Daily Thread: simple questions, comments that don’t need their own posts, and first time posters go here (January 06, 2024)

13 comments

1. I’d like to translate the meme [“If only you knew how bad things really are.”](https://i.imgur.com/YijjTbj.png) But it’s proving to be difficult to translate into Japanese.

   So far I have received these two suggestions:
   君が本当の状況を知ってさえいればなあ
   どれくらい酷いか君が知っていればなぁ

   How would *you* translate it?

2. > 噴霧の白煙が充分に遺体を覆い静かに消えていくのを待って、ホッサルは、よし、というようにうなずいた。

   Context: ホッサル is a doctor inspecting a dead body. He has first sprayed it with some kind of mist which the book doesn’t explain.

   I was wondering, about this part 覆い静かに, that adverb after that noun seems weirdly placed to me. Is this all just, like, it basically could have a comma here: 噴霧の白煙が充分に遺体を覆い、静かに消えていくのを待って、ホッサルは、よし、というようにうなずいた。

   Or maybe I’m missing something.

   I think it’s like, “After the white mist had sufficiently covered the corpse, wait for (the mist) quietly to go away, ホッサル nodded as if saying OK.”

3. Hello there! I just started my Japanese journey, and have decided to start with the Genki textbook. I’ve gotten to lesson 4 now, but I’m having a little trouble still understanding lesson 3, section 8 (the section explaining more in-depth the topic particle は).

   I guess the main thing I’m having trouble understanding is using は to present time expressions as the topic of conversation. For example, there’s the sentence 週末はたいてい何をします (what do you usually do on the weekends?), but I don’t understand why it couldn’t be translated as たいてい週末で何をします. So, in summary, could someone explain what exactly は does to a sentence, and importantly, when to actually use it?

   Please forgive me for any stupid mistakes or lack of understanding of Japanese! I repeat that I have only just started learning Japanese and I’m not goodthundered.

   EDIT: I meant 週末に何をします, not で

4. 「あくまでも、初見とこの状況からの推測ですが……黒狼熱の可能性があります」

   Context: A doctor has examined a corpse and is guessing at what killed it.

   I see that this doctor is guessing that this was “black dog fever” which killed the corpse but I don’t get what あくまでも does here. Something about thoroughness?

5. Any good places to study more casual grammar points like Kaname Naito on youtube? Every day I study grammar on bunpro/have studied every grammar point in their catalogue thus far, however sometimes more casual contractions trip me up since “dictionary” Japanese and casual chitchat can be quite different. Overall I do prefer to learn through things like textbooks and grammar explanations etc

6. 「こう不景気じゃ、干上がっちまう。」

   Little confused by the meaning of 干上がる here. Does it mean like “become unable to earn a living” like あごを干上がる as that what the context implies to me. Or without the あごを does it just mean “to dry up”?

7. A bit confused by this sentence from a film.「初めから、部隊が出動すれば、ドーラの如きに出し抜かれずに済んだのだ。」

   From what I understand the character is saying “If you dispatched the army from the start, we would have gotten by without being outsmarted like Dola.” But I think I’m misunderstanding either some vocabulary or grammar as I’m not really sure it makes sense in the context of the story.

   Furthermore, I checked the provided English subtitles and they were as follows, “If we’d mobilised sooner, we’d have bagged Dora too.” Truth be told I don’t really understand the English either… I think it means they would have captured Dola but I thought 出し抜く meant “outsmart” not “capture”? Though maybe that’s not what bagged means?

8. I would like to learn more about 短縮形… but i don’t know where to start. I have only sporadically seen some of the forms like 行ってしまう ー> 行っちゃう and 行かないといけない -> 行かなきゃ.

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11. I have been using Anki for three months, with cards for listening on the front (playing Forvo pronounciations) and Kanji/meaning on the back being some of the most useful. Now I am starting to run into the first common homophones like いる/要る, which have the same pitch accent but are otherwise distinct, making these impossible to distinguish just by mp3 of promounciations in their plain form.

    Does anyone have any recommendations how to handle this? Optimally I would get full sentences incorporaring these words read aloud with correct pronounciations, but I have no idea if there is a way to create this efficiently.

12. How does one say “if there are no complaints/if everyone agrees, lets do it.” I’m having a lot of trouble finding info about this.

13. Can I say « kippu o hitotsu » when buying one train ticket in Japan ? Just used it to get on the skyliner but was wondering if it was wrong or not ? Thanks !