(2016-05-17, 9:22 pm)FlameseeK Wrote: I've just found this sentence in Tobira and I couldn't help but ask myself whether 考ながら was meant to be 考えながら.

漢字を書く時は、文字のバランスもよく考ながら、点や線をきちんと書いて下さい。

Certainly it means かんがえながら. A lot of okurigana is omitted in ways that are not correct by the dictionary definition. I would have expected more care from a textbook, though.


It can't be こうながら because you can't attach ながら to a noun.

(Honestly I don't think I've ever seen 考 as the noun 'こう', but maybe I just blipped over it taking it for the noun かんがえ. I vaguely feel like I've seen 考 as こう the noun suffix, but since I can't recall a specific case of it I might be wrong. It's in any case not a common reading, at least not in light novels and such. Since your case is a textbook that's really neither here nor there, the grammatical problems with the other reading are all that matters.)

Do you guys know if the word 外交 only refers to international diplomacy?

That, and door-to-door sales. Daijirin says 外国との交際や交渉.

I'm reading Tobira's chapter on education right now and I'm a little unsure about the meaning of a sentence. I'll include the previous sentence as well for context, but it's only the second one that really lost me. It goes like this:

つまり、学歴社会とは、その人がどんな学校を卒業したかによって人生が決まる社会、いい大学に入れば将来、幸せになる可能性も高くなるという社会なのだ。

そこで、親達は自分の子供を塾に行かせ、受験をしなくても有名私立大学に進めるエスカレーター式の小学校や中学校に入れようとする。

Help, please.

(2016-05-24, 11:02 pm)FlameseeK Wrote: I'm reading Tobira's chapter on education right now and I'm a little unsure about the meaning of a sentence. I'll include the previous sentence as well for context, but it's only the second one that really lost me. It goes like this:

つまり、学歴社会とは、その人がどんな学校を卒業したかによって人生が決まる社会、いい大学に入れば将来、幸せになる可能性も高くなるという社会なのだ。

そこで、親達は自分の子供を塾に行かせ、受験をしなくても有名私立大学に進めるエスカレーター式の小学校や中学校に入れようとする。

Help, please.

親達は自分の子供を塾に行かせ - parents send their own children to cram schools

That's an independent clause. The rest of the sentence is also one independent clause, kind of, but still shares 自分の子供 as a direct object (hence the comma).

受験をしなくても有名私立大学に進める - 'Able to enter renowned private universities even with an entrance exam' (on second thought, that's not potential, it's just transitive).
'Entering (students) into renowned private universities, even without an exam.'

This clause modifies 'エスカレーター式の小学校や中学校'.

So we're talking about 'escalator schools' that allow you to get into a good school without an entrance exam. (edit, typo. Obviously 'without' not 'with'...)

学校に入れようとする - Make efforts to get (their children) into the schools.

And that's about it.

Yeah, this whole 受験をしなくても doesn't make that much sense to me, given the fact that they're talking about taking exams and cram school.

Does that actually mean some famous private universities don't actually require an exam? Maybe they're talking about 塾 to enter 高校 instead, which might be the key factor to entering one of these famous universities? I can't help thinking this sentence didn't have to be that convoluted.

EDIT:
Oh wait, let me see if I get it. There seems to be an actual system where they offer education from early on until university level that don't require exams (the whole escalator thing, which I thought was just a random word lol). So I guess they're trying to see people send their children to these private schools to avoid 受験戦争? And just send them to 塾 as well to compensate for the ゆとり教育 trend?

The two clauses are implicitly an 'or', not an 'and', I think: parents send their children to cram schools, or try to get them into the primary or middle schools with an 'escalator' link into good universities.

(And yeah, the escalator system is a real thing.)

Yeah, that about sums it up with pm215's correction. Parents are sending their kids to cram schools and elevator schools, but any particular child is only sent to one or the other, not both. There would be no reason to send elevator school students to a cram school unless they actually managed to fail or otherwise get kicked out of their elevator school.

Structures like,

受験をしなくても有名私立大学に進めるエスカレーター式の小学校

where you have an entire sentence embedded in the larger sentence just to modify a single noun, are often used as a way to describe or define a bit of jargon that people might not be totally familiar with like 'elevator school' in this case.

