The first interpretation is correct, that's what the ～てから means. I read the report I wrote in the summer holidays again carefully after showing it to my teacher.

I would guess maybe he got some advice/corrections from his teacher and read through the report again with them in mind.

Kuroro Wrote:夏休みに書いたレポートを先生に見せてから、もう一度よく読んだ


But the sentence makes more sense to me if I think of it as B since A with a nuance of causality 'Since I will show my teacher the essay I wrote during the summer holidays, I read it carefully once again'

If you wanted to say this, you would simply use the future tense.
夏休みに書いたレポートを先生に見せるから、もう一度よく読んだ。
Because I will show the report I wrote to the teacher, I read it one more time carefully.

This is a good illustration of how important grammar is. If you simply rely on knowing vocabulary and inferring the meaning of a sentence from what seems most obvious to you, you will often make big mistakes.

Thank you The phrase came from a listening exercise where the listener was presented with a set of separate sentences, so no context was given and that threw me off, thanks again

Edit: Thanks Tzadeck, you're absolutely right I confused the て-form+から with the から used when giving an explanation, I've only been studying Japanese for five months so I thought there might have been another nuance to that construction that I didn't know of, I'll pay more attention to these things from now on

One thing to remember about the tense of a Japanese sentence is that it's decided by the final predicate, and everything else tends to be relative to that. 見せて by itself has no tense, it could be past, present, or future depending on the sentence. It just means that the "showing" happens before whatever the final predicate is. The final predicate, 読んだ, is perfective (i.e. represents a completed action), and thus past tense. So the 見せて must be in the past as well.

Thank you I'll keep that in mind

The word is お店のくせ　／　お店の癖

Three examples. A young man is speaking? Anyway, he's the shopper for his family, and your character is speaking with him at the market.
もうお買い物はカンペキだと思ったのになぁ……
また一からお店のくせを覚える事にするよ。

最近ようやく一番安い買い物ルートを見つけたんだ。
これも毎日お買い物してお店のくせを覚えちゃったお陰だよ。

ふふ……一番安いお買い物。なんだか気持ちがいいな♪
お店のくせを全部覚えて一番安い買い物ルートを見つけたんだ。

お店の癖 = the peculiarities/particularities of the shops = figuring out your route around the shops to get the cheapest price for everything.

This is explained in the quoted passage

Can anybody help me out with this sentence?

何か手伝うことがないかと思って。

I don't get it at all, I've always seen the ことがある used after the past tense to indicate a previous experience but what does it mean when it comes after the dictionary form?

Kuroro Wrote:Can anybody help me out with this sentence?

何か手伝うことがないかと思って。

I don't get it at all, I've always seen the ことがある used after the past tense to indicate a previous experience but what does it mean when it comes after the dictionary form?

An English-y translation of that snippet might sound something like...
"I thought there might be something I could help with...?"

こと is just being used in a very normal way here (in conjunction with 何か) to mean "something" or "things." ("things" to help with)

Even if there was no 何か it could be used in the same way. For example, やること means "things to do."
ex/ やることがなくて退屈だ -- "(There's) nothing to do and (it's) boring.

Lots of examples of the more general pattern going on here and its special cases: http://amaterasu.tindabox.net/guide/Clauses.php

@drdunlap: thank you So 何か手伝う is acting as a modifier of こと and the ないか is meant to express a desire/invitation (negative form+か), right? So without the と思って nominalizing the whole thing, 何か手伝うことがないか would mean something along the lines of 'isn't there anything I could help you with?'

@Vempele: Thanks for the link That website looks like a great resource

One way of grabbing a hold of koto is to recognize that in English we have the ability to turn verbs into nouns a variety of ways. "Swimming" can just be use as a noun, as can "to swim". Sometimes we turn nouns into verbs, and sometimes verbs into nouns, with no change at all to the word (except to add 'd' to the end to make it passive or past tense, if that.)

In Japanese, without that flexibility, because verbs have to be able to carry so much more information in the verb, something always has to be added to a verb to make it usable as a noun in Japanese. The usual suspects are こと or just simply の.

およぐのやめたの is one of those ungrammatical things native speakers use all the time.

And it is complicated by the fact that the pluperfect/past perfect is regularly used in English in main verb of a simple sentence, and Japanese can be seen as only denoting completed/non-completed actions, and has to express past perfect/present perfect through the use of dependent clauses.

In English, we can say "I have (never) been to Japan" expressing with no dependent clauses, while Japanese uses the dependent clause of (completed verb+koto), and then says/asks whether that completed thing is something we have.

kapalama Wrote:One way of grabbing a hold of koto is to recognize that in English we have the ability to turn verbs into nouns a variety of ways. "Swimming" can just be use as a noun, as can "to swim". Sometimes we turn nouns into verbs, and sometimes verbs into nouns, with no change at all to the word (except to add 'd' to the end to make it passive or past tense, if that.)

