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6 votes
Accepted

Understanding a passage from 銀河鉄道の夜

Both interpretations are possible, but that shouldn't affect the meaning. Either way, you find 活版処 after turning three corners. That said, 曲がってある (of first interpretation) is not really idiomatic. ...
sundowner's user avatar
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3 votes

What's with this "On reading"/"Kun reading" thing? Is it important to learn both as a beginner?

BenderRodriguez9's explanation is my absolute favorite! I edited to make it easier to read. Here’s my example. Imagine if English were written with Kanji. English has native Germanic words, as well ...
user1176240's user avatar
12 votes
Accepted

How is Tsuyuri Kumin's name (五月七日くみん) read with 3 characters when it's made up of 4 kanji?

Say we have a Japanese word that has a meaning, and we want to write it using kanji. If we cannot find any corresponding character, we have the option of combining characters and assigning the ...
Ketchup901's user avatar
3 votes
Accepted

Understanding this passage in 羅生門 that uses ばかりではない

It's similar to the "not only ... but also ..." construction in English. (In fact, it might have started as a translation of that.) It might look tricky when the first part stands as a ...
Yusuke Matsubara's user avatar
0 votes
Accepted

Reading/Pronunciation of 呼吸 in the song 「デスペレート」"desperate"

This is known as 義訓(ぎくん)("meaning-based reading"). As the name implies, a 義訓 is a nonstandard reading of a string of symbols that nonetheless matches its meaning. Or, viewed the other way ...
Dragon_Fang's user avatar
2 votes

how to analyze this sentence?

(I suppose there's a typo: 有名な土地) The easy one is Q2: の is a nominalizer. It is equivalent to ほど近いことを... As for Q1, も should be the standard also, but it is not very clear in addition to what. Putting ...
sundowner's user avatar
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2 votes
Accepted

Pronunciation of 出入り

でいり refers to the abstract activity of people visiting the place often, whereas ではいり would refer to the physical act of going in and coming out. E.g. you can say 人のでいりを記帳する but it would be odd to say ...
Enno Shioji's user avatar
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1 vote
Accepted

Why are there two Japanese readings for a Korean word?

In both languages the word is formed of borrowed Chinese elements, which after borrowing went through several changes. トンヘ is the Japanese approximation of the Korean pronunciation, while とうかい uses ...
Angelos's user avatar
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