@jkerian As far as I know

One-time bonus only, so if you already linked say JLU and Gardening, you won't get another 100 on JLU

@Troyen but regardless it gets people over the "cant talk in chat" level

@jkerian Oh, that's a good point

Oh, I miss when our chat room was hopping every night

ugh... wasted so much time setting this computer up again

motherboard let the magic smoke out, last weekend

still don't have anki reinstalled... probably going to be 1000 cards behind or so

I've fallen so far behind with my Anki...

But I also feel like I'm getting diminishing returns on keeping it up...

Anki 2 supposedly has a system that helps with that whole "falling behind" thing

@silvermaple Me too, but recently I've gotten really busy with starting school

eh... we're still better now than we were 4 months ago

japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/6412/… is one of those odd cases... it is actually a duplicate, but it's hard as hell to tell that it is, if you didn't already know the material

The problem is, the answer to the redirected question actually does answer the dup's question, but I can imagine getting very frustrated with that redirect if it didn't click right away

Maybe because of negation so it's not immediately apparent that it's a duplicate

actually... if it weren't for the answers, I'd close-as-dup the other direction

smirks at japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/5727

I know exactly where that's coming from... a particular perversion of English "Would you borrow that to me?"

I wonder why there is a distinction in the direction of borrowing/lending

It's a different subject performing the action?

(and therefore a different action)

Couldn't the two just be replaced with a different word altogether or just adopt only one

The direction is already indicated from cues like "from" and "to"

In a theoretical constructed language, we could use some sort of passive construction... along the lines of "A killed B", "B was killed by A", "A lent a tomato to B", "B was lent a tomato by A", and just get rid of that 'to borrow' thing... but if you're seeking to eliminate repetitiveness from natural languages... I have bad news for you

"I <verb> <object> from you" "I <verb> <object> to you", <verb> = temporary transfer of ownership

who performs the action?

Well... I have good news and bad news

That bad news is that it sounds wierd

In this case, "I" performs the action because "you" is marked with "to" or "from"

The good news is that what you describe has basically happened with casual English, the word "borrow" gets used in both places

You can reverse "I" and "you" and then "you" becomes the actor

Which to me is a reasonable evolution (can I call it evolution?) of the word

One oddity is that it doesn't allow you to drop the prepositional phrase, even if it's not relevent to the conversation

"I borrowed it" could mean you either borrowed or lent it

Well then it depends on context

I still think it's generally inferior

introducing unnecessary ambiguity into the direction of a verb just doesn't seem like an improvement

I guess one variation I've heard is "borrowed out"

That's probably a modification from "lent out" which is probably a fragment from "He lent out the X", which itself ties in with "to give out"

anyways... after my bedtime... g'nite

nites

Continuing from my previous question... how would you say "There is an average of 150mm rainfall and 50% humidity in winter."?

In class today, my teacher claimed that onigiri is different to nigiri, ie it wasn't just a case of bikago. Is that true?

When I think onigiri, I just think riceballs. But when I think nigiri, nigirizushi comes to mind.

Maybe he/she was referring to nigirizushi, often just called nigiri?

@gibbon That'd explain it. I looked up nigiri in jisho.org, but it only gave the long form.

Turns out it is listed in japanese.stackexchange.com/a/2302/91

It looks like just "nigiri" can refer to rice balls, but since it can also refer to sushi, you wouldn't want to assume it's exactly the same thing.

@AndrewGrimm AFAIK 握り without the お means "grip/handle" without referring to the food

actually, apparently Wiki says that it お握り is sometimes called just 握り in some regions ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/…

hey

somebody

question

@jk

@jkerian *

ping!

h well

ah well (i can't type today

)

wow.

anyway, I was wondering how to pronounce the ae sound?

as in nam*ae*

namae.

@silvermaple!

Hey there!

なまえ is pronounced "nah-mah-eigh"

haha you sound like the on-ship computer in HHGTTG

if you've ever read that.

hitchhiker's guide

HHGTTG?

Oh!

(to the galaxy)

Hi there!

What can I do for you?

Yeah, I read it a few years ago

haha

nah-mah-eigh

eigh.

hmm

as in "neighbor" or "weigh"

('i' before 'e', except after 'c' and when it sounds like 'eigh' like in 'neighbor' or 'weigh') which honestly, has more exceptions than that

my pet exception is "protein"...That is not pronounced "pro-tay-n", and there is no 'c'

haha

yeah english spelling/pronunciation has a lot in common with Frankenstein

and this is said fast, right?

like na-MA EIGH!

angrily.

Um, two syllables

nama'e

ahhh

it's like "aeigh"

so how do you pronounce the ai sound?

i thought it was like eye

So, they're all pronounced like short vowels, and they don't run into each other (diphthongs?)

so

あい would be 'ah-ee'

mylanguages.org/multimedia/japanese_audio_phrases.php

yay! jkerian to the rescue

oh wow i didnt even notice that that wasn't you until you said that

It's choppy, but you can clearly hear the different parts of "onamae wa"

It's a lot easier if you keep them in hiragana, that way you can just read them separately, so to speak

I'd call ai, ou, ei diphthongs, actually

close enough at least

どういったご用件ですか...I've never heard that phrase I don't think

diphthongs... FLATTEN THEM!

speaks with a north-midwestern accent

@SomethingJapanese Yeah, that could be, I really have a weak grasp on technical things about languages

holy shit, I'm stuck on the "Can I help you?"

so much of it is silent

I havent really listened to japanese before AT ALL.

so this is knew to me.

