turvy Wrote:Wow, that is amazing. By the way, why "brought" where is the past tense in the sentence?

Japanese authors frequently use present tense when narating a scene in the past. It's kind of like they're telling it from that moment (ie it can be relative). The sentence by itself is ambiguous; without context there's not much option but to literally translate it into present/future tense. That said, in my experience novels in english are rarely narrated in the present tense so "A young shepherd who was assisting Fabre brings him a tapered ball of dung." sounds kinda weird to my ear. In Japanese, however, it's not really strange at all.

We do use the present tense in English when telling stories in the spoken form though, for some reason. Guys especially do it a lot (bar stories, etc.)

"Man, a lot happened after you left last night. At about two this chick comes up to me, and I say 'Hey, nice shoes, wanna *****?' She gives me a good slap in the face, but after a couple drinks she warms up to me a bit and..."

zigmonty Wrote:[[[ファーブルの]手伝いをしていた][羊飼いの]]青年が、[[先が尖った][フンの]]玉を持ってきます。

Which is essentially the same as yudantaiteki's except for the first part (which, imho, is the same grammatically as the [羊飼いの] and [フンの] later).

Actually it's not -- the possessive and "descriptive" の are grammatically different; you can see this by trying to substitute じゃない for them and see how it results. The first one is just a possessive that can be replaced with 's, the others are nominal sentences that are modifying the noun.

I always try to hammer the difference because not understanding this can result in people having trouble with normal, basic phrases like 日本人の友達.

Quote:That said, in my experience novels in english are rarely narrated in the present tense so "A young shepherd who was assisting Fabre brings him a tapered ball of dung."

The っていた would actually be translated as "had been". "A young shepherd who had been assisting Fabre brings him..." OK, that still sounds odd.

I guess this is another reason it's important to remember that Japanese doesn't have grammatical "past tense" and "present tense", it has aspect -- finished and unfinished. This results in relative, rather than absolute, tenses...but now this is just getting more off-topic, I guess.

http://www.lifehacker.jp/2012/02/120221b...rming.html

皆さんは、いつもどのようにブレインストーミングを行っていますか？　アイデアを出すばかりで批判することを許さず、結局は役に立たないアイデアを採用していませんか？　皆さんの体験を、ぜひコメント欄で教えてください。
How do you always organise/make your brainstorming, folks? Are disapproving judging about ideas that just come up and finally don't make use of ideas that are not helpful? Please let us now your experiences in the comment box.

The black part is a bit difficult for me to get.
アイデアを出すばかりで - just by coming up with ideas
批判することを許さず - not approving judging/criticising

Tori-kun Wrote:http://www.lifehacker.jp/2012/02/120221b...rming.html

皆さんは、いつもどのようにブレインストーミングを行っていますか？　アイデアを出すばかりで批判することを許さず、結局は役に立たないアイデアを採用していませんか？　皆さんの体験を、ぜひコメント欄で教えてください。
How do you always organise/make your brainstorming, folks? Are disapproving judging about ideas that just come up and finally don't make use of ideas that are not helpful? Please let us now your experiences in the comment box.

The black part is a bit difficult for me to get.
アイデアを出すばかりで - just by coming up with ideas
批判することを許さず - not approving judging/criticising

アイデアを出すばかりで
"just coming up with ideas (and)"

批判することを許さず、
"not permitting criticism/ not letting people criticize"

結局は役に立たないアイデアを採用していませんか？

This is a use of the rhetorical negative that's much more common in Japanese than in English: AREN'T YOU finally adopting useless ideas? By just coming up with ideas and not allowing them to be criticized, don't you end up adopting useless ideas?

Tzadeck Wrote:We do use the present tense in English when telling stories in the spoken form though, for some reason. Guys especially do it a lot (bar stories, etc.)

This is called "The Historic Present" in case anyone is interested.

Tori-kun Wrote:アイデアを出すばかりで批判することを許さず、結局は役に立たないアイデアを採用していませんか？

I believe it says, 'while not allowing criticism' ...
"Do you share your ideas while not allowing criticism, and in the end don't you adopt ideas that don't work?"
(Grammatically though, it's kind of the other way... 'do you, while sharing ideas, not allow criticism and...' but that sounds odd in English.)

where do you get while from? would without accepting criticism be better? I thought nagara and tsutsu were while?

