can't say much about the other SE sites... as I'm only really active on SO

Anonymous

@jkerian Try visiting English.SE sometime :-)

jkerian

(and a moderator queue that is several thousand flags deep is a rather different experience than here)

Anonymous

Eh, that queue is a lost cause.

hippietrail

ja has been the most negative one i've been this heavily involved in. in the past few days i haven't noticed it though. also when i was here a couple of years ago it was getting very negative too, but with different people and behaviours

Anonymous

4:46 AM

It basically reflects a design problem.

Kaji

At least it lets you get your badges in short order?

Anonymous

@hippietrail Tokyo Nagoya isn't here at the moment.

hippietrail

linguistics.SE seems to dislike votes of any kind

Kaji

Oh?

Anonymous

Linguistics.SE is dysfunctional as a SE site.

hippietrail

4:48 AM

travel.SE seems pretty healthy voteswise though there are blow ups now and then with somebody storming off or getting banned from chat for other reasons usually political or cultural (not SE culture)

jkerian

I haven't ever found JLSE to be terrifically negative... but there are different groups of people who keep trying to make the site exclusive: "exclusively for advanced learners" or "exclusively for beginners", and project hostility to anyone outside of that group.

Anonymous

Ling.SE might be better thought of as a forum where people post stuff

hippietrail

yep but i still get good answers at lingSE so i'm not going to give up on it. i'll just treat it as a sleeper

i hate any such exclusivity shite. we get accused of it on travel.SE sometimes and the accusers are just wrong

Kaji

SO is the only SE site I've ever felt to be outright hostile, but this is the only one I've really felt any desire to participate in on a regular basis

I poke around on other ones for fun reading now and then though (e.g. code golf)

hippietrail

my previous stint here there were people railing against "linguistics" taking over the site

Anonymous

4:50 AM

Yeah, SO is hostile, and it's not terribly high quality on average, but it has such huge volume that it ends up having a large number of high quality posts anyway

Anonymous

@hippietrail I think that was just Dave M G

Anonymous

Anyway, it doesn't seem to have affected anything

Anonymous

People still talk about linguistics here :-)

hippietrail

SO is in the same state as wikipedia these days. you have to treat it like going into a cage with lions

Kaji

hehehe...

Anonymous

4:51 AM

Although more often we have relatively basic questions these days.

Kaji

Ironically, I've picked up 5 gold badges and a handful of silver ones since leaving there

hippietrail

i couldn't care less about the politicking and wotnot that must go on at SO because i never felt a need to nurture it. i just ask my hard questions there and if i'm on a buzz i stick in the odd missing answer

Kaji

@snailboat Nothing wrong with basic questions. Sometimes there's actually a good bit of room for adding depth in an answer.

jkerian

@snailboat I have noticed that... I don't consider it a problem unless it seems like it's driving off the more advanced ones

Anonymous

@Kaji I like basic questions.

hippietrail

4:52 AM

i'll felt some negativity against some of my questions as being too basic

Anonymous

@jkerian I didn't say it was bad that we had basic questions.

jkerian

But we suffer from the same problem as all language learning sites. Somewhere at around 3 years of language study, you're able to switch most of your question-asking over to native speakers/sites.

Kaji

I was somewhat amused when Tsuyoshi commented on my 〜てほしい question that I'd attempted harder ones before. Not sure if it was surprise or disdain on his part, so I left that comment alone.

Anonymous

That was not Tsuyoshi Ito.

Kaji

In the end, though, much of what one can and can't answer depends on what they've been exposed to

Anonymous

4:53 AM

That was Tokyo Nagoya and I removed his comment.

Kaji

Ah, right

hippietrail

i get the impression some people wanted a EL&U for japanese - but with an english interface - or maybe they were just waiting for the interface to go japanese too ...

Anonymous

What's EL&S?

Kaji

^ ditto

hippietrail

argh EL&U

premature senility )-:

Anonymous

4:54 AM

I'm not terribly happy with ELU.

Anonymous

It is, however, much more active than this site

Kaji

Well, there are more English speakers/learners

Anonymous

Yes.

hippietrail

i just go there when i have a question or when i'm wondering something and it's already addressed there

Anonymous

But also, this site is in English :-)

hippietrail

4:55 AM

bingo!

