Japanese Language

Tim

02:30

@jkerian I have not heard that before but it makes sense. Do you have a reference so I can look further into it?

jkerian

@Tim I came about this through a very indirect route from Kuno's Structure of the Japanese Language (might have that title slightly wrong). Basically, nearly every verb in Japanese is "active", and represents instantaneous action.

Notable exceptions are できる,居る,ある and わかる, as well as potential conjugations.

Tim

@YangMuye jkerian has given us an answer but I was going to compare to わかりました，着いた、付いた etc. and wonder if in your example/observation the adults were trying to make the child laugh/cheer up in which case their response to first

short giggle might have been 笑った

jkerian

If you follow that logic, most verbs get reinterpreted as "start to X" when translating to English.

Tim

02:45

In that situation I could see two responses; "ah, he has started to laugh" or just "he(you) laughed" , the latter would apply if the child was trying not to laugh and there was a possibility it would not be repeated.

(Of course this is Yang Muye's observation - I can't agree/disagree but for as long as the laughing continued then I would have described the action as 笑っている.)

jkerian

03:00

Usually these sorts of conversations center around the ～ている construction :)

Yang Muye

03:29

If my observation is correct (笑った can be used), I actually have a tentative explanation.

I think it's because the speaker has some kind of expectation when/before speaking.

For example, when you want to know the answer of a puzzle, you say “正解は～でした” when you find out it.

Anonymous

@YangMuye I remember a list of times 〜た is used that was in this paper: hasegawa.berkeley.edu/Papers/Hasegawa99.pdf

Yang Muye

When you want to find out if there is there is any enemy, you say 敵がいた.

笑った is used instead of 笑っている because the speaker is trying to make the child laugh.

or wants to see the child laugh.

If this theory holds, I think 雨が降った is not impossible. (People normally say 雨だ　雨が降ってきた、雨が降り出した)

@snailboat thanks. What do you think about this question?

Anonymous

Are we talking about this question? japanese.stackexchange.com/q/15922/1478

Yang Muye

I mean, た or ている

Anonymous

I haven't read all the messages here yet

Yang Muye

03:41

I think は is the hardest part of Japanese, followed by voice and tense/aspect.

Chocolate

05:59

おもしろいね~これ

0

Q: Japanese without Kanji

Everyone says Japanese is a hard language, but if you remove the Kanji learning part from it, is it just as easy as any other language which just has a different writing system? Is spoken Japanese easier or harder than other common European languages?

Everyone says Japanese is a hard language ってホントに？

中国語の方が漢字が多いし、難しそうなんじゃない？

（私には、中国語のプリントが、全部ピンインで書かれてた時の方が、難しかったけど）

ssb

for native English speakers it's generally considered to be a hard language as far as I can tell

BUT I think most of that comes from the writing system

Chocolate

へえ～

ssb

actually no

I think learning to speak Japanese well, as in naturally and correctly, is extremely difficult

Things like pronunciation and pitch accent are on the easier side

especially since you can disregard pitch in just about any situation and still be understood

Chocolate

あ、そうなんだ～ピッチアクセントねえ～

ssb

For me Japanese was like starting over again from zero in terms of language ability

when learning spanish, even though I didn't know much, I could still string sentences together and guess at what I wanted to say

even if I didn't know the correct phrase for it

in Japanese, especially at low levels, that's often impossible

It was always really frustrating wanting to say something and having no idea how to do it

I still have that problem sometimes

Chocolate

06:08

「Is spoken Japanese easier or harder than other common European languages?」って、最初は書いてなかったような気が。

ssb

even that is a really ambiguous question

in terms of making the actual sounds, it is very easy for English speakers to get "close enough"

Chocolate

へえ～～

ssb

when I hear my fellow gaijin speaking the weird parts to me seem more in the intonation rather than in the actual phonemes

but then again, that's exactly the kind of thing I would think, isn't it..

but I mean there are two components to that

there's making the sounds of Japanese

and communicating orally in Japanese

a i u e o is pretty similar in English

but stringing it into a coherent sentence is NOT easy

Chocolate

「平安神宮」も、「he・i・an shurine」って、「へ・い・あ」を一個づつ、全部同じ長さで言えばいいと思うんだけど、

難しい？

イギリス人の女の人とアメリカ人の男の人と話してて、「どこ住んでるの」って聞いたら、「hen shrineの近くよ」っていうんで、

「ヘン・シュライン」？何それ、知らん。っていうたら

ssb

That sort of thing may be a common mistake, I'm not sure

Chocolate

06:19

「えええ！？あの有名な神社しらんの！？」みたいな。二人とも、「平安神宮」を「ヘン・シュライン」て言って、理解してた。

ssb

but if it does happen, I don't think it's because people find it difficult to say it correctly

