There are rules, though they are far from perfect and don't cover every case. The readings you're having trouble with have to do with the two kinds of on-readings: 漢音 and 呉音. For example, someone in this thread on this forum posted a rough rule about the readings of 人 originally posed on 2ch. It can predict the readings of words of the form XX人 with good accuracy. Technically the rough rule posted on this forum is describing how 漢音 and 呉音 of the kanji 人 behave and how they're related to the meaning and grammatical function of XX in XX人.

I know a longer explanation based on etymology and such can be opaque and even mysterious to some people. But you might find this simple rule helpful:

XX人 is XXじん if XX is describing an action and 人 is "the person who gets XXed" e.g., 殺 (to kill) is a kanji describing an action. And 人 in 殺人 (murder/killing) is the person/people who are killed. So it's さつじん.

XX人 is XXにん if XX is describing an action and 人 is "the person who does XX" e.g., 犯人 means "a criminal," i.e., a person who committed a crime. So, unlike 殺人, the part 人 is the person who does/did the action. So it's はんにん.

If you pronounce 殺人 as さつにん when talking about a serious crime, as the above second rule suggests, it can sound like a newly coined word which means "murderer" if it fits in context;

漢音 of 人 （じん）= person who is XX'ed,
呉音 of 人 （にん）= person who does XX.

I'm not saying さつにん would be treated as an accepted word though.

There are rules for when XX is not an action too. If you're interested, the linked thread has a little more. This isn't particularly esoteric knowledge. This is more like a grammar rule than a random reading phenomenon because you can coin a word on the fly using the knowledge. So I think you can find more detailed explanations somewhere else maybe in English too.

I have also read about how the readings of 人 and certain grammar rules in Spanish behave similarly somewhere on the internet. But I don't speak Spanish and forgot where it was.

As for the readings of 大, some cases are quite simple and regular if you have knowledge of 漢音 and 呉音.

大 in a word of the form 大XX (XX can be a single kanji) is generally read as:

だい if XX is a word of Chinese origin with a 呉音 on-reading,
たい if XX is a word of Chinese origin with a 漢音 on-reading,
おお if XX is read with its kun-reading.

There are exceptions. Some words allow multiple readings. I don't think your average beginner textbook teaches 漢音, 呉音, and their behaviors in detail. I wouldn't recommend you learn this kind of thing either; it's definitely overkill. But it might be helpful to know the fact that there are rules which can predict the readings in certain cases fairly accurately.

Thanks! I`ve always just been memorizing them individually but figured there had to be some logic behind it.

I just completed some sample questions in my grammar workbook, but according to the answers some were wrong. However I wonder if the following sentences could work both with both ways (my answer in red, correct answer in green).

これは教授(向きの/たる)ものにあるまじきことだ。
教授(からいえば/ともなると)お酒を飲む機会が多いのだろうか。
もともとあまり学者(たる/向きの)正確ではないのかもしれない。

What do you guys think?

FooSoft Wrote:I just completed some sample questions in my grammar workbook, but according to the answers some were wrong. However I wonder if the following sentences could work both with both ways (my answer in red, correct answer in green).

これは教授(向きの/たる)ものにあるまじきことだ。
教授(からいえば/ともなると)お酒を飲む機会が多いのだろうか。
もともとあまり学者(たる/向きの)正確ではないのかもしれない。

What do you guys think?

This isn't important to the question you're asking, but 正確 in the last sentence should read 性格, I think.

Anyway, the green one (the one on the right side in each sentence) sounds natural in each case. Red ones wouldn't be the correct answers, but you might be able to come up with an unusual situation with a very specific context where your version is ok. In each case, your choice results in a sentence with a different meaning from the correct version's. There are so many things that don't fit quite right that I don't know where to begin. Maybe, it's a good idea to explain why you think they should work, what you think those sentences should mean, and, if you're using a textbook, how it explains them.

So, without knowing at least why you thought they'd be ok, it's nearly impossible to spot the points you missed which your workbook assumes you should be able to get. If you thought red and green ones should mean the same in the examples, then they're not. You might want to read the explanation of each phrase in your grammar workbook again.

