Elenkis Wrote:寝ているホームレスの人のそばを、近くの会社で働いている人が毎日急いで通ります。

Am I correct in thinking that the を particle is used as it's effectively marking a location for 通る because it's a motion verb, even though it's intransitive?

So it basically says something like: "Every day, people working at nearby companies hurriedly pass by beside sleeping homeless people."

When you're talking about doing a motion verb 'through' an area, such as walking through a park or something, what you are going through is marked by an を. So, yes.

Thanks for the confirmation!

 汝 [うぬ]
(pn,adj-no,vulg) blockhead!; you

 汝 [なんじ, そなた]
(pn,adj-no,arch) thou; you

 汝 [い, しゃ]
(n,arch,vulg) you

 汝 [いまし]
(n,arch,fam) you

 汝 [し]
(n,arch) that; you; oneself; themself

 汝 [な]
(n,arch) I; you

 汝 [なむち, なれ, まし]
(pn,adj-no,arch) you

 汝 [みまし]
(n,arch,hon) you


woah...whats wrong here?

Nothing. There are a lot of words that mean "you", and a good number of them have used that kanji. なんじ is by far the most common reading of that kanji in current Japanese, although I've seen some of the others in old Japanese.

This seems to refer back to what I was reading about Japanese content words including personal pronouns (whereas they're function words in English—or think of them as open and closed class); from what I've been reading, Japanese personal pronouns may be considered deictic, exophoric, varying with context but also subject to conventions (thus their categorisation as content words), hence they're often dropped because they aren't as generic and endophoric, though apparently all this is changing (due to English influence?). Basing this on a mixture of readings more than experience in Japanese, primarily that Japanese ellipsis and reference tracking book I linked somewhere else and am too lazy to relink.

I'm going through the Kanzen Master N1 grammar book, and it keeps using the phrase 「後ろには」 to explain grammar points.

Like ～が最後
「後ろには、必ずそうなるという状態や、話し手の意思を表す文がくる。」

Or for ～とあれば
「普通とは違う特別な状況が条件になっていることを表す。後ろには、その状況の時に当然起こると予想される状況や動作を表す文がくる。」

Could somebody explain the phrase?

fakewookie Wrote:後ろ means behind, so in this case, it means what comes before what's given. That is, it's telling you what to put where the ～ is.

Er, what? 後ろ means behind, so we're talking about what comes afterwards... So for example with

Quote:普通とは違う特別な状況が条件になっていることを表す。後ろには、その状況の時に当然起こると予想される状況や動作を表す文がくる

and the example

Quote:だれも行かないとあれば、わたしが行くしかないだろう。

the その状況の時に当然起こると予想される状況や動作を表す文 is the わたしが行くしかないだろう bit.

Basically KM uses this pattern for grammar points that are conjunctions (joining two clauses) when there's some restriction on the kind of thing you can say in the following clause.

Ah, I see, my apologies. Deleted to avoid confusion. Doesn't help that I don't have that book. :3

Could anyone please translate this sentence for me? I'm unable to get the gist of it.

何かに関わるだけで、良かれと思った事でさえ、仇にしかならないというのな

I think most of the confusion for me lies within the "何かに関わるだけで" part...

Thank you very much!

Thanks pm215! It's one of those things that seems so obvious in retrospect. Maybe I shouldn't study at night, haha.

moomoox2 Wrote:Could anyone please translate this sentence for me? I'm unable to get the gist of it.

何かに関わるだけで、良かれと思った事でさえ、仇にしかならないというのな

I think most of the confusion for me lies within the "何かに関わるだけで" part...

Thank you very much!

I suck at Japanese, but maybe:

You'll only get hurt as long as you're just concerned with things that benefit you?

moomoox2 Wrote:Could anyone please translate this sentence for me? I'm unable to get the gist of it.