I don't understand why it would be "or" rather than "and". Isn't 行かせ the same as 行かせて, but more common in writing? I don't see anything implies both options are mutually exclusive. I'd probably use something like 行かせたり to imply that, so I'm not sure what I'm missing here. That being said, I haven't been working on production though, so that's just what my gut feeling tells me would suit this sentence if I wanted to mention things that people do as mere examples.

(2016-05-25, 7:35 pm)FlameseeK Wrote: I don't understand why it would be "or" rather than "and". Isn't 行かせ the same as 行かせて, but more common in writing? I don't see anything implies both options are mutually exclusive. I'd probably use something like 行かせたり to imply that, so I'm not sure what I'm missing here.  That being said, I haven't been working on production though, so that's just what my gut feeling tells me would suit this sentence if I wanted to mention things that people do as mere examples.

It's the same as saying in English 'Parents are sending their kids to private schools and charter schools in preference to the public schools.' Of course no one child is being sent to both kinds of schools. You're saying 'and' for the general subject of 'parents', but it's implicitly 'or' if you were to consider any specific parent  in that group.

There's nothing grammatical in either the Japanese sentence or my sentence to make that distinction, making that deduction comes from having a certain amount of knowledge about how society works. That's why it's implicit... if the grammar specified it it would be explicit!

進める as in 受験をしなくても有名私立大学に進める is the potential form of 進む. You don't use the transitive 進める to people (except troops etc.).

Hey guys, so I'm watching 宇宙海賊キャプテンハーロック and at one point Harlock says, "幻と分かっていても縋らずにはいられない時がある、人なら誰でも".
Context: (spoiler----)

Earth was presumably destroyed and replaced with a hologram, no one knows this but the high government and a few others like Harlock and his crew because all of humanity has left earth to colonize the galaxy after depleting Earth's resources. The guy Harlock is talking to knows this, being a high general sort of guy. The rest of mankind has depleted every habitable world they've found and are about to go extinct as a species.

So my best guess at a translation is: "even when you know it's an illusion, you can't live with giving it up... I'm sure everyone is the same in that regard"?

(2016-06-01, 1:07 am)HolyKotor Wrote: Hey guys, so I'm watching 宇宙海賊キャプテンハーロック and at one point Harlock says, "幻と分かっていても縋らずにいられない時がある、人なら誰でも". I've seriously been thinking about this for over half an hour now, I don't know what my deal is, but my best guess is: Everyone has times when they can't let go of a vision they've seen?

I don't understand what the も is doing at the end of 分かっていて, I'm assuming the 幻 he's referring to is poking at the fact that the guy he's talking to has been talking to a holographic avatar of the girl he loves (who was basically comatose in a life support machine), while also working as a general statement about people's dreams, or a past that haunts them or something. I don't know why 分かる is the verb used, or even who the subject is supposed to be specifically (just a general subject I guess, or is 時 the subject? I don't know). Basically at this point my brain is just fried and I feel less confident about knowing what the heck is going on than when I first heard it, haha. Someone please save me!

My best understanding is something more along the lines of:
"Everyone has times where they have nothing to hold on to but an illusion." (going for meaning rather than form)

The first clause, 幻と分かっていても has ても providing contradiction to 幻と分かってい（る） so that the following clause 縋らずにいられない時がある being "there are times when you can't not cling to".

So, from the information you've provided, perhaps this character is telling the guy with the comatose love that it's understandable that he clings to an illusion of his love interest, whom he can't talk to in real life, because there are situations where anyone would do something similar.

Here's a rundown of that first part:
幻: an illusion or vision; this is something (almost?) strictly not real
と: here, quoting 幻
分かる: to understand (here in ている form)
（て）も: も can still be thought of as 'also', it's just being used to link something most people would consider a contradiction (that one would cling on to the idea of something they know isn't real); this is very common, and you'll likely recognize でも as something like 'but', this is kind of the same idea (someone might correct me on that, because I'm not a stickler for the specifics of grammar, so I might not know what I'm talking about; works for my understanding though)

Hopefully that helps; tell me if there's something I could explain better (or more likely, someone else, because I won't be back on for a good 16 hours).

EDIT: Just a few seconds late... Well, I think you have it.

