Studying from 2ch can be dangerous, it would be like learning English from youtube comments. (looks up "i can haz cheeseburger?" in a grammar dictionary)

今作 makes more sense when you're talking about a game, because you can refer to a game as an artistic work instead of a tangible product. Context is a wonderful thing It's still somewhat "clever" language usage though. A quick google search reveals mostly Chinese matches. Narrowing the search to .jp domains reveals almost exclusively matches about music (and still some Chinese).

If that previous sentence was indeed by a native speaker on 2ch, you can be sure that it's yet a third type of な, the dialectical version of ね. For example, in my native Osaka (haha) you could say そうやな (or even そうやん) instead of そうだね.

You could translate it as something like "Certainly this (new) game makes me drunk (feel high/good while playing→enjoyable)" I guess, but I don't have any context.

You should think of Tae Kim as the EDICT of grammar. It's free and it's better than nothing, but that's about it.

Jarvik7 Wrote:A quick google search reveals mostly Chinese matches. Narrowing the search to .jp domains reveals almost exclusively matches about music (and still some Chinese).

To get rid of the Chinese sites, just add some Japanese particle to the search, like に.

You tell the negative command な from the sentence end particle な by context. It's pretty easy to tell, especially because な is generally somewhat reflective, and the only time you really hear it after the dictionary form of a verb and it's NOT a command is when someone is at least half-talking to themselves. In manga, for instance, it tends to show up in thought bubbles. This is not a dialect thing, but different dialects (Kansai) do use it with a different meanings.

nest0r Wrote:So what's the deal with Japanese synonyms, just how easy is it to interchange words. For example, would 外出する and 出かける be interchangeable?

You should get yourself a 使い分ける dictionary. Their whole purpose is explaining the difference between synonyms and near synonyms. In general a Chinese compound (外出) is always considered more formal than a native word (出かける).

Interchangeable in certain situations. Not in others, and they have a different feel. If nothing else, a two-kanji noun + suru combination will always have a different feel than a straight-up verb or a two-verb mash-up, just because of what it is. 'laceration' never sounds quite the same as 'cut'.
Counter: What's the deal with English synonyms? I'm not sure you've realized/recognized/understood/noticed/identified/observed how many there are.
Edit: Also, what he said.

QuackingShoe Wrote:Counter: What's the deal with English synonyms? I'm not sure you've realized/recognized/understood/noticed/identified/observed how many there are.
Edit: Also, what he said.

We talk about science in Latin because for most of western history the educated wrote exclusively in Latin due to its prestige. (For most of Japanese history the educated wrote exclusively in Chinese due to its prestige).

We talk about meats in French - beef instead of "cow meat", pork instead of "pig meat", since only the upper class could afford to eat meat, and at the time the words were adopted, the ruling class were French speaking invaders (Normans). I don't know why chickens got screwed over, it should be Kentucky Fried Poulet!

In both of those cases there are colloquial terms in existence too, creating some synonyms with the same meaning but a different feel. roast beef vs charred cow flesh

I don't know why English in particular has so many synonyms, but it's probably because England got invaded so many times and has no qualms about adopting words by the boatload. Europe also has a lot of languages in close proximity to gain influences from. Japan basically just had China. Sure Korea was there, but like Japan the educated and upper classes communicated in Chinese.

Pretty much, as far as I'm aware. Last I heard, the great majority of our grunt words are German, and the more flowery and sophisticated words are Latin (and French, or through French). Japanese has essentially the same thing going on with Chinese/Native Japanese.

Jarvik7: Heh, yeah, I know. It wasn't actually a question, it was more of a joking retort. But thanks!
Edit: Also! We use 'poultry!'

QuackingShoe Wrote:Edit: Also! We use 'poultry!'

