Japanese Language

Anonymous

12:07 AM

@ssb "bean" /biːn/ is a possible stressed pronunciation of been in British English, but not generally in American English

Anonymous

So it depends on what sort of pronunciation they're aiming for (...if any)

ssb

Right, that's why I'm always hesitant

it's not wrong, but..

usually I opt not to say anything about it though!

though I will never capitulate to those who say "ben" instead of "bin"

Anonymous

Hehe!

Anonymous

There's a lot of stuff about English pronunciation I never knew growing up.

Anonymous

Like the is different for most speakers in the egg and the ham

ssb

12:24 AM

I realized that only recently

Anonymous

It's the sort of thing they don't tell native speakers in school, presumably because there's no need to

Anonymous

Probably we only learn about differences in school that are reflected in spelling

Anonymous

Some native speakers think there's only one <th> sound

Anonymous

That's how much power I think spelling has on how we think about language

Anonymous

Spelling certainly shaped how I thought about English sounds growing up.

Anonymous

12:28 AM

I think we native speakers of English tend to think of the sound written <ch> as something other than <t> + <sh>

Anonymous

I like kana. It may not be a perfect representation of Japanese sounds, but it's so much closer than our English spelling is to our pronunciation :-)

Anonymous

1:35 AM

I'm sure you're onto something, but I still don't quite get it. If the roots are s- and k-, why not sanai and kanai like other 5dan verbs? — dainichi 17 mins ago

Anonymous

That's a great question! I have absolutely no idea what the answer is :-)

Anonymous

I wish retagging didn't flood the recent questions list with old questions.

Kaji

@snailboat Agreed on retagging

I actually have the documentation to answer dainichi's question; working on putting it in an understandable form right now. Feedback once it's posted would be awesome!

Anonymous

Hooray!

Anonymous

I don't know about that stuff, so I can't really provide feedback, but it sounds neat

Anonymous

1:53 AM

> I can't find any examples of particles being appended to どの. For meanings along those lines, see どれ below.

Anonymous

@Kaji That's because どの is a 連体詞.

Anonymous

I think that as with most other question words, the particles are used in construction with the interrogative phrase どの appears in, so どの人も for example

Kaji

Ah, I see what you're saying now.

Anonymous

It just happens that with a lot of the interrogative words, they can form interrogative phrases entirely on their own

Kaji

Also, expanded answer posted

Anonymous

1:55 AM

Just like in English, a lot of wh phrases consist of only a single wh word, but they can be bigger: [Which of the hamsters] was the cutest?

Kaji

Right

Anonymous

(Answer: Stripey boy. He's the cutest hamster.)

Kaji

hehehe...

Anonymous

Anonymous

Oh, your answer about く・す is much longer now!

Kaji

1:58 AM

Just a bit

I needed breakfast, which is why I didn't post a longer bit at the time

Anonymous

Say, aren't there other verbs that are monomoraic in predicative form in Classical Japanese?

Anonymous

得（う）

Kaji

Could be. I realized after posting that there was in fact more than 2 (e.g. I noted 寝【ぬ】 in my updated answer)

Anonymous

I enjoy learning about Classical Japanese, but what little I've learned has always been secondary to Modern Japanese

Anonymous

(Since there's so much Modern Japanese I need to learn!)

Kaji

1:59 AM

hehehe...

So true

If you haven't come across it before, this site has some awesome information for getting started with Classical Japanese: sengokudaimyo.com/bungo/bungo.html

Anonymous

Ah, thank you! I have some books to read through eventually.

Kaji

Not a problem!

Anonymous

I know a little bit of the basics.

