Is this sentence correct? - Printable Version

Is this sentence correct? - Printable Version

+- kanji koohii FORUM (http://forum.koohii.com)
+-- Forum: Learning Japanese (http://forum.koohii.com/forum-4.html)
+--- Forum: The Japanese language (http://forum.koohii.com/forum-10.html)
+--- Thread: Is this sentence correct? (/thread-7251.html)

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Is this sentence correct? - magamo - 2011-02-15

Huh? It's like セリフがたまに日本語だったりしてヒーローズ（ってドラマ、セリフ）聞いてて面白いよ. Didn't you get it? Ugh, I only have an hour and half to finish this paper!

Is this sentence correct? - Thora - 2011-02-15

oh my.....deja vu III Rolleyes

Please just find a way to bow out gracefully, Iryoku. The ratio of your fight posts to total posts is approaching 1:1. :-(

btw, you seem to have misinterpreted, selectively quoted and distorted what Magamo had written. (I'm not sure if you're just trying to win an argument or if English is an issue for you?) When Magamo talks about fragments being inferred, it doesn't mean that the sentence without them is incorrect. Magamo had clearly explained what he meant by で's different nuance in the sentences you left out of the quote. Magamo did not say that 聞く　is incorrect.

Time to let it go?

Is this sentence correct? - thecite - 2011-02-15

He's certainly busting everyone's chops.

Is this sentence correct? - nest0r - 2011-02-15

@Asriel - Thanks for the example. I may have seen it used that way before, though it seems strange to see it without the いう. The 人 somehow makes it more familiar, though. I get the impression it's often paired with の in some way, or used in an explanatory sense? Seems like it's more constrained than という aside from the issue of formality. Fascinating stuff.

I just can't think that it would be used by native or fluent speakers in the way that's being offered as an equal alternative (or even the only correct one) to what magamo wrote.

Do you think someone fluent in Japanese would likely read or hear: “[unfamiliar term (setting aside context for the sake of argument)]って登場人物” and when doing so likely think "a character named so-and-so"? iSoron mentioned it being a perspective thing, but I just can't see it being interpreted that way, much less considered incorrect or strange.

At any rate, unless I try to put together everything written in the thread, I'm just going to ignore all commentary that anything magamo wrote was strange or incorrect, because skimming through, I haven't gotten that impression.

Enjoy writing your paper, magamo! When you come back, please explain more about って. ;p

By the way, I think it's important to point out we're not upholding magamo as the native speaker so much as the educated native speaker who also is familiar with informal language and has spent an enormous amount of time thinking about Japanese in a meta way and explaining it articulately to English speakers.

Edit: And sorry to keep prefacing all my comments with @Asriel, hehe, only the initial questions are addressed to you. ^_^

Is this sentence correct? - magamo - 2011-02-16

I just submitted my paper right before the deadline and read through this whole thread again. I hate to say it, but Iryoku's posts have too much nonsense (at least to me it sounded nonsense), and I don't know where to start. To be honest, sometimes I couldn't follow what he's saying. So I'll just give a bit more explanations on some of the grammar points discussed here. If your questions aren't answered, it'd be helpful to explain what's not clear to you again so you can get clear answers from me or other knowledgeable forum members.

One of the points some learners in this thread is having trouble with is the various usages of "って" and similar colloquial expressions. Since Asriel gave a couple examples, I'll modify it to explain the two usages discussed in this thread:

高橋って人の漫画を勝手に読む

This sentence can be interpreted in two ways if there is no context and this is not spoken. One possible meaning is, if translated literally to illustrate the grammar point, "(Someone implied by context, e.g., the speaker) reads a manga owned by a person whose name is Takahasi without asking." In this case, 高橋って人 means "person who is called 高橋." It might imply the speaker's indifference to who actually is. Or maybe the listener doesn't know who the Takahashi person is. It's possible that って is used because the speaker doesn't know him very well. Either way, this use of って sounds very informal and colloquial. 高橋っていう人 means pretty much the same. Personally I make distinctions between these two, but probably this is too subtle to establish a general rule or to claim it's not a personal preference.

The other interpretation is "Takahashi reads manga which he doesn't own without asking." In this case, って is adding the sense of "You know something?," "I tell you what" or something along those lines. Asriel said he thought ヒーローズって was like "Hey, you know Heroes?" And I think his interpretation is spot on. As you probably already know, the notoriously nebulous particle は is called a topic marker. When we say, "You know what?," it's kind of bringing a new topic. So って and は are very similar in this regard. I wouldn't say this usage of って and particle は are interchangeable even if you ignore formality and stuff. There is always a slight difference in nuance. As I already said in an earlier post, は tends to be used when you want to give a sense of comparison while って is a bit more neutral.

If you make a pause after って, it's likely to be interpreted as the latter は-ish use. But it can mean this way without a pause too.

But then, is this sentence ambiguous if you use it in conversation without a pause when there isn't much context? No. It's crystal clear which you mean.

Why? Because the pitch accent of 人の (and the following part of the sentence) changes depending on which you mean by this sentence. So if you speak Japanese with a decent enough accent, native speakers won't misunderstand you.

The thing is that written text doesn't tell you what the intended pitch is. And this sentence happens to be ambiguous if there is no additional context either. So if you want it to be interpreted the second way, the only way to avoid ambiguity is to put a comma and make the reader pause right after って. If you put a comma after 人の instead, the reader would take it as the first "person who is called 高橋" sense.

One notable point is that the speaker may make no pause at all regardless of which meanings is used. In fact, because this sentence leaves no ambiguity because of pitch, a pause wouldn't make it much clearer in speech. Of course, it's good to put a comma after 人の when you mean "person whose name is Takahashi". But you probably wouldn't make a pause at the point in conversation.

Also notable is that there is no strict rule for when to put a comma. A comma is generally considered a pause. But as we already saw in the above example, it could be just a grammatical marker used for written text to avoid ambiguity. It's advised that you always make a pause at a comma when you "read aloud" written text. But just because there is a comma doesn't mean the same sentence requires a pause in spontaneous conversation. Also, if there is no comma in a written sentence, the exact same sentence may still be pronounced with a pause in conversation depending on the situation, speech style and whatnot.

ヒーローズって登場人物が時々日本語しゃべってて、聞いてて面白い can also be much less ambiguous in speech if the speaker pronounce it with a distinctive pitch pattern. For example, if you want to emphasize it's 登場人物 speaking Japanese rather than radio in the show, inserted songs etc., then your inflection, pitch, tone and loudness will all indicate that there is a grammatical disconnection between ヒーローズって and 登場人物. In this case, it's obvious って means the neutral kind of は. But there may not be a pause there. Interestingly, unlike the previous example, this sentence can be ambiguous about the meaning of って even in speech because technically this sentence allows a pitch pattern which can be taken in either way. In any case, unless you're too monotonous or have ignored pitch, intonation and such, you should be able to make yourself understood.

I think I was going to give explanations of a few other grammar points. But this post is getting too long and I forgot what they were, so I'll stop writing here.