Tori-kun Wrote: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。

焦っちゃった is a contraction of 焦ってしまった.

The の in こんなの is something like 'thing' in English. こんなの is 'this kind of thing.'

言われて is from 言われる, the passive of 言う. So, something like 'it was told to me' 'it was said to me.' 言われてから would be 'since it was said it to me.'

Came across an unfamiliar usage of "sou".
V(te)+sou

A1) 変な事ばっか教えてそうだなぁ…
A2) ラーメンを美味しそうに食べてそうな馬。

Not to be confused with a different usage of "sou" which makes plenty of sense.

B1) 彼女は謝罪としてそう言った。

And likewise, not to be confused with the 可能形 conjugation of a つ verb.

C1) 勝てそう

As for A1 and A2, the meaning escapes me, unless my hunch is correct.
I am not quite sure why they are not conjugated as the regular V(masu)+sou.
Like so : 教えそう、食べそう
That is, unless the て in A1 and A2 is really て居ます dropping the い and using V(masu).
Like so : 教えていそう、食べていそう.

Anyone have a clue?

@Zigmonty & SomeCallMeChris: Thanks for the explanation. That makes sense now.

sikieiki Wrote:A1) 変な事ばっか教えてそうだなぁ…
A2) ラーメンを美味しそうに食べてそうな馬。

Not to be confused with a different usage of "sou" which makes plenty of sense.
...
That is, unless the て in A1 and A2 is really て居ます dropping the い and using V(masu).
Like so : 教えていそう、食べていそう.

Yes, you are correct. They are putting the そう on the いる and not the 教える.
I'm not very good at explaining nuances, but to me, doing it in this way makes it seem more of a 'personality trait.' For instance, you might say that the person in A1 looks like he 'always' teaches weird things, as opposed to in just this one lecture, perhaps.

edit: it looks like you dont actually need explanations for B and C, and were using them for examples of what A isn't, so I took them out.

I'm proofreading a translation, and I have no idea how to parse the 「．」symbol in the following sentence:

宮城・東北にお越し下さい！

Are they trying to say "Please come to Miyagi, Tohoku" or "Please come to Miyagi & (the rest of) Tohoku"? I'm leaning towards the former, since the latter seems redundant because Miyagi is part of Tohoku.

I was asked to finish this today, so I will especially appreciate any quick replies.

@Tzadeck: Could you give me a simple translation!? Somehow, I grasped every grammar, but it does not make sense >_> 僕も言われてからヤット気づいた＝After I, too, was told, recognised ~ (?)

"I finally noticed after I was told"

vileru Wrote:I'm proofreading a translation, and I have no idea how to parse the 「．」symbol in the following sentence:

宮城・東北にお越し下さい！

Are they trying to say "Please come to Miyagi, Tohoku" or "Please come to Miyagi & (the rest of) Tohoku"? I'm leaning towards the former, since the latter seems redundant because Miyagi is part of Tohoku.

I was asked to finish this today, so I will especially appreciate any quick replies.

I would go for Miyagi and (the rest of) Tohoku based on this definition http://www.weblio.jp/content/%E4%B8%AD%E9%BB%92 I think its pretty sure that this nakaguru "heiritsus" Touhoku and Miyagu.

I usually see this symbol only used to create lists.


Sorry late reply

Can someone tell me what 当てる means in the second of these two sentences? It's what one of the characters shouts as part of a game he plays.

「よけなければ当たる！　よければ当てる！」

I thought it meant that if his opponent dodges he'll be exposed to a counter attack, but from reading on it seems that all she has to do is dodge.

Thanks for any help.

Tori-kun Wrote:@Tzadeck: Could you give me a simple translation!? Somehow, I grasped every grammar, but it does not make sense >_> 僕も言われてからヤット気づいた＝After I, too, was told, recognised ~ (?)

Asriel's translation for this part is spot-on.

If you want a translation for the rest you'd need to provide a bit of context. What were you two talking about when your friend sent this?

Splatted Wrote:Can someone tell me what 当てる means in the second of these two sentences? It's what one of the characters shouts as part of a game he plays.

「よけなければ当たる！　よければ当てる！」

I thought it meant that if his opponent dodges he'll be exposed to a counter attack, but from reading on it seems that all she has to do is dodge.

Thanks for any help.

当てる means to hit/to make a hit/score a point/win.

So, "If you do not dodge you will be hit! If you dodge you will hit/make a hit/score a point/win!"

