I don't think English is.
2012-01-12, 3:49 am
Betelgeuzah Wrote:I don't think English is.Please tell me that was a joke... if not, look at your second word.
2012-01-12, 3:55 am
I didn't say that English doesn't shorten words/sentences at all.
They're just amateurs at it.
They're just amateurs at it.
Edited: 2012-01-12, 3:56 am
Advertising (Register to hide)
May 16 - 30 : Pretty Big Deal: Save 31% on all Premium Subscriptions!
- Sign up here
2012-01-12, 4:47 am
I don't think English does any less shortening than Japanese, or any other language I've seen.
2012-01-12, 7:57 am
Spoken English does a lot of shortening, just like spoken Japanese, spoken Portuguese and most other languages I know.
2012-01-12, 8:12 am
By the way, I asked my Japanese tutor about the different imperatives and all that. (I didn't ask her about the question that was asked, since I think we've established the the いってみよ was short for いってみよう. I just was curious about imperatives)
She said that yeah, みよ is an imperative but it isn't used that often in regular speech (which is expected since it's classical). She said that her impression of it is that other than in literature it's used often in slogans or songs.
I also asked her about いってみな, which I've definitely heard before quite a few times (in fact, I think I just saw it somewhere in ノルウェイの森). She laughed and said people who use that imperative are people who think they're hot shit. She says it's also used by 男っぽい女性 who are trying to act cool.
I also asked her about いってみ as an imperative, and she said no, it can't be used as an imperative. It is only used as an abbreviation of 「いってみたらどう？」
As for the 関西弁 imperative I mentioned, stem+や, she says that instead of people saying いってみや they would usually say いってみぃや, and often write it that way too since み is only one mora. One mora verbs sound weird because they are so short. For a verb like たべる it would just be たべや, since it doesn't sound so funky when the verb is a bit longer. She is from Hyogo originally but has lived in Kyoto for a few years.
She said that yeah, みよ is an imperative but it isn't used that often in regular speech (which is expected since it's classical). She said that her impression of it is that other than in literature it's used often in slogans or songs.
I also asked her about いってみな, which I've definitely heard before quite a few times (in fact, I think I just saw it somewhere in ノルウェイの森). She laughed and said people who use that imperative are people who think they're hot shit. She says it's also used by 男っぽい女性 who are trying to act cool.
I also asked her about いってみ as an imperative, and she said no, it can't be used as an imperative. It is only used as an abbreviation of 「いってみたらどう？」
As for the 関西弁 imperative I mentioned, stem+や, she says that instead of people saying いってみや they would usually say いってみぃや, and often write it that way too since み is only one mora. One mora verbs sound weird because they are so short. For a verb like たべる it would just be たべや, since it doesn't sound so funky when the verb is a bit longer. She is from Hyogo originally but has lived in Kyoto for a few years.
Edited: 2012-01-12, 8:20 am
2012-01-12, 9:33 am
yudantaiteki Wrote:I don't think English does any less shortening than Japanese, or any other language I've seen.without wishing to go off topic... read my post, I never wrote that it did - all I said that is that I need to remember Japanese is a language that shortens words
2012-01-12, 9:51 am
Tzadeck Wrote:I also asked her about いってみな, which I've definitely heard before quite a few times (in fact, I think I just saw it somewhere in ノルウェイの森). She laughed and said people who use that imperative are people who think they're hot shit. She says it's also used by 男っぽい女性 who are trying to act cool.I talked with some of my 北海道 folk as well, and came up with similar results.
I also asked her about いってみ as an imperative, and she said no, it can't be used as an imperative. It is only used as an abbreviation of 「いってみたらどう？」
Except that いってみな wasn't necessarily said for people who think they're hot shit, but rather when using it for something they don't see as being all to important (which, now that I think about it, could mean that they think they're better than it, aka 'hot shit').
And yeah, I got pretty much the same response for いってみ, which basically came down to me deciding I'll probably never use it ever.
I still have no idea about anything 関西 related.
2012-01-12, 1:17 pm
Are all Japanese color blind? Aoi is both green and blue.
