Japanese Language

3:37 AM

@jkerian: Really? Well that's even sadder really. It shows that actually is some kind of culture of negativity about this site )-:

@snailboat yes and i think people should comment and answer in manner suitable for beginners. answering in all kanji for somebody who obviously can't read much kanji it is not suitable. commenting "why ask it's obvious" is not suitable.

hippietrail

4:00 AM

today in 南稚内 i saw a bird of prey being chased by a カラス - would it be an eagle, a hawk, or some other bird? which birds of prey exist up here in north hokkaido?

hippietrail

4:12 AM

looks like it was a オジロワシ or a ウミワシ

Anonymous

6:15 AM

@hippietrail Can you show me where either of these thing occurred?

Anonymous

Kanji aren't a big deal. We can always edit in furigana.

hippietrail

6:29 AM

@snailboat: either of which sorry?

the eagle?

Anonymous

In SE chat, messages are linked to each other to show what they're replying to.

Anonymous

Unless you type @ name by hand, of course.

Anonymous

You can click on the arrow at the beginning of the message or simply mouseover the message to see what it's linked to.

hippietrail

oh those are just examples. i've seen both happen. no specifics in mind.

Anonymous

Well, it would certainly be out of the ordinary for JLSE.

hippietrail

6:31 AM

yes didn't spot the arrow until you pointed it out

i'll be sure to point out such things in the future

are 食べられる and 食べます the same thing? (can)

Anonymous

No.

hippietrail

err hang on 食べます is already with "e". whereas i add it when going from 読みます
to 読めます

Anonymous

They are two different types of verbs, sometimes called type 1 and type 2

hippietrail

am i missing a version of 食べます that i don't yet know

Anonymous

First of all, you're comparing a plain form 食べられる to a polite form 食べます

hippietrail

6:44 AM

is this like vowel stem and consonant stem?

or like ichican and godan?

Anonymous

The citation form in a dictionary is 食べる. It is a vowel stem verb tabe-

Anonymous

Vowel stem are ichidan, consonant stem are godan

hippietrail

yes that bit i knew but i was thinking I didn't know how to make the same alternation in plain that i thought i knew in polite

Anonymous

Unfortunately there are lots of names.

hippietrail

仕様が無い

Anonymous

6:45 AM

Since the passive （ら）れる makes a vowel stem verb too, you get 食べられます as the polite form

hippietrail

so is 読めます the passive of 読み増す rather than being "can"?

Anonymous

No, 読めます is a potential form

hippietrail

so potential and passive can both be used for some kind of "can"?

21

Q: ことができる versus V~える form

Way back in the day when I was first learning Japanese, I learned that you could add ことができる to a verb to indicate potential. Like so: 食{た}べることができる (I) can eat (something) It became my habitual way of expressing possibilities. Then later, I learned that you could just modify the verb a...

Anonymous

読む　　　→　読める　　　yom-u → yom-e-(r)u
読みます　→　読めます　　yom-(i)masu → yom-e-masu

hippietrail

i was looking at this old question and got confused

what would be the equivalent quartet for 食べる?

Anonymous

6:48 AM

Consonant stem verbs have a potential form available using the affix -e-

Anonymous

The passive can be used as a potential form for vowel stem verbs

Anonymous

(They don't have the shorter -e- available)

hippietrail

do we have tags for each type of verb i wonder? we should put all the equivalent terminology in the tag wikis

Anonymous

食べる　→　食べられる
食べます　→　食べられます

Anonymous

There is also a form where ら is left out which is generally considered non-standard:

hippietrail

6:50 AM

ah so the two kinds of verbs differ in a fairly deep way. at my level it looked like just shallow phonological tricks like sky + -s = skies in english

Anonymous

食べる　　→　食べれる
食べます　→　食べれます

hippietrail

i would be clicking the up arrow all over the place if these were answers of comments (=

Anonymous

With an ichidan verb, the 〜られる can be potential or passive, but the shorter 〜れる is just potential

Anonymous

It is called "ra-nuki" meaning "ra deletion"

Anonymous

It's becoming more common and may become standard eventually

Anonymous

6:53 AM

But for now it's considered prescriptively incorrect

hippietrail

added some new and some existing tags (-:

Anonymous

The "passive" 〜（ら）れる in Japanese has several different functions

Anonymous

It's not always used to make passives.