Which translation of 当てる is good depends on context. Since you say 'all she has to do is dodge', probably it means something like 'score a point/win'?

Yeah, the boy shouts this at the girl before trying to shoot her with a water-gun.
「よけなければ当たる！　よければ当てる！」
After reading that bit of キノの旅 through a couple times, I finally decided it means
'If you don't dodge you'll be hit! If you dodge you'll score a point!'

It got me through the story.
(Forget what else I wrote here if you saw it. )

Thanks for the help guys. I'm working on translating this for fun/practice/to see if it's something I'd be interested in doing more of in the future, and I really want to get everything right. It's really hard to know how much I should stick to the original Japanese though, since literal translations sound so rubbish. XD

Edit:

SomeCallMeChris Wrote:(Forget what else I wrote here if you saw it. )

That really makes me curious. ^^

Splatted Wrote:Edit:

SomeCallMeChris Wrote:(Forget what else I wrote here if you saw it. )

That really makes me curious. ^^

当たる mostly means 'to hit', so it had originally seemed to me that there was something strange or colloquial going on with the grammar (since you'd expect it's the girl that is the subject of all the verbs), but 当たる can be used much more broadly than that. I'm actually still not quite sure precisely how the usage works (if you explicitly added the girl and the boy and the water-gun to the sentence, which particles would they be marked with? Which number entry in a dictionary should I point to? That kind of precision is beyond me at the moment), but I'm pretty sure it's a reasonably normal use.

Hmm, I don't think I even slightly understand what you're saying but I wouldn't expect the girl to be the subject of all the verbs. It's the water that's being dodged (水をよけなければ)　and the girl who's being hit (トートに/を当たる） by the water/speaker.　I don't see why it would have to be something strange or colloquial to make sense. If I was going to include everything in the sentence it would be something like:

トートは俺の水鉄砲の水をよけなければ、その水は身体に当たる。

It's probably badly written, but the relationship between each part seems pretty straightforward.

石が窓ガラスに当たった
The stone hit [struck] the windowpane.

In the primary definition, the subject of the verb is the hitter, not the hittee...
but as I say, it has a dozen or more uses many of which make the hitter the subject.

Your example looks like this primary definition and makes the water the subject of 当たる, and トート the object... that may be what's actually happening, I'm not quite sure, but as I say, I expected the -subject- of -both- verbs to be the same and not to change.

(I also pretty much decided it wasn't worth fussing over which is why I deleted the wondering the first time. At some point I should certainly look at some examples to specifically see how often the subject shifts around, but it wasn't worth it to me to do the other evening. Maybe tonight.)

It's also possible that トート is the topic throughout and fills in the role of subject on the left side of the conditional and object on the right side. (トートは）（水を）よけなければ、（水が）当たる　->（トートが）（みずを）よけなければ、（水が）（トートに）当たる。

I'm kind of leaning towards that at the moment more or less because even with twelve definitions I can't really find one that works to keep トート the subject on both sides.

(This is of course, purely a question of 'how is the grammar put together', it doesn't at all change the understanding of the sentence.)

(Edit after a little haphazard research

Poking around the web a bit hasn't helped resolve this, heh. I do find some sentence fragments in alc like 'be hit by a stray bullet' that support the notion that 当たる can be used the other way around,

hit by a stray bullet
《be ～》流れ弾に当たる

And I also find that there's no rule or tendency to avoid switching subjects as you cross a conditional. A bunch of the tae kim sentences change subject, as do a couple entries in the progressive JE dictionary,

水がなければ生きられない
We can't live without water.

Obviously the subject changes from water to 人間 or 生物, possibly clarified by a topic if it was actually in context.

In other words, it looks like it could be valid to interpret it either way, and that in any case any notion I had that the subject should not change across a conditional was mistaken.

当たる is a pretty funky verb in general. Looking in Progressive J->E (3rd Edition):

ボールが頭に当たった。
(The ball hit me on the head)
What is hitting is marked by が, what is being hit is marked by に

雨に当たってペンキがはげている。
(The paint is peeling off the weather-beaten wall)
What is hitting is marked by に; one of the things being hit, the paint, is marked by が

この部屋はよく日が当たる。
(Thsi room gets a lot of sunshine)
What is being hit is the topic, marked by は. What is hitting is the subject, marked by が.

彼は今日はよく当たっている。
(He is hitting [the ball] well today)
The topic is a person doing an action (though, strictly grammatically, I'm not sure how I'd want to interpret this).

