Everybody thanks a lot for your help so far!!!

chochajin Wrote:あんなに素敵な人なのに色っぽい話が何もないなんて絶対おかしい。
Isn't it strange that such a great person can't have an erotic conversation. HUUH?????

I suspect that 話 is being used in the sense of 'story' or 'rumor' -- check out the full range of definitions in a 国語辞典.

"Isn't it strange that he/she is such a wonderful person, but you never hear about him/her getting laid?"

The context I'm imagining is a woman's close friends talking about how she never says "Hey guys, guess what happened last night?"

chochajin Wrote:あんなに素敵な人なのに色っぽい話が何もないなんて絶対おかしい。
Isn't it strange that such a great person can't have an erotic conversation. HUUH?????

[EDIT: fillanzea is right]

Quote:「人民の人民による人民のための政治」
And this gives me a complete headache .....
A government for the people and because of the people???!!!!

Japanese allows for multiple modifiers done in this manner -- 人民のための政治 is grammatically a noun (phrase), so it can be modified by another sentence (人民による), then the resulting 人民による人民のための政治 is also a noun, so it can have 人民の linked to it.

人民の人民による人民のための政治 is the word-for-word translation of "government of the people, by the people, for the people." We learn this quote as Abraham Lincoln's line at elementary or junior high school, and every kid gets confused because it's not clear which 人民 modifies which noun in what way. Anyway, it's part of the Gettysburg Address.

As for 色っぽい話, I think the author meant 浮いた話, 浮いた話の一つ or something along those lines. 浮いた話 is an idiom that means "rumor about romantic relationships/love affairs." A typical example is:

浮いた話の一つぐらいないの？ (implying it's very strange for a person of the listener's age not to be in a relationship.)

The original sentence with 色っぽい話 does make sense and is grammatically correct. So, it's ok if the speaker really means "erotic story." But the context, sentence structure, collocation etc. all tell me the author meant 浮いた話, i.e., it should read あんなに素敵な人なのに浮いた話がないなんて絶対おかしい。

あんなに素敵な人なのに色っぽい話が何もないなんて絶対おかしい。might work the same way as the 浮いた話 version depending on context. But if you read it out of context, it'd be more like "Why didn't this cool guy get a romantic arc in this drama? Obviously he was in love with the heroine's sister! They should've put at least a few fanservicy/love scene eps instead of the boring fillers!" This kind of interpretation is impossible if it were 浮いた話, and unlike 色っぽい話, it wouldn't necessarily imply sexual intercourse in an erotic way.

@Everybody: Thanks a lot! That really helped. The KiC sentences are really difficult :/

I just want to make sure I understood this grammar point (Kanzen M. 2kyuu):

この薬は人によって副作用が出ることがあります。

So this could be translated as: Depending on the person this medicine can have side effects. ??

I'm asking because the grammar explanation this time confuses me a bit:
ある〜の場合には〈「〜によっては」が使われる。〉

chochajin Wrote:@Everybody: Thanks a lot! That really helped. The KiC sentences are really difficult :/

I just want to make sure I understood this grammar point (Kanzen M. 2kyuu):

この薬は人によって副作用が出ることがあります。

So this could be translated as: Depending on the person this medicine can have side effects. ??

I'm asking because the grammar explanation this time confuses me a bit:
ある〜の場合には〈「〜によっては」が使われる。〉

It just means "This medicine can cause side effects." Grammatically speaking, it's saying, "Some people get bad side effects and some don't." So I think "depending on" works.

Edit: If you add は so it reads "この薬は人によっては副作用が出ることがあります," the sentence sounds like the medicine causes bad side effects less frequently and is safer than the original は-less version, i.e., the によっては version sounds like it's kind of rare to get a bad side effect.

I hope nobody will grill me because of this OT question, but I just have to ask: How did you become so good at grammar??? It's my biggest problem and my strongest weak point

And thank you so much once again

chochajin Wrote:I hope nobody will grill me because of this OT question, but I just have to ask: How did you become so good at grammar??? It's my biggest problem and my strongest weak point

One of the things the traditional class-and-textbook approach is good at IME is teaching grammar. Textbooks are structured around an orderly progression through various grammar points and generally cover them in enough detail for you to grasp them. (I've said here before that I don't think the Kanzen Master one-liners are sufficient as the only explanation of grammar points.) Plus in the class environment you have a teacher who can explain things in a different way to the book if everybody's got confused. That's what worked for me, anyway.

アメリカ合衆国内で7番目に人口の多い都市圏である​

Can someone help explain the use of に　in the above sentence? I understand the meaning of the sentence but I think if I were to think of it in my head I would use の　instead of に。

It's because 七番目 is connecting to the predicate 多い (i.e. the sentence 人口の多い) rather than the noun 都市圏. To connect a noun/na-adjective to a predicate, you have to use に.

貴様

Is the the usage of this always derogatory? Or are there actual useful "Ok" uses of it (ie: Use it to refer to your friend normally; not like "That lucky bastard!")

Does やろう and あいつ fall around the same level of politeness as 貴様？

Thanks

@pm215: Thanks for your honest answer I can't take any classes, but I'm thinking about getting a private tutor. The thing is that most Japanese people can't really explain grammar that well. It's always difficult to explain the grammar of your own native language anyway.

