Here's the sentence: 「質問のある方はどうぞ。」

The English translation they gave is: Please feel free to ask any questions.
The part that I'm having a hard time figuring out is:「ある方」

What function does the word 「方」 serve here? I kinda get the 「どうぞ」part; and by 「質問のある」, I would imagine that mean's something similar to "the existing question", but I can't figure out what purpose 「方」 has in this context. Anyone wanna break down this sentence for me?

方 can mean person. It's more polite.

http://www.mail-archive.com/japanese_lan...00640.html

(Relevant section: "The form "A no aru B" means "B that has A" or "B with A"".)

ある方＝Person that has
方=Person　（かた）

The grammar here is plain/dictionary form+noun="That kind of thing" so in this case a person that has something. Another example would be 食べられない本=Book that can't be eaten.

So adding 質問 in there= A person that has a question=質問のある方
どうぞ Here is basically just the "feel free" part.
So a more literal translation might be: Person that has question, feel free to ask.

質問のある方 would literally mean a "problem-exists person" and its pronounced かた not　ほう when it's in reference to people.

you'll see 方 used for words like 外国人 sometimes.

What a super sentence to think about, you will hear this all the time!

Awesome, thanks guys. Exactly what I was looking for.

I knew beforehand that 「方」meant "person", due to the way it was being read, but what was really confused me was it's use coming immediately after a verb. It makes total sense now, seeing the grammatical explanation for it's use in this sentence.

Oh, and nice link, ruiner. The "A no aru B" explanation in there was enlightening.

Question though!

CerpinTaxt's example got me thinking: 「食べられない本」
Can the "A の ある/いる B" be broadened to include other verbs as well? I guess the verbs would have to be transitive.
For example:「本の読んだ方」
Would this mean: "person that read book"? Or am I just making stuff up now?

Well の wouldn't work for that sentence because your literally saying "The book's person that read." Gonna need a　を in there for it to work so:　本を読んだ方

The の works mostly when the original clause would have used a が.
ex. 質問がある

Any sentence, minus sentence-final particles, can modify any noun (grammatically). The only exception is that if the sentence ends in a na-adjective you use な to modify, and if it ends in a noun (or "no-adjective") you use の.

So in this case the basic sentence is 質問がある, which is "[someone] has a question/questions". All you have to do to create "A person who has questions" is just stick 方 after that, and you get 質問がある方.

But wait, the original has の -- that's because when a sentence modifies a noun, の can replace が. I think it's best to consider this to be a totally separate thing from the の you're probably used to seeing in other contexts.

Although learners usually learn 赤い本 as adjective + noun, it's really just a special case of the general rule "sentence + noun = sentence modifies that noun", since 赤い is a complete sentence in Japanese ("it is red").

This is a major aspect of Japanese grammar, and it's one that takes some time since (1) the modifying sentence can have a very wide range of relations to the noun it modifies, (2) the modifying sentence can be very long and have additional modifiers inside it, and (3) because the modifier comes first, you really have to be attentive to the context to know that you've just started reading a modifying sentence and not a stand-alone sentence. I really think that dealing with modifying sentences is one of the major barriers to an advanced, fluent level of reading.

(Sometimes these are called "relative clauses" or "subordinate clauses" by analogy to English, but I think this obscures the fact that the modifiers are all grammatically complete sentences, unlike English.)

Very interesting post, yudantaiteki. So, the sentence (or clause) that is modifying the noun 「方」is: 「質問のある」- is that right?

You got it. Whatever is being modified will come at the every end.

In this case, book is being modified:

赤い本
The red book

昨日読んだ赤い本
The red book I read yesterday

But Japanese gets tricky when you have modifiers stacked on top of modifiers


昨日読んだ赤い本の内容が(の）難しいところ。

The part of the red book that I read yesterday that was difficult to read.

In this case, everything is serving to modify　ところ

samesong Wrote:You got it. Whatever is being modified will come at the every end.

Thanks, samesong.

samesong Wrote:昨日読んだ赤い本の内容が(の）難しいところ

Man, I can definitely see how this whole modifier thing could become very confusing very quickly.

I have another question from my Core2000 deck for you fine folks here.

「家に遊びに来てください。」

The English translation in the deck says:
Please come over to my house.

There's nothing in the English translation that makes a reference to the word 「遊び」- at least not from what I can tell. Is this just a very loose translation, or is there something about that word that I should know?

遊ぶ also means "hang out" as well as "play" - which leads to tons of Japanese people asking you in English if you "Want to go play sometime?"... sounds like they're about 7 years old when they ask that question.

So anyways, that's a loose translation... they might also have said: "Please come over to my house for a visit sometime." or "Come hang out at my house sometime." Or something like that.

Ben_Nielson Wrote:遊ぶ also means "hang out" as well as "play" - which leads to tons of Japanese people asking you in English if you "Want to go play sometime?"... sounds like they're about 7 years old when they ask that question.

