I found myself rereading some manga recently and came across these lines of dialogue, which I think I understand but would like confirmation:

「俺ャあ普段は買い専門なんだがよ、弱い者イジメは、するのも見るのも大嫌えなんだ。特に、自由だ、正義だ、平等だのと綺麗事を吐きまくる、偽善者野郎のイジメはムカついてたまらねえ！」

Specifically, I'm wondering whether the examples in the second sentence (自由だ、正義だ、平等だのと) are a contracted form of ～だの、～だのと. I did as much poking around as I could online, but couldn't find any grammar resource anywhere mentioning this contraction, if that's what it is. Then again, だ is one of the more difficult things I've found to search for.

If my understanding of the beginning of the second sentence as an inexhaustive list of nouns is incorrect, what's the correct interpretation?

彼女は歌をよく歌えないばかりかピアノもよく弾けます。
I'm translating this as:
"Not only can she not sing well, she can play the piano well too"

How does よく歌えない give the sense of sing well as opposed to not sing well?

Are you sure the sentence isn't 弾けません, or 歌える? Where did you get that sentence?

A couple more attempts at translating things I'm not sure about - what do you guys think?

「さらに加えて裏表のない性格で、冗談だって通じる男で、嫌われる要素などそこにあろうわけもない。」
"Furethermore, with respect to his one sided personality, he was a man that could take a joke without getting angry."


Not sure what's going on with 永遠にも here, the に seems to be adverbial but can you use も after that?
「永遠にも思えた数秒の後、ぐっさりと心臓に突き刺さったまま揺らぎもしなかった彼女の視線が、ようやく蔑みを孕んで溶けた。」
"After what seemed like just a couple of seconds, still deeply thrust in my heart, her unwavering glance finally subsided its anger. "

One of the things I don't really understand here is the に in ぶりに - the ぶり suffix just creates a noun and not a な adjective or something right? Then is に just the particle that 間違いする takes?
「入学当時は一見儚げな美少女ぶりに勘違いする奴が続出し、言い寄る男も後を断たなかったという。しかし全員見事に玉砕、凄まれ、咬まれ、引き裂かれ、惨い言葉で嬲られて再起不能になる奴も多数。」
"Upon first entering the school, a number of guys mistakingly thought her to be a fickle pretty-girl, and everyone who approached her was rejected. Everyone was cast aside ["defeated"] in an amazing way - threatened, bit, torn up, and called merciless names to the point of no recovery."

マイケルさん達は両親が心配しているのでホテルからニューヨークへ電話を掛けた。

This sentence is talking about an event in the past. So I'm a bit confused why the progressive form 心配している is conjugated into the present. Shouldn't it be 心配していた? Currently doesn't it read as:

"Because Michael and company's parents are worried, we rang New York from the hotel."

But shouldn't it be:

"Because Michael and company's parents WERE worried, we rang New York from the hotel."

Thanks if someone can clarify this.

FooSoft Wrote:「さらに加えて裏表のない性格で、冗談だって通じる男で、嫌われる要素などそこにあろうわけもない。」
"Furethermore, with respect to his one sided personality, he was a man that could take a joke without getting angry."

Did you leave off 嫌われる要素などそこにあろうわけもない by mistake or just not know what to do with it?
"With respect to" isn't quite right. It's harder to tell because it's with nouns rather than adjectives, but grammatically this is very much like 家賃が安くて、電車にも近いです-- the で　is just the progressive form of だ, connecting two sentences together.
"Furthermore, his personality is straightforward, and he's a man who can take a joke, so there's nothing you can dislike about him."

Quote:Not sure what's going on with 永遠にも here, the に seems to be adverbial but can you use も after that?
「永遠にも思えた数秒の後、ぐっさりと心臓に突き刺さったまま揺らぎもしなかった彼女の視線が、ようやく蔑みを孕んで溶けた。」
"After what seemed like just a couple of seconds, still deeply thrust in my heart, her unwavering glance finally subsided its anger. "

Yes, you can use も after it. 永遠にも思えた=seemed like eternity. "After a couple of seconds that seemed like an eternity."

