Dialects are AWESOMEね

Growl Wrote:Dialects are AWESOMEね

To me, every version of language, including "standard" and "proper" variant, is a dialect. And human language is awesome. In this sense, I agree with you. If your definition of the term dialect is relative to, say, standard Japanese, I still agree with you, but with a caviat that the "non-dialect" is equally awesome.

A few sentences from "にゃんこ The Movie 2"
Some help figuring these out would be greatly appreciated.

1. え？お風呂が好きな猫かって？ そりゃあまあそうなんですけど
It's the 2nd sentence here that I don't quite get.

2. ターンだってお手のもの
The context here is that a cat is swimming in the tub and can even turn while swimming. I'm not quite sure what the "お手のもの" at the end is getting at.

3. 聞く耳持ちません…！
The english translation for this was "I won't hear of it!"
And I'm guessing this is just an idiom that has pretty much the same meaning?

4. 戸口さんなりの愛情です
What's the なり here?

5. ネットの掲示板で飼い主になりたいと 手を挙げてくれたお宅です
Whats the 手を挙げてくれたお宅です part mean?

Zarxrax Wrote:A few sentences from "にゃんこ The Movie 2"

I haven't seen it, but:

Zarxrax Wrote:1. え？お風呂が好きな猫かって？ そりゃあまあそうなんですけど
It's the 2nd sentence here that I don't quite get.

It means "Yeah, that's true, if you put it that way," "Yeah, I know. But..." or something along lines. You basically agree with what someone said, but kind of reluctantly.

Zarxrax Wrote:2. ターンだってお手のもの
The context here is that a cat is swimming in the tub and can even turn while swimming. I'm not quite sure what the "お手のもの" at the end is getting at.

It's an idiom that means "to be good at" and refers to a skill. It's most frequent when the context is "X can do not only this, but also that." So your comprehension "... and can even turn..." is spot on, though you can make explicit the sense of "the cat can even pull that off," i.e., the can do it very well when it's not easy. If the turn the cat made isn't that impressive, it's probably an exaggeration to sound cute.

Zarxrax Wrote:3. 聞く耳持ちません…！
The english translation for this was "I won't hear of it!"
And I'm guessing this is just an idiom that has pretty much the same meaning?

It's a fixed phrase that means something along the line of "being adamant" or "determined." You can't change his mind or talk him out of it. It can be a temporal thing as in someone went la la la, I can't hear you mode.

Zarxrax Wrote:4. 戸口さんなりの愛情です
What's the なり here?

In "his" way, or something like that. The sentence roughly means "it may not look like it, but that's how 戸口さん expresses his/her love/affection."

Zarxrax Wrote:5. ネットの掲示板で飼い主になりたいと 手を挙げてくれたお宅です
Whats the 手を挙げてくれたお宅です part mean?

手を挙げる here roughly means "to say (the speaker) will do it," "to express willingness to do it" or something along those lines. A typical situation is that someone asked people to do something, often when the one who asked is in need of help, and one of them "raised their hand." Typically, it's some kind of volunteer work or involves a donation, or maybe it's something others don't want to do. It's kind of a less dramatic version of "to say that they will step up to the plate" when it's not their responsibility and is for others' benefit.

Boss said to someone at work.

休憩をうまくとってください
I take it literally like "take the break skillfully" and I interpret it as "ake the break when you think is best according to the circumstances"

Good?

Lately, I have been seeing a usage of から that I find interesting.

For example:
全然気にしなくていいから
you don't have to worry about it

The person simply popped this out. The "I'm ok" part therefore "you don't have to worry about it" is simply left out.

Here is another example:
でもきっと変わってくれますから
but I'm sure he/she will change on me (change for me)

Again, just blurted out without saying "I'm fine/not fine" or "I'll/won't be alright", etc.

So, what I want to say is that, this から feels like a *lot* like just using よ instead, at least in those sentences.

i think you're overanalyzing it? it just means kara and if you want to compare it like that i see what you mean. just keep going with the japanese immersion or whatever you're doing.

