I think rules like adjectives all ways end in katakana i and wa marks the topic NOT THE SUBJECT are very useful and learning this rule would be quicker than sussing it out? Could you ever suss out the difference between wa and ga?

with regards to my kanji what are you doing tonight???

Back on the thread what is the difference between から and ので? I will research it myself, but I am trying 2 keep the thread on track.

why is it even useful to know all adjectives end in (hiragana) い though? Either you know the word's meaning or you don't. At any rate you don't need anyone to tell you that.

Re: は. This is a perfect example. There is an abundance of explanation of this on the net and still beginners get confused by it. The explanations usually given are complex and often include things that imo are complete red herrings. Unless you're somewhat familiar with grammar terms the words topic/subject are confusing anyway. Confusion over は comes entirely from poor translation (of isolated sentences) and poor explanation in text books.

re ので／から. ので is の＋で. で is a sentence connecting form of です. And の adds an explanatory tone to the sentence it's attached to. So basically ので has a more explanetory tone, explaining the circumstances for what results.
AのでB > (it was the case that A) and (B)

So you might use ので when explaining to your boss why you were late, or it might be used explaining why a game was cancelled or something.

whereas から is basically just 'because.'

Hey, I have a more random question. How can I know if compounds turn into "adj-na" or "adj-no" (when you check it with rikai-sama)?

E.g.
褐色(adj-no)
熾烈(adj-na,n) <- does the 'n' mean it can have a meaning as a noun, too?
矮小(adj-na)
突然(adj-na,adj-no) <- which one?

nadiatims Wrote:why is it even useful to know all adjectives end in (hiragana) い though? Either you know the word's meaning or you don't. At any rate you don't need anyone to tell you that.

Re: は. This is a perfect example. There is an abundance of explanation of this on the net and still beginners get confused by it. The explanations usually given are complex and often include things that imo are complete red herrings. Unless you're somewhat familiar with grammar terms the words topic/subject are confusing anyway. Confusion over は comes entirely from poor translation (of isolated sentences) and poor explanation in text books.

If you heard xxxxxi horse and knew that they were speaking about race horses you could guess it meant fast if you had more contextual clues. You say yourself that it is POOR explanation that is to blame and I agree.

I remember that verb-o means first person in Spanish - these rules were and are very useful.

Tori-kun Wrote:熾烈(adj-na,n) <- does the 'n' mean it can have a meaning as a noun, too?

Yes

Quote:突然(adj-na,adj-no) <- which one?

Both. Niwasaburo has a brief description at 3.3 (in Japanese).

In case you come across something that looks like an adjectival noun (na adj) but Edict labels it as adj-f, it's a 連体形. Niwasaboro mentions them in that section, I think.

At 3:13 of

what is the katakana next to レ?

オレ

thanks - do you often see it that deformed?

it's just a font thing they wanted him to look mean and scary so they used a font that isn't normal. It didn't even look "deformed" to me. example in lots of j-tv shows if the person is yelling it has this font where all the letters are wavy and shaky. Also japanese handwriting doesn't look like a textbook so you just got to get use to figuring it out for a while even if you read in a textbook fine.

Thora Wrote:

Quote:突然(adj-na,adj-no) <- which one?

Both. Niwasaburo has a brief description at 3.3 (in Japanese).

In case you come across something that looks like an adjectival noun (na adj) but Edict labels it as adj-f, it's a 連体形. Niwasaboro mentions them in that section, I think.

I haven't exactly grasped the difference in the usage. I often get confused with whether using the な or の after adj-na....

I've never looked into it, Tori-kun, but I imagine that it just represents grammaticalization of usage over time and there's isn't any particular coherence behind it. I think you just have to treat it as vocab, make a point of noticing when you read and perhaps do some targeted study.

For eg, you could put a little reminder on your cards of nouns that can be used as verbal nouns, na adj, no adj and adverbs. I believe you've been using Rachel's CorePlus deck which I believe has a field for Edicts parts of speech, so that would be easy to do. As niwasaburo mentions, though, it's sometimes difficult to classify words. Just b/c they are listed as nouns, doesn't mean the behave exactly as regular nouns do. (eg. X 特別を)

I suspect the number of no-adjs is small relative to na adjs, so you might consider searching and tagging them so you be familiar with which are both and which are only no-adj. (If you do, perhaps you could let us know? I'm curious to know how many are considered common.)

I don't know how accurate edict's POS labels are, though.　For eg, 本当　is labelled as adj-na and n, but 本当の is correct, not 本当な.

Quote:I often get confused with whether using the な or の after adj-na....

Just in case: の wouldn't be an option after any na adj - only after words which are also no adj. And some words are only no adj (not na adj.)

@Thora: Thank you. Yeah, I guess it's just up to my memorisation then >< Looks like a bit of work, especially for words you would mostly encounter in literature and not in common speech. I will see how I can mark them in rachel's deck somehow, but lately, as you might know, I have finished core6000 and started adding more vards violently with rikai-sama, also from books/articles I am reading... that's why the mass of not so common adj also went high up.

btw, you will of course see の　after na-adj when it's being used as Noun + possessive の. (eg. 熾烈の読み方). I see a few examples of Adj [edit:熾烈] ＋ copula の as well, though. I have no idea if this is Edict inaccuracy or just the real world being it's natural inconsistent self. :-) In other words, I wouldn't worry about it too much.

