Japanese Language

Darius Jahandarie

12:14 AM

自分でもそれが撮っているんだけど。 must be some sort of mistake... what a weird sentence.

I can think of a single, very bizarre context in which is it okay, but it's really quite weird.

Oh, wow, not sure how I misread it like that.

Anonymous

12:37 AM

Ah, I think it was 解(わか)る, not 解(と)く, since that would be 解いている

Anonymous

Oh, I see, you already got that :-)

Anonymous

I see your answer now

Anonymous

12:57 AM

I have two friends doing this WaniKani thing now

Anonymous

1:56 AM

The Tanaka corpus (known to be full of errors, mind you) has these three sentences: (1) 「自分でもそれが解っているんだけと。」 = "I know it myself."　　 (2) 「自分でもそれをやってみなさい。」 = "Do it by yourself."　　 (3) 「自分でもそれをやってみます。」 = "I'll do it by myself too."　　You've supplied sentences 1 and 3 with the translations for 1 and 2. — snailboat ♦ 53 secs ago

Anonymous

I wonder how that happened.

Anthony

@snailboat is there a phrase that means I appreciate it that sounds lik IOU?

I feel like it says えいおゆ

But that's so vowel-ly.

Anonymous

That is extremely vowelly.

Anonymous

It's phonetically 100% vowel. :-)

Anonymous

I don't know the phrase you're asking about.

Anonymous

2:00 AM

Do you have a recording?

Anthony

ゆ is a vowel?

And I don't know how to record things...

Hmm...

Anonymous

Phonemically the semivowel (glide) y patterns like a consonant

Anonymous

So we say it is a consonant phoneme

Anonymous

Phonetically, as in the actual physical reality of how it's pronounced, it's more or less a glide between two vowel positions

Anonymous

Try saying いう quickly

Anonymous

2:03 AM

ゆ is neither a consonant nor a vowel because it is made up of two sounds

Anonymous

The glide y and the vowel u

Anthony

Oh.

You're so cool.

You know so much cool stuff.

Hmm

I found what I was talking about

@snailboat At about 20:15 on this site...

soul-anime.net/watching/noragami-episode-9

It's also a terrible anime.

Anonymous

Oh, 礼を言う?

Anonymous

2:20 AM

I mean, that wasn't a question :-)

Anthony

Oh.

Jeez.

I was close.

How did that phrase come about. You're saying that you're saying something?

Anonymous

2:36 AM

Oh, I don't know

Anonymous

There's a class of speech acts called performative utterances

Anonymous

By saying them, you do them

Anonymous

For example:

Anonymous

"Welcome!"

Anonymous

Simply saying this word performs the act of welcoming you

Anthony

2:38 AM

So strange.

Anonymous

Performative utterance

Performative utterances (or performatives) are defined in the speech acts theory (part of the philosophy of language) as sentences which are not only passively describing a given reality, but they are changing the (social) reality they are describing. J. L. Austin originally assumed that stating something and performing an illocutionary act are mutually exclusive. == History of the term == In his 1955 William James lecture series, which were later published under the title How to Do Things with Words, Austin argued against a positivist philosophical claim that the utterances always "describe" or...

Anthony

Do most of those evolve from something else, or are some of them actually just originally spun up that way? For instance, etymology online says... wilcuma (n.) "welcome guest," literally "one whose coming suits another's will or wish."

Anonymous

Well, in English we have an interjection thank you, but it comes from the complete sentence I thank you which, though it wasn't an interjection, was a performative utterance

Anthony

Ah.

I see.

Anonymous

I think it's just one of the ways people use language

Anthony

2:42 AM

Yeah I don't know what I was thinking.

But so on the topic of welcome, it's from "one whose coming suits another's will or wish"?

So it wasn't always performative, then? (Not trying to nitpick your example, just curious)

Anonymous

No, it wasn't always performative

Anthony

Ah.

What does 礼 mean, again?

I only know bow.

Anonymous

Do you have a dictionary? :-)

Anthony

Yeah I'm sorry I asked, I realized it was a poor think to ask once I did.

I thought it meant something more honorific than thanks. Hmm.

Ah I was thinking of 礼儀 I think.

Sorry I'm a bit out of it. Thanks @snailboat.

Anonymous

明鏡 sense two: 感謝の気持ちを表すことばや金品。「礼を言う」「礼状」「謝礼」

Anonymous

2:51 AM

That's just sense two, the range of usage 礼 has is wider than that

Anthony

Is that ことば　や　金品

or こと　ばや　金品。

Anonymous

ことば　や

Anthony

Word for expressing thanks, and 金品？

I'm so confused.

Anonymous

感謝の気持ちを表す [ 言葉や金品 ]

Anthony

Oh.

<3

Thank you.

Anonymous

2:56 AM

Japanese relative clauses tend to attach higher than in English

Anonymous

In English they tend to attach just to the closest word, in Japanese they tend to attach to larger phrases

Anonymous

Just a tendency.

Anonymous

I mean in cases where both high and low attachment are possible.

Anonymous

So you should always try to think if it makes sense for the relative clause to attach to more than just the first word after it

3 to 5 business days

@snailboat Does it say "what kind of phonecalls are made here?"

Anthony

3:09 AM

@snailboat I'm not sure what you mean by attachment, but I'll stew over it.

Anonymous

3:30 AM

@3to5businessdays Actually, the speaker is asking about the phone calls being received

Anonymous

@Anthony Compare "I kicked the ball" with the relativized "The ball [that I kicked ___ ]"

Anonymous

The relative clause [that I kicked ___ ] attaches to the ball

Anonymous

(Technically it would be better to say it attaches to ball and the determines the entire nominal ball that I kicked, but we can ignore that detail here)

Anonymous

It's as though the ball is filling in the gap in object position.