Yeah, this sort of leaving-the-second-half-of-the-sentence-unsaid thing isn't uncommon, and it's not limited to から either -- you can hear it with が and the other 'but' conjunctions too (where the unspoken continuation is often "but [is that OK with you? / maybe I'm wrong / etc]").

そだようね。My interest is in how similar both から and よ work here.

から　can also be used as a sentence final particle like よ and conveys an assertive stance. In this case, I suspect your sentence could be either a trailing form of the conjunction 'because/since' から...　or the final particle から,　depending on the intonation used in that particular situation. My sense is that, generally, the final particle use is far less common.

Just to give you an idea what I mean:
Well, there's no need to worry about it, so... (pls don't fuss/calm down, etc)
Don't worry about it! (Didn't I already tell you to drop it?!)

(but don't rely on my intuition... I know how unreliable intuition can be)

As you're probably already aware, it can be difficult, sometimes impossible, to interpret the exact meaning of final particles without knowing the situation and intonation. They often add information about the speaker's attitude regarding the sentence content or the situation. In other words, it's more about personal interaction and implications than sentence meaning.

Thora Wrote:から　can also be used as a sentence final particle like よ and conveys an assertive stance.

Yeah, that's what I am saying. Awesome isn't it?

EDIT: It also depends on the speaker. Also, statistically unreliably as it may be, I hear よ a lot more from kids than from adults, even if they are using informal language. But I hear から (in this sense) more from adults.

Yeah... I consider the speaker to be part of the 'situation'.

Maybe you could try to check at the time that you're not mistaking conjunctive から　for final particle から. The former is like a way to be indirect and the latter is very direct (more like ぞ　perhaps?)

I don't know - I feel it's also common for adults to use よ　with that kind of phrase. The nuance of よ depends on the intonation, but I believe it's softer than final から. よ　doesn't have the some implications as conjunctive から, though.

But it seems you are already familiar with this stuff and were really only wondering if final からapplies in a specific example.　Maybe one of the folks here with near-native intuition can answer that with more certainty.

から does 'feel' softer than よ. Also, the idea was to point out that maybe the final から and the conjunctive から are basically the same thing. I love this topic, particularly よ. Some time ago I was completely puzzled by さ and ね when used in that cliffhanging fashion to mean you are not finished talking/telling a story but now I don't find it that obscure anymore. よ however, the more I understand it the more unique it seems. It's just impossible to translate. It's awesome.

EDIT: It's possible to 'aprox-translate' sometimes, but よ is still unique.

これだよ. (What the hell? You normal?) It's THIS one. (I'm telling you, I don't know if you knew it and I don't know what you are thinking but it's THAT one.)

When looking up a word in 大辞林, what does the number here mean:
けいかいしん3 【警戒心】
Does it mean where the pitch change is, or something like that? If so, how can I tell if it rises or falls?
Since I use subs2srs* I hear that it drops at か, but how can I interpret it without having audio availible?


*monolingually, and glosses every line with new word(s) manually [shame there's no "gloss with yahoo辞書" tool in Anki]

The 3 means the emphasis is in か in けいかいしん

"Emphasis" is not a good term because it implies English-like stress.

Stian: The number shows the syllable where the pitch falls. The word always starts out LH unless the accent is 1 (then it's HLLL...). So for this word it's LHHLLL.

Alright, let me see, 警戒 is 0, how does it work there? LHHH ですよね？

Yes, 0 means unaccented so there's no pitch fall.

Here's another:
みぶんしょうめいしょ80 【身分証明書】
What does "80" mean?

8 or 0. Of course, those are the same (for that word) out of context.

ごめんなさい軽い気持ちで入部するなんて書いたから期待させるだけさせて何て謝ったらいいか

What is させて doing there.

I feel ashamed to ask this, but...

I take it that 'itadaku' is a humble way to state 'get/receive' etc.

But I don't know if it's a humble form of ageru/kureru/morau or something else?

I always understand it as "the speaker getting or receiving something from who they are talking about."