[Edit: The following is kind of off-topic and wouldn't help you solve the problem, so you can safely ignore it and stop reading right here.]

Also, in my opinion, the best and only way to know if a given sentence works is to read and listen to a large amount of native material so that you can intuitively recognize the words and grammatical patterns used in it and tell how frequently they have appeared, what kind of person would use them, which kind of context they were used in, etc. So "the wrong answer" is more like "This must be wrong or extremely rare because I've never heard people say it this way in my life" or "This must be wrong because this evokes ridiculous situations in my mind."

There are too many sentences which are logically ok but don't appear in real life. Granted that stricter grammar/usage rules would eliminate many sentences of this kind, it would increase the other kind of sentence; the ones which are illogical but frequent in native speakers' speech/writing. More detailed grammar and usage may describe a language fairly well. But it's not the kind of grammar a "grammar workbook" would deal with.

Thanks for the reply! Sorry, you're right I should have been more specific about my reasoning (along with how I think these sentences would be translated):

これは教授向きのものにあるまじきことだ。
So to me, it seems reasonable that "教授向きのもの" is "a person suitable for teaching", thus: "This is improper for a person suitable for teaching"

教授からいえばお酒を飲む機会が多いのだろうか。
からいえば is like "judging from", so I think this translation could be "Judging from [his] instruction/lecturing, there are a lot of opportunities to go drinking". So basically this implies that the teacher might be drinking between classes, and behaves drunk during his lectures. This series of sentences is actually about a teacher that drinks too much, so this seems possible.

もともとあまり学者たる性格ではないのかもしれない。
You're right about the transcription error, I didn't notice when I was copying down the sentence. I think 学者たる性格 is supposed to mean something like "personality suitable for teaching". So I think the sentence translates to something like "Perhaps from the start, his personality was unbecoming for a scholar"

I do read a fair amount (at least an hour a day), but I find that understanding everything that's going on is different from understanding the subtleties of the language, especially if there are sets of grammar that have different meanings in Japanese, but translate to the same grammar in English. Or like, is a certain grammar being used just for variety, or does it have a specific meaning in this context...

FooSoft Wrote:これは教授向きのものにあるまじきことだ。
So to me, it seems reasonable that "教授向きのもの" would be "a person suitable for teaching", thus: "This is improper for a person suitable for teaching"

The most commonly used meaning of 教授 is "professor(s)" who teach and do research in university. It can also mean "teaching," "dissemination of knowledge," or something along those lines. But this sense has distinctive formality and an academic feeling, and is used mostly when other synonyms don't fit right. If I were to translated nest0r's posts on this forum, I'd use 教授する more often than in your posts, if this helps to get the nuance.

Theoretically, 教授向きのもの can mean "a person who is suitable for teaching." But there are tons of other expressions which mean the same and are more natural and idiomatic. e.g., 教えるのに向いている人 and 先生に向いている人. If you replace "teaching" with "a professor," it becomes easier to make sense. But still it's a bit awkward in this sentence. It'd be as (un)natural as "This is not a thing, which is appropriate for a person who is a professor."

あるまじき is Japanese in the 文語 style, which is also the case with たる but not with your 向きの phrase.

There are some other awkward points, but I think this would be enough to convince you that your version sounds like a sentence created by a machine which only takes crude grammar and literal translation into account, i.e., it might be logically possible by looser standards but isn't what a native speaker would say to mean the same thing.

The correct version uses the normal "教授 = professor" sense. So the speaker is describing how unacceptable something is for a professor, which would imply higher standards, more responsibility, etc.

FooSoft Wrote:教授からいえばお酒を飲む機会が多いのだろうか。
からいえば is like "judging from", so I think this translation could be "Judging from [his] instruction/lecturing, there are a lot of opportunities to go drinking". So basically this implies that the teacher might be drinking between classes, and behaves drunk during his lectures. This series of sentences is actually about a teacher that drinks too much, so this seems possible.

