Tsuyoshi Ito

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13676

bio	website	nec-labs.com/~tsuyoshi
	location	Princeton, NJ
	age	33
visits	member for	1 year, 11 months
	seen	7 hours ago
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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 I have been living outside Japan for a few years, and my knowledge about trends in Japanese is likely to be outdated.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.”

	20,931 reputation	bio	website	nec-labs.com/~tsuyoshi	visits	member for	1 year, 11 months
13676 badges		location	Princeton, NJ		seen	7 hours ago

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Feb 25	comment	Politeness on Twitter I see. Thanks for the answer. I am not sure why that happens, though. To me, it seems more usual for both parties to use polite form in that situation. But I am not very familiar with Twitter.
Feb 24	comment	Politeness on Twitter “when I tweet to someone in 丁寧語 they tend to respond without it, but if I tweet to someone with no 丁寧語 they tend to respond with it”: Interesting! Does this happen when you and the other person know each other personally, or when you do not know each other personally?
Feb 24	comment	“How did you know?” and “how do you know?” in Japanese Related: “How should I choose between 知る and わかる?” by Derek Schaab.
Feb 24	comment	Using 全然 with a positive pejorative What is the difference between your question and question 794 which you linked to?
Feb 22	comment	Method for deciding whether to use katakana or kanji version of the word? Thanks for editing, and oops, you are right, you did not say “most.” Thanks for understanding my intent.
Feb 22	comment	Method for deciding whether to use katakana or kanji version of the word? Two points related to the last paragraph: (1) I do not think that it is correct to say that most kanji words for plants and animals are 義訓 readings. There are many such words, but there are also many words which are just usual kun readings: 鶏 vs ニワトリ, 桜 vs サクラ, and so on. (2) 麒麟 has another meaning (Qilin) which is usually not written as キリン. See this question and the answer therein (shameless plug).
Feb 21	comment	How to express “with (x) as well” and “even with (x)” @Dono: I wrote what should be obvious to you to avoid other readers (including the OP) from being confused by your comment. If your comment “Both がも and はも exist” refers to particles がも and はも in classical Japanese, then I can only take your comment as either a nitpicking or a joke. It is along the line of responses “We can say はも because it is a name of fish” and “Not being grammatical does not mean we cannot say it.” If you are referring to some other words, I do not know what you are referring to and I appreciate a more specific pointer than “look them up in a decent dictionary.”
Feb 21	comment	How to express “with (x) as well” and “even with (x)” @Dono: Oh, was your comment intended to be a joke? If so, excuse me for spoiling it.
Feb 21	comment	How to express “with (x) as well” and “even with (x)” @Dono: It is true that particles がも and はも existed in classical Japanese and that they may have been etymologically が+も and は+も, but Daniel Safari is talking about different usages, as you probably know. We cannot say 太郎がラーメンを食べ、花子がもラーメンを食べた, for example.
Feb 21	comment	What does 日本語で送っても読めますか？ mean? @ssb: No, で is a particle in both sentences.
Feb 20	comment	What does 日本語で送っても読めますか？ mean? You have the point that technically, we do not send it in some language, but we write it in some language and send it. Similarly, technically, 日本語で送る does not describe the means of sending a letter. Yet, we sometimes consider writing a letter as part of the action of sending a letter and say 日本語で送る to mean what would be 日本語で書いて送る if we made a distinction between the actions of writing and sending, and this で is still the case particle which describes means.
Feb 20	comment	Expressing “I like to <do something>” @dotnetN00b: It is not wrong, and I have never claimed that it is wrong. But お茶を飲むのが好きです sounds more natural because こと is semantically heavier than の and there is no reason to put emphasis on the nominalizer here.
Feb 20	comment	How to express “with (x) as well” and “even with (x)” @Daniel Safari: (cont’d) If this is not complicated enough, we can consider particles other than でも. I do not know the complete picture about when a case marker is necessarily omitted, optionally omitted, or never omitted.
Feb 20	comment	How to express “with (x) as well” and “even with (x)” @Daniel Safari: Simply put, yes, but this is not specific to で+でも, but it applies to many other combinations of a case marker and a particle. For example, when we add でも to を, I think that を is almost(?) always omitted. You might say that でも also contains the expected meaning of fictional construction “をでも,” but it is not really the case that でも has many meanings, but that the case marker preceding でも is sometimes omitted. But not always—the combination of から+でも is simply からでも, and I do not think that we can omit から. (more)
Feb 20	comment	How to express “with (x) as well” and “even with (x)” @istrasci: I think that they work as well (I have not thought them carefully, though).
Feb 19	comment	Expressing “I like to <do something>” Yes, お茶を飲むのが好きです is correct.
Feb 19	comment	Pitch accent of まんまと @Chocolate: HLLLとかLHHLと書いているのは「高」と「低」の2段階に単純化されたアクセントであって、実際の音の高さは2段階にはなりません。私の場合、実際の発音は「ま↘ん‌↘ま↘と」と1拍ごとに下がっていきます。
Feb 18	comment	What does お察しいたします mean? @Dave M G: 察する and “guess” are superficially related. See Hyperworm’s comment. I already wrote that the true logic behind お察しいたします and “I can only guess how you feel” is very different. By the way, I am not asking for your clarification. I already gave up convincing you that coming up with pun-like translations is not a good way to learn a language. I just wanted other readers to be cautious not to be misled by your first comment.
Feb 18	comment	What does お察しいたします mean? @Dave M G: I know that you like translations which use words that are superficially related to the words used in original sentences: japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/1945/…. I am afraid that it can confuse readers of your posts/comments. Those pun-like translations are fine if the reader knows that the connection between individual words is only superficial, but they are misleading if not.
Feb 17	comment	Is there a difference between 名国 and 国? @Zhen Lin: That sounds much more plausible! And I should have thought of it, given that there was one question on this website where the asker misread 各種 as 名種.