You can gloss them both as "sleep" in English, but that doesn't really help you figure out how they're used in Japanese.

ねむい and ねむる are both normally written with 眠. 睡 does not have a normally occurring kun-yomi, but it contributes the meaning "sleep" in some compounds like 熟睡. The word 睡眠 (sleep) is fairly common.

I'm a bit confused about this sentence from KO2001:
この本を書くのに２年も費やした。

I don't understand the function of the のに here.

のに is actually a grammar phrase you'll find in a lot of dictionaries, but I've never thought of it being outside the regular meanings of の and に.

The の just turns it into a noun (or rather, the の is the noun, which is modified by この本を書く). So the translation becomes 'writing the book' rather than 'write the book.'

The に　is the same に from something like 私には分かりません. "For me, it's not clear." The に basically means 'for.'

So, "I devoted two years for writing the book."

Ah, got it! Thanks.

Another key point in the sentence is what the も means when it comes after a quantity expression like ２年.

iSoron Wrote:

yudantaiteki Wrote:

Quote:ガラゴロ

No idea. Context?

It's probably from Suzumiya Haruhi:

俺の脳裏には、真っ暗の校庭に真剣な表情で白線を引いている
涼宮ハルヒの姿が浮かんでいた。ガラゴロ引きずっているライ
ンカーと山積みにしている石灰の袋はあらかじめ体育倉庫から
ガメていたんだろう。

My guess: it's the sound the wheels of a heavy wheeled bag, etc, make when you drag the bag around.

I guess I should have included the context but.. Wow.. you managed to pick out the exact passage I was reading. I guess its a unique style of writing then? Anyways, it seems interesting that the best way to translate was with an informed guess.. it goes to show that the mimetic words may not have a precisely defined meaning but rather a feeling or colour associated to them.

I came across another problem word though:

阜ｻ

It comes in sentences like:

「飼い犬の死によって影響を受けた」より「犬が死んで悲しい」という阜ｻが自然だと思うのは極めて正当ですから。

Im thinking it means sentence or something, but wat is that small sa thing? Ive never seen that before.

That's 文字化け. The second part is a half-width katakana サ, but I think the original word was 表現.

chochajin Wrote:Everybody, thanks so much!!!
Today I finished the 2kyuu Kanzen Master grammar book!

A little late, but not all the questions got answered, so I'll give it a go.

Quote:1) 以上のような次第で、退職することになりました。
The grammar point was "次第", but I can't figure out the meaning of the first part of this sentence at all. Is "以上のような" an idiom or expression?

I don't know if it's really an idiom, 以上 usually means "the previously mentioned things", so 以上のような次第で is like "based on the preceding, and other stuff like it"

Quote:5) 日本人は集団行動が好きだとよく言われている。確かに、集団行動をしないことはないのだが、個人行動をとる日本人もけっこういる。
In the Dictionary of Japanese Grammar they say that this contruction "ないことはない" can only be used as an answer to a "negative" question (e.g. "You can't read Japanese?"), but then why is it here different???!!! It was also mentioned that it can never be used as the initial part of a conversation. Why is the sentence(s) above an exception then?

I don't think this is a special construction here, just take it literally:
集団行動をしない = Not acting in groups
集団行動をしないこと = The fact/case of people not acting in groups
集団行動をしないことはない = It's not the case that people *don't* act in groups, [but there are many Japanese who act on their own as well.]

Quote:8) 「この機械に詳しい人はいませんか。」「彼など詳しいと思いますよ。」
Expresses the speaker's emotion such as envy, happiness, anger, astonishement ...
Uhm, okay, but "He knows a lot about machines." <- I'm not sure what kind of emotion would be expressed in such a sentence. Basically it's quite indifferent, no? Maybe admiration?

The など is what's doing it here? I'm not completely sure for this one.

