@DamkerngT. I think only certain speakers would allow may there

languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1683

We're probably still at sub-while levels.

@DamkerngT. I'm 33 and I'm dialect A!

No.

Of course, I talk funny anyway.

I have opinions and stuff, but they might be suspect. :-)

Hitler, eh?

The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English seems kind of neat. Do you have that one?

Ah, it's online!

But the online one seems to be missing the collocations feature, which is what I thought was neat :-)

Maybe I don't know how to use the website properly

The version on my 電子辞書 has the stuff on the website, along with a list of collocations and examples for those collocations, a section titled "common errors", and at the bottom a thesaurus entry

So when I look up speech there's a section that says [Common errors] Do not say 'do a speech'. Say give a speech or make a speech.

And there's a list of 21 collocations

With examples

For that matter, the version of the Oxford Dictionary of English on OxfordDictionaries.com isn't as complete, either

This has the ODE, the LDOCE, and the OALD on it

Sure

I set the font size to tiny so I could fit more in the picture :-)

es

The text looks nicer when you make the font bigger, and the screen looks nice in person (it looks weird in pictures)

I really love my 電子辞書 :-)

So there are two screens' worth of collocations.

Um, I only know what it means because of our context here :-)

Otherwise I bet I'd assume it meant say "a speech"

Light verbs are tough in English.

In Japanese, you pretty much just have the one, する :-)

CGEL uses the usual term "light verb", by the way, but says:

"Light verbs ― or, more properly, light uses of verbs"

Pretend the bold worked. I'm too lazy to split the messages up this time.

Do you have an example with get?

Maybe I need to define "light verb".

"As used here, the underlined verbs are semantically 'light' in the sense that their contribution to the meaning of the predication is relatively small in comparison with that of their complements."

(In the above, they have double asterisks instead of underlines. Can't do underlines here because Jeff Atwood hates underlines.)

Basically, with a light verb, the noun it takes as a complement is where the main semantics of the action come from

In "She gave him a kiss", we can call gave a light verb because the semantics more or less come from kiss

In Japanese you could say キスした―literally "did a kiss" rather than "gave a kiss"

Because in Japanese the light verb is always する

(Of which した is the past form)

Yes, that's right, and it's a noun rather than a verb

Of course, キスする would be best translated with the simple verb "kiss"

But it actually has two parts, the noun キス and the verb する

You'd be surprised how many loanwords Japanese has.

Until the last 150 years, Japanese had no words for "she/her/he/him"

@DamkerngT. Loans aren't something that takes place only when a language is new.

Japanese certainly had a word for orange (the fruit) for a long time before anyone in Japan had even heard of English

But now Japanese uses オレンジ

Japanese had a word for spoon, 匙（さじ）

But now everyone says スプーン

If you look up 匙, it's defined as スプーン :-)

Several.

口づけ（くちづけ） and 接吻（せっぷん） are other words for kiss you'll find used today

Although キスする is more common

There's also チュウ, which is onomatopoeia

(You can pair it with する, and it can be variously written ちゅう or チュー)

There are all sorts of reasons why Japanese borrows sounds.

Unfortunately, Japanese Language & Usage felt the question about the topic was Too Broad…

Someone asked about the reasons why Japanese borrows words.

It's possible to categorize sets of borrowings and examine their apparent motivations

For example, in English we typically borrow words from Japanese for (1) things that we don't have words for, or (2) things we do have words for, in which case we use the Japanese word for those things that are specifically Japanese

For example

Japanese anime is borrowed from animation

In Japanese, you can use anime to refer to any sort of animation, including non-Japanese cartoons

In fact, "cartoon" is a pretty decent translation for anime

And yeah. We borrowed anime back into English, and we use it specifically for Japanese animations.

That sort of borrowing exists in Japanese to some extent, too. Sometimes an English word refers specifically to the version of something from an English-speaking culture.

That's not always the case.

But the new borrowing from English is often different in some sense from the word it's replacing, or appears alongside.

For example, オレンジ orange is clearly "orange". But Japanese also has, say, ダイダイ and ミカン

Both words are from Chinese

As an aside, this is a secondary use of katakana: names of plants and animals are often written in katakana, with the exception of some particularly common ones like 猫（ねこ） or 犬（いぬ）

I could write 橙 and 蜜柑 in kanji, but that would be less common.