Kaji

Also, if you're looking for reading practice there's UVA's archive at etext.lib.virginia.edu/japanese/texts/…

It's hard to grasp in isolation, even if you know Japanese

I read through the entire 古今集 via the site linked above, and as a result I've gotten to where I can understand the gist of things pretty well, but composing in classical Japanese is still a bit difficult

Another interesting thing I discovered along the way is that the word 思う seems to be exempt from the mora-count requirements in traditional tanka—it almost always counts as 2 morae instead of 3 in poems that otherwise comply with the 5-7-5-7-7 pattern

Anonymous

Oh, that's unexpected

Kaji

2:07 AM

For a little while I wondered if it was an alternate reading, perhaps, but the dictionaries I've checked don't offer any alternatives to おもふ as the reading

Anonymous

　得・来・為・つ・寝・経・む・ゆ・る　　←　The ones in kana are auxiliaries
（う・く・す・つ・ぬ・ふ・む・ゆ・る）

Anonymous

And of course there's auxiliary す and ぬ and ふ too but they didn't fit neatly into my chart :-)

Anonymous

I guess I could count ず and づ

Kaji

づ? Only case I can think of would be 出づ, which would put 出【い】 in the group if classified as such

Anonymous

Well, づ is a reduced form of いづ

Anonymous

2:19 AM

I see a cite for plain ol' づ in 旺文社古語辞典

Anonymous

「恋しけば袖(そで)も脹らむを武蔵野(むさしの)のうけらが花の色にづなゆめ」＜万・14・3376＞

Kaji

Interesting

Anonymous

It makes sense, since it eventually gave rise to でる rather than the expected いでる

Kaji

(speaking of which, I really wish they'd publish a digital version of that reference!)

Anonymous

I have it on my 電子辞書

Kaji

2:23 AM

...oh?

Anonymous

If you mean 旺文社

Kaji

Yeah

I've got two different printed editions, but never found anything else

Anonymous

Yeah, it came with both 旺文社古語辞典 and 旺文社全訳古語辞典

Kaji

Nice

Anonymous

It's on my EX-WORD XD-N10000

Anonymous

2:23 AM

casio.jp/exword/products/XD-N10000

Kaji

Awesome. I'll have to keep that in mind.

Anonymous

I really love this dictionary. It's got the 精選版 of 日本国語大辞典, along with 広辞苑 and 明鏡国語辞典. This last I didn't realize I'd want before I got it, but it's become my favorite--it has some of the best grammar explanations out of my 7 国語辞典

Anonymous

Along with the two cited 旺文社 dictionaries, the NHK漢字表記辞典, the NHK pitch accent dictionary

Anonymous

It has 新漢語林 for a 漢和辞典 which is pretty nice, though I think maybe I would have liked 漢字源 better

Anonymous

And then it has a whole slew of E-J and J-E dictionaries

Anonymous

2:26 AM

A bunch of E-E dictionaries too, but most of them are actually available online for free anyway

Anonymous

Anyway, I'm really glad I got the EX-WORD :-)

Kaji

hehehe...

I've got a couple of interesting ones I've picked up along the way

Anonymous

I was drooling over it for about a year before I bought it. My friends kept telling me not to ("no one uses one of those these days! Just use your cell phone! Jeez")

Kaji

OS X used to have some really nice ones built into its earlier versions that I guess it lost the license to; I dug them up and added them back anyway.

Anonymous

I've got a bunch of paper dictionaries, but it really is a lot more convenient using this thing, especially if I'm reading in bed or such

Anonymous

2:27 AM

Yeah, they switched companies

Kaji

One of my favorites is the 類語例解辞典, which provides detailed 使い分け for thousands of words

Anonymous

Ah, I have that on my 電子辞書 too!

Kaji

Awesome tool, isn't it?

Anonymous

Apple's contract with Shogakukan expired, so they lost the rights to 大辞泉 and the Progressive J-E/E-J dictionaries. They switched to Sanseido, so now they carry 大辞林 and the Wisdom J-E/E-J

Anonymous

That's mostly okay with me--I'd rather have 大辞林 than 大辞泉 on my phone anyway, although the two dictionaries are very similar

Kaji

2:30 AM

Yeah

I imported the old dictionary files from a computer that still had Leopard on it, so I've got all 5 on my current laptop. It's interesting comparing them at times.