The "teaching" sense of 教授 is far from the sense of "instruction/lecturing" in your translation. It IS "lecturing". But it is not the "lecturing" in that sense. 教授 is a way more abstract notion. "Judging from [his] instruction/lecturing" would mean almost the same as "Judging from the way he teaches the classes," or "Seeing how he teaches his class." But 教授 (= teaching) is a very abstract word which may appear as the translation of "dissemination of knowledge" in "Dissemination of knowledge is also the important role research universities must play in our society." It can be less academic than this example. But it doesn't refer to a concrete example of teaching a class. It's almost always an abstract "concept," not an instance of teaching a class.

Also, this also has the same kind of "native speakers wouldn't say it this way" problem as the first sentence. It looks like parts are assembled without considering what they'd sound like as a whole.

FooSoft Wrote:もともとあまり学者たる性格ではないのかもしれない。
You're right about the transcription error, I didn't notice when I was copying down the sentence. I think 学者たる性格 is supposed to mean something like "personality suitable for teaching". So I think the sentence translates to something like "Perhaps from the start, his personality was unbecoming for a scholar"

The simplest explanation may be that たる of this kind is followed by もの, 人物, etc., though this would severely restrict the usage. There are better but way longer explanations, which probably you can find somewhere on the internet too. But, maybe the most important point you might be missing is that it's not synonymous with 向きの at all.

For example, 学生たるもの in 学生たるもの勉学に励むべし。is more like a classical Japanese style of "You're students, aren't you?", "You know what students are supposed to do, don't you?", and so on. A versatile translation of "Aたるもの〜だ" might be "If you/one is A, then it is particularly true that..." So これは教授たるものにあるまじきことだ。may be understood as "If one is a professor, it is particularly true that this is unacceptable," which implies "WTF?! Why did he do that?! He's a professor, isn't he? Professors aren't supposed to be like that!"

FooSoft Wrote:I do read a fair amount (at least an hour a day), but I find that understanding everything that's going on is different from understanding the subtleties of the language, especially if there are sets of grammar that have different meanings in Japanese, but translate to the same grammar in English. Or like, is a certain grammar being used just for variety, or does it have a specific meaning in this context?

If I were you, I would spend more time on reading in Japanese than deciphering the language. I'm not sure if sentence parsing and grammar analysis would be counted as reading. I don't know how you do it while listening either.

I could be wrong, but it seems to me that what you're doing is to get a rough translation by applying rules, which I think wouldn't help you learn finer grammar points and shades of meaning very much. This is just my 2 cents though.

[Edit] If it doesn't make sense, think of it this way: You don't understand a passage by applying rules by logic. You use statistics. You understand a passage like "This phrase appeared in Situations A, B, C, ...., and Z. And I kind of feel like there is a certain similarity between them. So probably this is the meaning of it." This process is of course done subconsciously. So building up examples in your brain through exposure is the reading/listening I'm talking about. So as long as there is rich context, it doesn't matter much if you fully understand a sentence now. That mysterious sentence will serve as a sample when your subconscious infers the meaning of another similar sentence later. I don't know if this works well for reading, but as long as listening goes, it seems my brain keeps pretty much everything I heard in context somewhere deep inside it. It's like I can't bring them to my conscious mind, but they're there somewhere inside the brain, probably in vague and incomplete form.

The vast majority of my vocabulary comes from nowhere; I can't remember where I picked them up. I guess it's not very important for my conscious mind to understand a word or grammar point. It will help learn a language faster, I think. But it seem like language is about your brain inferring the meaning by doing statistics on the fly.

[Edit 2]Oh, I'm not saying you shouldn't use grammar and such though. It can enrich the context you absorb by making the situation clearer and more understandable. But probably it's not a necessary part of learning. It helps, and probably that's pretty much about it. I've seen some people say language learning is all about "getting used to it" in the sense of making the conscious process of parsing/analyzing sentences automatic by doing it again and again and again. But I kind of doubt it. What I'm saying is that probably consciousness doesn't play an important role in the first place.