When オレンジ is used for a color, it too is distinguished from 橙色（だいだいいろ） (lit. the color of ダイダイ)

→ ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%A9%99%E8%89%B2

→ ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/…

So gaining the loanword just gives Japanese the ability to express more variation :-)

Not like with さじ, where the original word has mostly fallen into disuse.

Another reason is for technical vocabulary. It's often desirable to use English technical terms in Japanese for one reason or another―the literature or documentation in the field might all be in English!

A major force in Japanese borrowing English is that all Japanese take six years of English classes in school.

And the way it's designed, the single biggest part is memorizing vocabulary.

And English is often perceived as cool or trendy

So people use English, sometimes rather gratuitously, in order to be cool

There are all sorts of reasons why Japanese is borrowing words from English.

It's shocking, though, just how many words are being borrowed

Older speakers find themselves quite disoriented in a world of loanwords they never picked up as children

japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/06/27/national/…

@DamkerngT. Hah

Do you think English classes in Thailand drive borrowing as well?

Ahh

I guess I viewed it as a system with feedback

When Japan opened its borders 150 years ago, and with the Meiji restoration, there was a strong movement to try to catch up with the west

And there were social and linguistics consequences, and a number of movements started

At one point, people seriously suggested abandoning the Japanese language and making everyone speak French!

Of course it would never happen.

The author felt French was the most perfect and beautiful language, better than the native language of Japanese

At the time, it was fashionable to look down upon Japanese culture and language in a sense, to try to westernize Japan

And Japan began to come in contact with a number of western cultures

Before that, their most extensive language contact with any western language was with Portuguese

When the Portuguese missionaries arrived in the 16th century, before the borders were closed

Oh! Interesting.

The Japanese word for spoon, the one I told you earlier was abandoned over the last century, is さじ, and it is over a thousand years old

The loanword スプーン has displaced it

Ah!

Honestly, some of the policies in Japan did some damage

There was an effort to nationalize the language and to stomp out regional dialects and even other native languages (which were labeled as dialects, even Ainu)

People advocated doing all sorts of things to Japanese during this time―including to the writing system (using all kana, using rōmaji for everything, etc.)

I'm sympathetic but I worry that this sort of effort is rarely successful

@DamkerngT. At this point, I don't think anyone believes a major Japanese script reform is even possible. Back then, people took the idea seriously.

I suppose that it was a time of great change and ideas like that didn't seem beyond consideration

In Thailand, too?

I don't know that much Thai history.

Well, I'm pretty ignorant of history in general. I keep learning bits and pieces about it because it ends up being a pretty serious influence on language! :-)

@DamkerngT. Oh! Tell me about that!

Wow! That's quite a bit!

@DamkerngT. There's a subset of learners who feel Japanese shouldn't be borrowing so many words and find English loans into Japanese distasteful

To me, that's strange, because my job as a learner is not to judge how native speakers use the language

Of course, people do it anyway. :-)

You can post it here

Hi back :)

Okee

So what do you think?

@DamkerngT. I doesn't make a difference with 'thought' you think?

Yes

@DamkerngT. Yes without 'thought' it is very easy to understand. I also read your comments above I agree. But in the sports e.g. why not simply say "I thought she might have a chance to win it" without 'had'?

Hm that could be the case.

@DamkerngT. Yes in the first one "she didn't do it" and in the second one"we didn't know at the time of thinking", right?

@DamkerngT. So in all of these sentences if we chuck out 'thought' will the sentence give us the same meaning? If that's the case then it is very easy I guess.

Ah. I see. Then it is very simple. But then only backshifting is making it unclear imo.

@DamkerngT. And can I say it with 'thought' with the same meaning as the original sentence: "I thought that ropes might have saved her" ?

right, I see.

Yes 'think' is good.

@Tarun Always is an adverb.

@DamkerngT. Traditionally, a preposition requires a noun phrase as a complement. So if yesterday is an adverb, then wouldn't since be an adverb instead, too? But it looks more like a preposition, I think, because yesterday looks like its complement. Well, we could follow CGEL in its non-traditional analysis, calling yesterday a kind of pronoun (a deictic temporal pronoun), so then we'd have no problem calling since a preposition. (Of course, CGEL redefines preposition, too...)

@DamkerngT. If you do consider might the preterite form of may, then you need to qualify it and discuss how it's different from regular preterites.

In fact, it's different from any other preterite

So you have to decide whether using the term in the first place makes sense