Anonymous

(I have an iPhone, and I was rather surprised when I updated it and 大辞泉 disappeared!)

Anonymous

Yeah, I've still got them on my Mac.

Anonymous

0

Q: Download OSX Dictionary files

I just got a new Mac a few weeks ago running Moutain Lion (10.8), and I've noticed that they changed the available Japanese dictionaries that are included in the Dictionary.app application. The new ones are ウィズダム英和・和英辞典 and スーパー大辞林. I know the previous version of the OS (Lion - 10.7) had the プロ...

Kaji

大辞林 is definitely far superior though, especially when classical Japanese and pitch accent are involved

Anonymous

Hehe.

Kaji

2:31 AM

Oh, did you know that 大辞林 is available for free on the iPhone? Even in the US store

Anonymous

Oh, an app for it?

Kaji

Yep!

Anonymous

That makes sense, since 大辞林 comes preinstalled on all iPhones through the integrated dictionary interface anyway

Kaji

Pretty nice one, too

Anonymous

(Though the built-in interface is pretty terrible!)

Kaji

2:32 AM

Hmmm...japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/16071/why-are-来る-and-する-irreg‌ular/16073?noredirect=1#comment36125_16073

Anonymous

Fixed URL:

Anonymous

@kaji I don't really know much about old Japanese and the forms listed there, though. — KingPumpkin 6 mins ago

Kaji

Thanks, I don't know how to link comments or answers in here

Not sure how to update or fix to resolve his issue. I explain a lot of the essentials as I go along...

Thoughts?

Anonymous

Shrug!

Anonymous

They weren't very specific about their problem.

Kaji

2:35 AM

Fair enough

jkerian

3:21 AM

@Kaji I like your answer, I just don't like the question

Kaji

Yeah, I've decided that one's gotten enough attention.

Having to explain the verb groupings or the six 形 in greater detail would be material for another question if he still needs that information

jkerian

It is, fundamentally, a resource question...

Kaji

Oh, you're referring to the chart question

Sorry, thought this was about the irregular verbs

jkerian

yeah, sorry

Kaji

hehehe...

It's all good

Truthfully, it's about as blatant of a resource question as you get—he was asking for a chart explicitly

I could see value in providing a reference answer with the information, so I decided to play ball and answer anyway, although as you can see in the chat log it snowballed a bit when it turned out there were more words than I'd realized at the outset

Anonymous

3:29 AM

@jkerian I edited this question to fix its mistake:

Anonymous

6

Q: What does the "〜やしない" conjugation mean?

In episode 76 of Fairy Tail, Gildarts said this to Natsu: 本気でそう思ったら、止めやしないよ。 (honki de sou omottara, tomeyashinai yo) Which was translated in the subtitle as: If that's what you honestly believe, I won't stop you. I thought "I won't stop you" would simply be "tomenai yo", so I'm kind ...

conjugations negative-forms anime

Anonymous

@jkerian I felt like it was the right thing to do because the answers are about 〜やしない and I think we decided that "typo questions" like that were off-topic, so editing it saved it and made it easier to find the answers

Kaji

@snailboat Posted a question regarding the 思ふ phenomenon I mentioned earlier, if you're curious to see some examples: japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/16078/mora-count-for-思ふ-in-classical‌-japanese

Anonymous

But I thought I'd bounce this off other people and see if anyone thought I should roll it back

Anonymous

@Kaji You have the same problem Tim does with a browser that doesn't URI escape when you copy from the URL bar, I think

Kaji

3:31 AM

Possibly. I use Safari exclusively.

Anonymous

So your URLs are gettin' broked, but it seems to work anyway since the site only cares about the numbers part :-)

Kaji

hehehe...

Anonymous

If you'd like to fix that, you can use the "share" feature, which will give you a special shortened link without that stuff hanging off the end.

Anonymous

I +1ed your question

Kaji

Thanks!

jkerian

3:34 AM

@snailboat yeah, that seems right

Anonymous

Speaking of which, I should tell @Tim about using the "share" feature, too! :-)

Anonymous

Tim is a fellow Mac user, and I think he uses Safari, too.

