Haha.  What a hilarious misinterpretation.  The ... thing threw me off, as well as the fact that she often says strange things.

Thanks!

Last edited by Tzadeck (2009 November 29, 2:16 am)

I'm back with another question regarding a Core2000 sentence.

「彼に会えて嬉しかった。」
I was glad to meet him. (translation given)

I'm trying to fully understand the reasoning for the use of 会えて. It seems to be using the potential form, that I get, but what I don't get is it's use of the て-form. Can anyone help me with that?

Last edited by brandon7s (2009 November 30, 12:33 am)

brandon7s wrote:

I'm back with another question regarding a Core2000 sentence.

「彼に会えて嬉しかった。」
I was glad to meet him. (translation given)

I'm trying to fully understand the reasoning for the use of 会えて. It seems to be using the potential form, that I get, but what I don't get is it's use of the て-form. Can anyone help me with that?

Though translating back to English, even in your head, shouldn't really be encouraged, I usually translate the て form (with verbs) in my head as "having."  So, I would think of this as "Having been able to meet him, I was happy."  Sometimes the て　form can connect verbs simply in an 'and' type way (as explained in the post above), but generally it also caries the meaning that the first verb has been realized.  The meanings range from

putting two things in sequence: "First thing" て"Second thing";
ongoing action, or 'ing:' 食べている I'm eating, I just ate;
causation, reason (I think your example is this): reason て result

and a lot of others that I'm kind of too lazy to think of.

However, using 'having' works the vast vast majority of the time to express all of these.  This does lead to thinking strange things like "I exist having (started eating)/(eaten)"  However, 食べている really does have a wider meaning than "I'm eating," so it's good not to think of it directly as 'I'm eating.'

Last edited by Tzadeck (2009 November 30, 6:12 am)

I hope you guys don't mind if I post an English question! I am currently reading a translation of Anna Karenina, and came across this sentence:

"In another's man's house..."

Why is it "another's" rather than just "another"?

Thank you it's sometimes hard for me to recognize errors as opposed
to just something I just haven't seen before.

Zorlee wrote:

Hi guys!
Pop-quiz time:

ちくわは、魚の身をすりつぶして、竹に巻いて、焼いたり、蒸したりしたもので、薄い塩味で、おいしいですよ。

I´m wondering about the もので part. Is it the polite もので particle, or is it もの + で?
At first I thought it was もの + で, but then I remembered that もので also works as an independent particle, and therefore - current status: Very confused.

Thank you!

It's もの + で. If it's difficult to decipher, what it means is:

ちくわとは、魚の身をすりつぶしてから竹に巻いて、それを焼いたり、蒸したりしたものです。ちくわは、薄い塩味で、おいしいですよ。

This kind of comma splice is common in spoken Japanese. It can be very confusing, but it's not wrong. Anyway, if the sentence in question were written (not a transcript of spoken language) by an adult native speaker, the author would be sent straight to grade school to learn Japanese grammar again.

The first half is saying basically the same thing as this line in the article about ちくわ on Wikipedia:

竹輪（ちくわ）は、魚肉のすり身を竹など棒に巻きつけて焼いたもの、または蒸した食品。

Oh, that will definitely improve your Japanese! As for the spliced sentence, probably that's the way he or she speaks Japanese. Your friend might deliberately punctuate the sentence so you can understand it easily. But that's pretty much how your average Japanese would speak in conversation.

As your Japanese gets better, native speakers will start speaking Japanese the way they always do. And you'll come across sentences like:

ちくわは魚の身をすりつぶして竹に巻いて焼いたり蒸したりしたもので、薄い塩味でおいしいから私は毎日のようにたべるんだけど、なんかあの淡泊な味が嫌いっていう人もそこそこいて、っというかうちの弟がそうなんだけど、あんなにおいしのになんで？って言ったら、まぁそれは個人の趣味だしどうでもいいじゃんとか言われて、うーん、まぁそりゃそうかって納得しつつその場で冷蔵庫から一本取り出しておいしいぞーって見せつけながら食べたんだけど、ってかそれはどうでもよくて、やっぱおいしいからせっかく日本に来たんだし、ちくわ食べないと損だって。(This is one sentence lol)

Many people on the internet write English sentences like that because they are horrible at English and cannot spell and have bad grammar I think that they should study English more before they start writing stuff because they sound like idiots but maybe they are idiots or at least they are children why are there so many children on the internet especially youtube I keep trying to disable the display of comments but for some reason youtube never remembers the setting so the next time I watch a video I get to see people being immature it's really annoying what is the point of writing a comment like "lol" on a video?

brandon7s wrote:

I can't wait till I can start reading ridiculous stuff like that in Japanese and understand it. If I ever get to that point, I think I will have reached true fluency.

  Another question from Core2000:

「お酒は大人になってから。」
Translation given:  You can drink alcohol when you're an adult.

I'm assuming that なって is the te-form of なる (to become), so the 大人になってから part looks like "from when you become an adult", but again, I don't really understand the usage of the te-form on なる. Is it directive?

Feel free to enlighten me. Lord knows I need it.

v-てから/'te form verb + kara' is what you're looking to reference, grammatically.

Yeah, it's literally something like "as for alcohol, after become adult."

ninetimes wrote:

This is a pretty mundane question, but it has evolved from simple curiosity into something more academic and I figured it couldn't hurt to poll more answers.

Song title for an older anime is written たとえ、涙かれても.

Does anybody have any idea what is going on here?  For rough context the song is played during a sombre moment during somebodies final minutes of life in a fight, so there are Tough Guy Tears and so on and so forth.

Does 涙 verb and conjugate in some way other than -suru that I'm not aware of and this is a glorified te-mo construction?  Is the kare actually 彼 in disguise?  I can 'feel' the general meaning of the phrase but actually nailing some sort of workable translation or even a soundly literal one is eluding me just because I can't really tell what's going on, since I get the feeling there is some "artistry" at work here that is beyond my fairly rudimentary ability.

Yes I get fixated on dumb questions but hey at least now I'll never get 涙 and 泣 confused again. 

{仮令　even if} {涙　tears} {涸れて　run dry} {も　emphasis on the 'even if'?}?

http://thejapanesepage.com/book/export/html/345

(ctrl+f "Even if たとえ　～ても")

Last edited by nest0r (2009 December 03, 8:53 pm)

ninetimes wrote:

Bloody brilliant, thanks, that makes a ton more sense.

I still draw a lot of contextual blanks when kanji isn't being deployed for verbs due to vocab/experience shortage.

Also, that page is amazing, I'd have never expected to find a set of examples with that same construction.

Indeed. Learning how to quickly deconstruct and reference sentences is a valid skill we develop as we progress with the sentence method, methinks. I file that under 'learning how to learn better' when raving about how great self-study and technology is. ;p

Last edited by nest0r (2009 December 03, 10:46 pm)