This is a story about a snail.
しりたがりやの　かわいい　でんでん虫ぼうやの　お話
...
「ぼうやの頭のところに大きなものがあるでしょう？」お母さんが聞きました。
Snail child replies:「うん、この目にしみるものこれなあに。」

→ What is ぼうや | しりたがりや | しみる | なあに?

After searching for like 20 minutes I found out that 知りたがり屋 means inquisitive / curious. How come Jisho / Tangorin did not have it? Another thing, Jisho says that ででむし is an archaism for snail so I guess でんでん虫 is another way of saying the same thing, but why these word usage? Isn't snail かたつむり?

So, what is この目にしみるものこれなあに ?　
目にしみる ?
なあに ?

I'm starting to think that these online dictionaries doesn't really cut it and I need to be able to parse and decode Japanese in a way that takes me less than an hour for the simplest things. I understand there is no perfect solution to this but maybe I could improve my study workflow if I were using other tools. Any recommendations?

turvy Wrote:After searching for like 20 minutes I found out that 知りたがり屋 means inquisitive / curious.
How come Jisho / Tangorin did not have it?

Because it's just grammar applied to the word 知る
知る→知りたがる→知りたがり屋
to know->to want to know->the characteristic of wanting to know, or a person with that characteristic.

Quote:Another thing, Jisho says that ででむし is an archaism for snail so I guess でんでん虫 is another way of saying the same thing, but why these word usage? Isn't snail かたつむり?

Is your story a 昔話 or 童話 or 民話? When you read old stories, you encounter old language.

Quote:So, what is この目にしみるものこれなあに ?　
目にしみる ?
なあに ?

You provide no context, but I suppose this is dialogue spoken by one of the characters. It looks like it might say 'What is this that is stinging my eye?'　
この　目　に　染みる 物
これ　何　？

Did that post change? It looks now like there's too lines together where I thought there was one. I think my guess is wrong, but I'm not sure what would be right. If it -is- a response, it looks more likely that it's なあ the interjection and not a drawn-out なに.

Quote:Any recommendations?

A good electronic dictionary does wonders for speed, although many people are opposed to paying hundreds of dollars for the same information that can more slowly be acquired online for free. The dictionaries at yahoo and goo are similar to what's in an electronic dictionary, although the accent (pronunciation) dictionary and character (kanji) dictionary that you might have included in an electronic dictionary are not freely available.

And ぼうや→坊や means something like 'boy'. It's used to address young males.

It's just a 話 for first grade children. So なあに is just another way of saying 何. I see.

I think maybe I should get one of these babies. Any recommendations as to what's the best out there for my yen?. I am not really interested in old Japanese or another language but I would find the prononciation feature exceedingly useful.

Did that post change? It looks now like there's too lines together where I thought there was one. I think my guess is wrong, but I'm not sure what would be right. If it -is- a response, it looks more likely that it's なあ the interjection and not a drawn-out なに. (or maybe not. I can't think of any way that に after what should be essentially acting as a sentence-final particle can make sense.... hmm.)
-
Books for very young children include a lot of non-standard speech. People don't talk to very young children the way they talk to adults. Anything aimed at kids under 12 or so is going to contain a certain amount of words only used by or towards children.

I missed your edit before and it didn't not change, but let me do so now.

EDIT: I'm back, you are right, there is something stinging the snail's eye, a leaf as it turns out.

Ahh, good, that makes sense then, once I consider that snails have eyes on top of their heads...
I take back what I said about not providing context, I just misinterpreted the lines on the first read. The edit makes it much clearer.

I think you're unfortunately going to find that 'for young children' does not mean easy to read for the foreign learner.

Many thanks for the help.

I am not sure if this is the right spot on the forum to ask this, but I am confused in making distinction between 種　and 類, they both seem to refer to "kind" or "type" of something.

また、いくとおりものよみががあるものもある。

In the above sentence が is used twice in succession, but what is the function of が in this sentence. Can someone please explain?

Man that took a while to figure out. Include the kanji next time:
また、幾通りもの読みがあるものもある。＝there are also ones (?) with multiples ways of being read.

Pretty sure one of those が is a typo.

nadiatims Wrote:Man that took a while to figure out. Include the kanji next time:
また、幾通りもの読みがあるものもある。＝there are also ones (?) with multiples ways of being read.

Pretty sure one of those が is a typo.

Thank you for answering! First of all I like to keep things original and I haven't had any problem understanding the sentence in the original form. I did a Google search in the meantime for 読みががある which delivered 3 results. It seems that the other two are based on the source I first got it from. This is why I believe that you are right in assuming that this is just a typo.

http://www2.ipcku.kansai-u.ac.jp/~ame/word/japan.html It is the part about name Kanji.

Edit: If I add な it gives 読み仮名 (よみがな) がある. What do you think, would make sense, or not?

I don't digest this message properly of a friend of mine... see the bold parts that require special consideration when explaining something. I guess I know all the words, but they don't make any sense Y.Y

あっちゃん(笑)
開いたとき一瞬焦っちゃったよ(^_^;
よくこんなの気付いたね、僕も言われてからやっと気付いたくらいだよ。