Kaji

hehehe...

Is there a similar way to generate links to specific comments or answers?

Wait, I see share for answers

Not comments, though

Anonymous

That's true, you'd have to edit the comment links by hand...

Anonymous

Not URI escaped: http://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/16071/why-are-来る-and-する-irregular#comment36096_16071
URI escaped: http://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/16071/why-are-%E6%9D%A5%E3%82%8B-and-%E3%81%99%E3%82%8B-irregular#comment36096_16071
Ambiguous: http://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/16071/#comment36096_16071

Anonymous

3:43 AM

So if you just delete that stuff between the / and the #, the comment link will work.

Kaji

Ok

jkerian

6:34 AM

I always forget we can turn things into comments ><

Anonymous

I only just remembered :-)

Anonymous

@jkerian By the way, I think I'd recommend Martin's grammar to you

jkerian

oh?

Anonymous

It's maybe several zillion times more detailed than my other grammar books

Anonymous

And he refers constantly to the works of other linguists, including Kuno and Jorden

jkerian

6:41 AM

I'm kindof holding off on such things at the moment, but in 18 months or so...

Anonymous

Ahh

Anonymous

I held off on buying a copy for a while because it was so expensive

Anonymous

But if you wait for a cheap used copy to surface, it's not so bad :-)

Anonymous

I'm really happy!

Anonymous

. . . must collect all reference grammars . . .

Anonymous

6:44 AM

(Don't ask me why reference grammars cost like $200 apiece!)

Kaji

hehehe...

Most I can recall paying for a reference book was 120,000 yen

For a Japanese-Vietnamese/Vietnamese-Japanese dictionary

Anonymous

That is a lot of money for a book.

Kaji

wait, 12,000

sorry

Mixed it up

Anonymous

Oh, that's more reasonable. Expensive, but . . .

Kaji

(effectively $120)

Japanese numbers play with my head sometimes

Anonymous

6:50 AM

The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language was around $200

jkerian

1 yen ~ 1 penny... give or take 30%

Anonymous

@jkerian Seems to have been true since I started paying attention in the mid-90s :-)

Anonymous

I was surprised when the pendulum swung back the other way.

Kaji

Yeah, that part I get

It's the shifting the decimal that gets me now and then

Or remembering that 10-man is 100,000, not 1 million

The value of oku

etc.

Unfortunately it's largely an issue of practice, which I only get so much of being stateside at the moment

Anonymous

Just think of it as 10,0000

Anonymous

6:58 AM

Maybe for fun do some mental math in your downtime in Japanese? :-)

Kaji

hehehe...

It'd probably be a good break from the kanji practice, I guess

Speaking of which, I think we got the answer to our poetry question

2

A: Mora count for 思ふ in Classical Japanese?

I suspect this might be an example of poetic license or even contraction. Note that all of the 思ふ instances above follow on another mora from the お行, leaving open the possibility that をしと思{おも}ふ, for example, was actually read as をしともふ, thus producing the expected mora count. I note too that 思う ...

yay for learning how to use the share button!

Anonymous

Woo hoo!

Dono

@snailboat I wanted to leave this as a comment to your comment, but it was too long. So posting here.

Chocolate

@Kaji おしとおも～

って読むと思います

Dono

@snailboat I suppose it depends on what you mean by irregular. In terms of verbal conjugation, ar- was once irregular (ラ変) but it is now a regular 五段. The problem you raise is not with the now regular verb ar-, but with the suffix -nai. But even this does not hold true completely. In the western dialects, -nu was prevalent there exists many ar-a-nu citations. The etymology of suffix -nai is unknown, but it is typically treated as an eastern form and is possibly related to eastern OJ suffix なふ.

The suffix -nai began to supplement and replace -nu, and during this early transition period you can find citations of ar-a-nai. (So no need for a * prefix.) Also occurring during this time was semantic re-analysis of this suffix -nai with the existing and homonymous adjective nai （無い). This resulted in ari- and nai being regarded as antonyms on each other.

