Daily Thread: simple questions, comments that don’t need their own posts, and first time posters go here (June 07, 2023)

23 comments

1. I said ここ＼ろ to a standard-accent native and, much to my surprise, I was corrected to こころ＼. I thought that both pitches were fine and all the dictionaries I’ve consulted confirmed this. So what happens if two standard-accent natives with different internal pitches for 心 meet each other, do they both think the other one speaks incorrectly? That would seem absurd. I can’t really make sense of that correction and I don’t know whether I should even take it in lol.

2. Can somebody help me understand the idea this text is trying to convey. I understand meaning linguistically, but not logically, althoughit could just being dense as f

   「早朝の会議に参加しなくてよい」という対応が、それを希望する人にとっては合理的配慮になるが、希望しない人にとっては逆に「不当な差別的取り扱い」になることもある」

   Why would 早朝の会議に参加しなくてよい be considered as 不当な差別的取り扱い? I understand the initial clause before が but fail to see the logical connection it and the following clause. Why is telling people that that “it’s ok not to attend an early meeting considered as discrimination?

   EDIT: Who does the 希望しない人 refer to and why are they in opposition against 「 早朝の会議に参加しなくてよい」? (I think this ambiguity might be affecting my understanding)

   Full Context:

   Ａ わがままではなく、法律で保障された権利だ。かつて、こうした配慮は相手の「思いやり」に頼っていた。でもそれでは、相手の気分に左右されてしまう。安定的に機会の平等を保障しよう、というのが基本的な考え方だ。

   ただ、合理的配慮の範囲や、何を「過重」と考えるか、などについては見解が定まっていない。たとえば「早朝の会議に参加しなくてよい」という対応が、それを希望する人にとっては合理的配慮になるが、希望しない人にとっては逆に「不当な差別的取り扱い」になることもある。

   From a vocabulary and grammar point of view, it is relatively simple, but the way these ideas have been threaded together feel disconnected and unclear to me.

   EDIT: Also, shouldn’t でもそれでは be それでも?

3. So I’m fairly new at this, but I’m struggling to wrap my head around the broader structure of a Japanese sentence. I understand how to write a simple [X] は [Y] です。kind of sentence, but I don’t quite understand how to generalize that into different kinds of sentences. In particular, I’m unclear how often I do or don’t need to use です, and how a sentence that is not “X is Y” looks. Like, if I were trying to write “he goes up Mt. Fuji”, is ふじ山を上がる correct? Would you only include です in sentences where you’re saying that X is Y? Would you simply replace です with another verb if it’s not X is Y?

4. ‎ベロンベロンに‎酔っ払ったところで——‎お前の出番だ Is there much of a difference in meaning between ? Is one more natural than the other?

   時に vs ところで

5. This is a super simple stupid question I have, apologies in advance. I’ve only just been getting my feet wet with Duolingo and am still deciding which paid study programs I want to progress into, but there’s one pronunciation I don’t understand that I want to make sure I do before I go fucking up other words later.

   Duolingo tells me Mataashita またあした, for “see you tomorrow” – why is it pronounced like “mah-tah-*ish*-ta” and not “mah-tah-*shi*-tah” like it’s spelled? I checked on a few different sites with the little speaker buttons to play the sound, and they all said it this way. Just looking for a bit of clarification before I get the wrong thing cemented in my brain! Thanks!

6. At around what age/education level would a Japanese kid be able to play something like Skyrim in Japanese and fully understand pretty much everything (i.e. what’s being said, what’s written in the books, etc)? The old fashioned speaking style and obscure fantasy vocabulary has made it seem like a daunting game to try to play through for me, though I’m wondering how that’d feel from a young native perspective. Thanks in advance!

7. How should I refer to the administrative staff at my uni in emails? I used to do “-san” for everyone who wasn’t a professor, but then I saw my supervisor (a prof, obviously) call someone from the student affairs office “-sama” and now I’m really confused about what I should be doing. I’m a grad student.

8. I’m using Heisig RTK to learn Kanji. How far into it should I get before I start trying to read a bit of manga?

9. What are appropriate ways to express non-romantic love. The reason I am asking this is because in my native language it is very complicated but in English it is very simple
   1. I love my mom.
   2. My mom loves me.

10. This is probably a super dumb question, but in Genki I Lesson 4, “two months ago” is given as にかげつまえ and “two weeks ago” is にしゅうかんまえ. Can anyone explain why the differences with the か, like why it’s not にげつかんまえ or にかしゅうまえ? I haven’t been able to find an explanation so it’s been hard for me to keep those two straight

11. In this proverb:

    海の物とも山の物ともつかぬ

    What is とも? Is it the particle と followed by も? Not sure how it works here.

12. 翻訳する vs　訳す

    context: I am speaking to a japanese native, I don’t know a phrase..

    I want to say “wait idk let me translate this real quick”

    わからないちょっと翻訳してみる or　しらないまって訳してみる

    thoughts on my usage?

13. Any of you who are more experienced with anki can you advise on moving from one deck to another? I have almost done the core 2.3k deck and would like to remove the cards i know from the 6k one and merge them together.

    So still do reviews from the old deck but get new ones from the other etc, is this even possible.

14. My brain is shutting off right now, can someone tell me what this means?? It’s a genki question

    “____ コーヒーをのみます”

    I thought コーヒー meant coffee, but then doesn’t みます mean “to watch”? I watch coffee? 🤨 and I understand の is a possessive but I still don’t get this whole sentence. What am I being dumb on?

15. TIL about “**最強の矛と最強の盾はどっちが強い？**” and its link with 矛盾 (“contradiction”).
    Japanese never ceases to surprise me.

16. There were some words I couldn’t make out in this part @ [7:45](https://youtu.be/ogOfeL5bC90?t=465). The word I was wondering about the most was, whether it was 異例 after 光を隠したもの?

    ヤコウタケの光に、生き物が寄ってくるのか、実験済みました。ゴキブリを集める　(プラト?)　の中にヤコウタケと, ヤコウタケを (布で覆って?) 光を隠したもの異例、(?)の中に三時間放置しました。

17. As far as I know, の deletes the downstep of nouns like 日本, 日本人, and 弟. Does this also apply to a の stemming from a relative clause が to の conversion? So, is e.g. 日本人’s downstep deleted in the phrase 日本人の知らない日本語?

18. Seems like Wine does not work on Mac OS Ventura for reading visual novels. Are there any alternative apps?

19. Can you lose 人生?

    In the sense of “10 lives lost” or “he lost his life”.

20. Can someone tell me the difference between “shitaku suru”, junbi suru” and “youi suru”?

21. What does なんですね at the end of a sentence mean? Is it kind of like “Huh!” ?

    Like: “Oh, so you’re a doctor, huh!” As a response to someone saying they’re a doctor etc

22. I want to start being consistent with practicing writing again, it’s been a couple of years. I used to use lang-8; but they seem to have stopped sign ups and are pushing their new service hinative.

    1) Does lang-8 still have an active user base? I really did like that site

    2) I get the impression HiNative is geared towards short form content, is that accurate, or will paragraphs of about 10-15 sentences get attention? I don’t want to be an influencer or anything haha, but will I 100% get 1 or 2 people correcting my writing every time?

    3) Are there any other favoured writing/language exchange websites? I’d prefer to avoid anything that has a lot of one on one interaction that people try to treat as dating apps 😛

23. For every word I learn, I also learn the writing for the Kanji (if necessary) before moving on. Is that a wrong approach?