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The most commonly known ぬ is the helper verb of negation, similar to ない. It is, like ない, added to the [未然形]{みぜんけい}-base of a verb: [立]{た}たぬ=立たない=does not stand. However, in this case we have ぬ being added to 立ち, and there's a different story behind it.
Note how the English wikipedia entry for [風]{かぜ}[立]{た}ちぬ says "The wind rises", with no negative ...
23
What I've read regarding the 見える、見られる and 聞こえる、聞ける doesn't appear to have been mentioned here at all and I think it's probably the clearest explanation.
見える - something comes into view
聞こえる - something can be heard
Both of these describe sights/sounds that can be sensed regardless of the speaker's volition, e.g. if you look out the window you can see the ...
22
When you contract te oku to t'oku, you're still conjugating oku, so the normal rules apply. The only reason this might not be clear is that kana prevents us from dividing t'oku into t' and oku.
Subsidiary verbs following ～て are grammaticalized, and people tend to contract grammatical words. So naturally, there are a number of contractions of ～て with ...
18
There are many ways to say "after ...ing" in japanese. There is no one to one translation, since you can use different words as "after" depending one the overall meaning of the sentence.
-て から
One of the most common translations and one of the first one learns would be:
-て から
This shouldn't be confused with the reason-giving から which is not used with ...
18
住みたい means "want to live" and is the default choice.
住んでいたい is its progressive form and is used when there's some sense of progression, which works best when you're already living where you want to live "progressively".
One overlap of usage is, e.g.
ずっと東京に住みたい。
ずっと東京に住んでいたい。
This is not a perfect analogy, but in English we have roughly ...
18
Verb stem (masu-stem) as a noun can have various meanings depending on the original verb, and you may not be able to determine its meaning without referring to a dictionary. I generally recommend you memorize these, and avoid "coining" a new word unless you're really comfortable with Japanese.
Person who does the action (≒ -er/-or)
酔っ払い drunkard
のぞき peeper
...
17
I wll try to explain this without translating the words themselves as, I feel, wanting to translate should be the major reason that you are experiencing difficulty in understanding these words.
「それで」 is generally used to express a simple "cause and effect" relationship between two events or situations. "B happens as a (natural) result of A." It is ...
16
In modern Japanese, instead of the conjugation [未然形]{みぜんけい}+[無]{な}い, another word is used to express the plain negative, namely 無い.
This a process called suppletion, supplying a certain conjugational form with a different word. It exists in English as well. You don't say good and gooder, you talk about better, which comes from Proto-Indo-European *bhAd- good....
16
I think they have the same meaning. The basic difference is that 〜ようになる is commonly used after positive verbs, while 〜くなる is commonly used for negative verbs.
Why? Well, negative verbs are morphologically shaped like adjectives, so they have the shorter 〜くなる form available, and that's what people use 99% of the time. That's not possible with positive ...
16
Let's talk about something practical first. Something like 食べさせられたくなかったです, beautifully explained in this article, is probably the longest natural verb "form" that may appear in ordinary conversations.
Also, you don't need to worry about extremely long verbs conjugations. They usually do not stack as many times as the number of colors in the ...
15
なって is indeed the te form of なる.
出なく is the morphing of 出ない (the negative form of 出る) to allow it to be connected to another verb.
so 出ない ＋ なる becomes 出なくなる (to start not coming out)
Adding the te form to the end is just a way of connecting it to another sentence.
This can be done to connect any verbs, for example 食べない (negative of 食べる) could become 食べなくなる ...
15
無理だったんだ is straightforward, it's a combination of 無理だった ("was impossible") and the explanatory-の. "So it is that it was impossible", "Because it was not possible", "(I failed but) it was impossible (in the first place)", etc.
無理なんだった is usually interpreted as a combination of 無理なんだ ("it's that it's impossible"; present tense) and discovery-た. "(Ah, I've ...
15
The verb is 捨てる, so its て-form is 捨てて, hence the compound form Vて+しまう becomes 捨ててしまう.
If it were the casual ちゃう instead of しまう that you were using, that starts from the て-form too, but also contracts the て, so it would instead be 捨てちゃう, with just the one て. Perhaps that is where the confusion arose?
Hope that helps!
15
待って is indeed the te-form, but 待て is not. It is the potential form. Remember that the final う sound becomes an え sound for the potential form of godan verbs? I guess this verb is a little more confusing than usual because つ becomes て (there not being a tse sound).
So the positive potential form of the verb is now 待てる. This conjugates like a normal ichidan ...
14
救われん is made of 救われる and the archaic suffix ん, which came out of む. む・ん had similar roles to よう・おう today; that is to say, 救われん in modern style would be 救われよう or 救われるだろう. It is not related to the ん that comes out of ぬ, which is a strong or dialectal way of stating a negative.
Additionally, as chocolate says in the comments, 祈り信じよ means 'Pray and believe', ...
14
A note on translation
Expressing the same ideas in different languages inevitably results in all kinds of things that don't fit very well, if we try to look only at the individual words used in those expressions. This makes things quite difficult for the beginning learner, since we don't yet have a bigger-picture understanding of how a given language works....
14
In English, ～ぐらい and ～ごろ mean about, around, approximately.