2012-01-12, 1:34 pm
There are lots of languages that don't have separate words for green and blue, especially in Asia. Languages vary a lot on what they have separate color names for -- all languages have at least black/white or dark/light, and if a language has three color words they'll be black/white/red. Then a language typicall adds green and yellow, then blue, then other colors. It doesn't mean you can't see the difference between them, it just means you don't need to make the difference explicit all the time, any more than you say you're wearing a graphite-colored sweater when you're wearing a gray one.
'Midori' used to refer to a glossy black color, and you'll often see people's hair described as midori in old literature; it doesn't mean that they had green hair, obviously.
From there, the meaning changed to refer to what we consider green in English, but for a long time it was just considered a shade of aoi. It wasn't until after World War II that people really started to think of aoi and midori as separate colors, probably because of Western influence. So words that already existed before then, like aoi traffic lights, continued to be considered aoi.
There was an episode of Detective Conan where they had three witnesses all giving conflicting testimony about the perpetrator of the crime, and Conan solved it by figuring it out that the guy who said the criminal was wearing an aoi jacket was old enough that he grew up when aoi still meant both blue and green, so his testimony was consistent with the other witness who said the criminal was wearing a midori jacket.
'Midori' used to refer to a glossy black color, and you'll often see people's hair described as midori in old literature; it doesn't mean that they had green hair, obviously.
From there, the meaning changed to refer to what we consider green in English, but for a long time it was just considered a shade of aoi. It wasn't until after World War II that people really started to think of aoi and midori as separate colors, probably because of Western influence. So words that already existed before then, like aoi traffic lights, continued to be considered aoi.
There was an episode of Detective Conan where they had three witnesses all giving conflicting testimony about the perpetrator of the crime, and Conan solved it by figuring it out that the guy who said the criminal was wearing an aoi jacket was old enough that he grew up when aoi still meant both blue and green, so his testimony was consistent with the other witness who said the criminal was wearing a midori jacket.
2012-01-12, 1:41 pm
No, they aren't colorblind, but green/blue is the same range of colors, and Japanese considered them shades of the same color until recently.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinguish...n_language
Japanese now has the words みどり and グリーン taken from Chinese and English respectively, but the boundary is not in the same place as in English so there are some 'greens' that are still 青 and of course, traditional expressions still use the older, broader meaning of 青.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinguish...n_language
Japanese now has the words みどり and グリーン taken from Chinese and English respectively, but the boundary is not in the same place as in English so there are some 'greens' that are still 青 and of course, traditional expressions still use the older, broader meaning of 青.
2012-01-12, 2:37 pm
Another lang-8 comment that I can't make heads or tails of...
よろしくお願いしいます。
A friend posted this after I made a journal consisting of my attempted translations of some famous English quotes.
皆の添削のとおりです、名言として響かせるために、
すこし インパクトのある日本語に上手に訳してくれている人もいるので参考にしてください。
My best(lol) guess at this is something like "Everyone corrected, so the sayings can resound a little bit. Please consult the people who translated it to Japanese well, so it has an impact.
A breakdown of the grammar in this would be amazing.
よろしくお願いしいます。
A friend posted this after I made a journal consisting of my attempted translations of some famous English quotes.
皆の添削のとおりです、名言として響かせるために、
すこし インパクトのある日本語に上手に訳してくれている人もいるので参考にしてください。
My best(lol) guess at this is something like "Everyone corrected, so the sayings can resound a little bit. Please consult the people who translated it to Japanese well, so it has an impact.
A breakdown of the grammar in this would be amazing.
2012-01-12, 2:56 pm
TheSlyPig Wrote:皆の添削のとおりです、名言として響かせるために、皆の添削のとおりです : it is as everybody's correction says. (I think the comma following this makes it a bit of a run-on sentence; a full stop would work too.)
すこし インパクトのある日本語に上手に訳してくれている人もいるので参考にしてください。
My best(lol) guess at this is something like "Everyone corrected, so the sayings can resound a little bit. Please consult the people who translated it to Japanese well, so it has an impact.