New quetions:
最近バードウォッチングと言って、野鳥の観察がはやっている。

Can't figure out the exact meaning of "と言って" here.
According to rikaichan: と言って といって (exp) however; because; as; (E)

失敗も一度だけから見逃してもらえるが、二度目の失敗は許されない。

What's the function of から here?

chochajin Wrote:失敗も一度だけから見逃してもらえるが、二度目の失敗は許されない。

What's the function of から here?

Either you misread it, or the spreadsheet/deck you're using has an error; I just checked my copy of KIC and it's なら, rather than から.

chochajin Wrote:最近バードウォッチングと言って、野鳥の観察がはやっている。

Can't figure out the exact meaning of "と言って" here.
According to rikaichan: と言って といって (exp) however; because; as; (E)

The sentence means "Observing wild birds, called 'birding,' is popular these days." I think と言って roughly corresponds to "called" in the translation.

As for から, I also think it should read なら.

Edit:

vix86 Wrote:貴様

Is the the usage of this always derogatory? Or are there actual useful "Ok" uses of it (ie: Use it to refer to your friend normally; not like "That lucky bastard!")

Does やろう and あいつ fall around the same level of politeness as 貴様？

貴様 sounds very rude in modern Japanese. It used to be a word to refer to a person of a higher rank, but the honorific sense was completely lost. You could use it when you want to sound humorous in a very very informal conversation with close friends, but it'd be very rare that you end up in a situation where you need such a strong word to offend the listener in real life.

Quick question. What does 泣かしむる mean here?

鬼神を泣かしむる. Is it an archaic form of 泣かさせる? Thanks.

Yes.

is there actually any difference between 脚　and 足？　im guessing that 足is just a simplified form, but why use the other 1? (saw it in a manga)

Babyrat Wrote:is there actually any difference between 脚　and 足？　im guessing that 足is just a simplified form, but why use the other 1? (saw it in a manga)

あし as "(a human's) foot" is definitely 足. The other kanji 脚 tends to be used when you mean "(a human's) leg" or the part from your foot/ankle to thigh/knee, but 足 is also popular for this meaning.

An insect's leg is 脚, but I think 足 is ok too. Mammals' legs can be either 脚, 足 or 肢. I think 肢 is used when you want to distinguish mammals from other living things with legs.

"Leg" as in the part that supports an object's wight such as a table's leg is usually 脚. Kanji's bottom radicals such as 心 in 思 are classified as 脚. Also, 脚 is better when you figuratively use あし to refer to movement of a moving object that can't move by its own will as in "雲の脚 (= movement of a cloud in the sky)."

あし as 足/脚 has other meanings, and 足 is always used for some of the meanings, e.g., 足 as "transportation." Also, there are tons of idiomatic phrases that have 足 such as 足が棒になる and 足が出る, and you can't use 脚 or 肢 in these cases.

Wow thanks for the brilliant answer. The poor niave me thought that 足 would be used on every type of leg!

On lang-8 someone said to me - みたくすればよかったですね^_^ . I couldn't figure out what it meant. Anyone know what this means?

Spines11 Wrote:On lang-8 someone said to me - みたくすればよかったですね^_^ . I couldn't figure out what it meant. Anyone know what this means?

みたく here is pretty much the same as みたいに, i.e., it means "like X," "the way X does" or the like. Here are example sentences:

彼みたく上手になりたい。(I want to be good (at something) like him.)
英語みたく聞こえる。(Sounds like English.)

It's not used in formal written language, and probably it's considered wrong in standardized tests. But you can hear native speakers use this みたく any day of the week. Actually this has been used by a lot of native speakers of various regions including Tokyo for a very long time. I think many native speakers who speak dialects that don't allow this みたく would find it cuter than みたいに probably because kids often make similar grammatical errors, e.g., 好きになる -> 好きくなる.

Spines11 Wrote:On lang-8 someone said to me - みたくすればよかったですね^_^ . I couldn't figure out what it meant. Anyone know what this means?

So, magamo's examples of this are all Nounみたく ... did yours have a preceding noun too and you just cut the quote in the wrong place, or did the comment actually start みたく ?

Ah, I guess I should have given more examples so it was clear that みたく works the same way as みたいに. Here is an example sentence of verb-みたく:

彼女が歌うみたく歌ってみたい。

For example, if 彼女 is a good singer, this can mean the speaker wants to be a good singer like her. This みたく is following a verb, and it's almost the same as 彼女が歌うみたいに歌ってみたい.

Of course you can start a sentence with みたく as you do with みたいに and っぽく in an informal conversation. The original sentence in question might be an example of this kind of use.

Anyway, like I said in the previous post, みたく in the sentence should be pretty much the same as みたいに, and it should make sense if you replace みたく with みたいに.

Yea, the original sentence had an English sentence before the みたくすればよかったですね. So she probably meant its good if she does it like the preceding English sentence. Thanks for the help Magamo.

駅の構内は終日禁煙になっております。皆様のご協力をお願いします。

Why is "natte orimasu" used here and what exactly does it mean?
I know that "oru" is a hubmle form of "iru" and that "ni naru" means "becomes ..", but what does "natte iru/oru" mean then?
Smoking within the station WILL BE forbidden? Why can't you use just "narimasu" then?

「日記」と「日誌」は違います。「日記」というのは個人が自分のためにつけるもので、「日誌」というのは会社や学校などでみんなのためにつけるものです。

What exactly does "tsukeru" mean here and what would be the right kanji to use?

空輸するとなると輸送費がとても高くつきます。

"suru to naru to" - uhm, what? And I checked it this time, it's not a typo.


Again, thanks so much in advance.