My guess is when English speakers try to speak quickly then some sounds can combine accidentally like they might in English

Chocolate

おおお～そうそう、英語って、そうやって、音がくっつくのよ！だから、私には、

英語の聞き取りが難しいのよおおお！

ssb

aha yes

like "do you want to" becomes something like "dyuwana"

or just juwana

Chocolate

じゅわなｗｗｗｗ

ssb

like the hit 2002 comedy "Juwanna Mann" directed by Jesse Vaughan

Chocolate

06:25

"ジュワナ～～？"って聞かれたら、意味はわかると思うけど、juwanna

っていう文字は、

分からなかったわ～

ssb

if it's ever actually written in shorthand I think it only goes as far as d'you wanna

Chocolate

おお、それならわかる～

最初、a lot of water を聞いた時さ、

「あらろぶ」

みたいで、「は！？」みたいな

ssb

ararobu..

Chocolate

"Let's get out of here!"も、「げらうらひあ」みたいな

ssb

i could understand that if it were just for "get out of here"

Chocolate

06:28

最初、「書きとれ」とか言われても、「？？？」って感じだった

ssb

kawaisou..

Chocolate

wwww

Chocolate

07:46

@Tim おお！worldwideにdeliveryしてくれる！

@Tim へえ、13ドル・・・

hippietrail

10:17

yo

Yang Muye

12:57

When I look at @Kaji's name, I always think what I see is Kanji.

When I look at his avatar, I always think what I see is 加蒜(ニンニクを加える‌)

Kaji

hehehe...

It's actually the hanko I used when I was living in Japan 10 years ago

加持

Yang Muye

Yes. When I look at it carefully, I find it is actually 加持 kaji.

ssb

should have gone with 鍛冶

Kaji

13:19

hehehe...

There's actually two reasons for the choice

One is because my last name is "Baptist", and from research it appears that 加持 is an analagous concept in Buddhism (洗礼 just doesn't have the same ring to it)

Other is that I used to bear a striking resemblance to a certain エヴァンゲリオン character, which is kind of how I started using the name online in the first place

Anonymous

13:58

@YangMuye The point of those examples was to show the morphology (what verb form ～うる attaches to) as in the OP's example of しうる, not to teach you the most common way to say "can do"

Anonymous

Hello, everyone! The proposed Japanese Culture Q&A site needs your support!

5

Yang Muye

14:18

@snailboat しうる struck me as odd because I have only seen なしうる. But after reading the OP's question, I see where does it come from. It's actually ～し得る.

Chocolate

14:58

絵がうまく貼れない

も~パソコン苦手！！

Anonymous

I think that if you use the [upload...] button and choose "from the web", then you can put the URL in there and it'll work

Anonymous

But if you just paste the URL in here, it doesn't work because the URL doesn't end in .jpg or such, so the Stack Exchange chat doesn't recognize it as an image

Chocolate

ああ！そうだったんだ！！

upload...ってのがあるや～ん

あ～

さすがSBちゃんなんでも知ってる～

これを貼りたかっただけ・・・へへ

Tim

15:27

@Chocolate 高いな。でも自分で使ったほうがtしかおいしいだろう：昨日、どこかでmayonaiseとの差についてよんだよ。サラダクリムはmayonaiseと違って、cooke‌deggsから作られたらしい。いい材料使えばheinzの

より出来ると思うよ。

作るやり気があるならね

Kaji

17:35

@Chocolate Quality's not the best, but that's from about the timeframe (Otakon 2002)

Was briefly the #1 result on Google's image search for Kaji. hehehe...

Anonymous

18:51

If anyone's in other chat rooms where the Japanese Culture proposal is on-topic and relevant, it might be time for another push for participation :-)

Anonymous

5 hours ago, by snailboat

Hello, everyone! The proposed Japanese Culture Q&A site needs your support!

Anonymous

So if you can post something like this in those rooms and raise awareness, it would help!

Anonymous

0

Q: The proposed Japanese Culture Q&A site needs your support!

There's a proposal on Area 51 for a new Q&A site for Japanese Culture: 　　http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/59039/japanese-culture It was proposed 8 months ago, and so far 55 people have followed the proposal. But if it's going to succeed and become a real Stack Exchange site, it needs ...

discussion featured

Chocolate

23:52

@Tim 作りたい~頑張って作ります～

@Kaji 背中にネルフって書いてあるねえ

オタコンって「オタク+competition」とか？

オタク＋conference とか

Otakonのグーグルイメージ、わからんキャラが多い

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