Japanese Language

1:46 AM

Given the questions regarding downvotes on meta, it made me look around a bit and I found data.stackexchange. Unless I'm misinterpreting something, we've got a total of 75k upvotes and 3k downvotes, 400 downvotes by users with less than 500 rep, and 1100 downvotes by one user (who also cast 1700 upvotes). (Not mentioning any names, this is a sensible topic so I thought I'd mention it here, and I've just found out about data.stackexchange, so I might be getting sth. wrong.)

Anonymous

3:33 AM

One user that used to have a lot of downvotes has been removed, by the way

Anonymous

@Xeo Almost!

Anonymous

@cirno Dunno. There are a few series that are made for learners, like 日本語文法セルフマスター that are pretty easy to understand

Anonymous

There's a pair of books, 初級を教える人のための日本語文法ハンドブック and 中上級を教える人のための日本語文法ハンドブック, which I think have pretty good grammar explanations

Anonymous

If you want to learn Japanese school grammar, you might pick up a textbook to work through

Anonymous

Though you can equally express anything in English or Japanese, or indeed, any natural language

Anonymous

3:37 AM

So just being written in Japanese isn't a guarantee that you'll start "getting" it

Anonymous

Some books have explanations in Japanese and English both, and you can try to read the Japanese and use the English if you get stuck

Anonymous

Like for example どんな時どう使う日本語表現文型辞典

Anonymous

Using Japanese monolingual dictionaries will help too, as you get used to the grammatical terms

Anonymous

@Earthliŋ Wow! How did you find an example of 傍点 over furigana?

Anonymous

Was it from memory?

Anonymous

3:48 AM

@cirno There's also the 完全マスター and 総まとめ series

Anonymous

I haven't gone through either of those, but they seem to be popular

virmaior

5:08 AM

Any idea what Japanese word Japanese people are translating to "informant". I've seen that word in two different academic papers in different fields in English written by Japanese... but in both cases, it is used in a very unnatural way where native English speakers would say "respondent"

ento

8:55 AM

@virmaior 「インフォーマント」かも?

インフォーマント

インフォーマント（Informant、あるいはInformer）とは、文化人類学、人類学や言語学のフィールド調査などで研究者にデータを提供する人。情報提供者。たとえば方言学者にとっての方言話者など。服部四郎のフィールドワークや小泉八雲の妻などが有名。 == §関連項目 == 語り部フィールドワーク言語学人類学エスノグラフィー口承、伝承、伝説民俗採集クロード・レヴィ＝ストロース...

ento

9:35 AM

or 「情報提供者」, as mentioned in the wikipedia article.

fwiw, en.wiktionary lists two senses for "informant":
1. One who relays confidential information to someone, especially to the police; an informer.
2. (linguistics) A native speaker who acts as a linguistic reference for a language being studied.
en.wikipedia article for "informant" describes the term only in the first sense, and the page is linked to "情報提供者" of ja.wikipedia, which is also about informants in the first sense.

Earthliŋ

9:55 AM

@snailboat Well, that answer is my most-upvoted answer. (My secret goal is to be the top answerer in the tag "punctuation". ;) I've been wondering about how, if at all, 傍点 and furigana are combined. So (by chance) I came across 傍点 above furigana in ONE PIECE, I took a picture and updated my post. =) In other words, I didn't spend hours looking at Google image search results...

Xeo

10:11 AM

@snailboat What would be the completely right way?

blutorange

10:56 AM

In regards to a comment from [this question](http://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/23220/), rather long so posting it here. Feel free to correct what I write ;)

---
@cirno
Yes, I suppose grammatically, まで marks a noun and its relation to the sentence as a whole (in that respect, similar to grammatical cases). That is why I said effectively, ie. as far as the actual meaning is concerned. And I wanted to distinguish it from the usage of ここまで when it adds a qualifaction to the entire sentence, `up until now, X didn't happen`.

Anonymous

12:22 PM

@Xeo Have you read l'électeur's answer?

Xeo

@snailboat Oh, I missed the fact that he actually posted a question :)

Anonymous

@Xeo My goal in chat was to get the question onto the main site so that they could get an answer like that :-)

Xeo

@snailboat Ah, I had a feeling something like that was missing. The construct just sounded too unwieldy and huge.

Even with his version, it sounds.. long. And repetitive.

Anonymous

@Xeo Repetition is more okay in Japanese than it is in English

cirno

@blutorange So, wouldn't ここまで apply to ドイツ留学のために出発までに必要な準備をしている clause as well/instead? How does the particle まで work when there are many clauses involved? The examples in my grammar book are quite simple. With separate sentences it's clear (only 1 sentence), but what about your example?

ここまでドイツ留学のために出発までに必要な準備をしているうちの姉が常識はずれの人間　だとは - does it work from a pure grammatical point of view?

