Japanese Language

小太郎

07:26

What meanings of 本 and 当 are being used in 本当?

Anonymous

08:02

Looking it up, I believe the answer is, more or less, "true" and "right/true". 本 was originally the roots of plants/trees -> (metaphorically) the source/essence of things -> the truth, while 当 expressed pledging a property of appropriate / equal value in exchange for a loan -> appropriate / on the mark -> right/true

Anonymous

Although I wouldn't be terribly surprised if someone said I didn't have it quite right, hehe.

Anonymous

Of course, it might make more sense not to ask that question. I don't think of 本当 as a divisible unit, personally. But then, I'm just learning.

phoenixheart6

13:48

hello all

how sould you say "You can only get it in Japan"?

*would

Flaw

14:02

~のは日本だけです

Or flip it back to a more straightforward orientation I guess

phoenixheart6

so it'd be something like "ぬいぐるみのは日本だけです"?

Flaw

日本だけで~

phoenixheart6

or 日本だけで買えます?

Flaw

このぬいぐるみを買えるのは日本だけです

phoenixheart6

ohh ok

Flaw

14:06

日本だけで買えます works too

phoenixheart6

Ok. Doesn't sound strange or anything?

Flaw

Hold on, there is some difference between だけで and でだけ

(I'm not a good judge for whether something sounds strange/acceptable in Japanese)

phoenixheart6

oh ok

Do you know what the difference is between だけで and でだけ　is?

Flaw

日本だけで買えます (At (only Japan), can buy)
日本でだけ買えます (Only (at Japan), can buy)

Both seems to be syntactically valid to me. I'm not sure if there is any awkwardness in the second sentence though.

phoenixheart6

Hmm I might post that as a question if the need ever arises again

ento

14:15

Another way to put it: このぬいぐるみは日本でしか手に入りません

phoenixheart6

Ohh I didn't know しか could be used in that way

Flaw

Coincidentally, I only understood ぬいぐるみ because I happened to pick up this word yesterday.

jkerian

@Jeemusu: I think you somewhat misunderstand community wiki (from here ). CW is used for cases where lots of people are going to be editing the answer, so it doesn't make sense to be giving upvote credit to one person (it suppresses rep gain from upvotes). It knocks the barriers for other people to edit even lower, and would typically be used for things like our resources thread (although in our case, we decided to leave that on meta).

Flaw

Maybe we should have a sticky function

Some important questions(threads) should be stickied

Or have a more obvious section showing those threads

phoenixheart6

@jkerian I've gotta admit, I've been using this site for about a year and I still don't fully get community wiki

Flaw

14:31

@ento Can 限り be used?

silvermaple

@phoenixheart6 I would post it anyway :) It's a good question

@Flaw see what I've been talking about

Flaw

@silvermaple What are the odds right?

silvermaple

I've had it happen with new English words I learn

phoenixheart6

@silvermaple I think I may have found a page that compares the two, but unfortunately I can't read it lol

google.com/…

jp.hjenglish.com/new/p12886

Flaw

@phoenixheart6 I can try to translate

~だけで is typically used to mean "just this method/location/person will be necessary to accomplish this task"

While ~でだけ means "only by ~, and no other method/location/person, will the task be accomplished"

For example, その仕事は二人だけでできます - This job only requires 2 persons. (Don't need more people)

その仕事は二人でだけできます - This job requires only 2 persons. (No more, no less)

silvermaple

14:49

oh that's interesting

phoenixheart6

ohhhh

very interesting

ento

このぬいぐるみを買えるのは日本に限られています。 might work, but sounds a little bit unnatural or unusual. But my naturalness sensor is not very sharp at the moment.
..のは今限りです。 is ok though. I can't put my finger on where the difference is.

Flaw

The difference is that one is spatial, and one is temporal

phoenixheart6

why the 今?

Flaw

for "now"

phoenixheart6

14:52

Is that saying "You can only get it in Japan right now"?