What is the difference to 'kudasaru', then? Is it more a request than 'itadaku'?

くださる is honorific for 'to give', so くださる expressions are elevating the listener while asking them to give something. ; it's similar to くれる

いただく expressions indicate humility on the speaker's part and are essentially a statement that the speaker will receive something, or a question asking if they speaker may receive something ; it's similar to もらう


あげる・さしあげる are slightly-humble and quite-humble ways of saying give, so are used for when the speaker is doing the giving.

corry Wrote:ごめんなさい軽い気持ちで入部するなんて書いたから期待させるだけさせて何て謝ったらいいか

What is させて doing there.

It's part of an idiomatic structure. The precise description of the structure is:

用言終止形 + だけ (which is 副助詞) + the same 用言連用形 + て (which is 接助詞) (+ おく連用形 + て (which is 接助詞)) + clause.

If none of the above makes sense, forget that.

A simpler way to see it is (verb)+だけ+(て-form of verb) typically followed by a negative clause. In your example, however, the final clause is omitted. Actually, it's not an omission, but treating it as an omission makes it a lot easier to swallow the whole sentence. So I first reconstruct the sentence by filling the supposedly omitted part, explain the meaning and usages, and then remove part of the recovered sentence to get the current form again.

First off, ごめんなさい is a stand-alone full sentence here, so this part looks like part of the long clause because of a poor punctuation. Your sentence would be better punctuated as:

ごめんなさい。軽い気持ちで入部するなんて書いたから、期待させるだけさせて、何て謝ったらいいか。

If 三点リーダー is acceptable in your context (e.g., a novel or some informal stuff), it might make it easier to understand if you replace each "、" with "……" Since ごめんなさい is isolated and shouldn't be a problem, it'll be ignored in the remainder of this post.

If you need to parse the whole thing within some limited prescriptive grammar (e.g., grammar tested in a standardized test), the best way to parse it may be to see it as a sequence of three incomplete sentences each of which has an omitted clause. In real life, the whole thing including ごめんなさい can be said in one breath as if it's a single sentence, which it is. But for the sake of easy parsing, see the sentence (excluding ごめんなさい) this way:

軽い気持ちで入部するなんて書いたから (omitted clause, e.g., こんな事になってしまいました)。

期待させるだけさせて (omitted clause, e.g., 結局入部しませんでした)。

何て謝ったらいいか (omitted clause, e.g., わかりません)。

Since you asked the role of させて, I only explain the second sentence. Recall that させて is part of a global idiomatic structure "(verb)+だけ+(て-form of verb) typically followed by a negative clause." Here, the omitted clause is the negative clause. So, it can be seen as:

期待させる (verb) + だけ + させて (て-form of させる)

with the following clause omitted.

The meaning of this structure is that the doer of the verb doesn't do another closely related thing he should. The neglected action is typically the kind of thing you're expected to do if you do the first thing. For instance, if you say you'll call me back in a minute, I expect you to follow through and call me soon. So, if you didn't after all, I may say

すぐにかけなおすって言うだけ言って、何日経っても電話してこない。

It's not limited to a promise. It can be anything as long as an action entails another action that is expected to be done by the same person. The following clause is often a negative clause (i.e., the straightforward "he didn't do it" kind), but it can be more creative. For example, you asked a question here, and I replied to you with an answer. And if you read my post and say "tl;dr. make it short next time", then I may say

質問するだけしてそれかよ。

Also, おいて is often placed between て-form and the following clause, e.g.,

人の態度批判するだけしておいて、自分はそれですか。

Whether おいて is used doesn't really change the overall meaning of a sentence, but it may evoke a stronger "should've done the second action" feel.

So, the omitted portion of the second sentence in your example can be 入部しなかった, which I think happened. The whole sentence you gave can be understood as a series of "incomplete" sentences phrased more naturally than rigid grammar allows so that it sounds like something native speakers would say in real life rather than obviously contrived "proper" wording.

Wow thank you so much for the amazing explanation, magamo!