In the sentence:

この町は嫌いだ。
何も新しいことなど始まらない。
こうしていて、何かが変わるんだろうか。

What's the meaning of こうしていて? I've read that こうして usually means "thus", but I can't see how that would fit here.

こうしていてmeans something like "being like this". This sentence was actually posted way back! It's from Clannad, right?

sparky14 Wrote:こうしていてmeans something like "being like this". This sentence was actually posted way back! It's from Clannad, right?

Thank you! Yeah, that's right. It's from the Clannad Visual Novel.

Another block of text from a game. Posting the full dialogue for context, with original linebreaks, although I'm noting the previous suggestion NOT to take those as sentence endings this time

All of these are for the same speaker, and there are only two people involved in this conversation. Sentences 1, 4, and 5 were the ones I was wondering about.

1. 話し相手になっちゃくれねぇか?
I think the gist of this is that the speaker's asking you to talk to him, or more literally be a conversation partner to him.
I'm not sure what なっちゃくれね is here though. I'm thinking it might be a

2. 俺の名前はNick..
今年で65才..
仕事は大工の親方だ..
(No questions about this.)

3. .. いや, 親方だった
と言うべきか
Or, I should say I WAS a boss.

4. なんせ最近
仕事してねぇからな ..
(Anyhow, these days, I'm past working?
or maybe
Anyhow, these days, after work...
I'm assuming this is the て+から that means "after verb-ing." However, after this line, the speaker goes on an aside, and doesn't talk about doing anything after working. Also, if I read the previously line right, I'm thinking he's out of work.)

(After this he goes on a brief aside about how you should love your family/job).

5. ..もし, おまえの相棒が
変態だったらどうする?
(I think this one is either "What would you do if your friend was deeply abnormal?" or "How should your friend change, if it were you doing it?"
I was going with the latter, first, since I saw that だったらどうする could mean something like "How would YOU do it?", although I think 変態 is a noun here, and not 変態する with だったらどう inserted in the middle?
This doesn't really follow from the speaker's previous line of thought, either.)

Saginaim Wrote:1. 話し相手になっちゃくれねぇか?
I think the gist of this is that the speaker's asking you to talk to him, or more literally be a conversation partner to him.
I'm not sure what なっちゃくれね is here though. I'm thinking it might be a

If I remember it right then:
1. "っちゃ" = て-form. (can also means ては）
2.くれねえ　＝　くれない　(slurred)

therefore a more formal form would be something like 話し相手になってくれないですか？　/　話し相手になってくれません？
your translation is correct , I think.

Saginaim Wrote:4. なんせ最近
仕事してねぇからな ..
(Anyhow, these days, I'm past working?
or maybe
Anyhow, these days, after work...
I'm assuming this is the て+から that means "after verb-ing." However, after this line, the speaker goes on an aside, and doesn't talk about doing anything after working. Also, if I read the previously line right, I'm thinking he's out of work.)

(After this he goes on a brief aside about how you should love your family/job).

1. ねぇ is simply the ない (slurred) like the above example.
2. な ending = just gobi.
3. "から" in this sentence means "Because/since"

= なんせ最近 仕事していないからな　= well/anyhow since i'm not working lately/recently anyway.

Saginaim Wrote:5. ..もし, おまえの相棒が
変態だったらどうする?
(I think this one is either "What would you do if your friend was deeply abnormal?" or "How should your friend change, if it were you doing it?"
I was going with the latter, first, since I saw that だったらどうする could mean something like "How would YOU do it?", although I think 変態 is a noun here, and not 変態する with だったらどう inserted in the middle?
This doesn't really follow from the speaker's previous line of thought, either.)

I'm not sure but I think the first one is correct "What would you do if your friend/partner was abnormal/pervert/twisted?"

from a bit of novel reading, I noticed the "たらどうする" ending just means something like "what if/ what are you gonna do if"

Ps. I'm not native English speaker either so my translation will probably sound odd

なんせ = なにしろ, with the connotation "as you know ..." or "you see ..."

4 is explaining 3.

Thank you both for your help.

myxoma Wrote:1. ねぇ is simply the ない (slurred) like the above example.

I've had issues with this in the past, I believe, going back to other sentences I've asked about.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought I saw ねぇ being used as a drawn out form of ね as well. Is this the case, and is there any advice on differentiating between them? Is the drawn out ね something that would only occur at the end of a sentence (so not before ka or kara, like in the sentences I gave)?

The sentence-particle ね has to go at the end of a sentence in most cases. In addition, if this really were してから meaning "after", it's not possible to put particles between the て and the から. So this would have to be してね, a softened command/request form, followed by から, which doesn't work grammatically (or meaningwise).

Saginaim Wrote:2. 俺の名前はNick..
今年で65才..
仕事は大工の親方だ..
(No questions about this.)