Chocolate

7:08 AM

「ものぞおも～」

Dono

So while ar-a-nai exists briefly, as an antonym, the shorter and more convenient nai becomes standard. As a result, there is no longer a need for ar-a-nai to be used.

@Chocolate こんばんは！

おお~そっちは夜ね

まだ仕事なんで、あばよ

まぁな・・・午前３時なので、夜とか朝とか・・・

Chocolate

7:10 AM

あばよ？

ええええ

ごぜんさんじ？？

じゃ、

ねなさい～

夜更かしですねえ

Kaji

出来ないよ・・・七時に起きたからさ・・・

Chocolate

ｗｗｗｗｗ

あれは、全部、一応、「歌」なので、

歌えばわかると思います。

Kaji

ですよね

正しい読み方（ポーズとか）が知りたいけどはっきり分からない

例えば、切れ字以外でポーズ点がある？

Chocolate

「おしとおも～」で、２拍休んで、
１拍休んで、「こころはいとに」
「よられなん～」２拍休んで、
「ちるはなごとに～」←８拍みたいな感じで
１拍休んで「ぬきてとどめん～～。」

とかさ。例えば。

Kaji

おぉ〜！すげぇ！

Chocolate

7:16 AM

「ちるはなごとに」は、「ちるはな・ごとに」って、意味が切れるでしょ？だから、

最初に、１拍休まないの。

「ぬきてとどめん」は、「ぬきて・とどめん」って、意味が切れるでしょ？だから、

最初に１拍休んで、「●ぬきて＋とどめん」ってすると、

４＋４になるでしょ

「ちるはな＋ごとに●」って考えて、４＋４

「おしとおも～」とかの、５文字とか６文字も、

「おしとお＋も～●●」って、

４＋４で、歌うの

@snailboat Snailちゃんの質問に、俳句とか和歌とかが、８拍になるっていう話、あったよね

「こころはいとに」は、「こころは・いとに」って意味が切れるので、

「こころは＋いとに～」でもいいと思います

Anonymous

@Dono Oh, thank you for the response! Here is how I was thinking about it: I was thinking it depended on whether you considered ar-anai an inflectional form of ar-. If you suggest that the actual inflectional form is the irrealis ar-a to which -nai attaches, as in traditional grammar, then the presence of ar-a-nu and the brief period where ar-a-nai was attested both seem to suggest that it regularly has the expected ar-a, and that the verb is not irregular.

Kaji

そして、普通に助詞で切ればいいって言える？

Anonymous

But if you consider -(a)nai to be an inflectional suffix attaching directly to the root with the allomorphs -anai after consonants and -nai after vowels, as in certain alternative grammars, and you consider it part of the regular conjugation paradigm, then it does seem to be irregular (since after all, ar-anai was attested briefly but today I think is considered nonstandard).

Kaji

@snailboat tangential to that conversation, but that reminds me of how I was trying to think of the 大阪弁 equivalent to なければ the other day. あらへんならば?

Chocolate

@Kaji そうですね、「ひとはいえども」なら、

「ひとは＋いえども」になるので、

最初に一拍休んで、「●ひとは＋いえども」がいいかなと思います

Anonymous

7:27 AM

So I think you could describe it either way, depending on what approach you take. Perhaps if Yang Muye asks the question he mentioned an answer could discuss the cases that could be described using different approaches. For example, if I recall correctly, you don't consider the 愛する・愛さない alternation to constitute an irregular verb, but instead a pair of regular verbs. I think both analyses are possible

Anonymous

In any case, I always appreciate your feedback, @Dono :-) I am after all just learning.

Anonymous

@Kaji Oh! One moment

Kaji

My read was the same on 愛す・する

Chocolate

「なかぬかぎりは」は、「なかぬ＋かぎりは」って意味が切れるので、最初に一拍休んで、「●なかぬ＋かぎりは」ってよんで、

「あらじとぞおもう」は、もう、８モーラなので、

そのまま、「あらじと＋ぞおもう～」みたいな

Kaji

なるほど

Anonymous

7:29 AM

@Chocolate Hehe, you switched from 拍 to モーラ！ I always liked the word 拍, ever since I discovered it in my dictionary

Kaji

hehehe...