Quote:10) この病気にかかると、今の医学ではどうしようもないらしい。
according to rikaichan: どう仕様もない どうしようもない (exp,uk) it cannot be helped
It doesn't really make much sense in this sentence, though.
If you get this illness, then it cannot be helped with the currenct medicine?? huh?
the currenct medicine can't do anything about it <- that sounds about right

どうしようもない and similar phrases have several meanings. Here it's what you said, "It seems that current medicine can't do anything about it." But the "cannot be helped" meaning shows up in other constructions, and sometimes it can also mean "there's no point" or "I can't do anything about the situation".

Eijiro:
どうしようもない

* can do nothing about
* can't be helped
* do not have much of a choice
* will never do anything

Quote:11) 考え得るかぎりの手は尽くしたが、問題の解決には至らなかった。
I thought as much as I could about it _______________, but I couldn't ....
What I don't understand is the 手は尽くした part...

手 often means "method" or "means"; Eijiro provides a good gloss for this:
手を尽くす

* do all one can
* do all within one's power
* do everything in [within] (the [one's]) power
* employ every possible means
* try everything

Once again, I'm back with a couple of sentences to pick your guys' brains with

「でもな、それはやめとけ」
Is やめとけ just short for command form of やめておく or something?

「あんた達の仲が良くなってくの…見てるのが辛いの…」
Again, is this just shortening 良くなっておく?

「椋は頭を下げると、自分の家へと続く道を歩き出す。」
What's the usage of this second と? I have never seen anything like this.

foosoft Wrote:「でもな、それはやめとけ」
Is やめとけ just short for command form of やめておく or something?

yes.

foosoft Wrote:「あんた達の仲が良くなってくの…見てるのが辛いの…」
Again, is this just shortening 良くなっておく?

It's short for 良くなっていく

foosoft Wrote:「椋は頭を下げると、自分の家へと続く道を歩き出す。」
What's the usage of this second と? I have never seen anything like this.

I think the second と is basically making 自分の家へ adverbial so it's basically "Mukunoki (?) bows his head and starts walking on the road that continues in the direction of his/her own house, as opposed to just "... road that continues to his own house". Not sure how to explain it any better. I might be wrong too.

Ah, thanks for the response, nadiatims. By adverbial do you mean kind of like と言う... except without the 言う?

The と connects to 続く. Xと続く means "continue to X" -- here X is the phrase 自分の家へ (towards home). A literal translation of "continue to towards home" isn't grammatical English but it's fine in Japanese.

foosoft Wrote:Ah, thanks for the response, nadiatims. By adverbial do you mean kind of like と言う... except without the 言う?

adverbs are like adjectives except they describe verbs. For example 速く走る, run fast or よく食べて! eat well. They describe the way in which an action takes place. Some words can be made adverbial by adding と, for example, のんびりと〜, in a carefree manner... It's often used with onomatopea (spelling?) for example, ドカーンと〜, with a bang....

Ah, those, OK, I knew about them But yeah, this looks different.

[re FooSoft's question] I wasn't sure what particle to write with 続く　the other day, so I read through a bunch of dictionary sentences. Here are some of my observations, fwiw, and questions:

I had assumed the と here was similar to the reciprocal と as in と違う、と同じ、etc. Is it closer to the adverbial と　as in 上へ上へと続く?

In similar sentences involving roads, paths, stairs that lead to/are connected to some place, sometimes just　へ続く　(without the と) is used. I don't know if there are any rules about dropping this と, but it doesn't appear to affect the meaning.

Occasionally it's に続く. I'm not sure whether it can affect the meaning. Unless　the ずっと　and 直接 in the last 2 sentences have some added sense of [reaching the location, as opposed to leading in that direction?] Could I substitute へと in those sentences?