Quote:One of the things I don't really understand here is the に in ぶりに - the ぶり suffix just creates a noun and not a な adjective or something right? Then is に just the particle that 間違いする takes?
「入学当時は一見儚げな美少女ぶりに勘違いする奴が続出し、言い寄る男も後を断たなかったという。しかし全員見事に玉砕、凄まれ、咬まれ、引き裂かれ、惨い言葉で嬲られて再起不能になる奴も多数。」
"Upon first entering the school, a number of guys mistakingly thought her to be a fickle pretty-girl, and everyone who approached her was rejected. Everyone was cast aside ["defeated"] in an amazing way - threatened, bit, torn up, and called merciless names to the point of no recovery."

I'm not sure where you get "everyone who approached her was rejected" from 言い寄る男も後を断たなかったという。言い寄る男=guys who approached her to talk, 後を断たない=never ceasing, endless.

再起不能 doesn't apply to everyone. Everyone was 玉砕、凄まれ、咬まれ、引き裂かれ、惨い言葉で嬲られて, but 再起不能になる奴も多数 is a different clause -- People who had no hope of recovery were 多数, many. (Technically this should be 再起不能になる奴も多数いた or something like that, if it makes it any clearer)

vinniram Wrote:マイケルさん達は両親が心配しているのでホテルからニューヨークへ電話を掛けた。

This sentence is talking about an event in the past. So I'm a bit confused why the progressive form 心配している is conjugated into the present. Shouldn't it be 心配していた? Currently doesn't it read as:

"Because Michael and company's parents are worried, we rang New York from the hotel."

But shouldn't it be:

"Because Michael and company's parents WERE worried, we rang New York from the hotel."

Thanks if someone can clarify this.

心配している is not "present", it's imperfective, meaning that it's not completed. Often this is　present or future, but in Japanese, the tense of a whole sentence is determined by the final predicate. Since 掛けた is perfective, the whole sentence takes place in the past, and the 心配している means that the worrying was not yet complete at the time the 掛けた took place. This works out to the 心配している being in the past as well.

That's kind of a complicated explanation but Japanese verbs do not conjugate for tense, they conjugate for aspect, and this is just one of the many places where you can see the difference. (Another term for this is "relative tense" rather than "absolute tense", which English has.)

Quote:the ぶり suffix just creates a noun and not a な adjective or something right?

In Japanese, "noun" and "な adjective" are virtually identical from a structural standpoint. Both use に to modify a predicate.

At the beginning of a podcast I sometimes listen to, the host always says something which sounds to me like:

(....) 今日も張り切って　送りしていきたいと思います。

Is this correct? If so, what is this 送りして form? A humble form?

Yes, it's actually お送りしていきたい, お送りする is the humble form of 送る.

Fillanzea Wrote:

FooSoft Wrote:「さらに加えて裏表のない性格で、冗談だって通じる男で、嫌われる要素などそこにあろうわけもない。」
"Furethermore, with respect to his one sided personality, he was a man that could take a joke without getting angry."

Did you leave off 嫌われる要素などそこにあろうわけもない by mistake or just not know what to do with it?

Thanks Fillanzea! Yeah, on that first sentence, I misunderstood the 嫌われる bit, I thought it was referring to the negative aspects of the character that sentence is talking about from an internal point of view, rather than external. So it's more like him not having hate a hateful personality, rather than being hated/disliked by others, so it seemed really redundant. But your explanation makes a lot more sense in that structure.

Fillanzea Wrote:I'm not sure where you get "everyone who approached her was rejected" from 言い寄る男も後を断たなかったという。言い寄る男=guys who approached her to talk, 後を断たない=never ceasing, endless.