So anyways, that's a loose translation... they might also have said: "Please come over to my house for a visit sometime." or "Come hang out at my house sometime." Or something like that.

Ooh, I see. That explains a lot. Thanks!

yay, 遊ぶ has some very different nuances than play. It's more enjoying a good time being idle. For example, you wouldn't normally use it for a game of 囲碁 or 将棋 as these are taken seriously and 遊ぶ would imply that you are not putting any effort into the game.

That said, 家に遊びに来てください。　is one of my favorite Japanese sentences, it's like being a child again

Got another sentence that I'm not quite figuring out on my own; lets see if ya'll can point me in the right direction here as well.

The sentence is: 「彼女は耳がよく聞こえません」
Translation is: Her hearing isn't very good.

The part that has me confused is the word　「聞こえません」 according to the dictionary, the plain form 聞こえる means: "to be heard, to be audible", the dictionary also says it can mean "to be said to be, to be reputed".

I'm not understanding how either of these definitions make this sentence say "Her hearing isn't very good."

If I didn't see translation first, I would think it means: "Her ears can't be heard very well.", which would not make a lick of sense. Obviously I'm missing some nuances here. Anyone wanna enlighten me once again?

In this case 聞こえる does take the first definition of "to be heard, to be audible." Well addressing the question it might be better to split the sentence up.

よく聞こえません- "Can't hear very well." Would be a good translation of that part.

Breaking it up further-
よく-Properly/well
聞こえません-Not being audible, not being heard

So the negative of 聞こえる is listed above and then modified by よく　you could get a literal translation of "Properly can't hear/not being heard"

Then the first part the grammar dictates that when you describe a persons body part you go person は　body part　が　defining characteristic. 彼女は耳が- "Her ear" So again combining literal translations, and some modifications, "Her ear can't properly hear." And from there the translation becomes apparent (I hope). But leaving a literal definition is not really a great thing I guess Cerego just jumped to "Her hearing isn't very good." Which equates to the same thing.


I hope this helps somewhat, not used to explaining grammar lol. I have no doubt someone will probably come along and provide a more fleshed out response if i somehow happen to confuse you more lol.

CerpinTaxt Wrote:In this case 聞こえる does take the first definition of "to be heard, to be audible." Well addressing the question it might be better to split the sentence up.

よく聞こえません- "Can't hear very well." Would be a good translation of that part.

Breaking it up further-
よく-Properly/well
聞こえません-Not being audible, not being heard

So the negative of 聞こえる is listed above and then modified by よく　you could get a literal translation of "Properly can't hear/not being heard"

　Well, I understand the sentence from a grammatical viewpoint, the part that makes me wonder was the "きこえません” meaning "not being heard".

For instance, In English, I can saying "My ears can hear well" makes perfect sense, but if I said "My ears aren't heard very well", that doesn't make any sense. I would expect them to use 「聞きません」 instead of 「聞こえません」 in this sentence.

So I guess my real question is: does 聞こえる mean "to be heard" as well as "to hear"?

Oh, that makes it a lot easier then. 聞こえる Is strictly used to mean "Being able to hear, to be heard" while 聞く is strictly "to hear/listen etc."

Examples:

音楽を聞こえました= I was able to hear/listen to the music. This is like "I was able to have the ability to listen/hear"

音楽を聞きました= I listened to (heard the) music. This is just plain old listening/hearing.

CerpinTaxt Wrote:Oh, that makes it a lot easier than. 聞こえる Is strictly used to mean "Being able to hear, to be heard" while 聞く is strictly "to hear/listen etc."

Aha, I get it now. "Being able to hear" makes sense. Though, I would have expected 聞ける in that case.

*EDIT* D'oh! I just looked back at the Tae Kim guide and saw there's a section about 聞こえる in there, and it explains the differences pretty well. Better late than never I guess.

I should really go to sleep... but 聞ける is a bit different. 聞ける is "to be given the opportunity to have heard." Hmm, I don't have any great examples but the same thing is seen in 見える/見られる which is equivalent to the 聞こえる/聞ける problem, and Tae Kim has some decent explanations for that so I'll pull those.

友達のおかげで、映画はただで見られた。 "Thanks to to my friend I was able to watch the movie for free"
With this example it's because the friend helped out you could 見られる, "being given the opportunity to see." This is similar to 聞ける

映画を見える= "I can see the movie"= I am able to see the movie.
Hear it's just the plain "i have the ability to see movie." This is similar to 聞こえる

Sorry had to pull different examples for that. Not confident enough with my japanese to create good examples for 聞ける/聞こえる.

EDIT: Bleh totally forgot Tae-Kim had 聞ける　and 聞こえる. I just got it from my sentence deck and searching 聞ける didn't bring anything up -_-" Totally forgot the verb was conjugated.

Thanks for your help, Cerpin. I'm glad someone else besides me stays up this late on here.

You should use が with 聞こえる instead of を. Same with 見える.　They speak more for the quality of the sight or sound.