It's used a lot in legal contexts.

I've also noticed Unger uses it in his linguistics writings when referring to sources.

I always just read it as "section", FWIW. :)

I've almost never tried to input it, except once ages ago in a Word doc, when I resorted to Insert > Symbol and scrolled through. :)

Are any of you good with Mathematica

@EiríkrÚtlendi 濁流っていうと、こういうイメージなんで　google.co.uk/…

あ、ここにも　kotobank.jp/word/%E6%BF%81%E6%B5%81

@snailboat 学校の教科書や問題集に「§」が使われてる時があって、「セクションいち」「セクションに」とかいう感じで読みますけど、

それ以外には、あまり使われてないので、あまり馴染みはない気がします

@snailboat clearly it's a simoleon!

(「～～は無い気がします」って打とうとしたら「～～鼻息がします」って変換される)

@snailboat え、わたし？

ちゃうやんなあ・・・

sad -- I just learned that NHK is very expensive here.

I mean I know that my cable TV has news channels from many places around the world. Things like CNN, BBC, CNBC Hong Kong, a Chinese news channel, TV5 Monde.

And I thought I had NHK too, but I don't. :( If I'd like to have it, I will need to pay almost the double of what I pay every month.

@snailboat Oh! So you had to learn Japanese from some other things, I think. :)

@snailboat Me too! :)

The Sims is good of course, but I'm a diehard simcity fan

I remember watching a video with the developers before simcity 2013 came out

And one of them said that "reticulating splines" refers to splitting splines into several parts

But later I read that 'reticulation' was completely made up!

I felt completely the fool

Ahh... Simcity brings back some good old memories.

I've played every version except simcity societies

I'm not sure which version I played though, but I'm sure it's a very old one.

Yeah I often get complimented on my intensified predicative complements

Oh, I remember that my Simcity had a Godzilla visit sometimes!

In the SNES version it's Bowser

(message moved to ELL)

@snailboat おおお・・・

TNのおじさん・・・じゃなくて・・・Hのおじさん

oh no..

@snailboat もってないです・・・

図書館にあるかなぁ

@ssb Dariusさんですかね

> とてもたくさんの

> とても多くの

But they can be consider as adverbs.

> ほんの わずかな

> ほんの少しの

What role does ほんの play? I think it is more like an adverb.

> もっと前のこと/時代

In Chinese, I think only red, white and black are gradable adjectives.

@snailboat Fraid not.

@snailboat: BTW, thank you for that paper on copulas. it is a real revelation - so many things I have been wondering or at best working out for myself. Can't understand why this area is not taught properly.

I am now looking for a good reference on use of particle と，especially for quotations. Does anybody have any suggestions?

@snailboat What do you need to know? Is it a specific page?

@YangMuye They are just for emphasis arn't they? I was about to suggest ほんに少し

when I saw you had included it. In English it correlates very well with with "just" a little (sugar) rather than a little: the person requested will be careful not to add more sugar than you¨want and will probably confirm that they are not going to add too much.

(Is this what you wanted to know?)

Despite its form, which is clearly adnominal, ほんの has an adverbial function. I found dictionaries listing it under 連体詞, but I don't think it's really an adjective.

Nevertheless, some words are both adjectives and adverbs, such as すごい／すげー

You can say ほんのわずかです, but you can't say ほんのです. In this respect, ほんの is different from すごい.

お土産やお中元を渡すときに言う「ほんの気持ちですが・・・。」の「ほんの」は、形容詞みたいだけどね

たいていの場合「ほんの」は副詞的に使いますよね

「すごい」「すげー」を副詞的に使って用言を修飾する使い方は、若者中心に見られる、近年の口語的な用法ですけどね。

小・中学校などで、作文に「すごい大きな木が・・・」と書いたら、「すごく大きな木が・・」と直されると思います

@snailboat Thanks, yeah, I can now see deleted posts too. :) Choko's reply is what prompted my question earlier, before he (she?) deleted it. And now I see it's been reinstated.

@Choko やっぱ、「激しい」とはこっちの辞書に書いてなかったのです。ご啓蒙ありがとうございます。（＾＾）Chokoさんの回答を読んだしばらく後、「さぁ、濁流ってもしかした‌​ら*豪雨*によって濁った水かな」、と思うようになりました。掲載になったGoogleのイメージを見て単なる「濁った水」よりも「鉄砲水」のようなものでしょうね。あとで‌​自分の回答を編集するつもりです。

@snailboat Huh, didn't see that, but that's essentially what Choko said. Getting a better understanding of 濁流 changes the かかりあい for me, I'll have to edit my post later.

@YangMuye I'd agree that it's adverbial in those cases, but it's also somewhat of a 連体詞 in that it can only adverbially prepend 形容動詞 (or other 連体詞 like 小さな), which tend to be more noun-like. ほんの cannot adverbially modify a regular old 形容詞, AFAIK.

@snailboat Thanks anyway.