lmanes Wrote:なのに、その世界が百メートル歩いたら壁に突き当たるような狭苦しいものでは、本末転倒もいいところではないか。

I came up with something like this (which is half-broken English and probably half-broken translation but I hope conveys the meaning):

"And yet, because of the cramming that is as if you bump into walls when you walk 100m, you can’t really take this world for real?"

lmanes Wrote:they seem like a common expression but the best I can come up with for the もいいところではないか part is "isn't it a good place?" and that doesn't make any sense to me.

Is anyone familiar with this? Is it just a long winded way to say 本末転倒だ or am I misunderstanding it entirely?

I think so, essentially. I'm reading that も as inclusive, and いいところ as a good point like a 'pro', then the ではないか is introspective like "probably not". So overall it would translate to "a flawed mode of thinking and probably not a good thing". Seems like they are saying that if you put effort into creating a whole fictional world and then make it feel restricted by having invisible walls every 100 meters, that's a flawed attitude.

Thanks for the replies everyone.

I didn't think to look up いいところ as one word. When I did I found this on denshi jisho:
4: (Noun or verb acting prenominally) utter; extreme;

So this is the translation I've come up with this time:

なのに、その世界が百メートル歩いたら壁に突き当たるような狭苦しいものでは、本末転倒もいいところではないか。
Even so, by that world being a cramped thing that seems like you would hit a wall if you walk a hundred meters, isn't that utterly ass backward?

lmanes Wrote:I didn't think to look up いいところ as one word. When I did I found this on denshi jisho:
4: (Noun or verb acting prenominally) utter; extreme;

That's the right definition - the idiom is -もいいところだ.

lmanes Wrote:Thanks for the replies everyone.

I didn't think to look up いいところ as one word. When I did I found this on denshi jisho:
4: (Noun or verb acting prenominally) utter; extreme;

So this is the translation I've come up with this time:

なのに、その世界が百メートル歩いたら壁に突き当たるような狭苦しいものでは、本末転倒もいいところではないか。
Even so, by that world being a cramped thing that seems like you would hit a wall if you walk a hundred meters, isn't that utterly ass backward?

Yeah you got it now. Like Vempele says, it's an idiom. I also love your translation for 本末転倒 lol

その こと は 承知 して おります

Is orimasu simply a polite version of imasu?

EDIT: and, mid-sentence it can be shortened to "ori"?

yes and yes. gj.

HERE'S an example with ori that i googlged and found
会社で経理を担当しており現在交際費等課税の特例について勉強しています。

Although note that usually おる is humble-polite, but in written style it is often used just as a substitute for していて. Verb stems are often used there instead of -te forms (i.e. 日本に行き、会社で働く) but instead of just い, おり is substituted instead with no humble connotation.

(EDIT: おる has two other confusing uses, one as a "neutral" polite phrase that is used with inanimate things, and in the passive as an honorific (おられる).)

can you give an example of the 'neutral polite phrase'?

今日のセットメニューはこちらになっております。 Some people don't like this usage but it's common in waiter/waitress or service clerks speech.

dtcamero Wrote:can you give an example of the 'neutral polite phrase'?

An even more obvious example:
本日のメニューでございます。

As an aside, I found learning this from native books makes a lot more sense then the wacky explanations you find in textbooks. By the time you can read the native books certain expressions are more internalized, like giving/receiving expressions, and it makes the transition to sonkeigo so much easier. I do think it's important to learn to understand early, but no one is going to force you into a situation where you have to use anything more than rote memorization keigo until you are a near-native speaker. Assuming you don't look Japanese です・ます is more than polite enough to talk to anyone higher than you. (Let's just say if you are up for the kind of job where it's absolutely required then you'll already know it and won't need any advice from an English-based forum.)

Seems to me that a lot of dialects also use しておる and おる as a substitution for している and いる with no change in meaning. Or, especially, しておる as しとる. Not really sure where and to what extent though. I think I've heard it a bit more from people from Shikoku or Wakayama, but I also hear it in Kyoto and Osaka sometimes.

tokyostyle Wrote:As an aside, I found learning this from native books makes a lot more sense then the wacky explanations you find in textbooks. By the time you can read the native books certain expressions are more internalized, like giving/receiving expressions, and it makes the transition to sonkeigo so much easier. I do think it's important to learn to understand early, but no one is going to force you into a situation where you have to use anything more than rote memorization keigo until you are a near-native speaker. Assuming you don't look Japanese です・ます is more than polite enough to talk to anyone higher than you. (Let's just say if you are up for the kind of job where it's absolutely required then you'll already know it and won't need any advice from an English-based forum.)

On the other hand I feel like being able to use the keigo even at a basic level goes a long way towards convincing Japanese people that you actually do know Japanese and that you're willing to operate in a Japanese cultural context. As a foreigner you can often get away with not using any keigo at all, but situations where native speakers use keigo are very common, and I'm not sure it's a good idea to limit your keigo use to times when it's "absolutely required". If you do that you're going to be relying frequently on the "It's OK because he's a gaijin" card.

(Now, keigo use differs a lot based on your situation -- especially if you're not in Tokyo you may find keigo use less common or even nonexistent.)