Kaji

This one might pull in more Japanese users if the site were in Japanese, but I think that might cause a bit of an expectation that the questions (and answers) be in Japanese as well, which could put up a rather high barrier for beginners

hippietrail

it might seem that a single site for native speakers usage question and foreign learners beginners question can't work - since EL&U has split off ELL

Kaji

A selectable interface would be ideal

Anonymous

I checked earlier, and ELU had closed 22 of the last 50 questions.

Kaji

...wow

Anonymous

4:56 AM

Despite that, they don't manage to keep a very high standard of quality

Kaji

Makes you wonder what counts as an acceptable question on there

hippietrail

so far JL is really JLL and there is no JL&U - though if the japanese only posts i can't read are full of native speaker level usage concerns then that would also be awesome (-:

Anonymous

@hippietrail No, it's not really either of the sites. It's its own thing.

Kaji

On that note, are Japanese-only posts allowed on here?

hippietrail

i think a selectable interface language would create a mismatch with nonselectable question language

Anonymous

4:57 AM

If you like!

hippietrail

SL went all native some time ago

Anonymous

If someone asks a question in English, though, it would be best to answer in English.

Kaji

Oh, definitely

jkerian

@Kaji Yes, actually... there was a discussion of that several years ago

hippietrail

i think any combination of Japanese and English should be OK

jkerian

4:57 AM

(cripes we've been in beta for a long time)

Anonymous

@hippietrail Tsuyoshi Ito argued early on that this site should be primarily for discussion of Japanese in English

Anonymous

In general people have stuck to that, but not exclusively

hippietrail

responders should answer in like language if they are capabable, and if not then nice people should contribute translations

Kaji

On one level it's understandable, if your goal is to make it as widely accessible to learners as possible

But at the same time allowing questions in all-Japanese allows for greater practice with it

hippietrail

some people have an intuition that they should personally find every question interesting

jkerian

4:58 AM

Here's the rules link with a link to the meta discussion about it

hippietrail

i see nothing wrong with people only seeing or caring about some subset of questions - if the site ever did go big that's what would have to happen anyway

Kaji

Isn't that one of the reasons for the tag feature? Follow the ones you want?

Anonymous

Uh oh. You're going to set off grumpy over there.

hippietrail

in other sites with growing problems i actively posted questions aimed at the undefined edges to try to prod people into deciding what the edges were

jkerian

mumbles something about the uselessness of tags

hippietrail

5:01 AM

@Kaji: indeed. though tags can't do everything. sometimes i just start reading questions and know i know nothing close to the topic so don't proceed

Kaji

hehehe...

Anonymous

I don't see any not constructive flags in the flag history.

jkerian

@snailboat For little sites like ours, I really wish we could get a full site RSS feed. Every question, every answer, every edit, and every comment.

Anonymous

If you see rude comments, please flag them!

Kaji

So, I know I'm going to tap on a slightly delicate subject here, but just out of curiosity...

...is there any progress on the Japanese Culture proposal?

Anonymous

5:04 AM

It probably won't happen

Kaji

Because last I checked it seemed like questions about culturally-oriented vocabulary are kind of homeless on the basis that it might come to be

Anonymous

That's not the case

Anonymous

We don't take its existence or non-existence into account when deciding what's off-topic here

Kaji

I'd seen it pop up on a couple of occasions when browsing meta, which is why I asked

jkerian

I think japanese-culture se is mostly doomed because its definition is pretty much subsumed by expats

Kaji

5:06 AM

Half-expected my 雷門 question to be flagged for possibly infringing on it

And the rest by anime.se

Anonymous

Infringing?

Kaji

Like I said, I recall seeing a rules post on meta where the poster discussed how culture posts shouldn't be here because they would be stealing content from it

Anonymous

That meta post is wrong.

jkerian

@Kaji "invading another sites territory" only hits you when you're trying to define a site that directly competes or creates a subset

Kaji

Ah, found it: meta.japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/796/…

"A "Japan Culture" SE is currently being proposed in Area 51 as of October 2013. If becomes a site, it would be entirely unfair and wrong of us to "steal" what should be their content."

