meta user
network profile
| bio | website | nec-labs.com/~tsuyoshi |
|---|---|---|
| location | Princeton, NJ | |
| age | 33 | |
| visits | member for | 1 year, 11 months |
| seen | 11 hours ago | |
| stats | profile views | 1,027 |
My name is Tsuyoshi Ito in English and 伊藤剛志 (いとうつよし) in Japanese. I am a native speaker of Japanese with a casual interest in languages. I have been living outside Japan for a few years, and my knowledge about trends in Japanese is likely to be outdated.
Aside: My secret goal is to keep being the top answerer in the tag “food.”
|
Jun 2 |
answered | Is the use of 先生 and similar titles context sensitive? |
|
Jun 2 |
comment |
Usage of なんて and なんか as emphasis. “3枚のレポート” probably means a report of three pages long (because three reports would be “3本のレポート”), but this is tangential to this question. |
|
Jun 2 |
comment |
What are the origins of ヶ? Me either, except in a dictionary. :) |
|
Jun 2 |
comment |
How should I select what first-person pronoun to use? Because わたし and わたくし are two different pronunciations of the same kanji 私 (and they are different in formality as you said), if you discuss the difference between the two, it is better to write them in hiragana. |
|
Jun 2 |
comment |
Passive-transitive-verb vs. Intransitive-verb （他動詞の受け身 vs. 自動詞) (2) I find both 本に教えられた and 本から教わった acceptable, but both are (kind of) personification. Probably the speaker is identifying the book with its author. I think that the usual (non-personifying) way to state “I learned how to use transitive verbs from a book” is 私は他動詞の使い方を本で習った. |
|
Jun 2 |
comment |
Passive-transitive-verb vs. Intransitive-verb （他動詞の受け身 vs. 自動詞) (1) I think I agree with you that 田中さんに教えられた has a stronger focus on someone’s actively teaching than 田中さんに教わった. However, it seems to me that 教わった still has some focus on the action of teaching when you compare it to, say, 田中さんから習った. (more) |
|
Jun 2 |
comment |
What are the origins of ヶ? Note that the character 个 is the simplified version of 個, and that the form 个 is very rare in Japanese. |
|
Jun 2 |
comment |
Can {X-eba X hodo Y} clause pattern be shortened to {X hodo Y}? @syockit: (cont’d) A possible (retrospective) reason might be because X is an adjective in this case. I noticed that at least in some usages of “X hodo Y” that means “It’s Y to the extent of X” that I can think of right now, X is always either a noun or a verb. But I am not sure if this reasoning is correct. |
|
Jun 2 |
comment |
Can {X-eba X hodo Y} clause pattern be shortened to {X hodo Y}? @syockit: This equally applies to “X-eba X hodo Y.” The form “X-eba X hodo Y” is unambiguous because, as you noticed, “X hodo Y” has another meaning. But if I see 近いほど届かない (chikai hodo todokanai) in a poem or a lyric, I would somehow understand it as the same meaning as 近ければ近いほど届かない (chiakereba chikai hodo todokanai) without fear of ambiguity. I began wondering why. (more) |
|
Jun 1 |
comment |
How can I say “Right now”, or “At that exact moment”? I have never heard 今どころ to mean “right now” or “currently,” but I am happy to see examples. The answer contained other errors, too. I downvoted the answer and explained the reasons for the downvote, and the user who posted it deleted it. |
|
Jun 1 |
comment |
How can I say “Right now”, or “At that exact moment”? @Kdansky: No, ちょうど今 is a usual phrase to describe “exactly now,” and it can refer to the very near past, too (just like “just now”). |
|
Jun 1 |
comment |
What is the real difference between the proper use of the words さむい and つめたい? There are other usages of 寒い, but I think that they are figurative ones derived from the usage about the weather. For example, the Daijirin dictionary shows the usage 心が寒い (lacking and unsatisfied). |
|
Jun 1 |
comment |
What is the real difference between the proper use of the words さむい and つめたい? (1) It is not strictly necessary to be able to touch to use use 冷たい. For example, 空気が冷たい and 風が冷たい. For a figurative sense (as in 冷たい人), it is possible to say 態度が冷たい and 視線が冷たい. (2) “The atmosphere of a situation can be 寒い (if many 冷たい people are present).” I do not think that this usage exists. There is a phrase お寒い状況 (which means a situation which is disappointing because it is far from expectation and/or ideal situation), but it is different from what you wrote. |
|
Jun 1 |
awarded | Organizer |
|
Jun 1 |
revised |
Pronunciation of 閾値 : いきち or しきいち? edited tags |
|
Jun 1 |
comment |
Is there an easily accessible list of terms in the Japanese grammar written both in Japanese and English? Thanks, these lists are useful! I will accept your answer after waiting for a day to see if there is any better answer. |
|
Jun 1 |
comment |
Passive-transitive-verb vs. Intransitive-verb （他動詞の受け身 vs. 自動詞) Note that the Japanese words are swapped, too. Verbs which take objects = transitive verbs = 他動詞, and verbs which do not take objects = intransitive verbs = 自動詞. |
|
Jun 1 |
comment |
Passive-transitive-verb vs. Intransitive-verb （他動詞の受け身 vs. 自動詞) (1) You are using transitive and intransitive swapped. Transitive verbs (他動詞) take objects and intransitive verbs (自動詞) do not. (2) 呆れる usually means to be surprised by a bad thing, so 呆れさしてくれ probably means that you want to receive surprisingly low-quality answers. :) 驚かしてくれ may be more appropriate, but it is not an idiomatic phrase like “amaze me!” |
|
Jun 1 |
comment |
How to choose between “よん” (yon) vs “し” (shi) for “四” (4) and “しち” (shichi) vs “なな” (nana) for “七” (7)? 九 / 9 also has two pronunciations: “きゅう” and “く,” and “く” is avoided in certain contexts because it has the same pronunciation as “苦” (suffering). |
|
Jun 1 |
comment |
外来語 (gairaigo) replaced by Japanese word? From a closer look at the search results, it seems that the term waseigo is sometimes used when it is clear from the context that the word in question looks like a foreign word. This is understandable because waseigo (和製語) literally means “word made in Japan.” I would be surprised if it is used to mean “foreign word made in Japan” without context. Usually the correct term is wasei eigo (和製英語) when it looks like an English word or wasei gairaigo (和製外来語) in general. |