Yeah, I couldn't find a definition for 後を断たない so took a guess, hehe.

yudantaiteki Wrote:In Japanese, "noun" and "な adjective" are virtually identical from a structural standpoint. Both use に to modify a predicate.

Hmm very interesting, yeah I've actually kind of wondered about this for a while. So does noun + に almost become adverbial?

Yes. 先生になる is structurally the same thing as きれいに書く or 少女ぶりに勘違いする. I'm not a big fan of the "noun" and "na-adjective" terminology although it's so entrenched in almost every English book on Japanese that it's hard to get away from. Unfortunately the Japanese grammatical vocabulary tends to be derived from Western grammatical categories which means it's kind of a mess also (since the set of terms was really made to describe Latin and doesn't even work so well for English).

One of my dream projects is to write a better online grammar guide that is based more on the JSL grammatical description but in a more readable (and free) way.

Wow! That' just blew my mind (in a good way though - this makes so much more sense).

thanks for that explanation about the difference between tense and aspect. I'm trying to now see Japanese sentences in a different way, and breaking away from thinking in "tense" all the time, but rather, aspects relative to the final predicate.

For a long time I've been confused about the use of the question particle か in plain speech.
From what I've read, it seems like that か is used as some kind of rethorical question or cynical comment. Is this true? Or can you use it for 'normal' questions aswell?
I read that in plain speech か is mostly not used when making questions, just a rising intonation. But how does one then make perfective questions?
Let us take for example: was it a bird?
Simply: 鳥？　or 鳥か？　does not convey perfective, but 鳥だったか？ also seems wrong, because I read that a だ and か cannot be combined (I think Tae Kim says this a lot), because だ indicates that something is a fact and か indicates a question.

I'm not an expert, but I was in Japan for a month on a homestay so I picked up some things like that.

I do believe they would just say "鳥??" with a rising intonation.

"か" can and is used for questions. I mostly hear it when you have -masu forms.

For instance, "今何時ですか?"

だ is declarative. You can't say か after だ. One may equate that to saying "The time is 4:30 is it?"

However, です can be used with か and that's where you'll most often see it. I'm not sure if you can say か without the です, or other verb, but whether you can or not, a rising intonation is much more common.

Yeah, usually you just use rising intonation. You can also put の？ after it depending on the situation. か is possible but sounds very blunt/rude after a plain form. For a past question you can just use だった？ with rising intonation (or だったの？)

kame3 Wrote:From what I've read, it seems like that か is used as some kind of rethorical question or cynical comment. Is this true? Or can you use it for 'normal' questions aswell?

Rethorical / self-directed questions is certainly its main use 「それがたまるか！」「そろそろ終わりか…」but you can use it for normal questions too 「俺の携帯知らないか？」「寂しくないのか？」

Quote:But how does one then make perfective questions?
Let us take for example: was it a bird?
Simply: 鳥？　or 鳥か？　does not convey perfective

I think these are fine →「鳥？」「鳥なのか？」「鳥だったのか？」
「鳥か」and 「鳥だったか」sound a lot like self-directed questions「鳥か…そうか！」

Quote:鳥だったか？ also seems wrong, because I read that a だ and か cannot be combined (I think Tae Kim says this a lot), because だ indicates that something is a fact and か indicates a question.

だ can be combined with か, it's just somewhat unusual: 「なぜだか知らない」「誰だかわからない」. だったか is also perfectly fine 「そうか今日だったか！」

Just a minor correction, that should be 鳥なのか？

yudantaiteki Wrote:Just a minor correction, that should be 鳥なのか？

Ops, you're right. Fixed.

I'm back with more translation attempts in search of enlightment

This sentence just seems weird, am wrong here, especially on the かかさず bit?
「逢坂に恥をかかさず、自尊心を傷つけることなく、自分を恨ませないためにはそれだけが唯一の正解だ。」
"By embarassing (not failing to embarass?) Aisaka, I won't damage my self respect; this is the only thing I can do that I won't regret later."