Xeo

12:32 PM

@snailboat I guess. Feels a bit awkwards to me, still.

blutorange

1:52 PM

@cirno I don't like long sentences either, but I had to do it to illustrate the point. That long sentence is supposed to show that it makes it rather hard for the reader to understand that ここまで is supposed to modify ...の人間 if it is far away. And yes, it could apply to some part of the ドイツ留学 sub clause as well (assuming that would make sense).

In other words, this illustrates that it is most natural to place ここまで in front of what it modifies, or at least in close proximity. Which provides some justification for the interpretation that it modifies a single word/clause instead of the entire s…

cirno

2:13 PM

Hmm, how do I start a new paragraph? :D

Earthliŋ

[shift]+[enter]?

cirno

ありがとう

@blutorange

In that case, is ここまでそんなことは初めてだ (it's the first time that kind of thing happened) grammatically correct? Did I get the meaning right?

(rel. to ここまでそんなことはなかった (such a thing didn't happen so far - or maybe it did, we don't know from what is being said)?)

blutorange

2:48 PM

@cirno
ここまでそんなことは初めてだ is correct, but I think something like (今・ここ)までそんなことはなかった sounds better.

I'm sorry if I wasn't clear: the ここまで (in the sense "up until here/now/today") **is different** from the one in ここまで乱暴な召喚 ("to such an extent").

The question title was asking for "it was the first time X (**of this extent**) happened", which suggested to me you were trying to apply the meaning of ここまで in ここまで乱暴な召喚 to ここまでそんなことは初めてだ (?)

cirno

3:08 PM

Ah, I see. So in the first case it is being used in the sense of 'extent', which I didn't catch at all myself. I thought the whole 乱暴 sentence was about the event *happening*, not its degree. It does make sense this way. So ここ doesn't have to be about physical/time location, but also degree? It's not listed here, so I assumed it couldn't http://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/leaf/je2/26097/m0u/%E3%81%93%E3%81%93/

One last thing (if I may bother you a bit more :))

First you wrote: "most particles apply only to that sub-clause. For example: 今まで[やったことのある]ゲームをリスナーさんにまとめていただきました."

I mean this weblio.jp/content/%E3%81%93%E3%81%93%E8%BF%84 just lists distance and time [as two variables ここまで　can refer to.

現在の時点や地点

Ah well, I am an incurable case of ばか, aren't I.

blutorange

4:44 PM

@cirno No problem, I've got some time right now.

"most particles apply only to that sub-clause" Let me rephrase that in a way that should make it obvious: Words apply to the (sub or main) clause their used in.

"The old cat, which I saw, was green" <-- Main clause: "The old cat was green." Sub clause: "which I saw". "old" only modifies cat, it hasn't got anything to do with the sub clause.

The Japanese sentence consists of ドイツ留学のために出発までに必要な準備をしている and ここまでうちの姉が常識はずれの人間だとは. The former then gets embedded in the latter to modify 姉.

cirno

5:03 PM

@blutorange I'm afraid this definition is beyond me... what does 現在を基準としてその前またはあとの近い日時。 mean (literally)? I think 現在を基準として means "taking current time as the point of reference" but then I'm basically at a loss.　Doesn't ここのところ雨が降らない mean "it hasn't rained recently"? I'm not sure how this implies extent?

ssb

5:20 PM

geocities.jp/f9305710/henkanji.html

blutorange

5:31 PM

I think 現在を基準として means "taking current time as the point of reference".

Yes.

その前またはあとの近い日時 -> "the time closely before or after that". 現在を基準としてその前またはあとの近い日時 is just a somewhat abstract expression for "now +- a bit".

I suppose I confused it a bit -- sense 3 is the ここ in ここまでそんなことはなかった. (up until now)

As for the ここ in ここまで乱暴な召喚; the "extent" part comes from まで, not ここ. ここまで is a collocation, but if we want to think about why it means what it means, I'd say ここ points to a point on the 乱暴-scale; and まで tells us that we got this high up on the scale (=up until a high point).

blutorange

5:43 PM

And yes, "ここのところ雨が降らない" means "it hasn't rained recently", although "recently" isn't a well defined amount of time. But more importantly, it can actually refer to time and not only space.

cirno

6:08 PM

@ssb im at a loss for words.

@blutorange my language intuition for Japanese is very poor, to the extent that I'm often better off sticking to dictionaries, grammar books and google image search to "decipher" the author's intent. Which is why I'm so hesitant to accept the English language parallels.

It's just that there could have been so many other possibilities the author could have said ''extent'', like あるほど、それほど、etc. and he chose ここまで　that I've only seen being used in locational/temporal sense before and doesn't fit with the dictionary meanings of ここまで or ここ　that perplexed me.

blutorange

6:43 PM

@cirno Found the dictionary definition for this usage, same dictionary as before (which I think is easier to understand than the big dictionaries Daijirin, Daijisen etc.), but under the entry まで:

まで
②程度を表す。
《こそあど言葉に付いて》程度が甚【はなは】だしいさまを表す。
「ここまで落ちぶれたか」「どこまで執念深いんだ」「そんなことまでしたくない」「あれほどまでして頑張ったのに…」

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