9 comments

1. Hello. I have a question about a cat’s name from the popular family friendly Japanese movie, Ju-On The Grudge.

   Every English source writes his name as Mar, which just seems like a weird name. I can’t think of anything that could stand for. However, in Japanese his name is written ミャー. That seems to me like a pretty direct translation of the word Meow. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

   For what it’s worth, in the American remake, the cat is never given a name.

2. Have a question about でも from a tadoku story. I know でも is often used to connect clauses in a similar way to “but” or “however” – that’s what everything talks about when I look online, but doesn’t seem to match up entirely with the way it was used in this story (though not entirely unrelated in idea).

   The basic context is a woman is receiving a package and is asked to use her ハンコ to mark that she got the package, but she can’t find it. So the delivery guy says 「サインでも　いいですよ」. The meaning is pretty clear to me – he’s informing her a signature is another option. Is this a common use of でも? To offer or suggest an alternative? Or maybe its something else entirely that I’m misunderstanding.

3. Hello! I have a question. I know about もしかしたら, that means “maybe” and we put it at the beginning and we can write it like “もし”. I know about かもしれません, that technically means the same, but we put it at the end. Do we reduce it like we do with もしかしたら or it always stays as a full phrase?

4. What’s with the 「のは、のお姿」 in this sentence?

   >YouTubeチャンネル「豆柴うに＆ゴールデンレトリバーおから UNI＆OKARA」で話題になっているのは、のお姿。([source](https://article.yahoo.co.jp/detail/38c0bba93698f645eed5e966763bc7abcc8ba272))

   Everything up until 「のは」is fine for me grammatically, but I’m thrown off by the presence of the next の—not sure if I’ve seen this sort of usage before. Is it like somehow attached (grammatically) to the channel?

5. Can a verb act like an adjective in japanese?

   I found this while reading a light novel 「燃えさかる炎」.

   I searched for it and 燃えさかる means “to blaze” and 炎 means “flame”. Joining both becomes “blazing flame”. But why?

6. Hello! I know that 在庫がありますか (Zaiko ga arimasuka?) is asking if an item is in stock, but I thought I saw somewhere that if you go shopping and use this phrase at checkout, they’ll understand it as you asking for a new version that’s still packaged. Is this accurate and used commonly?

7. I was wondering about this phrase here:

   天真爛漫

   What does it mean to describe someones personality? Is it only used for kids and if so what range? Can it be applied to adults and does it mean they are childish or not then?

8. If asked 何名様ですか？Do you reply with 人 or 名?

9. Hello! Help understanding 浮かれついで (or 浮かれついでに?) from an episode of Haikyuu S2:

   このタイミングで浮かれついでに潔子(きよこ)さんに近づく輩を―決して許すな！