(2016-06-01, 1:40 am)sholum Wrote: My best understanding is something more along the lines of:"Everyone has times where they have nothing to hold on to but an illusion." (going for meaning rather than form)
The first clause, 幻と分かっていても has ても providing contradiction to 幻と分かってい（る） so that the following clause 縋らずにいられない時がある being "there are times when you can't not cling to".

So, from the information you've provided, perhaps this character is telling the guy with the comatose love that it's understandable that he clings to an illusion of his love interest, whom he can't talk to in real life, because there are situations where anyone would do something similar.

Here's a rundown of that first part:
幻: an illusion or vision; this is something (almost?) strictly not real
と: here, quoting 幻
分かる: to understand (here in ている form)
（て）も: も can still be thought of as 'also', it's just being used to link something most people would consider a contradiction (that one would cling on to the idea of something they know isn't real); this is very common, and you'll likely recognize でも as something like 'but', this is kind of the same idea (someone might correct me on that, because I'm not a stickler for the specifics of grammar, so I might not know what I'm talking about; works for my understanding though)

Hopefully that helps; tell me if there's something I could explain better (or more likely, someone else, because I won't be back on for a good 16 hours).

EDIT: Just a few seconds late... Well, I think you have it.

Yea sorry about that, I agonized over that sentence for flipping ever, and then about 5 more minutes into the movie after posting I realized he was talking about Earth, not the girl (although I think the movie was portraying it as a little bit of both). With a clearer subject it all made a lot more sense. Sorry for not fixing my post in time, but thank you so much for replying! And I appreciate your explanations a ton as well. ありがとうございました！

I'm having a literally trouble following a few sentences, so I'd like to double check things.

1 - 自動販売機はどこの国でも発達しているわけではなく、１００万台以上ある国は世界でもアメリカと日本、そしてドイツだけだ。
(a) 自動販売機はどこの国でも発達しているわけではなく

Does this mean something along the lines of "It's not the case that vending machines have become popular/widespread (i.e. have 'grown') no matter what country..."?
I'm not sure how to put this. At first I thought 発達 was about the act of developing/manufacturing vending machines, but I guess this word means development in the sense of 'growing and reaching a certain stage'  instead?

(b) １００万台以上ある国は世界でもアメリカと日本、そしてドイツだけだ

"The countries that have more than 1 million vending machines are only Japan, the USA, and Germany." Right? I feel I'm missing something here in the nuance though. I don't quite understand the choice of saying でも instead of just で.
Isn't this usually just a way to emphasize what comes before the particle? I feel there's no need to emphasize 世界 in this sentence at all, unless perhaps it means something like "out of all countries in the whole world". Is that what it means here?

2-　日本の自動販売機は、夏には冷たい飲み物、冬には温かい飲み物というように、気温の変化に合わせて、飲み物を冷たくしたり、温かくしたりして出してくれる。

I don't recall ever seeing というように being used like this. The closest thing I've seen is probably ように being used to say something like "in order to / in such a way that" referring to a verb that precedes the expression. But here, there's no verb so I don't know. Is という used to compensate for the lack of a verb?
Either way, this sentence sounds pretty damn redudant. It seems like they're saying something like "in order to have cool drinks in summer and warm drinks in winter, the vending machine 'does things like cooling and warming' (duh?!?) according to changes in the weather".

This is a passage from the first chapter of 月の影影の海 by 小野不由美.  The last sentence is what I'm having trouble with.  The second-to-last sentence is saying that the animals are approaching in what seems like a cheerful festival line; is the last sentence basically saying that this really is the case?  Or is there some nuance of "once you start to think of them as X, they become unmistakably X," as if the scene is being shaped by the observer's thoughts?  Or am I over-interpreting.

For context, this is a dream sequence (although the reader would not know that for a couple pages yet).

Quote:異形の獣の群れだった。
…
前肢を振り上げ、小走りに駆ける。あるいは跳躍し、宙を旋回し、まるで陽気な祭りの行列でも近づいてくるようだった。陽気といえば陽気には違いなく、祭りといえば祭りには違いない。

(2016-06-02, 2:05 am)FlameseeK Wrote: I'm having a literally trouble following a few sentences, so I'd like to double check things.