Anonymous

@Chocolate Oh!! I want to link to that question now, let me go find it

Chocolate

そおだ…拍はちょっと違うね

Anonymous

7

Q: Are haiku typically "padded" when read aloud?

I was once told that haiku should be "padded" so that instead of 5/7/5, they fit an 8/8/8 meter: ■■■■■□□□　←　wait for 3 beats after this line ■■■■■■■□　←　wait for 1 beat after this line ■■■■■□□□　←　wait for 3 beats after this line If I recall correctly, the explanation was that Japanese ...

poetry

Chocolate

きっと、２モーラで、一泊として数えてると思う

Anonymous

7:30 AM

@Chocolate Oh! Is it really different? I always thought 拍 and モーラ were synonyms

Chocolate

そおなんだ～わからないｗｗｗｗ

Kaji

I'm picturing practicing to a metronome now

Reminded of an old man with a biwa—「ぎおん〜のかね〜のこえ〜・・・」

Guess that actually helps to explain some of the inflection and "held notes" a bit

Chocolate

@snailboat あ～それや～～

Anonymous

I was reading about some western forms

Anonymous

Martin says he thinks あかん is from いかん　←　いかない

Anonymous

7:36 AM

And for あらへん he writes ありはせぬ　＞　ありやせぬ　＞　ありやへぬ　＞　ありやへん　＞　ありゃへん　＞　あらへん and then in 大阪　＞　あれへん

Kaji

Interesting! I'd always figured 〜へん to be a contraction of 〜ません (cf. まへん)

Anonymous

Where if you say ari wa senu, but drop the /w/, then you get ari a senu, but the transition between the vowels in /i a/ sounds like a glide, so it ends up sounding like ari (y)a senu instead

Chocolate

@Kaji 「ぎおんしょうじゃのかねのこえ～」？

Kaji

あぁ、そうだ。平家の最初（最後？）

Anonymous

@Kaji Well, the western せぬ (or せん) corresponding to eastern しない is similar in form to ません, and it makes sense they would both be affected by the same deapicalization process せん＞へん and ません＞まへん

Kaji

7:44 AM

その言葉はいつも抜いてる、理由が分からん

Chocolate

ふふふ

Anonymous

japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/poetry

Anonymous

We only have two poetry questions!

Kaji

Oh, believe me, I'm happy to fix that

Anonymous

Ooh... japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/verse

Anonymous

7:46 AM

Should I merge verse into poetry?

Anonymous

Er.

Kaji

I'd say so

Anonymous

I meant to type poetry :-)

Anonymous

I love all the detail in Martin's grammar. I'm sure some points are speculative, and others people may disagree on, but it really has a remarkable level of detail

Kaji

Example?

Anonymous

7:51 AM

I looked up the idiom 気がする. As far as I knew, the most common form was 気がする, followed by 気が (since する is so obvious, it's omitted a lot), and 気もする occasionally. I'd also heard an adverb inserted once, 気がすごくする, although I haven't heard that very much so I wasn't sure how standard it was

Anonymous

Martin describes it as a separable idiom and explains that it has syntax like the other "quasi-possessives", which is his term for verbs that fit the construction A に B が VERB, as in the possessive A に B がある.

Anonymous

He gives the example 「・・・という気が、私にはする」

Anonymous

I love all the examples of less common constructions :-)

Kaji

Those are definitely always appreciated

Anonymous

Another example is the discusssion of あらへん I just typed up bits of

Kaji

7:55 AM

May have to look it up when I've got the extra $200

You and I seem to have strikingly similar tastes in references

Anonymous

Or buy it used for a lot less!

Kaji

hehehe...

