同じ実験を何度繰り返してみたところで, 何の結果も得られまい.

Can anyone confirm the end of this should, in fact, be 得られまい? And, if so, what is that? It's not something I've seen before...

Could it be the -まい of "negative conjecture"? c.f. pg. 161 in Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar, pg. 24 in KM2 Grammar, or here: http://jgram.org/pages/viewOne.php?tagE=mai-2 (which is basically just the entry from DIJG copied word-for-word)

So something like: "no matter how many times we repeat the same experiment, we probably won't be able to get a result"? At least that's my guess, maybe someone more knowledgeable can correct my clumsy translation...

Last edited by Blank (2009 November 15, 1:10 am)

I'm a bit confused by this smart.fm sentence:

引っ越しを業者に頼んだ。
I asked a company to handle my move.

I don't understand is how the を is being used.  Every example I've found has a nounをverb, but here the verb comes first. It seems to make sense moving を contractor as moving company...but why? If someone could explain it some more and maybe give some more examples where a noun comes after を that would help a lot. Thanks.

(bit of overlap with Tzadeck's answer.)

This sentence has only one verb in it (頼んだ) and it's at the end; 引っ越し and 業者 are both nouns. Both the を and the に clauses connect to the final verb. YをXに頼む ~= to ask X for Y.

If you see を followed by a noun it means you've reached the end of the を-marked clause and are starting on some other clause. The usual ordering of clauses within a sentence puts the を-clause last (in which case it's followed by the verb) but this isn't required; you can shuffle things around to change the emphasis.

Zorlee wrote:

Hi guys!
I´m coming out for some fresh air. I´m currently deep within Death Note, and it´s going pretty well. I do have a question for you guys, though:

やがて、誰も悪い事ができなくなるように…
そして、罪を受けて当然な悪人が心臓麻痺で死んでいく裏で、

First of all, the ように in the first sentence... Does it mean "like", as in: "Soon, it will be like no one does bad things anymore", or something along those lines? Or?
I´m just really confused about all the different ways to use ように, haha. Sometimes the meaning is obvious, but it could also make sense that this ように could also mean "in order to", as in: "Soon, in order to make no one do bad things anymore". No? I´m just thinking out loud here!

Secondly, the 裏で in the second sentence... Ehm, I really don´t have a clue on that one. Can it mean that "in the background" or "behind the scenes" or something?

Thank you guys!

It would be helpful to have more context for both of these.   The 裏で is connecting to some other sentence you didn't type in, but probably indicates some sort of secondary meaning or what the true meaning of that will be.  I don't remember Death Note well enough to say more than that -- I assume this is Light saying the things.

Last edited by yudantaiteki (2009 November 16, 2:19 pm)

This の is a special form of だ, so it can go after any particles that だ can go after.  This includes まで, から, and many others.  For instance, 友達からの手紙 = A letter from a friend.  東京までの電車 = A train to Tokyo.

This is the usual modifying sentence:
迷うばかりだ = [It] is only lost.
迷うばかりの心 = A heart that is only lost.

Zorlee wrote:

Hi guys!
I´m coming out for some fresh air. I´m currently deep within Death Note, and it´s going pretty well. I do have a question for you guys, though:

やがて、誰も悪い事ができなくなるように…
そして、罪を受けて当然な悪人が心臓麻痺で死んでいく裏で、

First of all, the ように in the first sentence... Does it mean "like", as in: "Soon, it will be like no one does bad things anymore", or something along those lines? Or?
I´m just really confused about all the different ways to use ように, haha. Sometimes the meaning is obvious, but it could also make sense that this ように could also mean "in order to", as in: "Soon, in order to make no one do bad things anymore". No? I´m just thinking out loud here!

Secondly, the 裏で in the second sentence... Ehm, I really don´t have a clue on that one. Can it mean that "in the background" or "behind the scenes" or something?

Thank you guys!

This kind of ように often works well if you translate it as "so that." Light has been writing the name of criminals on the Death Note so that eventually no one will ever do anything evil again. "in order to," "in order that" and the like also have similar meanings too.

By the way, やがて is a little difficult to translate into English. It's sort of a mix of "soon" and "eventually." In some sentences, "sooner or later" works fine, and in other sentences, "eventually," "soon," "some day," "after a while" or other sophisticated translations work better. In this sentence, やがて is expressing the sense that "As more criminals die of heart attacks , sooner or later people will realize what's going on and stop being evil."

As for 裏で, it roughly means "while," "as," etc. in this sentence, i.e., two events are happening at the same time. 同時に has a similar meaning, but 裏で is often used when you contrast the two events or one thing is strongly related to the other. One of the typical situations is when you describe a hypocrite who appears to be a very good person but is actually a bad guy, e.g., あの人は神父として教会で働いている裏で、とても悪いことをしている。

If it is used as (cause X)裏で、(clause Y), it often implies "People know/see/perceive (clause X), but don't notice (clause Y)." In Light's monologue, people know criminals will get killed, but they don't notice the fact that immoral guys are also being eliminated by Death Note because they die in accidents and so on. If Light killed them by heart attacks too, people would realize the clause Y part, but he wants to hide it, hence the disease, accidents, etc.