Touche.(wtf? I get 文字化け with the accented e) But it's mostly just used to refer to edible birds themselves as a classification, not specifically to the meat, which I've heard called "poultry meat". (英製フランス語?) Why all the chicken 差別 I wonder :/

FF6って今の中二ストーリー偏重路線の走りだろ（笑）

- http://schiphol.2ch.net/test/read.cgi/gs...040563/l50

Can anyone verify what this means for me?

"FF6 was the start of this 中二 line of overemphisis on story, right? LOL"?

中二＝中学校二（２）年

Probably related to 中二病
http://d.hatena.ne.jp/keyword/%C3%E6%C6%F3%C9%C2

I remember seeing an explanation of it before, used for things rahter than people, which was something like "Like something a middle school kid could think of/this is the kind of stuff a middle school kid would like." But I don't remember now, it was quite a while ago.

Implying someone is or acts like they're in 中学 seems like a popular insult online. There's another, 厨房, which is an intentional mistype of 中坊　（中学の坊や？）.

Edit; here we go:
http://www.paradisearmy.com/doujin/pasok_tyuunibyou.htm

同人の世界では、「中学生が考えそうな痛い漫画の設定」 がよく取り上げられ・・・

That explanation might require another explanation of 痛い in this sense:
http://www.paradisearmy.com/doujin/pasok_itai.htm

Mass thanks for that albion.

You must really know your stuff to have it down to double-meaning-ified internet insults. I took one look at that and presumed he was talking about the period when he himself was in middle school or something.

This is getting back to the original post. If you ever need help with a sentence, I recommend Lang-8. Native speakers are ready and willing to help. Here is a link to a forum for asking natives questions: http://lang-8.com/discuss/548

You can also just put it into your "diary" stream and someone will explain it to you there.

--I edited the above from "natives" as suggested below, not "natives" as in "indigenous people" but as in "native speakers" - although not all native speakers are necessarily Japanese ;-)

"Natives are ready...". This could be my idiosyncrasy, but this use of the word "natives" sounds a bit strange to me.
[edit - I've since seen many people just use "natives" to mean native Japanese speakers, so this post should be ignored]

Jarvik7 Wrote:You should get yourself a 使い分ける dictionary. Their whole purpose is explaining the difference between synonyms and near synonyms.

Could you recommend one, Jarvik? I wasn't able to find an earlier post (perhaps yours?) in which a couple were recommended.

Thora Wrote:

Jarvik7 Wrote:You should get yourself a 使い分ける dictionary. Their whole purpose is explaining the difference between synonyms and near synonyms.

Could you recommend one, Jarvik? I wasn't able to find an earlier post (perhaps yours?) in which a couple were recommended.

The one I posted earlier is a 漢字の使い分ける book ( http://www.amazon.co.jp/漢字を正しく使い分ける辞典-中村...677&sr=1-1 )so it's even more specialized to exact homonymic synonyms (擧げる　揚げる　上げる　挙げる etc), but here are two good books for more general synonyms:
http://www.amazon.co.jp/似た言葉使い分け辞典―正しい言葉...022&sr=8-1

and one of these (they are by same publisher and author, but I forget which one I read they both look good though)
http://www.amazon.co.jp/類義語使い分け辞典―日本語類似表...438&sr=1-4
http://www.amazon.co.jp/日本語類義表現使い分け辞典-泉原...530&sr=1-1

Great. Thanks!

jaystarkey Wrote:This is getting back to the original post. If you ever need help with a sentence, I recommend Lang-8. Native speakers are ready and willing to help. Here is a link to a forum for asking natives questions: http://lang-8.com/discuss/548

You can also just put it into your "diary" stream and someone will explain it to you there.

Oh great, I've been looking for something like this. Will check it out. Is it quite active?

For now, here's another question:

何とかならないでしょうか

In it's non-negative form it would be:

何とかなる なんとかなる to be able to manage somehow or another

But the 'negative' + 'probably/right?' at the end throws me a bit.

Does it mean: "Won't [you] be able to manage somehow?" or "Probably won't be able to manage somehow, right?"