[Edit 3] So my take of the so-called "comprehensible input" is that it's just input with context rich enough for my subconscious to use as a sample later. It's not always input which my conscious mind can make sense of, though there would be huge overlap between the two.

Thanks for the explanation magamo. I guess the thing that always worried me about grammar in general, is that unless you have someone double-checking you for understanding and correcting you, learning from input alone is not very efficient, thus requiring formal grammar study.

Your example with using "statistics" is interesting. I guess as you said, if you understand the context well enough then it becomes possible to "fill in the blank" regarding what you might not be sure about (given enough examples). The thing to do then becomes getting sufficient exposure to as many different forms of writing as possible. This is an interesting idea.

It's kind of funny. English is actually my second language, but I've learned it with very little formal study when I was younger. In fact prior to studying Japanese I didn't even have a solid understanding of what an "adverb" was. I guess my more analytical computer-science-y side might be intruding too much into learning of L3

明日まで使っていても構いませんよ。

This literally means "I don't mind if you use it until the end of tomorrow", doesn't it? So would the best translation be: "I don't mind if you use it until the day after tomorrow"?

Are you wondering whether まで　always includes the end of the time period? Or whether it does it that particular sentence?

I'd translate it as "until tomorrow". I think まで　(meaning "until") has the same customary meaning and potential ambiguity as English "until".

In more formal circumstances where precision is important, we would use something like "until and including"; "on or before", or "by the close of business on __".

For stuff like concerts and flights, we understand that something playing/available "until tomorrow" includes tomorrow. But "I can't wait until tomorrow" probably doesn't.

Is that what you meant?

Yeah, that's what I was confused with. It's because in DOBJG, they were saying that when "X まで", if X is a duration of time, then まで means until the end of that duration of time. So, with "来週の月曜日まで休みます" for example, DOBJG advises to translate it as "I will be on vacation until Tuesday".

vinniram Wrote:Yeah, that's what I was confused with. It's because in DOBJG, they were saying that when "X まで", if X is a duration of time, then まで means until the end of that duration of time. So, with "来週の月曜日まで休みます" for example, DOBJG advises to translate it as "I will be on vacation until Tuesday".

If that explanation is confusing, maybe it's helpful to think when the range defined by "until" includes the day in a sentence and when it doesn't.

If my understanding of the English word "until" is correct, the range defined by "until" generally does NOT include the day etc. right after "until" in a sentence when the start/beginning/occurrence of something is implied. For example:

I can't wait until tomorrow! (Implying something awesome is going to happen tomorrow.)
I will be on vacation until Tuesday. (Implying you will show up Tuesday.)

But if the speaker only implies the end of something by "until" or doesn't imply anything, it usually includes the day, e.g.,

I waited until Monday. (The end of "waiting" is Monday, and your "waiting period" includes the day too.)

I think Thora's example "playing/available until tomorrow" about concerts and flights is also of this kind.

Note: This is just a nonnative English speaker's intuition developed through a limited amount of exposure. So if the above explanation of "until" doesn't match up with native speakers' intuition, please ignore the following.

Japanese word まで is similar. But just because a direct word-for-word translation sounds like the speaker is implying the start etc. doesn't mean the original Japanese sentence also does and vice versa. The vacation sentence is an example of this, I think.

It seems that in general までs in sentences with the "can't" sense are often like the first kind of "until," e.g., 明日まで待てない！ (= I can't wait until tomorrow!), 来年までやってはいけない (= You are not allowed to do it (or equivalently "you can't do it") until the next year comes around). (Sorry for the awkward translation! I wanted to mean "January 1st is the first day you can do it" without using the until+(one word) structure.). But this is not a strict rule and may not always work:

明日まで出来ない -> [Edit] I thought this would more likely mean you could do it tomorrow unless you put emphasis on まで in speech. But the result of googling まで suggests it's more context dependent.
明日までずっとできない -> It's ambiguous if you can do it tomorrow or not without context.