Anonymous

My copy was $11! :-)

Anonymous

I'd been wanting my own copy for a long time, as opposed to checking it at the library or seeing the few pages on Google Books

Anonymous

It's somewhere north of a thousand pages

Kaji

7:56 AM

Wow

What's the publication date on it?

Anonymous

1975

Anonymous

Here's his overview of the accusative case marker を, split into six categories

Anonymous

As a random example

Anonymous

Notice that he uses ローマ字 throughout the entire book, which I imagine may put off a lot of learners. But it has its advantages

Anonymous

8:02 AM

For one, he can mark pitch accent and what he calls "minor and major junctures" (intonational phrase boundaries), and indicate where accents are cancelled, which lexical items cancel the accent on words they're attached to, how pitch accents interact with grammar, how they change in rapid speech when words are run together

Anonymous

And sometimes how speakers' judgments on grammaticality can change when a juncture is inserted or removed

Kaji

Interesting

The romaji does take a bit of getting used to, since he's using kunrei by the look of it

zya/zyi/zyu just doesn't feel right

But the information is good

Anonymous

@Kaji It's phonemic. I think you'd typically want a phonemic transcription in a grammar that uses rōmaji at all

Anonymous

So it's more similar to 訓令式 than ヘボン式

Kaji

I understand why, but some things just feel so far removed from what's natural at times that it just takes a moment more to process

Truth is one probably gets used to it after 10 minutes, I'll grant

Anonymous

8:08 AM

It does take getting used to. Of course, any romanization scheme does

Anonymous

Since you spend upwards of 99% of your time reading looking at Japanese script with kana and kanji, you'll have practiced reading that to the point where it's relatively easy (of course excepting rare kanji and readings and so forth), but you won't have practiced reading Japanese in Latin script at all

Anonymous

So in that sense, it's definitely a challenge

Anonymous

If you do read linguistics papers written in English, though, you'll notice that the vast majority of the time the language is romanized, and it's usually represented phonemically

Anonymous

So you get used to it eventually . . .

Anonymous

I find it's easier to understand romanized script if I read it aloud

Anonymous

8:10 AM

And the accent marks help me with that :-)

Anonymous

Another challenge in reading Martin's grammar is that he has synthesized his own analysis from all sorts of approaches to Japanese, and he's adopted his own terms and concepts in doing so. (But not all uniquely his own.) So to use his grammar as a reference, I think you have to at least read the first 50 pages or so to get an overview in your head

Anonymous

Otherwise, your brain will probably hurt when you see cathectic object, quasi-restrictive, or nuclear focus

Kaji

hehehe...

Anonymous

So I'm not sure whether I should recommend it to most people . . . I love it, though :-)

Anonymous

I really like syntax.

Anonymous

8:19 AM

It is from 1975, so it is now slightly dated, although I think the large majority of the information is still relevant to Japanese in 2014. I think in some cases people have found data that contradict Martin, for example on some of the details related to pitch accent and devoiced vowels

Kaji

Well, things shift over time, to be sure

But it's not like the language has done a 180 in 40 year

years

Anonymous

Right. There are changes, of course! But besides changes, people also make new discoveries in descriptive linguistics over time, revising our knowledge of what was already true

Anonymous

For example, it wasn't many years ago that it was established that -n't had been reanalyzed as an affix rather than a reduced clitic form of not: babel.ucsc.edu/~hank/mrg.readings/ZPCliticsInfl.pdf

Anonymous

@Chocolate Oh, what if you put the boxes to the left? Then the boxes would all line up

Chocolate

あ、そうか・・・

Anonymous

8:33 AM

> ■■■■■■□□　をしとおもふ～－
> ■■■■■■■□　こころは　いとに～
> ■■■■■□□□　よられなむ～－－
> ■■■■■■■□　ちるはな　ごとに～
> □■■■■■■■　－ぬきて　とどめむ

Anonymous

Ooh, it looks all neat when I do it like this

Anonymous

Do you mind if I edit it? :-)

Anonymous

Like that!

Anonymous

Oh, you did it!