Anonymous

5:08 AM

Fixed :-)

Kaji

Thanks!

jkerian

yeah... that was not, you'll note... in my original version of that

Anonymous

Ahh, I see where it got added

Anonymous

Thank you for pointing that out!

Kaji

I appreciate the clarification, it's had me wondering about where the line should be

No problem!

Anonymous

5:09 AM

No, Stack Exchange sites don't really take into account "this would be on-topic elsewhere" as a reason for being off-topic.

Anonymous

I mean, sometimes users close questions for that reason, but they're not s'posta :-)

Kaji

hehehe...

jkerian

I think as a side comment it would be fine "For questions related to the culture, look into supporting the japanese culture se"

Anonymous

There are sites with overlapping topicality.

hippietrail

japanese culture and expats are completely different

Kaji

5:10 AM

Yeah, occasionally I've seen SO comments such as "This should be on SF or SU", and rarely cross-site moves of such questions

jkerian

@hippietrail They should be different, but look at the questions under japanese culture

Kaji

@hippietrail Never been to expats, what's it like over there?

hippietrail

anyway there's a whole blog post about when topics cross over the fields of multiple sites... look up peewee herman ...

Blog - Stack Exchange: The Pee-Wee Herman Rule

Jeff Atwood on November 29, 2010

I recently had a long discussion on gaming meta regarding “Help me remember this game” questions. I’ll spare you all the gory details; my general conclusion was this:

If we get an excellent user who asks a good, thoughtful [game] identification question and sticks around in our community to participate, then it’s worth allowing it in those rare cases as a high quality “getting to know you” fun question.

This reminded me of a conversation I once had on Server Fault Chat about mod rewrite questions. This is a true gray area in our network. It’s tricky, bec …

Anonymous

@Kaji It's okay to say "this is off-topic here, but it would be fine there", but not "this is off-topic here because it's on-topic there"

Kaji

Ah, think I remember seeing that one

hippietrail

5:12 AM

i'm not and never have been an expat. but i've been to japan seven times.

so i've had plenty of japanese culture WTF moments

Anonymous

Japanese Culture looks like it's on track to get enough followers! But it won't have anywhere near enough 10-rated questions.

Anonymous

That's why I said it probably won't happen :-(

Kaji

Unfortunately the number of questions you can propose and votes you can cast is disproportionate to the number of followers needed

Anonymous

Same thing at the Korean proposal

Kaji

Even if you get all the necessary followers, you still need an extra half or so to get approval, from what it looks like

Either that, or there are several followers who haven't done either. I haven't really done the math.

hippietrail

5:16 AM

anyone remember the recent question about the variability in pronunciation and spelling of borrowed words ending in vowels sometimes long sometimes not?

Anonymous

You need 40 questions with a score of 10, so that's 400 votes assuming no one wastes any, and each user gets 5 votes, which means you need 80 users minimum who spend all their votes. But you only need 60 followers.

Anonymous

Yes

Kaji

@hippietrail Yep. Have an answer on that one.

hippietrail

i need to post a link to it in response to a response to a comment i posted on something else (-:

Kaji

Just a moment

-1

A: ブラウザ or ブラウザー? Words borrowed from English which end with -er

Observations seem to indicate the extended version is preferred. I tend to liken it to some British English accents where the final R is more of an extended A sound (e.g. "bar" sounds like "baa").

hippietrail

5:17 AM

@hippietrail When does kana fail to accurately represent rendaku and long vowels? (Also, what do you mean by "mute vowels"?) — senshin 6 mins ago

Anonymous

@hippietrail Kana fails to represent long vowels, sometimes, when spelling differs from pronunciation, I think

Anonymous

I can't think of when kana fails to represent rendaku...

Kaji

I've seen something along those lines in some 東北 dialects

e.g. あたらしい => あだらしい

hippietrail

yeah i wasn't sure about the rendaku thing but we have lots of experts who can chime in and correct me

Yang Muye

By some old conventions, only voiceless kana are used.

Anonymous

5:21 AM

@YangMuye Oh, that's true, and you do see that in very tiny furigana sometimes still

Kaji

@YangMuye Good point! Classical Japanese largely doesn't use 濁点 at all

Yang Muye

It seems to be an invention of the Portuguese.