So it may not be a good strategy to guess if までX in a sentence is "until X" of the first kind or of the second kind from the literal word-for-word translation of the rest of the sentence.

It might also be confusing that までX doesn't indicate the exact point something ends at if X has a range like a day. (I think this is the same as "until X.") 明日まで待って下さい means that the speaker needs one more day. But it's not clear exactly when he finishes his job, returns what he borrowed, etc. If he already missed the deadline, the listener wouldn't be happy if he meant "I will finish it by tomorrow's 11:59pm." But he might say he kept his promise by submitting his work at exactly 11:59:59.

[Edit] I edited this post so many times I don't remember what the original was like... Probably it made no sense. I'm sorry if it confused you.

vinniram Wrote:Yeah, that's what I was confused with. It's because in DOBJG, they were saying that when "X まで", if X is a duration of time, then まで means until the end of that duration of time. So, with "来週の月曜日まで休みます" for example, DOBJG advises to translate it as "I will be on vacation until Tuesday".

hmm Not sure I agree with DoBJG that " 'X made' and 'until X' do not have the same meaning when X represents duration of time." As Magamo explains, the English version can be ambiguous. So the meaning is the same sometimes. Good to be aware of the risk of changing the meaning though.

I wasn't aware that まで must include the last time period. I see this kind of thing
4月1日から3月31日まで　　
　　　　　　＿＿日（同日を含む）から＿＿＿日（同日を含まない）まで
　　　　　　＿＿日（同日を含まない）から＿＿＿日（同日を含む）まで
which suggests to me that where it isn't obvious (fiscal year), and where accuracy is important (interest accrual, deadline), somebody felt it worthwhile to clarify the meaning of まで. Although maybe they do that b/c they know it'll get translated into English. [edit: What do you think, Magamo?]

(To think that someone's fortune could turn on a mistranslation of まで　 in a contract...lol)

Already mentioned, but I don't think まで necessarily means 100% of the last time period. Your sentence is like "sometime tomorrow". Or:
夏の炎熱が9月まで続いた. (from dictionary)
The heat of the summer lasted into September.
We don't have to translate that as "until October".

Thora Wrote:[edit: What do you think, Magamo?]

I don't think Xまで always means "until the very end of X," so your translation of 夏の炎熱が9月まで続いた is spot on. Maybe the grammar reference is wrong or vinniram misread it.

Also, the range explicitly stated in a sentence may not include X at all. For example, 月曜日まで試験はありません is talking about the period of time in which there is no test. And it's ambiguous if the next test will be on Monday or Tuesday.

As I said, I think this depends on if the speaker is implying the beginning or happening of something after the period. If the speaker is a teacher who is asked when the next test is, then it's more likely that it means the next quiz is Monday (i.e., happening of a test after the no quiz period is implied). But if it's a sentence from a person who doesn't like a test like a less motivated student, probably it means that Monday is still within the no quiz period. In other words, the speaker in the former case is in a situation where the focus is on the day students take a test while in the latter case the focus is on until when the student can enjoy the no quiz period.

I think the same goes for "until." If I asked when my online purchase would be shipped because the shop's website kept saying "Will be shipped soon" for a month and the customer service responds on the phone, "It will not be shipped until Tuesday," I might expect them to ship it on that day, i,e., Tuesday is the expected shipping day. But if the shop says the sentence after explaining how it was back ordered and how they can't ship it soon, I might take it that they will ship my purchase on Wednesday or perhaps even later, i.e., Wednesday is the earliest and is the most likely shipping day.

In any case, I think it's better to specify exactly when a period ends if it can make a big difference.

I'm having a bit of trouble with the following sentence. The context is that a guy is telling his friend 天吾 that his involuntary spasm-like episodes can be pretty dangerous if they happen at the wrong time.

知り合いにスギ花粉症の男がいてね、運転中にくしゃみが始まって、そのまま電柱にぶつかっちまった。ところが天吾くんのは、くしゃみどころじゃすまないものな。

My attempt:

"So I knew this guy that was allergic to Japanese cedar polen, while driving he started sneezing and just like that he ran into a lightpole. Nevertheless, what you have Tengo, cannot be excused as sneezing."