A breakdown of the grammar in this would be amazing.
XためにY => in order that X, Y. (where Y here is "すこし インパクトのある日本語に上手に訳してくれている" and X is 名言として響かせるために).
XのでYしてください : X, so please Y.
すこし can't be modifying 響かせる, it would have to come in front of it to do that.
You ought to be able to put the fragments together in a better causal relationship now...
2012-01-12, 3:04 pm
皆の添削のとおりです、in the way that everyone corrected -> "I agree with everyone's corrections" - this bit basically stands alone and could have ended with a period instead of a comma.
名言として響かせるために、-> "In order to make profound sayings resonate" - this prefixes the rest, standing as a reason for the suggestion.
すこし -> I think this is actually modifying 参考にして 'consult a little bit', hence the space that could have been a comma. It -could- be modifying 'インパクト' but I don't think so.
インパクトのある日本語に -> '(into) Japanese with punch behind it.' This modifies the next phrase.
上手に訳してくれている -> 'Skillfully translate' (the 'くれている' gives a sense of gratitude that could be translated as 'for us' or could be dropped in translation) Of course, 'translate into (previous phrase)'.
人 -> The people that are modified by the previous two parts - that is, 'people who (previous phrase)'
もいる -> Said people exist (the も adding a nuance of ... 'among other people' or 'out in the world', but not strong enough a nuance to actually put into that many words.)
ので参考にしてください。 -> Therefore (since they are there) please refer to them.
"Since there are people that skillfully translate profound sayings into Japanese with punch behind it, please make an effort to refer to their works."
The meaning to take from that is, look at what some talented people have done to get an idea of the right kind of phrasing to use.
名言として響かせるために、-> "In order to make profound sayings resonate" - this prefixes the rest, standing as a reason for the suggestion.
すこし -> I think this is actually modifying 参考にして 'consult a little bit', hence the space that could have been a comma. It -could- be modifying 'インパクト' but I don't think so.
インパクトのある日本語に -> '(into) Japanese with punch behind it.' This modifies the next phrase.
上手に訳してくれている -> 'Skillfully translate' (the 'くれている' gives a sense of gratitude that could be translated as 'for us' or could be dropped in translation) Of course, 'translate into (previous phrase)'.
人 -> The people that are modified by the previous two parts - that is, 'people who (previous phrase)'
もいる -> Said people exist (the も adding a nuance of ... 'among other people' or 'out in the world', but not strong enough a nuance to actually put into that many words.)
ので参考にしてください。 -> Therefore (since they are there) please refer to them.
"Since there are people that skillfully translate profound sayings into Japanese with punch behind it, please make an effort to refer to their works."
The meaning to take from that is, look at what some talented people have done to get an idea of the right kind of phrasing to use.
2012-01-12, 3:06 pm
TheSlyPig Wrote:Another lang-8 comment that I can't make heads or tails of...It's a typo. よろしくお願いします
よろしくお願いしいます。
A friend posted this after I made a journal consisting of my attempted translations of some famous English quotes.
TheSlyPig Wrote:皆の添削のとおりです、名言として響かせるために、The first sentence is them agreeing with the other corrections (don't get fooled by the comma after です). Then saying "there are some people who skillfully translated it into japanese with a bit of impact for you, so that it resounds as a wise saying. Please refer to them."
すこし インパクトのある日本語に上手に訳してくれている人もいるので参考にしてください。
My best(lol) guess at this is something like "Everyone corrected, so the sayings can resound a little bit. Please consult the people who translated it to Japanese well, so it has an impact.
A breakdown of the grammar in this would be amazing.
Quick breakdown of some of the points you may have missed:
Xのとおりです, "it is as X says", or the like.
xとして, "as X".