Last edited by magamo (2009 November 16, 5:37 pm)

Ah, thank you guys so much! This made it a whole lot clearer for me!

If you don´t mind, I have two more questions, regarding the following (unrelated) sentences.

名前のあとに人間界単位で、40秒以内に死因を書くと、その通りになる
My problem here is the 単位 part of 人間界単位. I´ve looked at many example-sentences, and I just can´t grasp the meaning of this word. Help a brother?

え…昨日、新宿の繁華街で六人ものを殺傷した通り魔は、
Well... 六人もの is the case for me. What does もの mean here? It can´t possibly mean person, since 人 is already written, so does it mean "thing/object" here, as in: "The killer, that did the thing of wounding and killing 6 people in the business district of Shinjuku..."

PS: Excuse my brutal translations. I will never. ever. become a translator, haha!

Zorlee wrote:

Ah, thank you guys so much! This made it a whole lot clearer for me!

If you don´t mind, I have two more questions, regarding the following (unrelated) sentences.

名前のあとに人間界単位で、40秒以内に死因を書くと、その通りになる
My problem here is the 単位 part of 人間界単位. I´ve looked at many example-sentences, and I just can´t grasp the meaning of this word. Help a brother?

え…昨日、新宿の繁華街で六人ものを殺傷した通り魔は、
Well... 六人もの is the case for me. What does もの mean here? It can´t possibly mean person, since 人 is already written, so does it mean "thing/object" here, as in: "The killer, that did the thing of wounding and killing 6 people in the business district of Shinjuku..."

PS: Excuse my brutal translations. I will never. ever. become a translator, haha!

人間界単位 is put here to indicates that the "40 seconds" is measured in humans' unit, i.e., a different kind of "second" is used in 死神's world. It's like 40 degrees can be either 40 degrees Celsius or 40 degrees Fahrenheit.

もの isn't one world here. It's も+の. も is emphasizing the fact that the number of murdered people is 6. It is often translated like "murderer who killed as many as 6 people." Simply put, it just adds the sense that 6 is surprisingly many.

Aha!!
六人もの人 etc. definitely makes sense!
And thank you guys for clearing up the 単位 issue, now I can finally unsuspend that sentence

Again, thank you so much!

sennahoj wrote:

I have seen "X歳という若さで" a few times when someone is said to die. If this means "at the young age of X years old", is there an age limit, because I have seen it used for a wide range of years. Does this mean it can describe actual youth and also be used the way the English phrase "X years young" is used?

"X歳という若さで" is used when you mean it's surprising for a young person to do/be/accomplish something at that young age. There is no clear-cut line. For example, セオドア・ルーズベルトは42歳という若さで大統領になった is ok, but "42 years old" wouldn't be surprising if it's about graduating university. Dying at 70 years old is considered to be very "early" in Japan, but it might change if life expectancy worsens.

It's like a 100 year old is "younger" than a 101 year old. You don't say, "He's not younger because he's over X years old!!"

By the same token, you can say 1年という短期間で億万長者になる, but it wouldn't be 短期間 if you're talking about how long it took you to finish your homework. There is no limit for a word 短期間, 若さ, 早さ, etc. because it's always relative.

Tzadeck wrote:

In this story, a man with a letter walks into a bar and meets an acquaintance, another man.  The man with the letter explains that he needs to respond to a love letter from his girlfriend, but he sucks at writing, so he's thinking about getting someone to write it for him.  The conversation then goes like this, starting with his friend’s response to the idea:
「代筆か？それはやめた方がいい。とんでもないことになりかねない。」
「どういう意味だい？」
「僕の友人に君と同じ事を考えた奴がいる。」

Now , I'm confused about the first sentence.  Of course, he's recommending against getting someone else to write the letter, but was does the なりかねない part at the end mean?  (I agree with the どういう意味だい reply )

The third line is a bit less confusing, but I just wanted something clarified.  The meaning seems to be "I have a friend who thought about doing the same thing."  My question is about the 僕の友人に part at the beginning.  Does this mean "of my friends," as in "In my group of friends, there is a guy who thought about doing the same thing."  It just seems a bit odd to me because　I've only seen the にいる pattern used in actually physical situations, and I didn't know it could be used this way.  Is that what's going on?

This かねない is "might" as in "it might cause you trouble." You can find an explanation and examples on Tae Kim:

http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/gr … easibility

友人に/友達に/知り合いに/whatever XXXがいる is a very common sentence structure and I think its meaning is very clear. Your sentence roughly means "I have a friend who tried the same thing." I think the nuance of した奴がいる in this kind of sentence structure is similar to "I know this guy who did XXX."

Last edited by magamo (2009 November 19, 5:38 am)

Here's a question for you good folks. On one of the first pages of the manga はじめてのあく, there's a picture of a dog saying this: 「男なら背中で語れ。」

What I'm having trouble with in particular is the word 「語れ」

Last edited by brandon7s (2009 November 21, 3:56 am)