Daily Thread: simple questions, comments that don’t need their own posts, and first time posters go here (July 01, 2022)

26 comments

1. In games where players take turns to play, does 順番をとばされる mean getting skipped (ie. lose right to play in your turn)? Will 俺の番をとばされる also work? What is the difference between 順番 and 番 in this context?

2. Was just wondering, does “今更なんて言わないでね” mean something along the lines of “don’t say that it’s too late” I’m note sure exactly how “なんて” works here

3. Question about 兼ねる in the following sentence.

   Context: a man just ate a meal at a restaurant, and now he’s heading home but decides to take a detour in order to burn some calories.

   >腹ごなしをかねて、まっすぐに帰宅せず遠回り。

   Does the 兼ねる in 腹ごなしをかねて mean *”to be unable to”* or *”to do along side / to work in two or more jobs simultaneously”?*

   My translation:

   “While simultaneously exercising to help my digestion, without returning straight home (I took) a detour.”

   Or is it:

   “Unable to exercise to help my digestion, without returning straight home (I took) a detour.”

   The first translation seems to work better for me. Is this correct?

   Usually when I see 兼ねる / かねる it means “unable” so I sometimes get tripped up when it’s one of the other meanings.

4. 無駄遣い and もったいない both refer to some sort of waste (e.g. waste of money). What is the difference between the two meanings? Is it just that one is a noun and the other is an adjective?

5. Context: Speaker tried to talk to her friend because she senses there’s something wrong with her but the friend just brushes her off

   私にもっと友達づきあいの経験があれば、このもどかしさの正体に気付くことができただろうか。

   I feel that I know the meaning of this sentence but when I translate it, it doesn’t feel like it makes sense. Yes I know Japanese is a language not meant to be translated to english at times but I just feel that maybe I’m interpreting something wrong here. I’m confused on このもどかしさの正体. So if I try to translate it, it would be “If I had more experience with hanging out with friends, perhaps I would be able to take notice of this irritating true body/form” which doesn’t feel like it makes sense.

6. Where’s a good site to watch unsubbed anime? I want to test my listening skills.

7. What is the estimated number of words you need to know to read kobun without dictionary?

8. Context: Keito spent a long time thinking of what to send as a message to an ill Yukako because he was being troubled about the tone of his message being too formal or casual. He thought Yukako would reply immediately or at least after a few minutes/hours but the reply didn’t come. Yukako’s reply only came at night when Keito already came home from work. The first line is a reply to Keito’s message. The second line is the inner voice of Keito.

   祐果子『ご心配ありがとうございます。メッセージもらえて　嬉しいです。元気が出ました』

   もう一行目だけで、今までの不安が浄化されていく気がする。

   I’m confused on what 一行め means. I have no idea how to interpret it.

9. 河川敷

   しき or じき？Which is more common?

10. Super basic question. I always get ソ & ン mixed up and am looking for a mnemonic to remember them. I always remember し シ & つ ツ by the way they match their opposites. Writing し you start by going down, so it matches ツ, so it’s not that one, it’s the other one. And vice versa. ん ン & そ ソ are so different to their pairs that I struggle to build a relationship between them in the same way.

    I practice writing katakana daily and often mix ソ and ン up. Without a mnemonic I just get held up and often put the wrong one, not really enforcing any sort of muscle memory, just half learning it right, half learning it wrong.

    So, does anyone have a tip, trick, or anything, to help me remember?

    I know it’s not just me who gets annoyed at these characters. I spoke to a Japanese person who said their friends wrote シ ツ ン ソ ‘dirtily’ and said that it’s tough to tell them apart. So I guess that just means putting the small strokes in a intermediate position so it’s not really clear which is which… Not that the average Japanese doesn’t remember the difference, just that messy handwriting and similar characters go badly together.

11. OK, so, a couple of pretty basic level questions. I’m looking at the lyrics of ヤギさんのゆうびん (“Goat mail”), which, as I’m sure a lot of you probably know, is a children’s song about two goats constantly sending letters back and forth. I’m trying to understand some of the grammar/words used in the lyrics, which are as follows:

    白ヤギさんからお手紙ついた

    黒ヤギさんたら読まずに食べた

    しかたがないのでお手紙書いた

    さっきの手紙のご用事なあに

    First two lines are pretty straightforward: “A letter arrived from the white goat / When the black goat [received it, he] ate it without reading it.”

    Question number 1: I know the “tara” in the second line is an auxiliary usually added to verbs to make them conditional (“if/when”), but I’ve never seen it used as a standalone particle/word next to a noun like that. Is that a common use? Or is it just because it’s part of a song and the verb it’s supposed to be modifying is implied?

    Next line is also pretty straightforward: (“It can’t be helped, so he wrote a letter [in response]”), but it’s the next line I’m a bit confused at. “What was in that letter you just sent?”

    Question number 2: The noun “ご用事” gets translated as “business” or “errand” in every dictionary/translator I look at. Is that a common way to refer to letter contents? I guess I’m just confused at what definition would apply there (or if it’s one of those words that doesn’t really translate cleanly into English).

    Question number 3: The last word is なあに rather than なに – is the extra syllable purely for lyrical reasons so that it fits the rhythm of the song, or is 何 ever formally pronounced as なあに?