インパクトのある日本語 = "japanese with impact", the first part is modifying 日本語
Starting from the outside in can be a useful tactic (ie delete all the relative clauses and look at the basic structure of the sentence, then add detail). The second sentence is "XのでYしてください", because of X please do Y. X can then be broken down into "人もいる", there are also people. "Because there are also people, please refer to them". The whole slab before that is modifying 人. So what kind of person is it? "日本語に上手に訳してくれている人", people who translated skilfully into japanese. What kind of japanese? Well, that's what the stuff before 日本語 is specifying. "すこし インパクトのある日本語", japanese with a bit of impact. Why did those people do that? "名言として響かせるために", so that it resounds as a wise saying.
They're basically saying that if you're going to write something that comes off as a wise saying, you have to write it in wise-saying japanese. You know, pithy quotes often use a different sort of language than rambling sentences.
2012-01-12, 3:11 pm
Fillanzea Wrote:'Midori' used to refer to a glossy black color, and you'll often see people's hair described as midori in old literature; it doesn't mean that they had green hair, obviously.You can't fool me like that, I've seen them in anime...
2012-01-12, 3:33 pm
Fillanzea Wrote:It doesn't mean you can't see the difference between them, it just means you don't need to make the difference explicit all the time, any more than you say you're wearing a graphite-colored sweater when you're wearing a gray one.Or to use an example closer to 青い, navy blue and a light sky blue are both blue right? Different shades of the same colour? Except the later is often referred to as cyan, and is considered a different colour. Red, green and blue are the primary colours of light, cyan, magenta and yellow are the primary colours of pigment. No english speaker would argue magenta (hot pink) and red are the same colour or that yellow and green are the same colour, yet english usually considers cyan as blue. But the primary colour cyan is as far from the primary colour blue as the other two examples.
It's all just brainwashing from childhood. There's a discussion in 日本人の知らない日本語 about what colour the sun is. The japanese はるこ insists that it's red, whereas others insist it's yellow or gold. "White" is probably the closest description (although the peak wavelength is in the yellow part of the spectrum). Due to the atmosphere scattering some of the blue light out (which causes the blue sky), it has a yellow tinge (and the contrast against the blue sky leads to an optical illusion making it look yellower still), but it's way closer to white than yellow paint.
Edited: 2012-01-12, 3:39 pm
2012-01-12, 9:29 pm
Beth Levin and the World Color Survey spring to mind - I was fascinated by it. I failed a module and went AWOL causing the Japanese lecturer to ignore me in the street but my professor was happy with my research and emailed a senior researcher in Germany... I remember going to a pub quiz and being told traffic lights in Japan are blue and thinking "no, they're not."
Back to the thread
Have I translated the following sentence OK? (I doubt it) The things that confused me was yの整ったx. Does this mean the x that arranged Y? I checked with Tatoeba and I think that's what it means.
各平仮名の文字固有の字形を覚えさせ、かつ字形バランスの整った平仮名表記を習得させることができる平仮名練習帳の提供。
Supplies a hiragana practice list that can cause the memorization of a character style of a proper shape of each hiragana and can also cause the learning of hiragana writing that arranged the character style balances.
Back to the thread
Have I translated the following sentence OK? (I doubt it) The things that confused me was yの整ったx. Does this mean the x that arranged Y? I checked with Tatoeba and I think that's what it means.
各平仮名の文字固有の字形を覚えさせ、かつ字形バランスの整った平仮名表記を習得させることができる平仮名練習帳の提供。
Supplies a hiragana practice list that can cause the memorization of a character style of a proper shape of each hiragana and can also cause the learning of hiragana writing that arranged the character style balances.
2012-01-12, 9:43 pm
No, in バランスの整った平仮名表記, 整った is almost acting more as an adjective than a past-tense verb -- it's 平仮名表記 that can be described as 字形バランスの整った, hiragana writing where the character forms are properly balanced. (整った comes up in my J-E dictionary as 'orderly, well-ordered, in good order.')
Other than that, I think hiragana practice book or hiragana practice worksheet might be a better translation for 平仮名練習長, and I wouldn't say 'cause the memorization' though that's more a stylistic choice. 'allow the memorization' or (to depart from the absolutely literal) 'aid in the memorization' might work better.
Have you ever read Jay Rubin's book Making Sense of Japanese? It's really good on untangling sentences with embedded clauses.