Anonymous

Maybe it's just me, but I'm not sure I fully understand 恩 myself, so I would recommend 感謝 if you need to ask. Conversely, if you want to stick with debt please write it in blood. — virmaior 2 days ago

Anonymous

8:40 AM

in... in blood?

Kaji

That is awesome!

Chocolate

@snailboat わ、はやっ

写したらよかった～ｗｗｗｗｗ

Anonymous

@Chocolate Hehe! I can make my computer swap them around for me with a regular expression. That's why I offered to do it for you :-)

Chocolate

@snailboat 血で書く？ｗｗｗｗ

こわっ

呪いの手紙かっ

Anonymous

@Chocolate tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CouldntFindAPen

Chocolate

8:42 AM

ずげえ。。。マニュアルでやったわｗｗｗｗｗ

@snailboat ダイイング・メッセージ。。。ｗｗｗｗ

Kaji

@Chocolate @snailboat If we can get a link to Snail's earlier post about 8 beats edited in for context, I'll switch the accepted answer to Chocolate's

Chocolate

@Kaji Oh switch? Hmm

I feel bad!

Kaji

From the look of it the existing answer provides a reasonable explanation from an observational perspective, but seemed to lack the context that knowing it's supposed to be read in 8 beats adds

So while it's a good answer, it seems it's not quite as accurate. I'm actually rather glad you posted yours

Anonymous

Japanese seems like a very rhythmic language, doesn't it?

Kaji

It does

Anonymous

8:48 AM

By the way, this is what I typed to reverse the answer: s/(.*)\s+([■□]+).*/$2　$1 /

Anonymous

So it took less typing for me :-)

Kaji

hehehe...

I get the gist of RegEx, but I've never had any luck building them from scratch

Anonymous

I recommend Jeffrey Friedl's book.

Anonymous

I also recommend using an editor with perl REs available, like vim

Kaji

Offhand, do you happen to know any patterns for isolating kana and/or kanji (analogous to [a-zA-Z])?

Anonymous

8:50 AM

Yes, you can use pre-defined character classes by name specific to classes of Unicode characters in perl REs

Kaji

Oh, so something like [cjk-unified-ideographs]?

Anonymous

Yes, \p{CJKUnifiedIdeographs}

Kaji

Ok!

Anonymous

What specifically would you like to match?

Kaji

Well, to be honest, I was trying to figure out how to work Cypher's furigana script into one of my own projects, but being unable to figure it out I thought I'd take a stab at borrowing his style sheets and rewriting around it

I'm a hobbyist who primarily works in PHP and MySQL

Anonymous

8:56 AM

Ah. I was going to say, in perl REs see perldoc perluniprops for a current list of character classes.

Anonymous

I'm not sure how well PCRE (the engine used by PHP) supports the character classes perl defines, and if it doesn't work, you may need to resort to hard-coding codepoint ranges

Anonymous

e.g. \x{30A0}-\x{30FF}

Kaji

Gotcha

Anonymous

I added another question to the Japanese Culture proposal

Anonymous

area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/59039/japanese-culture/…

Anonymous

9:06 AM

Wow, the Area 51 interface is bad :-)

Anonymous

It shuffles the questions with equal scores on each page load, and that includes when you click the "next" link

Anonymous

So clicking "next" you might see a bunch of the same questions, and never see some of the others . . .

Kaji

Ouch

You'd think it would sort by score then ID or title

Anonymous

It's a repurposed (hacked-up) version of the Stack Exchange engine, which by default shuffles equally scored answers

Anonymous

0

Q: A little question about polite Japanese

I can't understand why is it used polite form in -「いらっしゃい。逃げ切れるとは思わないで」, I would translate it like this - "Come! Don't think you can run away!". And as far as I can guess シオン is telling it to an enemy? カイム：「よし、これでこっちの動きは封じた！」シオン：「やるわねカイム！さすがあたしの弟！」カノス：「ちっ、先を越されちまったか！今度はこっちの番だ、頼むぜシオン」シオン：「いら...