First, it is saying that the guy is allergic to スギ right? For some reason (maybe the usage of に there, it looks weird to me). And second of all, is くしゃみどころ something like "the thing of sneezing"? Any reason why it's どころ and not ところ then?

Edit: Or perhaps, どころ is not ところ at all, and is actually the どころ from どころか being used for contrast? So then the last sentence would be more like:

"Far from sneezing, what you have Tengo, is inexcusable."

FooSoft Wrote:知り合いにスギ花粉症の男がいてね、運転中にくしゃみが始まって、そのまま電柱にぶつかっちまった。ところが天吾くんのは、くしゃみどころじゃすまないものな。

My attempt:

So I knew this guy that was allergic to Japanese cedar polen, while driving he started sneezing and just like that he ran into a lightpole. Nevertheless, what you have Tengo, cannot be excused as mere sneezing.

First, it is saying that the guy is allergic to スギ right? For some reason (maybe the usage of に there, it looks weird to me).

Do you find the に in 知り合いに男がいる strange? It's kind of like "among" so it's like "there is a guy among people I know." And 花粉症の is simply saying that the guy is suffering from hay fever. So the whole clause means, "I know this hay fever suffer who..."

FooSoft Wrote:And second of all, is くしゃみどころ something like "the thing of sneezing"? Any reason why it's どころ and not ところ then?

This どころ is like 〜どころではない. You can see ない a bit later in the same clause: くしゃみどころじゃすまない. Also, じゃ here is a colloquial version of では. So it's a combination of Aどころではない + 済む (すむ). This Aで済む is like "it costs only A" or "can be settled at the expense of A."

So, the literal translation of the combination would be "(you) must pay much more than A" or "it will/would cost much more than A." This combination is a little more figurative in real usage and roughly means something is much more intense so that A isn't an accurate description. In your example sentence, it probably means that what 天吾 is suffering from causes a much worse symptom than sneezing, which can already be a cause of a car accident. Probably the implied meaning is that it's not surprising at all that he's having big trouble doing something or maybe it's natural that 天吾 crashes into a pole if he did it too.

So my translation of the passage is:

I know this guy suffering from hay fever who started sneezing while driving a car and, before he could do anything about it, crashed straight into a light pole. But in Tengo's case, it's nothing comparable to just a sneeze.

Makes perfect sense, thanks again magamo. I had no idea どころではない could be split like that or how 済む fit into the expression

magamo Wrote:I think the same goes for "until." If I asked when my online purchase would be shipped because the shop's website kept saying "Will be shipped soon" for a month and the customer service responds on the phone, "It will not be shipped until Tuesday," I might expect them to ship it on that day, i,e., Tuesday is the expected shipping day. But if the shop says the sentence after explaining how it was back ordered and how they can't ship it soon, I might take it that they will ship my purchase on Wednesday or perhaps even later, i.e., Wednesday is the earliest and is the most likely shipping day.

FWIW, I don't personally think that (for me) there's any context that would make "It will not be shipped until Tuesday" not imply "it will be shipped on Tuesday". If you want "likely Wednesday or later" then (IMHO) you need "until Tuesday at the earliest" or similar. (Of course an online retailer might say "won't ship until Tuesday" and then ship Wednesday, but I'd consider that to be them lying to me rather than a disagreement about semantics of 'until' ;-))

I was watching an anime today (Gungrave), and I heard this line:

あなたは今の私を見て笑いますか

「あなた」 is referring to a dead Mafia boss who the guy worked for. I thought the sentence meant along the lines of "Are you laughing at seeing who I am now?". But I turned on the subs to double-check, and it said "If you could see me now, would you laugh?". Can anyone provide some insight with regard to how the -te form is being used, and what this sentence would really mean?

pm215 Wrote:

magamo Wrote:I think the same goes for "until." If I asked when my online purchase would be shipped because the shop's website kept saying "Will be shipped soon" for a month and the customer service responds on the phone, "It will not be shipped until Tuesday," I might expect them to ship it on that day, i,e., Tuesday is the expected shipping day. But if the shop says the sentence after explaining how it was back ordered and how they can't ship it soon, I might take it that they will ship my purchase on Wednesday or perhaps even later, i.e., Wednesday is the earliest and is the most likely shipping day.