    Thanks in advance!

12. What’s the most common reading of 追手 as a standalone word? おいて or おって?

13. When writing weekday next to a date is it common to omit the “youbi” part for the sake of simplicity. I saw a date written like this in an anime on a paper. １０月３１日 (火)

14. I’ve recently been listening a lot to a song by Ayano Kaneko called わたしたさへ and have some questions about it, although I’m not sure if I’m just reading into it too much!

    I understand the song title to mean ‘for us’ but during the song she sings just わたしたち rather than わたしたちへ. So she is just singing the word ‘us’.

    Im still fairly new, and not sure if I’m reading into it too much but is she just singing ‘us’, or is this one of those situations where it is implied that she is singing ‘for us’ and a Japanese speaker would interpret it as such?

    Also, is there a reason that she did not use the kanji for 私 in the song title?

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16. How do I find a good tutor? I was thinking of once a week structured lesson but I don’t know where I can find reputable online lessons.

17. Is this sentence correct: 彼女は青い目をしています.

    I got this from a shared anki deck, if it is correct then can someone please explain why this is a suru? doesn’t this translate to “As for her, blue eyes she is doing.”

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19. パラサイトによる無差別殺害事案に対する緊急対処および作戦行動における法的解釈について

    Today we are here to formulate counter measures and discuss the execution of the strategy against the indiscriminate killings that are being caused by the Parasites. Also in regards to that going over what is and isn’t permissible within the law.

    I’m having a little difficulty understanding what 法的解釈について means

    “Going over what is and isn’t permissible within the law.” Would this be accurate?

20. Started the grind and I really, really wonder why someone didn’t take this abomination of a writing system behind a shed and shoot it dead centuries ago. It’s beyond frustrating to have half my cards be completely familiar words absorbed ages ago via osmosis that I shouldn’t even have a card for, but then it’s like 場所 that you’ll see once and have forgotten the next day.^(See Moser, below) Yes, fuck you too.

    Being illiterate is frustrating, and all the more frustrating because it’s so incredibly, thoroughly, utterly unnecessary.

    Just a rant, nothing constructive here, sorry.

    —

    http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html

    > Now imagine that you, a learner of Chinese, have just the previous day encountered the Chinese word for “president” (总统 zŏngtŏng ) and want to write it. What processes do you go through in retrieving the word? Well, very often you just totally forget, with a forgetting that is both absolute and perfect in a way few things in this life are. You can repeat the word as often as you like; the sound won’t give you a clue as to how the character is to be written. After you learn a few more characters and get hip to a few more phonetic components, you can do a bit better. (“Zŏng 总 is a phonetic component in some other character, right?…_Song_? _Zeng_? Oh yeah, _cong_ 总 as in cōngmíng 聪明.”) Of course, the phonetic aspect of some characters is more obvious than that of others, but many characters, including some of the most high-frequency ones, give no clue at all as to their pronunciation.

21. 皆さん、こんばんは!
    Usually, names tend to be neutral or have a counterpart (i.e. Andrea is genderless, Alexander has a female counterpart, Alexandra, etc.).
    But what about Japanese? To be more specific, does the name *Yurine* (ゆりね) have a male counterpart?

22. 最後に王子に戻ったカエルってどう思った？

    Does this mean “What did ***you*** think of the frog that turned back into a prince at the end?”, or ” What did the ***frog*** that turned back into a prince at the end think?”? If it’s too hard to tell without context (I don’t have any), which interpretation is more likely?

23. I heard 出来ます be used in a way I don’t get, is it grammatically correct to say:
    “Profession/titleは出来ますか?”
    With the meaning of “can I become profession/title?”
    or “can I succeed as profession/title”

    By the way I heard it in mha, the original sentence was:
    個性がなくても, ヒーローはできますか!?

24. 「わたし、辛いものを食べると、〇　〇　〇　〇　咳が出るんです。」

    1.ほど　２.必ず　3.いい　４.といって

    Would anyone please give a correct order for the sentence above?

    Someone post a comment on the internet as 2431, but my answer sheet gives me 2134.

    It is one of those questions that I got wrong and still unable to get a good grasp even after looking at the answer.

    TBH I don’t think I heard 必ずほど before so I would really appreciate If anyone can elaborate on the correct order. Thank you so much!

25. My textbook (会話のにほんご) is saying something about there being two causative-passive forms of some verbs but doesn’t give an explanation. For example, 作る can be 作らせられる or 作らされる. I’ve never encountered the second before. Is it just a shortened form for all 五段 verbs? How common are the two forms in comparison to each other?

    Edit: I renewed my Google efforts with different search terms and came across two helpful resources that answered my questions:

    https://selftaughtjapanese.com/2021/06/30/japanese-grammar-abbreviated-causative-passive-forms/
    https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/28522/shorter-causative-form-popularity

    So never mind, unless anyone has anything else to add. 🙂

26. Good day! I’m looking to re-start my Japanese studies. I’ve studied Japanese before but it was 12 years ago. I still can read hiragana and katana albeit very slowly. Anyway, I’ve been looking at Japanesepod101 and TokiniAndy for paid lessons, my question is do these sites provide for the genki textbook or are they going to provide their own resources/materials. Thank you very much in advance.