Daily Thread: simple questions, comments that don’t need their own posts, and first time posters go here (July 13, 2022)

28 comments

1. So i found this sentence:

   >彼女はそのドレスを衝動買いした。

   I’m guessing it says 買い(を)する instead of 買いました or 買った. Is it common to use [noun]をする instead of the actual verb? Is one way or the other preferable in colloquial speech or are they freely interchangeable?

   Thanks in advance!

2. I found the following sentence, the person who is saying this is talking about how their friend is always the one who proposes they should go to a concert.
   友達が毎回いっしょに行こうっていうんで
   I would understand this sentence as “My friend says we should go, every single time”, but why does it end on んで？I’ve heard of adding ん before です, but not before particle で. Could someone please explain?

3. **Need help with a hard conversation between a Scientist and MC (her little brother), while she’s preparing breakfast for him**
   **Context: Mc is about to eat breakfast with his sister (a scientist).But his sister told him to wait ,while still measuring the perfect amount of miso soup for her little brother .MC told her that she don’t have to find the perfect amount ,just good enough/reasonable (?) amount of miso is OK for him .**

   **Then his big sister making some arguments about probability/mathematic or something ,which I don’t understand .Appreciates if someone can help me understand their correct meaning o/**

   リビングに降りてくると、朝食の良い匂いが漂ってきた。

   宣彦 (MC)「今日は和食だね。焼き鮭に海苔、玉子焼きにほうれん草のお浸し……美味しそう」

   眞里「いま味噌汁も出す。少し待て」

   そう言って、まり姉が計量カップを使用して念入りに味噌の量を調節している。

   宣彦「……いつも言ってるけど、適当でいいよ」

   眞里「アタシもいつも言っている。“適当”などは無い、と」

   眞里「最適の味になる解答は存在し、その為のデータもある」

   宣彦「でも、毎回必ずその解答に行き着くのは大変じゃない？」

   **眞里「アタシから言わせれば、適当に済ます方が大変だ。そもそも１から１０まであって１０が正解だとした場合、どこで済ませるのが適当なんだ？」**

   宣彦​ 「ええっと……７ぐらい？」

   **眞里「ぐらい、とは何だ、定まっていないだろう。それでは証明できないではないか」**

   宣彦「……理系って生きるの大変そうだね……」

   まるで劇薬を調合しているかのような表情で、計量カップの味噌を睨みつけているスタイル抜群の美女。

4. I saw this in a book and I was wondering about it:

   減速しつつ

   For context, this was about a train decelerating.

   I didn’t see しつつ before so I looked it up, it means “in the process of” so this is “in the process of decelerating”

   But I wonder why we use しつつ and not しなっている or しなりながら or something

5. Difference between 研究 and 究明？I understand both to mean a research type of investigation?

6. I just started studying with the “Tango N5” Anki deck and it has been going somewhat smoothly, but I’m noticing that I’m only learning to read. That is, it provides a sentence in Japanese and it expects me to understand it, but I never have to translate English into Japanese.

   This deck has been helpful, but I’d like practice writing and speaking as well. Is this a limitation of the Tango deck? Are there other resources I can use, or that anyone would recommend? I figure mining my own words and sentences are where I could do this but I think I am a long way from doing that.

7. Hows my handwriting? Finally got to the point where I can write both alphabets from memory.

   https://ibb.co/DPdHbyb

8. Hi just wondering why the Abe assassination is referred to as 銃撃？ Shouldn’t it be called 暗殺？ Is it emphasize that it was a shooting? Wikipedia calls it the “安倍晋三銃撃事件”.

9. A little help quoting someone. How would you quote this:

   “My teacher said that when she went to Japan, her friend said her Japanese was weird”

   I’m not sure how you’re supposed to quote someone within a quote

10. > 「…」と**聞いてきた**。

    I haven’t been able to find 聞いてくる in a dictionary. 聞いてきた is being translated as “asked”.

    It looks like “came and asked”, which would also make sense, so would that be a better translation? Alternatively, since there isn’t anything marked with に or を, I wonder if this could this be a non-ambiguous way to say “ask” in such a case.

11. Hi ! Just started my Japanese learning journey and I am currently following the “A year to learn japanese guide”. It’s a pretty comprehensive guide although sometimes I am a bit lost around the document.

    Currently, I went through the kanas and started my kanji learning with the anki deck that combines RTK and Kodansha so that’s good.

    Regarding grammar, I am gonna be using a grammar book so that’s handled.

    But with vocab in Japanese, I’m struggling because I tried to use the COre 2.3k deck on anki but found it impossible to study given that I don’t really know any kanji at the moment.

    So should I put off learning vocab a bit more and focus on grammar, kanji, kana and probably listening ?

    Thanks!

12. Is there a tai form for aru? There doesn’t seem to be but how do you ask “What do you ***want to happen***” in Japanese?

13. In anime and other forms of manga, it’s relatively common for non-child women to refer to themselves in the third person. This means, instead of using a pronoun, the use their own name. For example, instead of saying “私、イーブイが好きです。” they’d instead say something like “さくら、イーブイが好きです。” where “さくら” (Sakura) is the name of the girl.