Anonymous

I think we figured out potential is the second most common function, but mostly only for ichidan verbs because godan verbs have that shorter potential form available

Anonymous

The other two are honorific and spontaneous

Anonymous

6:57 AM

You might have seen that question Tim asked about using the "honorific passive" when speaking about the emperor

Anonymous

"Spontaneous" is thought by some linguists to be the original function of the morpheme

Anonymous

And I think it's now the least common

Anonymous

I saw a paper with nice percentage breakdowns but I didn't put it in my notes and I can't find it anymore

hippietrail

i think it's pretty normal across languages that the passive(s) have other jobs, as do many forms

Anonymous

Besides that, in Japanese there are two types of passive, indirect and direct

hippietrail

7:00 AM

i don't know whether the same other jobs seem to co-occur across languages however

Anonymous

So you could break it down into five categories if you like.

hippietrail

verbs are the hardest to learn in most languages, but the most fascinating. you should look at georgian some time. and i'm keen to play with a language that has noun incorporation - does ainu?

Anonymous

I have learned very little about Ainu

hippietrail

i'm in the territory but see almost no mention of anything ainuish

on the way to wakkanai from rumoi one of my drivers stopped for lunch and i think we had ainu food - which i think was the seafood since the preparation seemed typical japanese

Anonymous

Wikipedia says it this way: Ainu is moribund with only 10 native speakers remaining

hippietrail

7:05 AM

much more lively than classical japanese then!

Anonymous

Yes, moribund only means at the point of death, not actually dead yet

hippietrail

wikipedia says something that way, i don't know the referent to your it

Anonymous

It didn't have an anaphoric referent

hippietrail

it was just a side remark d-;

googling suggests that ainu does have incorporation and not just nouns

ah incorporation may have been lost during the decline in use

jkerian

3:46 PM

@hippietrail I'm actually going to entirely disagree with you here. People have different ideas about how much research should go into questions, which is fine. There is a voting mechanism that allows people to express these differences, which is also fine. I guess I'm kinda sick of the whining about votes as opposed to trying to improve the site.

For all the sanctimonious pontificating about the potential harm of downvotes, "the SAD" comments that are *@&#ing up questions, answers and comments manages to be opaque and cliquish and FAR more exclusive than the votes said users are complaining about (yay! pointless custom vocabulary to convince new users they don't know what's going on)

Earthliŋ

5:09 PM

@jkerian At least one user, who is not new, is convinced he doesn't know what you're trying to say. (That'd be me.)

Andrew Grimm

10:57 PM

@jkerian except that the person who downvoted refuses to leave any comments or chat messages on the JL.SE site. No explanations = useless.

Sawa stopped posting questions, answers, comments or chat messages long ago. He's stopped contributing to the community.

Should someone who's stopped contributing to the community still keep the privileges they have, such as the privilege to downvote?

Andrew Grimm

11:16 PM

Just realised this morning: "We need your help translating the Stack Exchange to Japanese!" is just above "How to handle "need helppp!!!" translation requests?" 笑

jkerian

11:44 PM

@Earthliŋ long-version short, I'm deleting/editing out references to "the SAD" in questions/comments/answers, until someone is able to tell me how it's relevent to the topic of the site

@AndrewGrimm You make an interesting argument, feel free to take it up with the designers of the site on the new multi-site meta. Until you do, however, the answer is rather obviously "yes"

You may disagree with this, but voting actually IS participation... and downvotes are useful.

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