Daily Thread: simple questions, comments that don’t need their own posts, and first time posters go here (October 20, 2023)

6 comments

1. Just wanted a sanity check that Duolingo should have accepted my answer (I know Duolingo isn’t the best, but it is useful as a habit!)

   English
   “I have never seen Mr Mori upset”

   My translation
   “怒った森さんを見ていることがない”

   Duo’s translation
   “森さんが怒っているのを見たことがないです”

2. How can one say something like:

   “It cant be that hard/difficult, right?”
   Or
   “How hard can that be?”

   For example, someone tells you:
   “You will have to learn Chinese too”
   And you, knowing its a very hard thing, jokingly say “sure! Cant be that hard, right?”

   Is this something people would say in Japan or is it one of those things that isnt said at all?
   Thank you in advance for your time!

3. Trying to understand the structure of these sentences (MNN 34).

   しょうゆをつけて食べます。

   しょうゆをつけないで食べます。

   If I understand correctly, て is often used to connect sentences. But in those cases, it’s used to create a sequence of events. Event 1 て、event 2 て、。。。

   As far as I can tell, these are not sequences of events. The secondary sentences simply add information to the main sentence (たべます)。Eating without putting soy sauce on the food.

   Did I understand this correctly?

   How do I differentiate between this and a sequence of events?

4. I’m trying to understand the usage of の in this sentence from MNN 34:

   新しいのを買ったあとで、なくした時計が見つかりました。

   I would expect の to be used with a noun, but that’s an adjective.

   Can somebody explain what kind of の this is?

5. How might I find a transcription into hiragana & an English translation to a piece of Japanese language music?

   Song in question is the end credits for the Playstation game Tekken 2 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b99KSI4zGSM

6. Hi!

   If anyone is familiar with Cure Dolly, there is a grammar point (or rather an explanation) I have some trouble understanding.
   When talking about negation, she says this:

   If we want to say “this is a pen”, as we know, we say “これは ペンだ”.
   “as for this, pen = / As for this, it’s a pen.”
   But if we want to say, “this is not a pen”, we say, “これは ペンでは ない”.

   So what does that mean?
   Well, the “で” is the て-form of “だ” or “です”.
   So we still have “これは ペンだ” in the form of “これは ペンで” and then we’re attaching “ない”.

   I don’t quite follow what would be the reason for inserting は in between ペンで and ない here. Is it needed to properly assess what’s to be negated ?

   Source: [Cure Dolly Lesson 7 (Negative verbs)](https://youtu.be/KIPhvGxp43c?t=2m9s)