Taken literally, there's no simultaneous-time grammar, but the first phrase ends in で, which seems to me to be a conjunction choice that creates a tight coupling and the first phrase sets the stage for the second phrase.

The point I was trying to make, really, is not about concurrence (either way is concurrent, after all), but that I believe the 'not permitting criticism' is given a more emphatic role than 'sharing ideas'.

My post wasn't to disagree with Fillanzea's more literal translation but because it hadn't been posted when I wrote what I did, the meaning isn't fundamentally different.

'Without accepting' would be fine if you prefer, but doesn't change the meaning or emphasis substantially.

yudantaiteki Wrote:the possessive and "descriptive" の are grammatically different; you can see this by trying to substitute じゃない for them and see how it results. The first one is just a possessive that can be replaced with 's, the others are nominal sentences that are modifying the noun.

I always try to hammer the difference because not understanding this can result in people having trouble with normal, basic phrases like 日本人の友達.

So, I looked up DoBJG and there is this example:
ピカソの絵

This is translated to "a picture by Picasso", which is descriptive の (I hope I got it right).

But this also could be "Picasso's picture" (possessive の), I guess?

Hey guys I was wondering what this means: あげないっすよ! I have heard it a few times before, any help would be great!

I saw it in this AKB48 Video around 2:35 min in.

sage47 Wrote:あげないっすよ!

It means あげない　です　よ and in this case that means 'I'm not giving you my delicious katsudon!'

SomeCallMeChris Wrote:

sage47 Wrote:あげないっすよ!

It means あげない　です　よ and in this case that means 'I'm not giving you my delicious katsudon!'

Thanks for the clarification!

Inny Jan Wrote:ピカソの絵

This is translated to "a picture by Picasso", which is descriptive の (I hope I got it right).

But this also could be "Picasso's picture" (possessive の), I guess?

It could also be "a picture of Picasso".

In a phrase like: JohnのMaryのPicassoの絵
the painting of Picasso Mary painted which John owns

John is the owner, Mary is the creator and Picasso is the theme of the painting. The relative order is apparently rigid (owner -creator - theme). If elements are missing, the intended meaning is potentially ambiguous and would be inferred from context or what's plausible.

An aside: This is one eg of fixed word order in Japanese. It's been mentioned a few times that Japanese word order is completely free. I think it'd be better to say it's relatively free compared to English. There are many instances where word order is fixed and essential to accurate comprehension.

yudantaiteki Wrote:

zigmonty Wrote:[[[ファーブルの]手伝いをしていた][羊飼いの]]青年が、[[先が尖った][フンの]]玉を持ってきます。

Which is essentially the same as yudantaiteki's except for the first part (which, imho, is the same grammatically as the [羊飼いの] and [フンの] later).

Actually it's not -- the possessive and "descriptive" の are grammatically different; you can see this by trying to substitute じゃない for them and see how it results. The first one is just a possessive that can be replaced with 's, the others are nominal sentences that are modifying the noun.

I always try to hammer the difference because not understanding this can result in people having trouble with normal, basic phrases like 日本人の友達.

羊飼いじゃない青年　→　◯
ファーブルじゃない手伝い　→　☓

Of course they are different... This is what you meant by descriptive の being a replacement for だ, yes? As in the set: の、じゃない、だった、じゃなかった? Whereas the possessive の isn't part of that set, it's just a totally different use of の？ I've never actually thought of it like that before. They *are* totally different in my head though, you're right.

Good thing i'm not a japanese teacher, lol.

zigmonty Wrote:羊飼いじゃない青年　→　◯
ファーブルじゃない手伝い　→　☓

Of course they are different... This is what you meant by descriptive の being a replacement for だ, yes? As in the set: の、じゃない、だった、じゃなかった? Whereas the possessive の isn't part of that set, it's just a totally different use of の？ I've never actually thought of it like that before. They *are* totally different in my head though, you're right.