Kaji

(renderings sometimes add it in, much like how they change む to ん, but it's not in the original texts)

hippietrail

i have 80km to hitchhike to sapporo so i'm gonna quit now - but somebody should post a question about what you guys just spotted with rendaku stuff so it doesn't get lost

Kaji

Have fun!

hippietrail

5:22 AM

see you all soon

Anonymous

A question about what exactly?

Anonymous

See you!

Kaji

I think he wants us to post about when rendaku doesn't show up

hippietrail

> By some old conventions, only voiceless kana are used.
> @YangMuye Oh, that's true, and you do see that in very tiny furigana sometimes still

jkerian

I was apparently too subtle here... I thought I was pretty clear about "edit out flatly wrong part of your answer please"

Anonymous

5:29 AM

It's pretty clear. They may not agree, so they may not want to edit it

Kaji

I think @snailboat hit it

Plus it's a new user, so they probably aren't particularly aware of the norms or expectations yet

Chocolate

質問してもいいでしょうか・・・

definitely と definitivelyは、どう違いますか

japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/15734/…　ここにdefinitivelyって書かれてますが

私の小さい辞書には definitely と definitive までしか載ってません

オンライン辞書(英和辞書ですけど)でも見たけど、ほとんど例文が載ってない

Kaji

"definitely" means that something is certain or absolute.

"definitively" means that something sets the standard (it's the adverbial form of "define")

jkerian

(might want to edit the message)

Anonymous

@Chocolate Definitively 〜 conclusively, finally, decisively

Kaji

5:40 AM

@jkerian Didn't know that was possible, thanks for pointing that out!

jkerian

I rather seriously miss that capability when I go back to IRC these days

Chocolate

ありがとうございます～う~ん難しい・・・なんとなくわかったような・・・

Kaji

On an aside, had an awesome time last weekend! Attended the Princeton Japanese Pedagogy Forum

Felt good actually being in an environment where I could have extended spoken conversations in Japanese again; not too many people to practice with where I live right now

Chocolate

プリンストンといえば・・・

誰か住んでたような・・・sawaさんじゃなくてTsuyoshiItoさんかな

Kaji

ニュージャージー州のプリンストン大学

あぁ、そうか？

Anonymous

5:47 AM

Poor Yakobu

Kaji

What's up?

Chocolate

Oh no, Tsuyoshi san has removed his location information

あら・・・。すみません、私、やこぶさんをいじめましたか？

Anonymous

@Chocolate Oh, no, it's not that

Anonymous

It's just that it seems like he's trying to help but he's slightly confused

Anonymous

I sympathize because I'm often slightly confused :-)

Kaji

5:56 AM

I know that feeling every now and then

There were a couple of points during the lectures last weekend where it was slightly frustrating because I'm sitting there like, "OK—I know every word they're saying, and should know all the grammar, but I'm still not keeping up somehow..."

I guess I'm just far too accustomed to reading text and being able to refer back for context

Anonymous

Yeah, when we read we can choose our own pace, but when listening we can't

Kaji

It was kind of funny in one of the lectures because the presenter was talking about how they'd measured the rate of the examples on the disc provided with her class's textbook (based on morae per second) versus what she called "natural speech"

But her own speech during the presentation was at least 50% faster than the "natural" rate she sampled for us during the presentation

Anonymous

Well, people also vary a lot in how quickly they talk.

Kaji

True

Anonymous

I recall one story about a student who spoke English really slowly, and they tried to get her to speak at a "natural rate"

Anonymous

6:00 AM

Then they discovered when she spoke in Japanese, she spoke that very slowly too :-)

Anonymous

It was just her normal pace.

Anonymous

When learning by listening, ideally you'd be able to control the speed of the audio and rewind as necessary

Anonymous

That would give you the same advantages you have in print

Kaji

True

But at the same time there's something about the ephemeral nature of conversation that's important to get accustomed to as well

As it turns out I made friends with a J-E (J-native) conference interpreter that weekend, so I asked him if he dealt with the same kind of issues I was dealing with—

Essentially, translating every word mentally as you listen and not being able to string them together

His advice based on personal experience for that was to focus less on the individual words and more on trying to pick out the key themes and filling in the gaps logically from there

Anonymous

I'd read a good study about students controlling their own listening speed during listening practice using recordings, but I can't find it now

Anonymous

6:10 AM

I did find this: academia.edu/2064584/The_Tape_is_too_fast

Kaji

The pull quote about not recognizing words in speech is definitely on the mark at times

What with how many words sound similar in Japanese

Honestly, that's one of my strategies—using kanji to visualize the word and try to figure out either which one they used or which one I'm looking for

Thanks for the link!

jkerian

6:30 AM

@Kaji I'm pretty much forced to do that here.