In Japanese, without that flexibility, because verbs have to be able to carry so much more information in the verb, something always has to be added to a verb to make it usable as a noun in Japanese. The usual suspects are こと or just simply の.

およぐのやめたの is one of those ungrammatical things native speakers use all the time.

And it is complicated by the fact that the pluperfect/past perfect is regularly used in English in main verb of a simple sentence, and Japanese can be seen as only denoting completed/non-completed actions, and has to express past perfect/present perfect through the use of dependent clauses.

In English, we can say "I have (never) been to Japan" expressing with no dependent clauses, while Japanese uses the dependent clause of (completed verb+koto), and then says/asks whether that completed thing is something we have.

That was one of the best explanations I've seen for こと.

That comparison with English was very insightful, thank you so much Kapalama!

Hey everyone, I'm having trouble with a definition for 【幻】

実体がないのにあるかのように見えるもの

the ように and のに are throwing me off. I know that のに means despite and ように can be used to mean "similar too", but I can''t connect the dots...

Is it saying something along the lines of something that exists and can be seen despite not actually being there?

Thanks

sparky14 Wrote:Hey everyone, I'm having trouble with a definition for 【幻】

実体がないのにあるかのように見えるもの

the ように and のに are throwing me off. I know that のに means despite and ように can be used to mean "similar too", but I can''t connect the dots...

Is it saying something along the lines of something that exists and can be seen despite not actually being there?

Thanks

「〜かのように」 is like English 'as if/though', so「〜かのように見える」means "appears as if". A somewhat literal translation might be: "Something that appears as though it has a material form even though it doesn't (have one)."

I think what might be throwing you off is that ようdoes not really mean "similar to". It means "in the manner of".

I would not worry to much about separate the かのように from 様に in general. か is just the question marker there which can usefully thought of as saying maybe there is.

Hey everyone, having trouble with a word in this sentence

額に宿ったそのラタトスクごと消滅してもらう。

What's ごと?

Context: This is from a game, and this girl has this ラタトスク (the game hasn't revealed what that is yet) thing on her forehead. Based on the story so far, it's some sort of marking that holds a great power.

Thanks

〔…といっしょに〕

みかんを皮ごと食べる
eat an orange, peel and all

地所ごと家を買った
I bought the house 「and the lot [together with the land].

Also a really really common phrase using it is 丸ごと, which combined with the surrounding hand gestures the guy was using when I learned it, helped ごと sink in. (rare kanji for this usage of ごと is 共)

Be aware there is another ごと, that has a related but separate meaning every twenty minutes, every hour, , that is usually written in kanji 毎, 20分毎 一時間毎. That's a common one for bus schedules and the like.

(As a side note, that seemed a pretty rare usage for 宿る, especially when written so close to 額, which had me thinking price, not forehead, because I deal with hotels all the time. But internet research says that there is a reason they used that construction. Don't search for it or you will get spoilers methinks.)

kapalama Wrote:(As a side note, that seemed a pretty rare usage for 宿る, especially when written so close to 額, which had me thinking price, not forehead, because I deal with hotels all the time. But internet research says that there is a reason they used that construction. Don't search for it or you will get spoilers methinks.)

But why would you stay in the price? 8)

drdunlap Wrote:

kapalama Wrote:(As a side note, that seemed a pretty rare usage for 宿る, especially when written so close to 額, which had me thinking price, not forehead, because I deal with hotels all the time. But internet research says that there is a reason they used that construction. Don't search for it or you will get spoilers methinks.)

But why would you stay in the price? 8)

Why would I stay in a forehead? I guess part of the problem is that I almost use お凸 for forehead, and 額 as the second character for 金額/半額.

(TBH, I have heard only heard 宿る for staying in a hotel (but that's ususually 留まる/宿泊, hiding from rain/sun (雨宿り), or non-physical metaphorical usages of 宿る.)

Well that and hermit crabs (宿借り), but that's their hotel for now.

宿る is used also for spirit possession (an old usage -- the Koujien gives 亡き魂や宿りて見給ふらむ from the Genji). I think that's closest to the usage from Ratatosk above.

kapalama Wrote:

drdunlap Wrote:

kapalama Wrote:(As a side note, that seemed a pretty rare usage for 宿る, especially when written so close to 額, which had me thinking price, not forehead, because I deal with hotels all the time. But internet research says that there is a reason they used that construction. Don't search for it or you will get spoilers methinks.)

But why would you stay in the price? 8)

Why would I stay in a forehead?

Because you're a strange, mystical thingo leeched onto someone's head and this isn't exactly the word "stay," it's ”宿る”?

Well yeah, I realized once I looked up the "ラタトスク" the used of that word is designed to be a clue of a non concrete thing.

yudantaiteki Wrote:宿る is used also for spirit possession (an old usage -- the Koujien gives 亡き魂や宿りて見給ふらむ from the Genji). I think that's closest to the usage from Ratatosk above.

I...I did not know that.

Now we have ruined the reveal in the game. I am so sorry. I am why we can't have nice things in here.