Zon70 wrote:
could anyone tell me what たまらん means? i see it all the time and im assuming its some form of たまらない but when i read the dictionary definition of たまらない(in english and in japanese) it still does not make any sense
here is a sentence i got from a youtube video
あの表情たまらんｗ
The core meaning of たまらない is that something evokes too strong an emotion to control. It can be either very positive or extremely negative depending on what kind of sensation you're having.
It often follows て/で as in 彼女が好きで好きでたまらない, which means you love her so much you can't control yourself. You can also say うれしくてたまらない, 腹が立ってしたまらない and so on. 仕方がない, しょうがない, and ならない are synonyms in this sense.
You can use it to modify an adjective to make its sense intense as well. For example, a cute little girl's adorable smile that makes everyone awwwwww is たまらなく可愛らしい笑顔. Again, this word can carry negative tones, e.g., こんなのたまらなく嫌だ (I really don't like this) and たらまなく痒い (Soooo itchy!).
You can also use it to intensify a noun or a subject clause too. For instance, この緊張感がたまらない is an oft-used phrase that means you like the tension very much that always involves a particular activity or situation. You might have already heard it from a boxer, someone who is riding a roller coaster, and so on. Another example is ツンデレにくぎゅときてはもうたまらない (Oh, god! Kugimiya voicing a tsundere girl!).
たまらない itself can refer to an extreme negative sensation, e.g., こんなに暑くてはたまらない (I can't stand this heat!).
One of the most frequent word to further intensify the sense of たまらない is もう. As you can see in the combination もう + すぐ = もうすぐ, this word emphasizes the fact that something is really coming, about to happen or something along those lines. So the combination もうたまらない means, in a little awkward literal sense, that the situation where you can't control yourself because of intense emotions is about to happen.
So without context, you can't tell what the speaker implied by あの表情たまらんｗ. If he's referring to a funny face someone is making in a prank video, it can simply mean "lol look at that funny face!" If you're watching porn, well, it shouldn't be that difficult to figure out what it should mean.
Hinode wrote:
"涼しくって快適な秋がすぐにやってくるのが待ちきれません。"
I'd say this translates to "I can't wait for the cool and pleasant autumn to come soon enough", a friend of mine says it's "I can't wait for the cool and pleasent autumn that is coming soon."
Who's right? >_<
It's already slightly awkward in Japanese in normal context. If you parse and grammatically analyze it, it'd be something along the line of "I can't wait for the situation that the cool and pleasant autumn comes soon to happen." It might make sense when, for example, someone says, in the middle of hot summer, that the comfortable season comes real soon, so you think this guy is nuts or has no clue what Japan's weather is like, and you say in a very sarcastic tone, "Yeah, I can't wait for the cool-autumn-comes-in-no-time thing to happen right in the middle of summer."
That said, it's too pedantic to say it's wrong. So just take it that the speaker thinks the next season is around the corner and he can't wait if said in a normal situation. It's just poorly worded.
Last edited by magamo (2011 September 18, 6:15 pm)