1 - 自動販売機はどこの国でも発達しているわけではなく、１００万台以上ある国は世界でもアメリカと日本、そしてドイツだけだ。
(a) 自動販売機はどこの国でも発達しているわけではなく

(b) １００万台以上ある国は世界でもアメリカと日本、そしてドイツだけだ


2-　日本の自動販売機は、夏には冷たい飲み物、冬には温かい飲み物というように、気温の変化に合わせて、飲み物を冷たくしたり、温かくしたりして出してくれる。

For 1a,b yes and yes, you have it. 発達 is used to mean 'development' or 'growth' in the sense of more roads, more houses, more shops... or in this case more vending machines.
I think that も in　世界でも is an emphasizer, and means something much like what you suggested.

As for 2, well, yes, it does feel very redundant. It's kind of a strange sentence.
というように is　just grouping '夏には冷たい飲み物、冬に暖かい飲み物' serving kind of the same purpose as 'those' in English. 'Like those cold drinks in the summer and hot drinks in the winter, ...'

It does seem a little redundant, but it's basically giving cold drinks in summer and hot drinks in winter as a typical example of the times when drinks are warmed and cooled in accordance with changes in temperature. Presumably there are also other times (like a warm day and a chilly evening, or unseasonal cold snaps and heat waves) that drinks are treated differently in accordance with the temperature.

After a quick search I realized why というように seems so familiar to me (at least partly),
A question is asked here
http://japanese.stackexchange.com/questi...s-sentence
about というような as used in the first story of Read Real Japanese: Fiction
http://www.amazon.com/Read-Real-Japanese...1568365292
ああ、懐かしい。　あのくまは。
I also feel like it's not unusual for me to come across というよう in my reading generally.

(2016-06-02, 1:16 pm)shaydwyrm Wrote: This is a passage from the first chapter of 月の影影の海 by 小野不由美.  The last sentence is what I'm having trouble with.  The second-to-last sentence is saying that the animals are approaching in what seems like a cheerful festival line; is the last sentence basically saying that this really is the case?  Or is there some nuance of "once you start to think of them as X, they become unmistakably X," as if the scene is being shaped by the observer's thoughts?  Or am I over-interpreting.

For context, this is a dream sequence (although the reader would not know that for a couple pages yet).

Quote:異形の獣の群れだった。
…
前肢を振り上げ、小走りに駆ける。あるいは跳躍し、宙を旋回し、まるで陽気な祭りの行列でも近づいてくるようだった。陽気といえば陽気には違いなく、祭りといえば祭りには違いない。

You're over-interpreting.

XといえばXだ means that X wasn't the first thing the speaker would think of, but if it comes up, well yes, it is X.

違いない is a little stronger then simply だ, so maybe in this case 陽気 and 祭り -should- have been the first thing he thought of normally but he was distracted... perhaps by the subjects of his observations being 異形の獣. That's getting into some pretty speculative interpretation about a story I haven't read, but it's the kind of flavor that occurs to me reading your sentence.

(heh, overlapped with SomeCallMeChris while I was writing the reply...)

(2016-06-02, 2:05 am)FlameseeK Wrote: 1 - 自動販売機はどこの国でも発達しているわけではなく、１００万台以上ある国は世界でもアメリカと日本、そしてドイツだけだ。
(a) 自動販売機はどこの国でも発達しているわけではなく

Does this mean something along the lines of "It's not the case that vending machines have become popular/widespread (i.e. have 'grown') no matter what country..."?
I'm not sure how to put this. At first I thought 発達 was about the act of developing/manufacturing vending machines, but I guess this word means development in the sense of 'growing and reaching a certain stage'  instead?

Daijisen lists 3 senses, (1) physical or mental development or growth (2) something gains more advanced functionality/features/etc (eg civilization develops, transportation facilities develop) and (3) the scale of something becomes gradually larger: そのものの規模がしだいに大きくなること。「―した低気圧」So here we're looking at sense 3 I think -- the scale of vending machine use becoming bigger (but the word could mean "steadily developing/manufacturing better vending machines" in some other sentence).

Quote:(b) １００万台以上ある国は世界でもアメリカと日本、そしてドイツだけだ

"The countries that have more than 1 million vending machines are only Japan, the USA, and Germany." Right? I feel I'm missing something here in the nuance though. I don't quite understand the choice of saying でも instead of just で.
Isn't this usually just a way to emphasize what comes before the particle? I feel there's no need to emphasize 世界 in this sentence at all, unless perhaps it means something like "out of all countries in the whole world". Is that what it means here?