Good thing i'm not a japanese teacher, lol.

Well, I got this explanation from Japanese: The Spoken Language -- I would have never come up with it myself. It took me a while to really understand the significance of it but it makes a lot of sense now. It goes along with JSL's concept of "sentence modifier", which is a different way than usual of explaining modifiers in Japanese but one that I think works very well. The basic concept is that you take a sentence, usually in plain form, without sentence-ending particles, and stick it in front of a noun. The sentence then modifies the noun.

So 買う is a complete sentence ("[someone] buys/will buy"), and if you stick it before a noun, it modifies the noun in some way -- 買う本 (A book I will buy), etc. It also works with perfective and negative. And the sentences can be as long or complex as you want, of course.

It's also interesting that by this mode of explanation, 高い本 is *not* the equivalent of English adjective + noun, but it's just another type of sentence modifier -- 高い is a complete sentence in Japanese (meaning "It is expensive").

The only wrinkle in this explanation is that you don't say 日本人だ先生, you say 日本人の先生 instead. So JSL describes this の as a special form of the copula. (This explanation makes historic sense as well, since の ultimately derives from some pre-written-Japanese copula that also resulted in the particle に.)

yudantaiteki Wrote:It's also interesting that by this mode of explanation, 高い本 is *not* the equivalent of English adjective + noun, but it's just another type of sentence modifier -- 高い is a complete sentence in Japanese (meaning "It is expensive").

Yeah, that makes sense. There's no real reason to consider an adjective modifying a noun as anything fundamentally different to a verb modifying a noun. Eg. 美味しいケーキ and 食べたケーキ. They're both just very simple relative clauses.

yudantaiteki Wrote:The only wrinkle in this explanation is that you don't say 日本人だ先生, you say 日本人の先生 instead. So JSL describes this の as a special form of the copula. (This explanation makes historic sense as well, since の ultimately derives from some pre-written-Japanese copula that also resulted in the particle に.)

な adjectives are also bit of a wrinkle. You don't say きれいだ少女 either.

This one should be an easy one, I usually wouldn't stop my reading for just one bit I don't understand but I can't figure out what ほど is doing exactly:

たった半年で片言で話し始めたほど賢い赤ちゃんでした。
Such an intelligent baby that she was already talking with 6 months?.

EDIT: Maybe this is it: [Subject] was [such] an intelligent child to the extent of smattering words with merely 6 months.

turvy Wrote:This one should be an easy one, I usually wouldn't stop my reading for just one bit I don't understand but I can't figure out what ほど is doing exactly:

たった半年で片言で話し始めたほど賢い赤ちゃんでした。
Such an intelligent baby that she was already talking with 6 months?.

You've dropped 片言で in your translation, but you've got the ほど bit right -- it's expressing how much (to what extent) the 赤ちゃん was 賢い. This is basically just ほど's usual meaning, I think (when it's not in the ば...ほど pattern, anyway).

Quote:EDIT: Maybe this is it: [Subject] was [such] an intelligent child to the extent of smattering words with merely 6 months.

That's a literal (ie awful :-)) translation but it means the same as your first attempt really. You might try "so ~ that ~" as a slightly more natural sounding phrasing.

「田舎は空気からして違う」
Saw this からして example in KM2.

Someone on JGram translates it as [The countryside, in particular the air is different.] but I am getting a different feeling from からして. Something along the lines of [You can tell the countryside is different, by things as insignificant as the air]. Alternatively, it may be something like [The countryside so different, even the air feels foreign.]

Anyone have any thoughts?

からして according to renshuu.

[The countryside] you can tell [is different] / [the difference] from the air.

I just came across 夢がかなった, it seems to mean "a dream come true". But what is かなった? It looks like the past of なる prefixed with か. If that's so, what's that か doing there?.

It's the past tense of かなう.

Ah, I see. 叶う "to come true".

My 1st grade book it's a sea of ひらがな.

EDIT: Thanks!

かなう is written in hiragana fairly often; 叶 isn't a Joyo kanji even on the additional kanji recently added.