Other than that, I think hiragana practice book or hiragana practice worksheet might be a better translation for 平仮名練習長, and I wouldn't say 'cause the memorization' though that's more a stylistic choice. 'allow the memorization' or (to depart from the absolutely literal) 'aid in the memorization' might work better.
Have you ever read Jay Rubin's book Making Sense of Japanese? It's really good on untangling sentences with embedded clauses.
2012-01-12, 9:53 pm
Thanks for the quick reply! I am happy that I at least sussed out where the first causative verb goes to!
It is much better than last time so I am happy! I will put this in my grammar notes and am researching the book.
what does に時において mean?
ＬＥＤ数字表示器のマウント作業やその他の取り扱いに時においてＬＥＤ数字表示器の上下方向を考慮する必要を無くし、ＬＥＤ数字表示器の取り扱いの容易化などを図る。
I googled it and it seemed a strange construction - there were ony 10 hits for it. I found this http://ejje.weblio.jp/sentence/content/time+value that implies that の時において means at the time of. does the first chunk of the sentence mean something like "at the time of mount operation of the led numeral display and other uses"?
It is much better than last time so I am happy! I will put this in my grammar notes and am researching the book.
what does に時において mean?
ＬＥＤ数字表示器のマウント作業やその他の取り扱いに時においてＬＥＤ数字表示器の上下方向を考慮する必要を無くし、ＬＥＤ数字表示器の取り扱いの容易化などを図る。
I googled it and it seemed a strange construction - there were ony 10 hits for it. I found this http://ejje.weblio.jp/sentence/content/time+value that implies that の時において means at the time of. does the first chunk of the sentence mean something like "at the time of mount operation of the led numeral display and other uses"?
Edited: 2012-01-12, 11:03 pm
2012-01-12, 11:02 pm
TheSlyPig Wrote:よろしくお願いしいます。Wowtypo.
zigmonty Wrote:Xのとおりです, "it is as X says", or the like.
xとして, "as X".
Starting from the outside in can be a useful tactic (ie delete all the relative clauses and look at the basic structure of the sentence, then add detail). The second sentence is "XのでYしてください", because of X please do Y. X can then be broken down into "人もいる", there are also people. "Because there are also people, please refer to them". The whole slab before that is modifying 人. So what kind of person is it? "日本語に上手に訳してくれている人", people who translated skilfully into japanese. What kind of japanese? Well, that's what the stuff before 日本語 is specifying. "すこし インパクトのある日本語", japanese with a bit of impact. Why did those people do that? "名言として響かせるために", so that it resounds as a wise saying.
SomeCallMeChris Wrote:もいる -> Said people exist (the も adding a nuance of ... 'among other people' or 'out in the world', but not strong enough a nuance to actually put into that many words.)
ので参考にしてください。 -> Therefore (since they are there) please refer to them.
"Since there are people that skillfully translate profound sayings into Japanese with punch behind it, please make an effort to refer to their works."
pm215 Wrote:XためにY => in order that X, Y. (where Y here is "すこし インパクトのある日本語に上手に訳してくれている" and X is 名言として響かせるために).Thank you very very much, zigmonty, SomeCallMeChris, and pm215.
XのでYしてください : X, so please Y.
すこし can't be modifying 響かせる, it would have to come in front of it to do that.
2012-01-12, 11:20 pm
you may, or may not be interested to know that Japanese bikers supposedly use 夜露死苦 for よろしく.
http://d.hatena.ne.jp/keyword/%CC%EB%CF%AA%BB%E0%B6%EC
http://d.hatena.ne.jp/keyword/%CC%EB%CF%AA%BB%E0%B6%EC
2012-01-13, 2:32 am
Quote:No, in バランスの整った平仮名表記, 整った is almost acting more as an adjective than a past-tense verbAnd this is because た is not a past tense marker, it's a perfective aspect marker. One of its functions is to represent something that happened in the past, but another function is to show a "realized" or "actual" state, as in this example.
Quote:what does に時において mean?I'm pretty sure that's a typo for の時において.