FWIW, I don't personally think that (for me) there's any context that would make "It will not be shipped until Tuesday" not imply "it will be shipped on Tuesday". If you want "likely Wednesday or later" then (IMHO) you need "until Tuesday at the earliest" or similar. (Of course an online retailer might say "won't ship until Tuesday" and then ship Wednesday, but I'd consider that to be them lying to me rather than a disagreement about semantics of 'until' ;-))

That's interesting. When I gave 明日まで出来ない as an example in the earlier post, at first I was thinking there was no way it could mean tomorrow would be the final day of the "can't" period. Repeating several other examples in my head, I though the same applied to other "can't" sentences in general like 明日まで出荷できません (so it would mean the same as you would interpret "It will not be shipped until tomorrow"). But after posting it, I googled to double-check my intuition in Japanese and found counterexamples! I even found a blog post claiming someone found through statistics or some kind of poll that more Japanese people interpreted similar sentences the opposite way I would.

It was just a blog post without a source. And other counterexamples I found may be merely due to regional differences or something. But I repeated 明日まで出来ない and similar sentences 10+ times, looking for situations where I'd interpret it the same way as the alleged majority. And finally I found myself taking it that way when まで is over pronounced, hence the editing.

Also, it took me a while to come up with the ambiguous example 明日までずっと出来ない (Well, ambiguous to me).

So, today my intuition betrayed me both in Japanese and English. This reminds me of the thread where someone (Was it you?) said "You know how you lent me your camera" and "You know that you lent me your camera" sounded the same. I still don't know how they sound to the majority of native English speakers to this day.

Could someone explain why there is a difference in pronunciation between 買う and 飼う when they're both かう? Thanks

battlehymnz Wrote:I was watching an anime today (Gungrave), and I heard this line:

あなたは今の私を見て笑いますか

「あなた」 is referring to a dead Mafia boss who the guy worked for. I thought the sentence meant along the lines of "Are you laughing at seeing who I am now?". But I turned on the subs to double-check, and it said "If you could see me now, would you laugh?". Can anyone provide some insight with regard to how the -te form is being used, and what this sentence would really mean?

I think that's just a bit of poetic license on the translator's part; since the guy's dead I think it's fine. That construction is common in Japanese and does not necessarily mean that the speaker believes in a literal afterlife with the person watching them.

Manske: The accent may be different.

Manske Wrote:Could someone explain why there is a difference in pronunciation between 買う and 飼う when they're both かう? Thanks

I just pronounced them in my fake standard Japanese. It seems I say 買う with the flat accent with か being lower in pitch while in 飼う accent is on か. I didn't notice any other significant difference in my pronunciation, so probably their pitch patters are the only difference.

In the Osaka dialect, which is my native dialect, they're not homonyms either and are pronounced with different pitch patters.

You can find the pitch pattern of each word in standard Japanese in some dictionaries. If I remember correctly, the online version of 大辞林 is free and indicates pitch patters for many words. You can use it in some major dictionary sites.

If you're not familiar with pitch accent, maybe wikipedia is a good starting point.

必聴 - Anyone know the reading for this?

I suppose ひっちょう, but impossible to find confirmation on the web.
It is the beauty of kanji, the meaning is clear and but not the reading.

MakiSushi Wrote:I suppose ひっちょう, but impossible to find confirmation on the web.
It is the beauty of kanji, the meaning is clear and but not the reading.

It's impossible to find anything! I had no luck searching for "必聴　読み方", "「必聴」の読み方", "「必聴」 読み方", "「必聴」　意味", and "「必聴」の意味". I checked alc and yahoo as well. Hopefully magamo will show up soon and save the day.