turvy wrote:

Wow, that is amazing. By the way, why "brought" where is the past tense in the sentence?

Japanese authors frequently use present tense when narating a scene in the past. It's kind of like they're telling it from that moment (ie it can be relative). The sentence by itself is ambiguous; without context there's not much option but to literally translate it into present/future tense. That said, in my experience novels in english are rarely narrated in the present tense so "A young shepherd who was assisting Fabre brings him a tapered ball of dung." sounds kinda weird to my ear. In Japanese, however, it's not really strange at all.

zigmonty wrote:

[[[ファーブルの]手伝いをしていた][羊飼いの]]青年が、[[先が尖った][フンの]]玉を持ってきます。

Which is essentially the same as yudantaiteki's except for the first part (which, imho, is the same grammatically as the [羊飼いの] and [フンの] later).

Actually it's not -- the possessive and "descriptive" の are grammatically different; you can see this by trying to substitute じゃない for them and see how it results.  The first one is just a possessive that can be replaced with 's, the others are nominal sentences that are modifying the noun.

I always try to hammer the difference because not understanding this can result in people having trouble with normal, basic phrases like 日本人の友達.

That said, in my experience novels in english are rarely narrated in the present tense so "A young shepherd who was assisting Fabre brings him a tapered ball of dung."

The っていた would actually be translated as "had been".  "A young shepherd who had been assisting Fabre brings him..."  OK, that still sounds odd.

I guess this is another reason it's important to remember that Japanese doesn't have grammatical "past tense" and "present tense", it has aspect -- finished and unfinished.  This results in relative, rather than absolute, tenses...but now this is just getting more off-topic, I guess.

Last edited by yudantaiteki (2012 February 27, 6:27 am)

Tori-kun wrote:

http://www.lifehacker.jp/2012/02/120221brainstorming.html

皆さんは、いつもどのようにブレインストーミングを行っていますか？　アイデアを出すばかりで批判することを許さず、結局は役に立たないアイデアを採用していませんか？　皆さんの体験を、ぜひコメント欄で教えてください。
How do you always organise/make your brainstorming, folks? Are disapproving judging about ideas that just come up and finally don't make use of ideas that are not helpful? Please let us now your experiences in the comment box.

The black part is a bit difficult for me to get.
アイデアを出すばかりで - just by coming up with ideas
批判することを許さず - not approving judging/criticising

アイデアを出すばかりで
"just coming up with ideas (and)"

批判することを許さず、
"not permitting criticism/ not letting people criticize"

結局は役に立たないアイデアを採用していませんか？

This is a use of the rhetorical negative that's much more common in Japanese than in English: AREN'T YOU finally adopting useless ideas? By just coming up with ideas and not allowing them to be criticized, don't you end up adopting useless ideas?

Tori-kun wrote:

アイデアを出すばかりで批判することを許さず、結局は役に立たないアイデアを採用していませんか？

I believe it says, 'while not allowing criticism' ...
"Do you share your ideas while not allowing criticism, and in the end don't you adopt ideas that don't work?"
(Grammatically though, it's kind of the other way... 'do you, while sharing ideas, not allow criticism and...' but that sounds odd in English.)

Taken literally, there's no simultaneous-time grammar, but the first phrase ends in で, which seems to me to be a conjunction choice that creates a tight coupling and the first phrase sets the stage for the second phrase.

The point I was trying to make, really, is not about concurrence (either way is concurrent, after all), but that I believe the 'not permitting criticism' is given a more emphatic role than 'sharing ideas'.

My post wasn't to disagree with Fillanzea's more literal translation but because it hadn't been posted when I wrote what I did, the meaning isn't fundamentally different.

'Without accepting' would  be fine if you prefer, but doesn't change the meaning or emphasis substantially.

Last edited by SomeCallMeChris (2012 February 27, 12:52 pm)

Hey guys I was wondering what this means: あげないっすよ!  I have heard it a few times before, any help would be great!

I saw it in this AKB48 Video around 2:35 min in.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdr8eWey9Dc

SomeCallMeChris wrote:

sage47 wrote:

あげないっすよ!

It means あげない　です　よ and in this case that means 'I'm not giving you my delicious katsudon!'

Thanks for the clarification!

yudantaiteki wrote:

zigmonty wrote:

[[[ファーブルの]手伝いをしていた][羊飼いの]]青年が、[[先が尖った][フンの]]玉を持ってきます。

Which is essentially the same as yudantaiteki's except for the first part (which, imho, is the same grammatically as the [羊飼いの] and [フンの] later).

Actually it's not -- the possessive and "descriptive" の are grammatically different; you can see this by trying to substitute じゃない for them and see how it results.  The first one is just a possessive that can be replaced with 's, the others are nominal sentences that are modifying the noun.

I always try to hammer the difference because not understanding this can result in people having trouble with normal, basic phrases like 日本人の友達.

羊飼いじゃない青年　→　◯
ファーブルじゃない手伝い　→　☓

Of course they are different... This is what you meant by descriptive の being a replacement for だ, yes? As in the set: の、じゃない、だった、じゃなかった? Whereas the possessive の isn't part of that set, it's just a totally different use of の？ I've never actually thought of it like that before. They *are* totally different in my head though, you're right.

Good thing i'm not a japanese teacher, lol.

yudantaiteki wrote:

It's also interesting that by this mode of explanation, 高い本 is *not* the equivalent of English adjective + noun, but it's just another type of sentence modifier -- 高い is a complete sentence in Japanese (meaning "It is expensive").

Yeah, that makes sense. There's no real reason to consider an adjective modifying a noun as anything fundamentally different to a verb modifying a noun. Eg. 美味しいケーキ and 食べたケーキ. They're both just very simple relative clauses.

yudantaiteki wrote:

The only wrinkle in this explanation is that you don't say 日本人だ先生, you say 日本人の先生 instead.  So JSL describes this の as a special form of the copula.  (This explanation makes historic sense as well, since の ultimately derives from some pre-written-Japanese copula that also resulted in the particle に.)

な adjectives are also bit of a wrinkle. You don't say きれいだ少女 either.

turvy wrote:

This one should be an easy one, I usually wouldn't stop my reading for just one bit I don't understand but I can't figure out what ほど is doing exactly:

たった半年で片言で話し始めたほど賢い赤ちゃんでした。
Such an intelligent baby that she was already talking with 6 months?.

You've dropped 片言で in your translation, but you've got the ほど bit right -- it's expressing how much (to what extent) the 赤ちゃん was 賢い. This is basically just ほど's usual meaning, I think (when it's not in the ば...ほど pattern, anyway).

EDIT: Maybe this is it: [Subject] was [such] an intelligent child to the extent of smattering words with merely 6 months.

That's a literal (ie awful :-)) translation but it means the same as your first attempt really. You might try "so ~ that ~" as a slightly more natural sounding phrasing.

からして according to renshuu.

[The countryside] you can tell [is different] / [the difference] from the air.

Last edited by turvy (2012 February 28, 11:58 pm)

It's the past tense of かなう.

かなう is written in hiragana fairly often; 叶 isn't a Joyo kanji even on the additional kanji recently added.