Is it necessary to specify time?

ento

oh I shouldn't have ellipsized it. I meant このぬいぐるみを買えるのは今限りです

Contrasting the use of 限り/限られている
a. x このぬいぐるみを買えるのは日本限りです。 (unnatural)
b. ? このぬいぐるみを買えるのは日本に限られています (probably works)
c. o このぬいぐるみを買えるのは今限りです。 (ok)

Flaw

X限り works only when X is a number or a time, or when X限り has the meaning of "as long as X"

(I went to look up the grammar dictionary)

ento

d. o このぬいぐるみを買えるのはここ限りです。 (ok)

jkerian

@phoenixheart6 CW really shouldn't show up very often

When you mark something CW, it's for saying "this can't possibly be complete... please edit"

ento

lots of stuffed animals today. yipee

jkerian

15:00

Note that most things that fit that description shouldn't actually be on the site, so CW tends to be a bit rare (except for FAQ-type things on meta)

@ento well-fed pachyderms?

phoenixheart6

@ento ohhh ok, I see

what about 日本でしか手に入れません?

Flaw

!!

phoenixheart6

@jkerian yea, that's what's always confused me. I've never understood how it's decided if something gets closed, or gets community wiki'd

Flaw

I wonder if しか has a similar issue: でしか vs しかで

phoenixheart6

some cw questions seem really outside the scope of the site

0

Q: Difference between だけで and でだけ?

The だけ meaning "only", and で being the "at/in" particle. When saying "only in/at", does the で　come before, or after the だけ? What does it mean, if anything, when it's reversed? Example: "You can only get this plush toy in Japan". Is it, このぬいぐるみを日本だけで手に入れます。 or このぬいぐるみを日本でだけ手に入れます。

ento

15:09

@jkerian 鉄面皮?

日本でしか手に入(い)れません translates to "I only get it in Japan"
日本でしか手に入(はい)りません "You can only get it in Japan"
日本でしか手に入(い)れられません "You can only get it in Japan"

jkerian

@ento hmm? I was just making a bad joke

ento

Perhaps there should be a link to the Community FAQ somewhere on JLU. Shouldn't be of harm at least. (Is there?)

@jkerian oh me too. My head is just going zig-zag from sleepiness or lack of sleep.

jkerian

@ento Specifically to meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/11740/… ? I dunno... CW is one of those things that no one really needs to know about, since it should be really rare.

I guess people think CW is some kind of "FAQ" marking... that's actually what community bulletin is for, but it makes you think about it more carefully when you realize you're basically limited to 4 items.

Chris Harris

15:29

For meta.japanese.stackexchange.com/q/955/1328 are we just considering whether these are in good question/answer format? Or are is it just based on how "inviting" they are to newcomers?

Flaw

Only now I realise the tiny difference between 区別(Japanese) and 区别(Chinese)

Chris Harris

@Flaw what is the difference?

Flaw

Rikaikun wasn't able to detect 区别. So I went to look up the words.

the 力 radical

in Chinese, 力 is under 口

Chris Harris

oh wow, I just noticed the difference

Flaw

In Japanese, it looks more like ク than 力

Chris Harris

15:31

sneaky

I thought it was 方？

Flaw

Apparently Chinese uses 力 and Japanese uses 刀

Nope, I'm wrong.

Traditional Chinese and Japanese use 別. Simplified Chinese uses 别.

Turns out all 3 are 刀, but for some reason the top protrudes in simplified Chinese.

(Simplified Chinese stroke order)

ento

@jkerian If it's a feature of the site, I expect an easy path leading to an explanation somewhere. It's the responsibility of SE, really.

Chris Harris

@Flaw I thought Japanese used more simplified Chinese characters.. is this wrong?

jkerian

@ChrisHarris There is "simplified Chinese characters", then there is The Simplified Chinese Characters. :)

Flaw

haha

The Simplified Chinese Characters are officially used in China and Singapore

Chris Harris

15:45

@jkerian lol what is that?

jkerian

@Flaw aren't they only like... 50 years old or so?