Yes, that's my interpretation: even if you look at every country in the world (as opposed to say "just Asia") you only find three with this level of development. (If you don't want to emphasise 世界 you might as well drop the whole clause I suppose.) The でも and the だけ kind of work together here I think.

Quote:2-　日本の自動販売機は、夏には冷たい飲み物、冬には温かい飲み物というように、気温の変化に合わせて、飲み物を冷たくしたり、温かくしたりして出してくれる。

I don't recall ever seeing というように being used like this. The closest thing I've seen is probably ように being used to say something like "in order to / in such a way that" referring to a verb that precedes the expression. But here, there's no verb so I don't know. Is という used to compensate for the lack of a verb?

Well, you've got to have something there to attach that clause to the ように... という is quite handy for connecting things together.

Quote:Either way, this sentence sounds pretty damn redudant. It seems like they're saying something like "in order to have cool drinks in summer and warm drinks in winter, the vending machine 'does things like cooling and warming' (duh?!?) according to changes in the weather".

Well, it's providing an clarifying example, so a bit of redundancy to make the point clearer. Something like: "Japanese vending machines heat or cool the drinks they provide to suit the weather, giving us cold drinks in summer and hot ones in winter.", which I think is reasonably natural English that doesn't feel overly redundant.

I have a question about this sentence: 皆様にご迷惑をおかけしまして大変申し訳ございません.

I'm assuming the おかけしまして is one of the 50 uses for かける, but when I asked if it should be おかけてしまして instead on HiNative (with a て)I was told that would be wrong, basically because the kind of set phrase is おかけする.

My question is why would かける become かけする? I think I might be missing something here or thinking about it the wrong way, but I'm not sure.

EDIT: Ah crap, I think I just remembered what this is. It's the humble setup of お+stem+します, right? My bad!

(2016-06-05, 7:17 pm)HolyKotor Wrote: I have a question about this sentence: 皆様にご迷惑をおかけしまして大変申し訳ございません.

I'm assuming the おかけしまして is one of the 50 uses for かける, but when I asked if it should be おかけてしまして instead on HiNative (with a て)I was told that would be wrong, basically because the kind of set phrase is おかけする.

My question is why would かける become かけする? I think I might be missing something here or thinking about it the wrong way, but I'm not sure.

お＋stem＋する is a humble form. You can just consider it a special conjugation for being extra-polite when you're trying to be humble. お願いします is an extremely common form of the same pattern from the verb 願う, but you may never have questioned the expression because it's often learned very early on.

Tae Kim does cover this on his keigo page, though it's a fair bit of the way in,
http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar/honorific

それでこそ私の兄だ！

I don't think I've ever really heard of or at least recognized それでこそ before, is it basically the same thing as using さすが in this sentence?

(2016-06-07, 12:00 am)HolyKotor Wrote: それでこそ私の兄だ！

I don't think I've ever really heard of or at least recognized それでこそ before, is it basically the same thing as using さすが in this sentence?

I suppose that's likely.

Fundamentally, it's just a stronger version of それで, so it should have a causative meaning. 'And that, precisely, is why he's my older brother!' doesn't make a lot of sense but is what it should mean. If the 兄 in question is not actually a blood-relation, then it makes sense that this is why the speaker looks up to 兄 as a brother. If it is actually a brother, then I would take it as meaning 'this is why my brother is great' or 'this is why I think highly of my brother', even though those modifiers are only implied.

(2016-06-07, 12:13 am)SomeCallMeChris Wrote: I suppose that's likely.

Fundamentally, it's just a stronger version of それで, so it should have a causative meaning. 'And that, precisely, is why he's my older brother!' doesn't make a lot of sense but is what it should mean. If the 兄 in question is not actually a blood-relation, then it makes sense that this is why the speaker looks up to 兄 as a brother. If it is actually a brother, then I would take it as meaning 'this is why my brother is great' or 'this is why I think highly of my brother', even though those modifiers are only implied.

Ahh, ok. That makes sense. I guess I didn't really understand それで. That's a really good explanation, thank you!

(2016-06-07, 12:24 am)HolyKotor Wrote: Ahh, ok. That makes sense. I guess I didn't really understand それで. That's a really good explanation, thank you!

You're welcome.