    From what I’ve heard, it’s a trait that’s most commonly associated with children and not adults. In anime and manga, it’s often done by non-children to act cute. For example, in some anime, you have high school or even adult girls speaking in the third person.

    How common is this practice in Japan really? Has anyone here ever encountered high school students, college students, adults, etc. referring to themselves in the third person? Or, like many things often depicted in anime, it’s extremely rare or even virtually non-existent in real life?

14. Hello, can someone please help me understand this sentence? その秘密は、 ぼくが飼っている ねこです。

    So that’s from a book and the translation is “The secret is my cat.”

    So this book has beginner stories, but I find this sentence particularly strange. I am a beginner so I don’t really know but there’s something about this sentence that I just find weird. I’m sorry I can’t explain better 😐 It’s almost like it doesn’t follow the usual patterns that I have encountered so far.

    Is this a thing or am I just being weird?

15. If there was… hypothetically… a foreigner that you meet, whose given name is マヌエル and short version is usually マヌ… hypothetically…

    Would their name make you think of the word マヌケ ?

16. Hey I have a question about the conjugation of adjectives. Dou you have to conjugate both, the verb and the adjective if you want to say, for example “I wasn’t beautiful” or just the verb or the adjective if so which one of them. Thanks in advance!

17. In polite speech (but not business Japanese level just yet), is using dictionary form and masu-form before から and ので , equally normal and natural? As in:

    寝坊したから、今急いでいる

    寝坊しますから、今急いでいる (sorry if these sentences sound unnatural they are mine)

    I think Genki hadn’t taught me that in polite speech, it was possible to use dictionary form before から and then ending the sentence with a masu-form verb which made it polite. But then I encountered sentences which should be natural that had this, dictionary form kara and then masu-form, and the sentence was polite.

    Is there one way that is more natural or are both used daily?

    どうもありがとうございます

18. Please help me make sense of this sentence.
    来たい人は誰でも招待して宜しい。
    I feel like there is an invisible を after 誰でも. Google translates it as “anybody who wants to come may be invited”, however I do not see the passive form anywhere in this sentence. If I’m right, the literal translation would be something like “of those wishing to come, it is fine (for you) to invite anybody”. I feel like something is missing for me to grasp this.

19. 冬はまめにうがいをします。

    “I often gargle [water] in winter.”

    What is まめ in this sentence? From the context I figure it means “often,” but I haven’t come across it before and when I look up its usage all I get is まめ as in beans.

20. What’s the difference between honorific and humble in Japanese?

    Ex:

    ていただけませんか

    お～ください

    ご意見がいただけると嬉しいです。お伝えください。

    ご意見がいただけると嬉しいです。伝えていただけませんか。

21. Is there a way to quickly look up kanji pronunciation (perhaps using right-click?) in a browser without having to copy and paste and search in dictionaries?

22. Hello, i started reading Spy x Family and i have stumbled upon the following sentence:
    「試験のためにおまえの学力を知っておかなくちゃいけないんだ」
    Thanks to my knowledge and google i understand what it means, but i can’t wrap my head around what’s going on at the end: 「おかなくちゃいけないんだ」thanks to google trad i know it kinda means the “need” in the sentence but i’d appreciate if someone could explain to me what’s going on here. Or tell me what to look for to check out some lessons or smthn.

23. What’s the difference between

    ほとんど + Negative phrase

    and

    すこしも～ない

    えっ！この魚ほとんど匂いがない。

    えっ！この魚すこしも匂いがない。

24. What’s the difference between

    てある

    and

    ています、ていた

    Where did the poster that had been hanging in my room go?

    私の部屋に貼ってあったポスターはどこにいったんですか。

    私の部屋に貼っていたポスターはどこに行ったんですか。

    Are these both correct or is there a difference?

25. [deleted]

26. Is “でんしゃ なか でんわ つかう です” a grammatically and vocabulary wise correct sentence? I am trying to say “using a phone inside a train”

    sorry for no kanji i am very new

27. I’m looking for a mobile app that would allow me to download vocab audio files. I will be without internet for a couple weeks, and would like to continue to add Anki cards to my deck which include audio. Regularly I use Forvo on PC, and noticed that it has an app as well, but I wasn’t sure whether it worked offline or not. Any recommendations are greatly appreciated!

28. I was reading a Japanese explanation of the English word “doubt” and encountered the following translation:

    I doubt this plan is gonna work -> この計画うまく行くかなあ

    I was wondering if that is in fact a good translation. In my mind, the word “doubt” indicates that the speaker is quite certain and I don’t see any of that certainty conveyed in the Japanese. The Japanese sounds more like the speaker is unsure though maybe suspicious.

    Does the Japanese sentence convey the level of certainty implied by “doubt” in English?

    Another way to ask think might be, if the plan does in fact work, the speaker of the English sentence is wrong. Is that true of the Japanese sentence?

    Thanks