Anonymous

6:43 AM

Hehe. My latest question, I'd already learned before... But I forgot entirely!

Kaji

It's always fun seeing new patterns show up on here. Think that's one of the things I love best about this site.

It lets me benefit from the experience of everyone else's exposure to new content

Chocolate

8:09 AM

あと一時間・・・　japanese.stackexchange.com/users/4032/tokyo-nagoya

でも、きっともう、帰ってこないかな・・・

おや。いきなり部屋がすいている。

Anonymous

@Chocolate Oh :-(

Anonymous

8:40 AM

@jkerian But, but, we're getting more activity over time! :-)

Anonymous

1078

Japanese Language – japanese.stackexchange.com

Beta Q&A site for students, teachers, and linguists wanting to discuss the finer points of the Japanese language.

Currently in public beta.

Anonymous

Compare this to our lull a year ago

Anonymous

14

A: What does the community team think about our site?

What does the team think about your site? You're on the road to graduation. The only thing stopping you from graduating has been on our end - namely that we haven't had a site design prepared. Until recent months, Jin has been overworked by us as our only designer on the site end of things. In ...

Chocolate

8:52 AM

だってさぁ・・・

in 日本語で, May 3 at 5:47, by Tokyo Nagoya

@Chocolate 誰が地方公務員やねん。しかも帰ってきた訳やないし。ちょっと寄ってみただけや。とにかく、話しかけんといてや。ホンマここけーへんさかい。今から傷心の一人旅に出るわ。‌ほなお元気で。

He said "Don't talk to me"

and「ホンマここけーへんさかい」

jkerian

@snailboat I actually haven't looked in a bit, thanks

We had several red-colors on that summary, last time I looked

@Chocolate :/

Tim

10:18 AM

@Kaji Hi Kaki-san, I think that is good advice. I can't remember the numbers but we retain more of what we see than we hear and apparently, even in our own native languages, we pick up a much lower %age of what is said than we think. We have speech patterns programmed in our brains and we guess what we don't by matching what we do to the closest speech pattern and guessing the rest.

Japanese is challenging because the patterns are so different and we have not got them properly hard-coded.

Chocolate

10:39 AM

I want this

heinz.co.uk/en/Products/Salad-Cream/Products/Heinz-Salad-Cream

日本で売ってないよね

Tim

1:16 PM

@Chocolate なるほど。このweb sites から注文できるみたい：

britishsupermarketworldwide.com/acatalog/info_31904.html

britsuperstore.com/acatalog/Heinz_Salad_Cream.html

You might also be able to get brands popular in the UK from Aus or NZ:

aussieproducts.com/prodinfo.asp?number=BFHSCR

Andrew Grimm

@jkerian have you ever deleted such comments in the past? I doubt it.

Tim

イギリスのmarketing research cos　は　イギリスの家族を２つに分けている：salad cream が好きな家族と　mayonaise が好きな家族だよ、僕は mayonaiseが好きな家族からだ。僕の好きなHellmans mayonaise が日本で Bestfoods no

mayonaise として売られているから

Chocolate のように salad cream　に憧れていない

Yang Muye

1:38 PM

@Chocolate,@Yange Muye : I don't think the OP needs "probably" in the sentence. — Tim 15 hours ago

@Tim, I don't think でしょう is the same as "probably"

It can be "must".

@Chocolate,@Yange Muye : I think a possible context is either a Will (遺言）or if a soldier writes a letter to his wife and then gives it to a comrade and says "please give this letter to my wife if I die". The OP's statement would appear in the letter. The writer uses "if you are reading this" rather than "if you have read this" because it gives the feeling of conversation to the reader and it it is irrelevant if she has completely read it. On the other "If you have received this letter" would be ok (because she would not receive it if the writer had not died) — Tim 15 hours ago

It looks similar to my previous comment.

