Daily Thread: simple questions, comments that don’t need their own posts, and first time posters go here (February 16, 2023)

7 comments

1. I came across the sentence
   > お勘定をして下さい。

   while studying and I’m wondering why お is used here together with a word that exclusively uses on’yomi.

   I did a quick check on google and found about 10.5M results for お勘定 and about 8.7M results forご勘定.

   Why is the お used here at all? Why is it apparently more common? Does this happen regularly with other words?

2. [deleted]

3. When I come across a paragraph or page of Japanese, it looks like a wall of text. It feels like I have to go into “Japanese mode” to start reading it. Once I do that I can read at a reasonable speed, but it’s nowhere as automatic as english.

   Come to think of it, even though I studied mandarin for 12 years in school, it’s the same. There is a slight pause for me to switch modes before I start reading a long sentence or page in mandarin.

   This doesn’t happen for individual words though. I see kanji and immediately the reading comes to mind. But once I see a wall of text my brain takes a while to warm up before I can read it.

   Does this happen to you and when did reading Japanese become as natural as English?

4. Was wondering about this line from the final fantasy script which I’ve been reading. For context here it is: http://ff4com.s4.xrea.com/ff4conve/conve012.html

   > 手前の胸に聞いてみやがれ！

   It seems to literally mean “You have the nerve to listen to the front of (my? your?) chest!”

   But that can’t be right…

5. Is there a difference between writing 初めて and 始めて? Is there a difference in connotation between the two Kanji, or are they completely interchangeable? Thank you.

6. I’m trying to work out why 疲れた or even よかった, is used in the past form, when in English we say, “man, I’m tired“ (right now) or “thank goodness.”

   Is Ta form always used for past forms only or am I missing something?

7. Which is the main Anki app people use on iOS (or at least recommended by users here)? When I search on the App Store, the first one that comes up is a whopping $25. Surely that’s not the one when there’s others that are free and higher rated.