Daily Thread: simple questions, comments that don’t need their own posts, and first time posters go here (May 12, 2023)

15 comments

1. Is こう another word for あの or えっと, namely, a word used when you’re thinking of what to say next, like “umm” in English?
   Recently I’ve started listening to real Japanese people (not characters in anime or VNs) and they use it all the time, particularly women. Which is weird because I’ve always thought the go-to sounds were あの and えっと.

2. い as a conjunction (and) was something that I learned recently. 1. is this true? 2. can you explain this while I’m still a little stunned? 4. when does this occur? 3. are there more examples?

   an example here, I think:

   ハリーはロンにーいやいやながらー手伝ってもらい、行く先々でくまなく探した。

3. Was wondering about this.

   > うそみたいに白くなっている。

   Context: Someone gets magical food which makes their teeth magically white and healthy without brushing.

   Now what does “white like a lie” mean? Some idiom?

4. Hey everyone 🙂

   Is there a way to say “out of curiosity…”

   For example: “out of curiosity…are you free tonight?”

5. I just started my learning journey last week and I am currently trying out the Renshuu app (among other things). I noticed for days of the week it lists both ~曜日 and ~曜 as the same word (i.e. 日曜日 and 日曜 for Sunday), but it doesn’t seem to differentiate the difference between the two in its definition. Is there really much of a difference between these two? Is one more formal than the other?

   I tried to do some searching on my own but none of the answers seemed certain.

6. Sorry for the sorta off-topic question, but if I’ve got a Switch from America, would I be able to play the new Zelda game in Japanese if I buy it digitally? Or, would a physical Japanese copy bought in Japan work on my American Switch? 🤨

   I remember reading that Switches aren’t region-locked, but a Japanese copy of BotW didn’t work on my Switch for some reason (years ago when it came out) so I wanted to ask here if anyone’s got some personal experience with the language options on Tears of the Kingdom

7. If a Japanese person was to write something in a notebook would they more likely write horizontally or vertically?

8. Shinkanzen taught me that

   – もの：形がある、目で実際に見える実体。

   But several pages later, this sentence was presented in the same book:

   このサービスは８０歳以上の一人暮らしの方に対して行われるものです。

   Service doesn’t have shape so I’m confused.

9. “してこのような状況におかれた時君は”

   What does the して mean here? First time I’ve seen it start a sentence

10. What’s the best way to order food with multiple specifications? For example “I would like a small size milk tea with tapioca”

11. A character in a game I’m playing says それ when you sprint, and another says it when you begin gliding. What does this mean in this context? Is it sort of “let’s go there”? Another says そこ when they hit something, is that similar to “take that!”?

12. I really enjoy the translation exercises in Genki, the ones where it gives you an English sentence and asks you to write it in Japanese. They’re especially prevalent in the “Learning the Kanji” exercises in the back of the workbook. Is there any resource available that is just a long list of phrases like these to translate (along with answers, of course)?

13. I often eat at a standing soba restaurant where we are supposed to wipe the table after eating. After I wipe the table, the chef says something that sounds like

    おさわります

    Any idea what they actually say?

14. Imagine I’m with a girl I just started dating at a restaurant, i’m seeing someone and i’m being asked who this person next to me is. If i say 彼女, would that have a 恋人 connotation in this context or not? Is there any other term I could use?

15. Does ながら modify the pitch accent of nouns in the same way it does for verbs; staying high for heiban nouns and forming a compound with the downstep on the な for nouns with a downstep?

    Whenever I hear 残念ながら it sounds like ざ**んねんな**がら but I haven’t really noticed it with other nouns.