何かに関わるだけで、良かれと思った事でさえ、仇にしかならないというのな

Xだけで means "Just by doing X", so this is "Just by getting involved in something..."
良かれ is the classical 命令形 of よし (modern いい), so it could mean "do it well" or "I hope it goes well" depending on the context. Without the context it's hard to make a translation because I don't know who is thinking 良かれ or who is getting involved, or who is going to be the enemy.

(Side note, please don't italicize Japanese, it makes it annoying to read)

Translation request please:
あなたの、御返事を、待っています。

I cannot find anything on those middle 3 kanji. I want to say it is sort of a polite way of saying "your answer is waiting" but I'm not sure.

You can't find 御 and 返事 in a dictionary?

+ translation : we are waiting for your (honorable) reply.

Aaah, well see I haven't learned honorifics yet, being a first year Japanese student. I tried to translate it as an entire 3-kanji compound word and I got different answers on different website. Thank you!

You should check out rikaichan if you haven't already done that.

http://www.polarcloud.com/rikaichan/

Achromatize Wrote:あなたの、御返事を、待っています。

What an, obnoxious way, to use commas.

Not that Japanese really has rules about it or anything.

Tzadeck Wrote:

Achromatize Wrote:あなたの、御返事を、待っています。

What an, obnoxious way, to use commas.

Not that Japanese really has rules about it or anything.

Haha it's the exact same way that Japanese people who don't know I speak Japanese well talk to me.

kitakitsune Wrote:You should check out rikaichan if you haven't already done that.

http://www.polarcloud.com/rikaichan/

Why on earth would you link to this rather than the mod? Do you hate all that's noble and good in this universe?? ;p

yudantaiteki Wrote:

moomoox2 Wrote:Could anyone please translate this sentence for me? I'm unable to get the gist of it.

何かに関わるだけで、良かれと思った事でさえ、仇にしかならないというのな

Xだけで means "Just by doing X", so this is "Just by getting involved in something..."
良かれ is the classical 命令形 of よし (modern いい), so it could mean "do it well" or "I hope it goes well" depending on the context. Without the context it's hard to make a translation because I don't know who is thinking 良かれ or who is getting involved, or who is going to be the enemy.

(Side note, please don't italicize Japanese, it makes it annoying to read)

Thanks yudantaiteki and nest0r :)

Though I think I figured it out, it means something like "Anything I did, even when I was trying to make things better, only made things worse." Though in the end, it's still kind of a shot in the dark.

Also, sorry about the italics. It is pretty annoying. Won't do it again. And the lack of context, haha.

Can someone tell me if my translation of the following sentences are correct?

Context: "The dialogue is about Jason who is talking to his former host mother about his family."

へえ。アメリカには女性の弁護士が多いの？
ええ。別に珍しくありません。

Really? Are there a lot of female lawyers in America?
Yes | Yeah. They are not particularly rare.

別に～ない means "not particularly," according to my textbook. So i guess my above translation should be correct?

I think a better translation might be ‘It's not particularly unusual’, but I could be wrong.

kitakitsune Wrote:

Tzadeck Wrote:

Achromatize Wrote:あなたの、御返事を、待っています。

What an, obnoxious way, to use commas.

Not that Japanese really has rules about it or anything.

Haha it's the exact same way that Japanese people who don't know I speak Japanese well talk to me.

That's from a letter from a potential homestay host that I inquired about from Tokyo. The comma usage was like that throughout her letter; I just assumed it was either part of the language, or that she assumed that I wouldn't be able to understand Japanese without providing enough spaces between words.

nest0r Wrote:I think a better translation might be ‘It's not particularly unusual’, but I could be wrong.

Thank you! Actually your translation sounds better, and it seems to be correct, so i will go with that.

Hey!

I've recently started using facebook in Japanese and I stumbled across 他を見る.

I know that its a link to display the rest of a list of options and that it translates to something like "see the rest" or "see the others", but how is 他 read?

rikaichan offers either ほか (other (esp. places and things); the rest or た (other (esp. people and abstract matters)).

Thanks alot.