～ぐらい is used for approximate quantities, which include duration.
このXはいくらぐらいですか。About how much is this X?
そのXは５００円ぐらいです。 That X is about 500 yen.
六時間ぐらい図書館にいました。I was at the library for about 6 hours.
～ごろ is used for approximate points in time, with an optional に.
八時ごろ（に）公園に来ました。I came to the ...
13
This looks like modern "浮かべる" but it is actually classical "浮かぶ" (四段, "to float") plus what is traditionally taught as the "り" auxiliary verb (助動詞).
Etymologically, of course, it is really just "ari" attached to the ren'yokei 連用形/infinitive: /ukabi/ + /ari/ = /ukab(y)eri/, /ukab(y)eru/ adnominally (as in this case). Frellesvig calls this the "morphological ...
13
Here's where 歩けなく comes from:
Start with the verb 歩く, "to walk".
Turn it into its potential form: 歩ける, "able to walk".
Make it negative: 歩けない, "unable to walk".
Turn the newly formed i-adjective into an adverb: 歩けなく.
Now, なっちゃう is a shorter form of なって + しまう.
なって, of course, is the -て form of なる, which means "to become". なる requires that the adjective ...
13
There are five honorific (subsidiary) verbs of almost r-consonant (type I) conjugation that have very peculiar style of irregularity, ending in い in 命令形 (command form) and before ます.
plain form regular masu-stem masu(-only)-stem command form
いらっしゃる いらっしゃり-たい いらっしゃい-ます いらっしゃい
おっしゃる おっしゃり-たい おっしゃい-ます おっしゃい
くださる くださり-たい ください-ます ください
...
13
Actually, because なる is a change of state verb,「寒くなっています」does not mean "it is getting cold", but rather "it is cold"- or more specifically, that it got cold and remains in that state.
Any verb that signifies a change in state used with ～ている means that the change happened in the past and remains in that state. That is why, for example, 「死んでいる」 means "is ...
13
「Verb in 連用形{れんようけい} (continuative form) + かかる」
means:
"to be about to (verb)", "to be on the point of (verb)ing", etc.
The first verb used in this expression can be either in the active or passive voice form. Active or passive, Japanese verbs still inflect in the same manner.
Active voice: 「殺し」 is the 連用形 of 「殺す」
「殺しかかった」= "was about to kill"
...
13
失礼{しつれい}しなければならない
失礼 (shitsurei) is "rudeness".
失礼する (shitsurei suru) is "to be rude"
失礼しない (shitsurei shinai) is the negation "to not be rude".
失礼しなければ (shitsurei shinakereba) is a conditional form of the above "If I am not rude"
失礼しなければならない (shitsurei shinakereba naranai) I'm now sure how to break down ならない meaningfully but in this context it kind of ...
13
① Grammar pattern
The grammar pattern used here is:
V(ない form, and drop the い) + なければならない
which means "must V", where V is any verb in the plain negative form (ending in ない) . First drop the い and then add なけらばならない
食【た】べない → 食【た】べな →食【た】べなけらばならない。"Must eat".
行【い】かない → 行【い】かな → 行【い】かなければならない。"Must go".
散歩【さんぽ】しない→ 散歩【さんぽ】しな → ...
12
My understanding is that ます is an inflectable function word (助動詞), so I'm wondering why the negative form ends with ん. Is that a contraction of ぬ perhaps?
Yes, the final -n is from negative -nu. This should make sense as -nu attaches to the irrealis, which is ma-se since mas- is サ変.
(Also why is the 未然形 ませ rather than something more regular, like まさ?)
...
12
You should parse it this way:
近所のひとに『カラオケに行こう』と誘われました。
(lit.) I was invited by my neighbor, (saying) "Let's go to Karaoke."
⇒ My neighbor invited me out to Karaoke. / suggested we go to Karaoke.
I usually would just use plain form いく.
You could rephrase the sentence as:
近所のひとにカラオケに誘われました。
I was invited to Karaoke by my neighbor.
⇒ My neighbor ...
12
How do you know in English? The degree to which て/で represent causality versus things being simply sequential is ambiguous in nearly the same way that and is ambiguous in the same role in English.
Consider sentences like
The door was locked and I couldn't open it.
I ate too much for lunch and skipped dinner.
I brushed my teeth and left for work.
Which ...
11
First, let me comment on your three examples:
です ⇔ であります
We discussed です before. According to 大辞林, there are several theories, but we don't know its etymology for sure. This is one of the three theories it lists, though. I've read that でございます may be more likely, but I never read an explanation why, so I won't make that assertion here.
じゃない ⇔ ではない ...
11
This 願わくば is a fixed expression fossilized long ago, and you just have to memorize it without thinking about it too much. It's a literary expression that corresponds to "Hopefully, ..." used as a sentence adverb.
As pointed out in the comment, this is related to ク語法, a grammatical feature which had already dropped out of use more than 1000 years ago. It was ...
11
This is a kind of 擬態語 (phenomime) that refers to the act of becoming shy. So "てれり" can mean "blush." This kind of onomatopoeia is often freely created, especially in comics.
てれり is one of those created in this way, so it's not in dictionaries.
てれり seems to come from the verb 照れる. Though grammatical discussion is not so meaningful, this can be looked at as ...
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