3 to 5 business days

oh shyt, I completely dropped the ball on that one

Anonymous

3:34 AM

We instinctively understand that "I kicked ___" is an incomplete phrase, and the ball is filling in for it.

Anonymous

But sometimes it's not clear what the relative clause is attaching to.

Anonymous

1. "I have a brother and a sister [ that I love ___ ]"

Anonymous

2. "I have a brother and a sister [ that I love ___ ]"

Anonymous

Example 1 is high attachment. If you drew a syntax tree, you would see that it attaches to a node that was higher up in the tree.

Anonymous

Example 2 is low attachment.

3 to 5 business days

3:36 AM

Oh wait

> こちらにかかってくるのは

oh, that's "call here"

i see

Anonymous

When both are possible, English tends to prefer low attachment, like example 2, but context determines which way we understand it

3 to 5 business days

I thought に marks location, but it actually marks destination or maybe indirect object

Anonymous

So if we have pragmatic (contextual) reasons to think #1 makes more sense, we'll instinctively understand it that way

Anonymous

に has many uses

3 to 5 business days

yes

If it were to mark location, probably で would be more suitable?

かかる probably has more uses than に hoho

Anonymous

3:38 AM

Oh, かかる has like 45 senses IIRC in 明鏡

Anonymous

You can think of them all as stemming literally or figuratively from the core meaning "hang", although then some of the meanings are pretty far-removed

3 to 5 business days

Yeah

Anonymous

Oops, it's actually 52 :-) I just checked

Anonymous

Set has 430 senses in the OED.

Anonymous

So it's at least less intimidating than that. :-)

3 to 5 business days

3:42 AM

set?

Anonymous

The English word

3 to 5 business days

you have OED subscription? Or you keep one copy at home?

Anonymous

I have an electronic copy--very few people use physical copies at the moment, and in fact they've stopped printing them. If you're in the US or UK, odds are fairly good that you can access the OED online for free using a library card that's available to you

Anonymous

(You can generally access it from home using your library card if so)

Anonymous

Many schools have institutional access too, of course

3 to 5 business days

3:47 AM

I have to settle for this since it's free

Anonymous

It's not worth paying for an individual subscription. You can buy an electronic copy for about the same as one year's access

Anonymous

That is an entirely different dictionary

3 to 5 business days

I know

Anonymous

But they don't say which one.

Anonymous

It's the Oxford Dictionary of English. If you set it to American English, then it gives you the New Oxford American Dictionary, which is a derivative of the ODE.

Anonymous

3:48 AM

I have a copy of that on my 電子辞書! :-)

Anonymous

I rather like it

3 to 5 business days

hmm how many Oxford dictionaries are there?

Anonymous

The main difference being the 電子辞書 version has the Oxford Sentence Dictionary included with a lot of examples.

Anonymous

Quite a few!

Anonymous

Popular among learners is the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary

3 to 5 business days

3:51 AM

Oh yeah I have 2 of that I think

They have different covers though

Anonymous

It's really nice how many good dictionaries of English are online

Anonymous

I use onelook.com to search a bunch of dictionaries at once

Anonymous

One of my favorites online is Macmillan

Anonymous

There are a lot of competing learner's dictionaries in English!

Anonymous

I don't think there's anything quite like those for Japanese

3 to 5 business days

3:53 AM

I'm very thankful for 大辞林 and 大辞泉 available online

Anonymous

Monolingual dictionaries of Japanese are generally designed for native speakers

Anonymous

Yes, me too! :-)

3 to 5 business days

Though they are not exactly learner friendly

The explanation is a bit too brief

Anonymous

I like having bilingual dictionaries because they tend to have a lot more examples than monolingual dictionaries

3 to 5 business days

yes

Anonymous

3:54 AM

But monolingual dictionaries usually do a better job explaining or defining

Anonymous

~~明鏡 is my favorite for that :-)~~

3 to 5 business days

You've been saying that so many times haha

Anonymous

Haha! I'll try not to be a broken record :-)

Anonymous

I just like dictionaries :-)

Anonymous

I have my own little dictionary collection.

3 to 5 business days

3:58 AM

I like well-written documentation, in general

dictionaries is a subset of that

Anonymous

Competent speakers know a lot more about how verbs are used than can be found in dictionaries, unfortunately

Anonymous

They know what ranges of constructions they can appear in, what range of complementation they can take, what collocations they appear with

Anonymous

Good dictionaries tend to approximate that but it's never complete

Anonymous

You know, I like the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (LDOCE)

Anonymous

It has a big collocations section for the words I've looked up in it :-)

Anonymous

4:03 AM

I think the free online version is missing that, sadly

3 to 5 business days

You get what you paid for

*pay

3 to 5 business days

4:24 AM

I just rediscovered the furigana option to "hide furigana texts, only show when mousing over kanji"

it's so nice

I wonder if mobile browsers can display furigana...

Anonymous

The iPhone browser can, but it's not enabled on the mobile version of Japanese.SE

Anonymous

So they see 変える【かえる】 or 変{か}える or however people choose to write it

Anonymous

If you go to the full site in the mobile browser you can see furigana, but it kind of squishes the characters to make room, so it looks funny

Anonymous

Anthony

4:43 AM

@snailboat Thank you!

3 to 5 business days

5:36 AM

uh, refreshing yet displeasing to the eye

Choko

7:01 AM

@Anthony sounds to me as 「まちびとまちまち」

machi bito machi machi

I can't hear 花 either

Choko

8:25 AM

Lizladyninja, United States

32 2

She took back her post

and left

I discouraged her... maybe

by pointing out her mistakes

Maybe I should have responded to her like "keep up the good work!"

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