Daily Thread: simple questions, comments that don’t need their own posts, and first time posters go here (October 03, 2023)

7 comments

1. Confused about に in this sentence as per usual…

   いい友達に会った。
   Met good friend.

   This is in chapter 3 of Tae Kim’s guide (using it for now because I plan to get Genki). Searched it up to no avail.

   So why isn’t it を? Met is something I did TO someone and not TOWARD someone.

   My guess is that this is how the language perceives meeting someone, and this a valid answer in my head but perhaps I got this all backwards.

2. How do I reference time in the following way:
   “when I ____, (sentence)”
   example: when i get home, i will do my homework”

   is this correct: 帰ったとき、宿題をする(つもりだ)

3. About how much vocabulary do you need to be able to read textbooks in Japanese? Interested in 初級を教える人のための日本語文法ハンドブック but it feels so far from reach right now that I can’t even estimate when it will be accessible.

4. Can we add んです after だった

   example:

   …つもりだったんです

5. Im still new to learning japanese, so apologies if this question may seem dumb

   recently learned that い-stem of Verb + そう, which creates an adjectival noun meaning roughly “seems like Verb”

   But i came across い-stem+そうにない and while i understand what it means, i can’t understand how it works

   It seems to be the negative of い-stem+そう but considering that’s an adjectival noun, shouldn’t the negative form be い-stem+ではない?

   And い-stem+そうに should be an adverb right? So why is it attached to ない which an い-adjective?

6. [What sense is 来る being used in in this puzzle](https://layton-fushigi.g-takumi.com/nazo028.html) from Professor Layton? [Here’s images of the puzzle](http://professorlaytonwalkthrough.blogspot.com/2008/02/puzzle028.html) if you need them. I’m guessing one of these definitions:

   ③ ある原因から、ある事態が起こる。「不注意から―事故」「不摂生からきた病気」

   ④ ある段階・状態・位置に達する。「限界に―」「体にがたが―」「ぴんと―」

7. How does this work grammatically:

   光の粒が、ネズミに吸い込まれていく。

   吸い込む is passive, so in that case, に points to “who did it” and the mouse is sucking up the grains of light. However, I’m not even sure what ていく does with this particle and how the priority of it all even works out. いく is intransitive so that would mean, に would point to where the particles were sucked towards, so still sucked to the mouse, but not sucked in *by* the mouse.

   I can’t decide of the particles are sucked to the mouse, or sucked in *by* the mouse.