Flaw

Simplified Chinese characters

Simplified Chinese characters (; Pinyin: Jiǎntǐzì) are standardized Chinese characters prescribed in the Xiandai Hanyu Tongyong Zibiao (List of Commonly Used Characters in Modern Chinese) for use in mainland China. Along with traditional Chinese characters, it is one of the two standard character sets of the contemporary Chinese written language. The government of the People's Republic of China in mainland China has promoted them for use in printing since the 1950s and 1960s in an attempt to increase literacy. They are officially used in the People's Republic of China and Singapore. Si...

"Since the 1950s" so yea, about 50 years or so

ento

@jkerian FAQ, or "Wikipedia"

jkerian

@ChrisHarris In the ~1200 years since the Japanese first imported Chinese characters, they have simplified several of them. But that's distinct from the rather sweeping official "Simplified Chinese Characters"

Chris Harris

@jkerian So that might mean that there can be characters where three versions exist right?

jkerian

15:54

@Flaw The relationship between Kanji and Hanji(?) can be a bit loose sometimes... is there always a 1:1 (or perhaps N:1) mapping for traditional to simplified characters?

Flaw

I don't think so

There are characters for which there is no simplification

Also kanji has some characters that do not exist in hanji

渋 does not exist in Chinese

ento

@ChrisHarris I realized I was looking at them if they were "exemplary" q/a format, not (just) "inviting". The intention seems to be to gauge how magnetic the site is to newcomers.

Flaw

@ChrisHarris Possible. 裏 → 裡 → 里 and 歎 → 嘆 → 叹

Aarthi

:D Hello everyone! よろしくお願いします~!

Flaw

Hi

ento

16:03

うわさをすれば!

Chris Harris

hello :)

@ento I haven't voted yet, but that's what I did too

Aarthi

I just wanted to drop by and say that I've been really impressed by the participation on your self-evaluation :)

Chris Harris

and that means it might be worth asking what is different from a question being attractive to newcomers that is not encapsulated by being in good q/a format

jkerian

@Aarthi Excellent timing, we were just talking about how we're supposed to be judging those questions/answers

Aarthi

Ah! :D Well my rule of thumb is, "If I were some random who had stumbled upon this post by the wonders of Google, would I be happy or unhappy with the results here?"

jkerian

16:08

Eh... on the negative side... it's easy to get Japanese students to talk about learning Japanese. (provides a convenient distraction from Xthousand kanji flashcards)

Flaw

@Aarthi That really depends on what one expects from the site vs. what the site actually does.

jkerian

@Flaw Think of it as "stickiness". Are those the kinds of questions/answers that would cause someone to say "I should bookmark this place for later, it looks useful"

@Aarthi Are these really random? or the results of looking at some sort of SEO algorithm? (just curious)

Aarthi

@Flaw Ignore the site -- if you were searching for this info, would you be satisfied with what you found here? Pretend you're a total noob to the site.

@jkerian totally random. ten questions from the last 30-45 days

jkerian

feels like a total noob to the site, on a regular basis >_>

Flaw

I'm quite satisfied with the site

In terms of information, I think we do have a lot of good questions answered.

Aarthi

16:12

Then vote accordingly. :) Another good way to look at it is: how do our answers stack up against the rest of the internet? Are we answering as well as or worse than other sites/forums?

ento

It depends on who the target audience is.

Flaw

(Except that those random questions picked didn't happen to be one of the super mega ultra excellent questions)

jkerian

We actually have gained a bit of a reputation in some circles. We get referenced periodically from reddit's Japanese learning subreddits along the lines of "If you have a serious question, there's JLU."

