@turvy:

八人も兄弟がある。
He has as much as (count it!) eight brothers!

That's how I would translate it from my feeling:3

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think ほど used with a number (quantifier?), is used to show approximation, like in

３日ほど旅行します。 I will travel for about 3 days. (upper limit)

Yeah, that's the usual translation but you don't really speak like that in English I presume hehe.

turvy Wrote:八人も兄弟がある。
(He) has eight brothers!

A side note, but you should be using いる, not ある, unless all 8 of your siblings are dead.

I also think this word order would be more typical:
兄弟が八人もいる。

Right. This is weird, I took that example right off Kodansha's Dictionary of Particles. Go figure.

Aru can be used to indicate possession of people, but they have to be close to the speaker. You can't use it with your mechanic or gardener for example.

Yeah, ある is perfectly normal for siblings and spouses, at least.

EDIT: And only when it means "I have a husband" or "I have two brothers" -- you can't say 兄は店にある.

You can use いる with some inanimate things that move in some contexts, such as buses.

From Amazon, what does this title mean?

この本のなか見！検索より （詳細はこちら）

All this boil down to より I still don't quite understand より. If anyone could elaborate on the historical origins of the particle, please.

@turvy: My pen pal always writes "ナツキよりよろしくを". Do you understand this? You can paraphrase it here with から, I think.

As for the historical origin, I don't know what the etymology is (it clearly has some connection with 拠る/因る but I don't know the exact details). In classical Japanese, though, it was used with a fairly wide range of meanings that were similar to how から is used in modern Japanese (although から was used in classical Japanese as well). I think in modern Japanese it's much more limited in scope, for the most part.

Very interesting, but what does 検索より?

I asked a native speaker and he said "by means of", but maybe he was brushing me off, can anybody verify this?.

@Tori-kun, regards from Kitsuki? Is that it? What's that を doing in there?

GTO 2012 drama. Old grumpy lady speaking to a much younger female teacher.


お化粧とお洋服選びに時間がかかったんじゃないんですか？
まだまだ　教師としての自覚が足りないようで。

I'm having problem with understanding 自覚が足りない. From context I'd translate it as "too self-conscious" but when I look at rough translations of individual words I get "not enough self-conscious".

not enough self awareness

What's the difference between 中央, 中, 中心? And I am sure there are more.

中央 and 中心 are basically the same except that 中心 implies a slightly greater importance. Both of these words are 漢語 so they automatically imply a certain sense of formality and will appear in writing a lot.

中 is 大和言葉 so you'll always hear it in spoken conversation compared to the other two because it doesn't carry the formal baggage of 漢語.

But as usual, they are used in different phrases -- を中心にして, for instance, can't be replaced with the others. There are more examples at alc.co.jp

中 is used a lot in writing as well, it just depends on the context.

Chie bukuro is almost always my first port of call for these things

indeed.

I don't know how much you can rely on the idea that 漢語 is formal/written and 和語 is casual spoken. 漢語 make up something like 60% of the japanese language (iirc) and are used all the time. There are plenty of 和語 that are obscure, obsolete or formal. You've gotta judge these things on a case by case basis.

There have been plenty of studies done that show that spoken Japanese is dominated by 和語 and written discourse by 漢語.

turvy Wrote:Very interesting, but what does 検索より?

I asked a native speaker and he said "by means of", but maybe he was brushing me off, can anybody verify this?.

@Tori-kun, regards from Kitsuki? Is that it? What's that を doing in there?

It just means by/according to the search. (ie reporting the result of a (presumedly web) search).

The を in ナツキよりよろしくを is implying some kind of verb like 伝える or 願う.

kitakitsune Wrote:There have been plenty of studies done that show that spoken Japanese is dominated by 和語 and written discourse by 漢語.

Nevertheless, it's not safe to assume that 和語 are always spoken and 漢語 are always written. I don't even think that's true 80% of the time. Most of the time the meanings don't match up 1-to-1 anyway. I fully agree with nadiatims on this point; you have to take them case by case.

What are some of these studies, and what were their exact results?

nadiatims Wrote:It just means by/according to the search. (ie reporting the result of a (presumedly web) search).

What search? I haven't searched for anything, so are you saying it doesn't mean "by means of"? and how could it possible mean "according", according to what?.

turvy Wrote:

nadiatims Wrote:It just means by/according to the search. (ie reporting the result of a (presumedly web) search).

What search? I haven't searched for anything, so are you saying it doesn't mean "by means of"? and how could it possible mean "according", according to what?.

What is probably confusing you here is that なか見！検索 is the Japanese name of the "look inside" feature of Amazon. So この本のなか見！検索より means "From the なか見！検索 of this book", i.e. "From the 'look inside' of this book." The links below this text are links to thinks like the table of contents or index, which are links to the なか見！検索 feature.

I think here "taken from" would be better than "according to" if you're looking for an English equivalent. You see this usage of より sometimes in cited texts as well; there will be a passage followed by （源氏物語より） or something like that.

ええ、so より is modifying この本のなか見 ?

EDIT: Ah, ok I think I got it. 検索 (which by the way, what a weird word) means I guess something like index and この本のなか見！検索より means [この本のなか見！検索] より.

I guess; 検索 is the standard word for "search" on the Internet -- I don't see what's odd about it. Every time you use google you're 検索'ing. (Index is usually 索引)

なか見！検索 is the name of the "look inside" feature, as I said. It's made up of two parts which I guess are "look inside" and "search", but they go together to be the name of the feature. The exclamation mark doesn't end a sentence or anything, it's just a part of the name.

I would parse it as [この本の　[なか見！検索] ] より.

nadiatims Wrote:It just means by/according to the search. (ie reporting the result of a (presumedly web) search).

That would be により (ie で) rather than the "from" より?