21 hours ago, by Yang Muye

I still haven't fully understood the grammar of the English sentence "If You're Reading This, I'm Already Dead." In Chinese, if I speak from the point of view of current, I will not use “if”. I speak from the point of view of future, “if” can be used and it roughly means the same as “because”.

So if/なら actually has two functions: 1) A will cause B to happen 2) B can be inferred from A.

Tim

@YangMuye Yes, I agree. It depends on context and even several translations are possible. (In English "I think"/ "I expect that" might also work.)

jkerian

@AndrewGrimm haha... uhm... yes. We'll just leave that as 'yes'.

Yang Muye

I feel でしょう sounds like you are thinking while speaking.

You are imagining the future scene.

jkerian

@AndrewGrimm: Be honest with me here... is nonsense like "I doubt it" what you would call being civil?

Tim

I suggested taking it out because the OP did not use the word and, on the assumption they were looking for equivalent translations, decided it was best left out (even though I automatically included it in my first response because it would be a natural addition to such a statement in English)

Yang Muye

1:49 PM

As for the difference between たなら and ているなら, I don't know how they are used in Japanese. But I think sometimes た doesn't imply an finished action. e.g. when you see a infant laugh, you say 笑った, even though he is still laughing.

Tim

@YangMuye yes I think I see where you are coming from on the でしょう　(if not なら）

jkerian

@YangMuye Non-passive verb applied to the moment the action started... has always been my interpretation

Yang Muye

@Tim English usually uses “will” in the future tense and occasionally leave it out while Japanese usually doesn't use “する” but sometimes uses “するだろう”. I don't know why.

Tim

@YangMuye I'll be back in 20-30 mins but (briefly) I tried to cut that たなら vs ているなら in my answer to the OP's question because I thought it was secondary to what was being asked.

Ariane

5:08 PM

Fairly off-topic, but I figured people here might know. I love to sit in seiza position. It's really comfortable to me. I sit that way on chairs all the time. I just don't find it comfortable at all to sit with my legs downwards. I don't really understand why.

So I figured it was fine to sit this way. But a friend of mine says that it's bad for the ankles, because it stretches them out so much and puts weight on them. I'm trying to find information on this, but I can't seem to find anything. I read contradictory stuff about knees, and stuff about how cutting circulation then restoring it can be unhealthy, and also stuff about how "if it's uncomfortable you shouldn't do it if you can avoid it". But it IS comfortable to me. So I'm confused.

And so I really don't know where else to ask.

Kaji

I don't know where to refer you to for information offhand, but I do know that I've always found it uncomfortable personally when I've had to remain in it for long periods of time. But then, I have rather large thighs, so that might be part of the reason.

Anonymous

5:59 PM

jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jpa/24/2/24_2_167/_article

Ariane

6:55 PM

@snailboat Thanks, but uhm... I can't be sure because I was never able to read English scientific texts very well (I'm a native French speaker), but basically, doesn't this study only say that legs are temporarily under-oxigenated and numb during seiza and take a while to recover from that? Because that doesn't sound like it would cause any long-term issues.

Anonymous

I was actually looking at the section titled "Introduction", which glosses over some previous research:

Anonymous

> It is reported that due to large knee flexion, Seiza has harmful effects on not only the skeletal system but also the hemodynamics of lower limbs. For example, Mori (1982) reported that Seiza occludes blood flows of lower limbs because of compression by the weight of the upper body. Nagasue (1994) also reported that repeated Seiza in daily life could be a cause of popliteal arterial constriction or obstruction.

Anonymous

I don't see a specific cite for the claim about the skeletal system

Ariane

Hmm. Odd. So far it sounds like all this research only proves scientifically that seiza makes your legs wobbly for a while. But I doubt that's actually it.

Anonymous

This actual paper is focused on just one specific point.

Anonymous

7:03 PM

I haven't taken the time to read the whole thing. (I don't sit seiza, so . . .)

Ariane

I see. Hmm, well, thanks anyway.

Anonymous

7:18 PM

You could always send them an email asking for their source for "Seiza has harmful effects on ... the skeletal system" if you wanted

Andrew Grimm

10:55 PM

@jkerian I shouldn't have said that. I'll try to be more civil in the future.

I'd appreciate it if you were more civil in the future as well.

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