You understand the で in the second sentence?

yudantaiteki Wrote:The sentence-particle ね has to go at the end of a sentence in most cases. In addition, if this

Saginaim Wrote:2. 俺の名前はNick..
今年で65才..
仕事は大工の親方だ..
(No questions about this.)

You understand the で in the second sentence?

I looked up that pattern and I was under the impression it was something like "I'm turning 65 this year?"

Saginaim Wrote:

yudantaiteki Wrote:The sentence-particle ね has to go at the end of a sentence in most cases. In addition, if this

Saginaim Wrote:2. 俺の名前はNick..
今年で65才..
仕事は大工の親方だ..
(No questions about this.)

You understand the で in the second sentence?

I looked up that pattern and I was under the impression it was something like "I'm turning 65 this year?"

Yeah, that's it. It's often used with time expressions to mean "As of this year/week/etc"

Hi, I'm wondering if there's a typo in this sentence:

淀みなく流れていってしまう。

I would have expected:

淀まなく流れていってしまう。

If there is no typo, can someone please explain the form 淀みなく. I believe this is the verb yodo(mu), to hesitate, be stagnant, etc. so I would have expected yodomanaku; yodominaku doesn't make sense, does it?

Thanks.

It's [noun] + なく meaning without [noun]

RandomQuotes Wrote:It's [noun] + なく meaning without [noun]

Thanks. I didn't realize there was a noun "yodomi". It's not in either my Random House japanese-english dictionary nor my Compact Nelson character dictionary, so I didn't find it.

I do see in the online Denshi Jisho dictionary.

Thanks again.

The bare masu stem of any verb is a noun (when it's not functioning as a conjunction).

Hi, I wanted to check my understanding of this sentence:

言葉を覚えまちがえたみたいに。

I think it means "seeming like I could have remembered his words wrong"? Is that out to lunch? Thanks.

Mm lunch.

That would be a fragment in English and without the context it's impossible to tell what's going on BUT, here's a possible explanation based entirely on guesswork♪

It seems like this phrase is probably being used as an afterthought to back up or provide a little more explanation for something that was said immediately beforehand. Also, this 覚える is most likely the meaning closer to the English word "learn" and 言葉 is more likely "language." All of this is just conjecture, of course, since I have no context. But when you say "言葉を覚える" in Japanese you're generally talking about learning a (often foreign) language or learning vocabulary (as a young child learning his/her first language).

So.. "<something something something.. explanation here..>"
ー＞"as if (he/she/it) had learned the language incorrectly."

Is someone consistently using a word or phrase wrong or something like that?

drdunlap Wrote:Mm lunch.

That would be a fragment in English and without the context it's impossible to tell what's going on BUT, here's a possible explanation based entirely on guesswork♪

It seems like this phrase is probably being used as an afterthought to back up or provide a little more explanation for something that was said immediately beforehand. Also, this 覚える is most likely the meaning closer to the English word "learn" and 言葉 is more likely "language." All of this is just conjecture, of course, since I have no context. But when you say "言葉を覚える" in Japanese you're generally talking about learning a (often foreign) language or learning vocabulary (as a young child learning his/her first language).

So.. "<something something something.. explanation here..>"
ー＞"as if (he/she/it) had learned the language incorrectly."

Is someone consistently using a word or phrase wrong or something like that?

Here is the sentence that comes before. The context is that a strange creature has invaded a woman's house:

獣のしゃべりかたはなんだか少しずつ奇妙だった。言葉を覚えまちがえたみたいに。

The beast's speech was a little odd. As if it had learned the language incorrectly.

drdunlap Wrote:The beast's speech was a little odd. As if it had learned the language incorrectly.

Thanks, that makes sense.

Quote:獣のしゃべりかたはなんだか少しずつ奇妙だった。言葉を覚えまちがえたみたいに。

This sentence seems a little odd to me as 少しずつ appears to be an adverb without a verb.

Is this an adjectival usage that's missing from JMdict (and elsewhere), or is the verb somehow implied?

That example makes me think novels are not necessarily the best material to learn a language because authers can be as creative as to aptly express what ordinary people can't.

The oddness remains level, yet a slightest oddness rags the tempo as the conversation progresses.

Yeah I believe that line is from a Murakami Haruki short story. I love this kind of stuff but trying to make sense of it from a second language learning perspective can be.. not-worky.

But if one of the things you want to do is read novels, then it makes sense to learn from them at some point.

There really is no "adverb" class in Japanese; a phrase like 少しずつ can connect to any predicate -- most of the time that will be a verb because of semantic concerns, but in this case 奇妙だった is "legal" to connect it.

Hey everyone, having trouble with this sentence:

よくみると、みんなそれは赤いずぼんをはいたどんぐりで、もうその数ときたら、三百でも利かないようでした

I have no idea how 利かない is being used.

Thanks.

文脈？