What's the context of the sentence?

I have a couple of sentences...

1) 「当たる宝くじを買わないようなものだ」

Context: She is visiting New York and wants to hear live jazz. And of course, NY has tons of live jazz. As this phrase is enclosed in brackets, I assume it is a metaphor. My guess: "It is like winning the lottery without having to buy a ticket." Yes?

2) どこで聞いたからいいのではなくて　何を聞いたかが大切なんだって。

I am pretty sure I understand this... "Where you listen (to music) isn't important. It is what (kind of music) you listen to that is important." What is confusing to me is the か in 何を聞いたかが...

My guess is that the phrase 何を聞いたか is a question: What do you listen to? And the が particle indicates that it is this whole question phrase that is 大切。

Thanks in advance for your insights...

Your guess is correct on the second sentence. As for the first sentence, your guess is as good as mine.

For the first, I would have thought "It's like not buying the winning lottery [ticket]". Like she's there with all these jazz clubs, but can't go there? But from the context you gave, that doesn't seem to make sense.

か can be used like "what/when/who/etc..." in English, like "I don't remember what he said." Some examples, and a Japanese explanation (from 日本語文型辞典, translations by me).

1
彼がいつ亡くなったか知っていますか
Do you know when he died?

2
パーティーに誰を招待したか忘れてしまった
I've forgotten who I invited to the party.

3
人生において重要なのは、何をやったかではなく、いかに生きたかということであろう。
What's important in life is not what you do, but how you live.

4
人類の将来は、地球環境をいかに守っていくかにかかっているといっても過言ではない。
It's not an exaggeration to say that humanity's future depends on how much we protect the environment.

Does that make more sense?
Japanese explanation:

疑問詞を伴う疑問文を名詞の資格に変えて、他の文の一部に埋め込むのに用いる。例えば１．で、「彼はいつ亡くなりましたか」という文を「あなたはそれを知っていますか」の「それ」の部分と入れ替えたもの。「か」の前は述語の普通体を用いる。

How about this? This is from the definition of: みかぎ・る ［見限る］

〈五〉 見込みがないとしてあきらめる． (派)(～)り

I'm wondering what the として is doing here. Can anyone help? And as a side, what does that 〈五〉mean here?

Virtua_Leaf Wrote:How about this? This is from the definition of: みかぎ・る ［見限る］

〈五〉 見込みがないとしてあきらめる． (派)(～)り

I'm wondering what the として is doing here. Can anyone help? And as a side, what does that 〈五〉mean here?

It has a lot of meanings, but I think in this context として means something like "as" or "like".
Something like -- Giving up like there's no hope, or something like that. I could be very wrong here, of course.

The 五 here means that it's a 五段 verb -- it ends in る, so there are two conjugation possibilities.

So you'll have みかぎってinstead of みかぎて, and みかぎります instead of みかぎます。 That might be why the り is there at the end, but I'm not sure about that.

Jarvik7 Wrote:な in the adjectival sense wouldn't be used with a verb like 酔う. Also, no one calls particles gobi except for Tae Kim, because he's wrong (about a lot of stuff really).

In Tae Kim's defense, does anyone know any better word for what Tae calls "gobi"? You're misrepresenting him, he doesn't use "gobi" to mean "particle", he uses it to mean "よ、か、ね、な、ぜ、ぞ" at the end of the sentence. I've never seen any other convenient name for these sentence-ending-thingies, and it's useful to have a name for them.

snispilbor Wrote:In Tae Kim's defense, does anyone know any better word for what Tae calls "gobi"? You're misrepresenting him, he doesn't use "gobi" to mean "particle", he uses it to mean "よ、か、ね、な、ぜ、ぞ" at the end of the sentence. I've never seen any other convenient name for these sentence-ending-thingies, and it's useful to have a name for them.

Sentence-ending particle (終助詞), maybe?
Yeah, not that convenient.