I can't really get the point of the も in this sentence. Is it just to add emphasis to 夢 (see something /even/ in a dream)?
「なにか夢でも見ていた気がするが……丑三つ時を指す時計を見て、ぼりぼりと腹を乱暴に掻く。」
"I have a feeling that I might have seen something in a dream. I look at the clock which points to midnight and roughly scratch my stomach."


Two things here - first I'm used to seeing something come after せっかく before だから - without anything there, does it just mean "with trouble"? Also, what the heck is going on with "便所にでも行く" what is で doing there? Ahh, so confusing.
「杞憂だったか、と、息をつき、せっかくだから便所にでも行くことにして冷たい板張りの台所へ素足で向かう。」
"Was this just needless anxiety? With a sigh I troublesomely head barefoot across the kitchen's cold wooden floor to the bathroom."

FooSoft Wrote:I can't really get the point of the も in this sentence. Is it just to add emphasis to 夢 (see something /even/ in a dream)?
「なにか夢でも見ていた気がするが……丑三つ時を指す時計を見て、ぼりぼりと腹を乱暴に掻く。」
"I have a feeling that I might have seen something in a dream. I look at the clock which points to midnight and roughly scratch my stomach."

That part's not quite right. If the も wasn't there, that sentence would be, "I feel like I've just had / been in / seen a dream", whereas with the も, it would be, "I feel like I've just had / been in / seen a dream or something."

FooSoft Wrote:I'm back with more translation attempts in search of enlightment

This sentence just seems weird, am wrong here, especially on the かかさず bit?
「逢坂に恥をかかさず、自尊心を傷つけることなく、自分を恨ませないためにはそれだけが唯一の正解だ。」
"By embarassing (not failing to embarass?) Aisaka, I won't damage my self respect; this is the only thing I can do that I won't regret later."

かかさず is the same thing as かかさなくて; it just means "not embarassing her, and..." It's a set of three things that apply to ために.

Quote:I can't really get the point of the も in this sentence. Is it just to add emphasis to 夢 (see something /even/ in a dream)?
「なにか夢でも見ていた気がするが……丑三つ時を指す時計を見て、ぼりぼりと腹を乱暴に掻く。」
"I have a feeling that I might have seen something in a dream. I look at the clock which points to midnight and roughly scratch my stomach."

I interpreted this as the でも meaning "or something like it". Maybe we need to see the previous sentence, but I think this is 夢を見る -> 夢でも見る, not 夢で見る -> 夢でも見る.

Quote:Two things here - first I'm used to seeing something come after せっかく before だから - without anything there, does it just mean "with trouble"? Also, what the heck is going on with "便所にでも行く" what is で doing there? Ahh, so confusing.
「杞憂だったか、と、息をつき、せっかくだから便所にでも行くことにして冷たい板張りの台所へ素足で向かう。」
"Was this just needless anxiety? With a sigh I troublesomely head barefoot across the kitchen's cold wooden floor to the bathroom."

でも, once again, means "or something like it". せっかくだから does indeed mean "I've gone to the trouble, so..." (depending on the context).

FooSoft Wrote:This sentence just seems weird, am wrong here, especially on the かかさず bit?
「逢坂に恥をかかさず、自尊心を傷つけることなく、自分を恨ませないためにはそれだけが唯一の正解だ。」
"By embarassing (not failing to embarass?) Aisaka, I won't damage my self respect; this is the only thing I can do that I won't regret later."

You have to excuse me, as I still have a lot of trouble with kanji, as I'm only part way through RTK1. But I don't see the problem you mention with this sentence. Also, it's not "partitioned" the way you've translated here. With the semicolon, you effectively made this into two sentences, which changes the meaning.

yudantaiteki Wrote:Maybe we need to see the previous sentence, but I think this is 夢を見る -> 夢でも見る, not 夢で見る -> 夢でも見る.

Ooh, so that's what he was thinking! I was wondering why he was tripped up on this point.