Daily Thread: simple questions, comments that don’t need their own posts, and first time posters go here (March 05, 2023)

7 comments

1. I used to be able to switch between English characters and hiragana in the Japanese IME using the CAPS key, but it recently stopped working. I poked around in the IME settings a bit but couldn’t fix it. Any idea how to get it back to how it was?

2. I sometimes use songs to try and learn a little bit more of japanese and I got curious about this line from “Magnet”:

   私の蝶不規則に飛び回り (My butterfly flapped about aimlessly,)

   私の蝶 means “my butterfly”, but I can’t understand the rest of it.

3. >のりや粘着テープを使うことがあります。

   What i understand from this is something like:

   >You can use glue and adhesive tape.

   What does the ~ことがある do/mean in these type of sentences?

   I’ve found online this construction can mean “ocassionally” or “sometimes X happens” but they don’t seem to fit here. It pops up on pretty much every single hinative answer i come across though.

   Thanks in advance!

4. Question about particle に

   縦半分に切ります

   This is cooking instructions to cut shrimp in half longways. So I read the sentence basically “Lengthwise half に cut” or more naturally “Cut in half lengthwise”

   How do I interpret に for this? So far I know it like in/on/at/for but more in terms of destination or time in a physical or temporal sense. “I live in Japan” or “I ate at noon”. Is it correct to think of this as also being used for “arriving” at a state? Basically “Cut in order to arrive at the state of lengthwise halves”? Or is there another separate grammar point this sentence is using?

5. Listening is proving really tough because I cannot “hear in Kanji” and my reliance on Kanji in reading is strong and I know probably 3000 Kanji or so. Despite listening at full speed, I wonder if I should put podcasts/etc at 3/4ths speed to better train myself on more difficult conversations. All the generic greetings, pleasantries, etc. is easy to understand for me, but conversations have a tendency to go from near complete understanding to about 10% real quick for me. It is difficult for me to recover without a pause. Should I try slowing things down or should I just keep natural pace even though I cannot really catch it all? What is better for advancing quickly – I got 2 weeks left before a meeting, it will be my first in-person Japanese conversation.

6. **「でもメイドさんである事に変わりはないからな…確保確保と」**

   **A character is playing a gacha game, he had failed to get a 5 star character from the event gacha pool. Hope someone can explain to me the correct meaning of his monologue here.**
   **( i can ony guess but not sure what he meant : “But i guess since she’s still a maid character… I’ll not dump/delete her” ?)**

   More context:
   「来いっ……★５おっぱいメイドさんっ！！」
   「だー！　また★１かよっ！　最近ガチャ運悪いなぁ」
   **「でもメイドさんである事に変わりはないからな…確保確保と」**
   俺はお気に入りのソシャゲ、『もっと！　イッ乳（パイ）！　炎のおっぱい異世界魔法学園』をプレイしていた。

   その中で長期イベント、『おっぱいメイド学園』が始まってからはこれまで以上にドハマりしている。

   おっぱいでメイドと来たら、課金しない訳にはいかないじゃないか…！

7. Which particle should I use if I want to say “taking photos of”?
   “Mary is taking photos of flowers.” Is the sentence I’m trying to to write.
   I don’t know how to say “taking photos of”
   I know 写真を撮る is to take a photo.
   I think it could be メアリーさんな花の写真を撮っています。
   Thanks for the help