Chris Harris

@Flaw not only that, but not one of those questions has a "Sawa answer"

no disrespect to anyone else, those answers are wonderful too :)

Flaw

sawa-level answers are something different (sawa hasn't been active lately though)

Aarthi

16:16

@Flaw the idea behind random questions is, "What if this batch of ten questions was the first thing a new user saw on your site?" Would you be happy or unhappy?

some sites have a tougher time with that answer :)

@jkerian which i read as "Justice League Unlimited" at first.

jkerian

is tempted to change the name of this chatroom, temporarily

Chris Harris

@Aarthi Most of the questions that I see from other Q/A sites regarding Japanese have been answered here (not all though).

Aarthi

@jkerian (do it do it)

@ChrisHarris are our answers better / more complete / more helpful?

if so, we're rockstars! if not, sounds like y'all got some editing to do.

jkerian

I'd be pretty happy with most of them. Two of the questions were just fundamental misapplications of rules... which isn't bad, just not terribly useful

Chris Harris

In my opinion yes, but other Q/A sites seem to have more populace

Flaw

16:18

I think our answers are more helpful.

jkerian

@ChrisHarris other SE sites? or other japanese learning sites? There are ALOT of japanese-language-learning ghosttowns, out on the interwebs

Aarthi

^^^ That's totally true.

Chris Harris

@jkerian other japanese learning sites

Aarthi

I picked up conversational half-assed Japanese from years of anime and dorama (renzoku) television serials

I remember how dead other JP-learning sites are

Flaw

We have Dono, ZhenLin that have lots of knowledge about classical stuff. TsuyoshiIto provides good insight into the questions. Now we have Teno, his answers are good too.

Chocolate provides native-language insight.

jkerian

16:21

@Flaw I miss Chocolate... she still stranded in England?

Flaw

f(stranded) = holidaying

jkerian

close enuf

Flaw

Haven't seen her around for quite some time.

We used to have DerekSchaab and repecmcs

ento

# I was just going to ask if we're doing okay without sawa-san. Bus factor is higher the better.

Chris Harris

@jkerian Why was a misconception a bad advertisement for the site? japanese.stackexchange.com/q/6600/1328

Aarthi

16:24

(brb getting lunch.)

jkerian

@ChrisHarris I'm tempted to edit SomethingJapanese's answer there to start it out with a simple statement of "that rule doesn't apply here"

Chris Harris

@jkerian Explicit is better :) Go for it

Flaw

I shall be back in about 12 hours or so. Time to go to bed.

jkerian

Or perhaps add a sentence to the second paragraph, "That is not the same as the に in your example"

@Flaw 'nite Flaw

Chris Harris

good night Flaw

Flaw

16:25

おやすみ～

ento

わたしもおやすみなさい

Chris Harris

good night ento

jkerian

@ChrisHarris Which sites are you thinking of? The TK forums, the jpod101 forums, and the LJ site are basically dead. The LJ subreddit is slightly less active than we are. There's esaura.cc and the language section of yahoo.co.jp, but neither of those are really in the same niche we are.

Chris Harris

I thought TK wasn't that dead...

I've gotten plenty of my answers from there before, but maybe it is more dead than I thought

jkerian

It was last time I looked, other than the anime fandom section

Chris Harris

16:34

Well, to be honest, I haven't been there since I came to JLU

jkerian

Which sucks... I'm generally a critic of his guide, but I do appreciate its existance. It doesn't seem like he's been as active recently

jkerian

16:47

lunchtime for me too

jkerian

18:45

huh... something about this code load seems to be shearing off the write heads :/

Chris Harris

19:32

Does anyone know how to talk pronounce "O(1)" in terms of algorithm complexity?

In Japanese of course :)

Maybe it is ランダウイチ?

And what about "O(n)" ?

jkerian

Does it offer any hints here? ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/…

Chris Harris

20:03

I'm still reading it.

taylor

22:55

which is worse Fox News or RT

jkerian

23:28

meh... Fox News isn't any worse than anyone else

whose RT?

can't figure out why anyone would try to get their news from TV

taylor

23:56

Julian Assange had a mini series on RT

before that I had never heard of it

then I started watching it

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