I cannot follow it after the first word

the "o" is silent??

I was just pointing to the second to last one... btw... one oddity of that page is that you just mouse over the audio-symbol, rather than click

(that's why it was so choppy for me when I was first trying)

i think these may be a bit messed up

it's making the "ka" at the end of questions silent

surely that can't be right

OH

ok, it's okay

slow down

you have to LEAVE your mouse over it the whole time

yeah

or it stops playing. wow.

bad design.

Interesting site though... it's essentially grabbing one large mp3 or whatever... and chopping it up

Yeah, some of it is cutting off the end

no i got the idea though

The audio for this 私を助けることができる場合は is "私は手伝ってくれますか？”

oh man i have not come far enough to know the readings for those kanji.

so...

hard to follow.

rikai-chan is your friend

forgot i had it lol

rikai-chan, rikai-kun, or even rikai-dono :P

the whole rikai-family

Did you say something like "I'll save the situation"?

or, better translated as "I'll fix this"?

or "I can fix this"

rikaichain shows like 19000 options!!

Um, what part?

"if it's the case that you can help me?" and "can you help me?"

wait

The audio for this 私を助けることができる場合は is "私は手伝ってくれますか？”

how does the audio end with か if the text ends with は

It's a completely different sentence

who was talking about people who's names are like their jobs?

io9.com/5934506/…

Aptronyms

oh you were saying that the audio sample was terrible

okay

gotcha

hah, yeah

ok, im out for the day

seeya later!

welcome back, somethingjapanese

I have a short attention span =/

and other things that need doing =P

I'm actually being reasonably productive at work today...

one of my tech managers just confused the heck out of me, though... he directed a colleague to review my fixes for a problem that I've never heard of

@Aerovistae 「私を助けることができる場合は」は、何かの間違いだと思います。

@Aerovistae 「私は手伝ってくれますか」は、「私"を"手伝ってくれますか」のことだと思います。

@Chocolate heh... he's going to have difficulty understanding that. Relatively new learner.

@jkerian あ、そおなのね・・

@silvermaple see Chocolate's comments here ^

@Aerovistae The translation 私を助けることができる場合は is wrong. I think it's some kind of mistake. I think it meant to say 私"を"手伝ってくれますか[わたしをてつだってくれますか],

Yeah, it looks like the transcription of the audio was wrong

And I think 私を手伝ってくれますか would make sense, but it doesn't sound natural.

We normally say just 手伝[てつだ]ってくれますか or (私[わたし]の)宿題[しゅくだい/homework]を手伝ってくれますか

yeah... I was going to say, you usually use を with what you need help with

(damn English rules... "with what you need help with" is incredibly awkward)

well, there are worse things in English

(nothing off the top of my head though, I just don't think that one's so bad)

...and now I'm thinking of Grease

@jkerian へえ～～awkwardなんですか…(私にはぜんぜんわからないですwww)

@Chocolate 正しい英語ですが、簡単な意味なのに言葉が多すぎます

We'd say 宿題を手伝ってください(orくれませんか/くれますか)/仕事[しごと/work]を手伝ってください/荷物[にもつ/luggage]を運ぶ[はこぶ/carry]の‌​を手伝ってください, rather than 私を手伝ってください. But 「お兄[にい]ちゃんを手伝ってあげなさい」「お兄ちゃんのこと(を)手伝ってあげなさい」would be alright. Like your mom says "Go help your brother"

not に?

@jkerian そおなんだ～～もっと簡単に言えるのでしょうか・・・難し～～

yeah I can't even begin to make sense of that, haha

I'm still working on basics

only know ~200 kanji

We don't say 「お兄ちゃん"に"手伝う」

@Aerovistae Basically we're talking about whether を belongs there or not

ah

お兄ちゃんを手伝ってあげなさい... is that [私に]お兄ちゃんを...あげなさい ?

anyways... lunch time

later

いってらっしゃい

@jkerian No it's like お兄ちゃん(=your brother)を手伝いなさい(=an imperative form of 手伝う).

When I googled "私を手伝ってください/私を手伝ってくれますか", I got a lot of results. But it seems like most of them are example sentences on Japanese language learning websites or Japanese translations of "Can you help me" etc.

Today on Lang-8 I corrected a Japanese entry, where the writer referred to her son as 彼. She also wrote "He(=her son) said to my mom 'あなたもハッピーバースデイ'"

I told her that we don't refer to your son as 彼. I also changed あなたも into おばあちゃんも.

Because you don't call your granma as "あなた". But no other native Japanese speakers corrected them.

I don't know why so many Japanese people teach Japanese learners to say things we don't say ourselves.

Sometimes I feel like asking them "Do you honestly think this sounds right?" "Would you use that phrase yourself?"

Ah~ I talked too much

おやすみなさい~~~

@Chocolate yeah... I remembered when I got home about how that construction is supposed to work