In our dodging example, I'm guessing she is playing the role of the topic on both sides of the sentence, but would be jumping around a bit if we wanted to assign her a more specific grammar role. She would probably be marked by に in the first half of the sentence (what would you call that grammatically?), and is the subject in the second half. Incidentally, I think that to do that is probably applying English grammar to Japanese in an incorrect way--she's simply the topic, and that's that!

From a short story about the origin of the different ways of counting in Japanese. The title is 「いち、に、さん」と、「ひ、ふ、み」。数え方が違うのは、なぜ？

It starts by pointing out that the origin of these words is very old and that there is a children's song about it. I am having trouble translating the following excerpt (not like I translate everything I read but I just can't make sense of it):

これは、数をあらわしたり、ものを数えるときに使う、「いち、に、さん、し」や、「ひとつ、ふたつ、みっつ、よっつ」よりも、古くから使われてきた言葉です。
(I thought たり was always followed by する so I am not sure if this is the same たり..たり..する. Also, what is よりも exactly?)

**

Now, I have more than 20 minutes writing this post and trying to come up with my own interpretation so I don't come out as "please translate for me" but I am going to give up, I am completely confused by the used of よりも at the end there.

Help U_U

turvy Wrote:これは、数をあらわしたり、ものを数えるときに使う、「いち、に、さん、し」や、「ひとつ、ふたつ、みっつ、よっつ」よりも、古くから使われてきた言葉です。
(I thought たり was always followed by する so I am not sure if this is the same たり..たり..する. Also, what is よりも exactly?)

It is the same たり; here the verb ending the clause is 使う instead of する...
"These are used to indicate numbers and when you are counting ... "
よりも is just emphasizing the contrast, it's just より followed by も
to say これは「いち」より古い. I assume that in the context 「これ」 is talking about counting with ひ、ふ、み rather than いち・ひとつ.

@Tzadeck: I just consider them にーmarked objects, personally. They are often but not always indirect objects when compared to English and some people consider them so, and some people consider them 'targets' or some similar word. I'm not sure what the Japanese term is for a にーmarked object - if there is one. It may depend on the situation. And yes, 当たる is a word that gives me fits. I think I'm going to leave the problem be and just keep my eyes out for similar examples, and also try to get further into niwasaburoo's outline so that I can get a clearer idea of some rules of usage from a perspective that is less 'compare to English.' That said, I don't think that wondering where the girl fits into the sentence grammatically is really about English grammar at all, it's all about different equivalents in Japanese grammar. I'm already perfectly happy with what the English equivalent is.

Yes, I understand that first part, that's as far as I was able to get with my interpretation but I can't translate the rest. If you have 1 minute would you mind posting your own full translation of the text. Very much appreciated.

'Ichi-ni-san and hitotsu-futatsu-mitsu, used to state numbers and count things, have not been used for as long as these words.'

(Edit: should really say 'these words' since 言葉 and これ go together.)

These are words used from old that are used when counting things and show numbers and are used rather than the “ichi ni san” and “hitotsu futatsu mittsu” sequences.

Edit: Chris's version is probably better than mine.

Just for fun I'm gonna translate it too (actually, I already started before seeing SomeCallMeChris' post). It's actually pretty hard to include everything in a single English sentence that doesn't sound like crap.

"These are words which have been used since a long time ago--even longer than "Ichi, ni, san, shi" and "Hitotsu, hutatsu, mittsu, yottsu"--to do things like express numbers and count.

(I used 'things like' to give the same nuance as たり, and 'even longer' as the equivalent of よりも)

(Basically the sentence is これは言葉です--'These are words.' Everything else is modifying 'words', so it's hard to make it not clunky in English, haha.)

Thank you everyone, actually @HJ's version made it click for me as I read it before @Tz's. By the way, I don't know if I wasn't clear enough about the context, but the words they refer to at the beginning of the sentence I typed in are ひ、ふ、み. Of course よりも makes total sense at the end as "as opposed to these words as well".

Anyway, here is my own interpretation, please take a look at it.

As opposed to (ichi, ni, san, shi) as well as (hitotsu, futatsu, mittsu, yottsu), these words were formerly used to represent such things as numbers and counting things.

@tzadeck i interpreted the comma after よりも to mean that the よりも went to the final noun phrase 使われてきた言葉 and not the fukaku kara? did you deduce this from context or is there a grammatical clue in the sentence to suggest it means "older than" as opposed to used rather than?