その道は山頂へと続いている
山道は山頂に続いていた

この階段は地下室へと続く
階段がずっと階上へ続いている
階段は直接部屋に続いていた

Probably obvious, but just a reminder that "a path going up a valley" uses を　instead as it's considered going through somewhere [rather than towards somewhere]:
　 小道が谷間を上へ続いていた

An hour on one particle...trying to write is such a humbling experience. :-)
[edits]

yudantaiteki Wrote:The と connects to 続く. Xと続く means "continue to X" -- here X is the phrase 自分の家へ (towards home). A literal translation of "continue to towards home" isn't grammatical English but it's fine in Japanese.

Ah! I totally missed your post yesterday. So I see it's just another set expression of sorts that has to be learned. This makes sense, thanks

I won't write a lot about this but, I disaggree with linking と and 続く. Remember, particles (except の) are inflections that clarify the role of the preceding word. They attach to the preceding word. Not the verb. That's why words (except verbs) can for the most part be shifted around and still keep the same function within the clause.
For example, I'll slightly modify one of Thora's examples:
気球が上へ上へと続く。
上へ上へと気球が続く。

here's another:
上へと宇宙の彼方に突き進んでいく

A link doesn't have to be to the word directly after it, it can be separated by other clauses or words, but a particle like と still creates a connection between two specific words in a sentence.

Yeah, I understand that. In a way all the words are linked to each other in that they contribute to the meaning of the sentence. I mean obviously the subject, object, indirect object are going to have a connection with the verb no matter where they are placed. I was disaggreeing with the notion that: this verb takes this particle and this other verb takes this other particle which I think is the ultimately the wrong way to explain things. The idea for example that 行く must be preceded by に or 食べる should always be paired with を etc. I mean some people actually memorise their verbs this way and it's not actually how the particles operate. I mean you can stick any particle anywhere you like in a sentence. The point is to actually understand accurately how that will translate to meaning in the ears of native speakers. There is major difference between the way Japanese speakers define word function in a sentence (through inflection(particles)) and how english speakers do (through word order) and it can take a while to understand the significance of that, especially when it's explained poorly or not at all in textbooks.

All I am trying to say is that Xと続く is one pattern that is used to say that something continues to X. I'm not saying it's the only particle possible or that 続く must always occur with と. I was just explaining the use of と in that particular sentence, in which it was connecting 自分の家へ to 続く. This is the standard way to explain this in grammar books so I'm following that. The Japanese word for this type of grammatical connection is かかる.

微妙
I know that the meaning is "subtle, delicate" but I swear that the usage of びみょう in colloquial Japanese tends not to be positive. Yet I still can't wrap my head around the situations when this adj is used. Anyone have examples?

非人名用
What's this mean? (In a list of Kanji). I know 人名漢字, and I know 非人, and I assume it has nothing to do with that,

vix86 Wrote:微妙
I know that the meaning is "subtle, delicate" but I swear that the usage of びみょう in colloquial Japanese tends not to be positive. Yet I still can't wrap my head around the situations when this adj is used. Anyone have examples?

You are thinking I bet of phrases like びみょう　の　におい ? I am in the same boat. I learned my Japanese directly, by unintentional immersion, and there is no way that the people saying びみょう　の　におい　were talking about a delicate smell. They were talking about a whiff of the smell of death by the look on their faces.

I ask Japanese teachers and they don't know what I am talking about. So I am not of any help except to tell you, that if you are making a mistake in understanding it, then so am I. I would trust interaction with actual Japanese people in real life to tell me more than what a Japanese person tells me anyway. They tend to clean up their way of speech when they are explaining something to the point that they are essentially ficitonalizing about how they actually use their own language. YMMV.

kapalama: 非 means "not", and 人名用 means "used for names"

I think that the 微妙 is perhaps rather as an answer to a question -- it usually means something like "not really" or "not very much".

Can someone help clarify this for me?

あなたの国では地震が起きたことがありますか。
This sentence is simple: "Has an earthquake ever happened in your country?".

あなたの国では地震が起きることがありますか。
Here the verb is in the present tense so it should be, "Do earthquakes happen in your country?"

I'm just guessing. よろしく御願いします。