Quote:Seems to me that a lot of dialects also use しておる and おる as a substitution for している and いる with no change in meaning. Or, especially, しておる as しとる.

Yes, that's a common dialect feature. Like many dialect features it's a holdover from classical Japanese.

yudantaiteki Wrote:(Now, keigo use differs a lot based on your situation -- especially if you're not in Tokyo you may find keigo use less common or even nonexistent.)

In the seven years I've lived in Tokyo I've found speaking in keigo to be completely non-existent. Gender or age bias maybe? Outside of work what situations have you found it useful in?

tokyostyle Wrote:

yudantaiteki Wrote:(Now, keigo use differs a lot based on your situation -- especially if you're not in Tokyo you may find keigo use less common or even nonexistent.)

In the seven years I've lived in Tokyo I've found speaking in keigo to be completely non-existent. Gender or age bias maybe? Outside of work what situations have you found it useful in?

Work or school, but if you're in Japan, aren't you going to be doing one of those two things? When you say nonexistent, you mean that even the Japanese people around you aren't using keigo at all?

Doing research at Waseda I had to use keigo with the professors every day in both e-mail and talking to them. The professors also used keigo speaking with the students, which I thought was odd but many of them did it.

[s0apgun]

Wow, how did you end up at Waseda? Impressive.

ya my friends in kagawa used to use おる a lot instead of いる. When I asked about it they called it inaka-ben.

I also recall some middle-20s friends from kansai telling me how they were shocked living in tokyo for the first time, realizing that people in kanto use keigo a lot.
growing up in kansai it was like a thing you learned but wasn't used by ordinary people, according to her.

yudantaiteki Wrote:Doing research at Waseda I had to use keigo with the professors every day in both e-mail and talking to them. The professors also used keigo speaking with the students, which I thought was odd but many of them did it.

Once your Japanese level is high enough to talk to your professors entirely in Japanese you should also be at the point to study keigo from native or near-native materials. You absolutely must understand it before then, but I just don't see how useful it is to attempt to speak it at low fluency levels. My imagination just comes up with these terrible watashi-wa sentences ending in mangled keigo that goes the wrong direction. This is precisely what beginners sound like when they have to study it the week after learning giving/receiving.

I just remember being so super confused back then, but now it just seems a bit more natural and the only difference is that I'm more used to くれる and もらう style sentences.

If that stuff was trivial for you, then I utterly hate you in the nicest possible way.

So, taking the advice, I've read Michael Kamerman's book. A lot has become clear to me, but I still don't understand:

If negative of だ　is じゃない, and past is だった, then why can you use じゃない　and だった in questions (and with か), but not だ?

Is it just "the way people came to speak over hundreds of years", meaning you just have to consider this as something that is there and move on, or is there a reason to this?

Istrebitel Wrote:So, taking the advice, I've read Michael Kamerman's book. A lot has become clear to me, but I still don't understand:

If negative of だ　is じゃない, and past is だった, then why can you use じゃない　and だった in questions (and with か), but not だ?

Is it just "the way people came to speak over hundreds of years", meaning you just have to consider this as something that is there and move on, or is there a reason to this?

だ often drops out or changes to な or の in various places; there's no real reason for it.

A: あ……えっと……何か手伝うことは、ありますか？

B: ん？　あぁ、この辺はドシロウトにできるこっちゃないからな。　邪魔にならねぇように先にメシでも食って、後は舞台袖ででも大人しくしてな

I don't understand the bolded part.. what is こっちゃ? Rikaichan's translation confuses me even further. Also for the second sentence is it saying that to not be a nuisance he "ate something like rice" and afterwards stayed quietly off-stage "or somewhere"?

Betelgeuzah Wrote:A: あ……えっと……何か手伝うことは、ありますか?

B: ん?　あぁ、この辺はドシロウトにできるこっちゃないからな。　邪魔にならねぇように先にメシでも食って、後は舞台袖ででも大人しくしてな

I don't understand the bolded part.. what is こっちゃ? Rikaichan's translation confuses me even further.

Don't look at the translation, look at what it says it's a contraction of. こっちゃ = ことでは -> こっちゃない = ことじゃない.

Quote:Also for the second sentence is it saying that to not be a nuisance he "ate something like rice" and afterwards stayed quietly off-stage "or somewhere"?

No, he's telling A to do that. Also, the first part is "Go have a meal or something", it's not specifically rice and the "or something" refers to the verb because でも+suggestion often does that.

In the sentence:
お兄ちゃんしか私たち三人を一緒にいさせてくれる人いないんだし
Why is it marked with an を instead of a に?

を in most cases can alternate with に in these causative patterns.

I'd just like to make certain whether I am screwing something up by saying this:

こんばんは！私はフィンランド人で、そしてFCを探しているのです。日本語はまだ下手ですが熱心で勉強していますね。これがよければXXXさんのFCに入りたいです。どうぞよろしく

I told him/her this and received silence as the result. I know that this can happen if s/he simply doesn't want me to join, but I don't want to cause that kind of behavior by being rude to anyone unintentionally. In general I am wary of being impolite and it's kind of hindering my output..