09-17-2015, 04:26 PM | #401 |
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Effectively identical in core meaning but へ is more formal or literary. But neither is really modern spoken Japanese. Both sound very poetic.
Edit: Wait no, in this context, に is correct. へ is only for physical movement. For IO, you have to use に. Your first sentence is something like "I show my power towards you". The second is to you. Also all the pronouns are pretty unnatural. In speech, the speaker and listener are understood through context. You'll pretty much never use 君 or あなた and 吾 is really archaic.
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09-17-2015, 05:02 PM | #402 | |
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Quote:
The thing is, in English, we can play word games (or mind games!) by just swapping between Sentence 1 and Sentence 2 and it really doesn't make much difference. But in Japanese, while Sentence 2 could take either に or へ (as the particles would be being used there akin to an English preposition, specifically prepositions which indicate direction), Sentence 1 could only take に since only に works as the indirect object marker. I dunno ... this is a basic-level topic but it's making me really question my understanding of に's relationship with へ 'cause I'm thinking about it so hard to make sure I don't tell you anything wrong. ^^; As for the sentence(s) you provided, two and a half things. First, your (in my personal experience) odd choice of spelling for "I." Not only is われ uncommon, but in my experience it's pretty much always spelled 我. Not sure I've ever seen 吾 outside of personal names (where it offers the sound "go" / ご). While I hesitate to correct you when I feel unqualified to do so, I guess I'll "correct you" and say that if you really want to use われ for the first person personal pronoun then you should spell it 我. Second, tonal mismatch between pronouns. 君 is a politer form of address than is used typically by speakers who would refer to themselves as 我. At least in modern Japanese. 我々 and similar is the sort of thing I expect to hear out of socially aggressive speakers, like ... politicians giving a stump speech, the leader of an army addressing his troops, etc. Coming out of an ordinary civilian's mouth, it suggests massive ego. And massive ego doesn't usually go hand in hand with calling someone else 君. So it just feels a little weird. Half, question about intended speaker. Is he supposed to be someone old-timey and powerful like Rider from Fate/Zero? Or is he supposed to be someone modern? 'Cause like ... if it's someone modern, then all I said above should suffice for you, but if it's someone ancient, then you may want to rework the particles a little more. From ... 君に吾の力を見せる。to ... 貴様に我が力を見せる。The latter's how I'd imagine someone like F/Z Rider would say it. (I changed 君 kimi to 貴様 kisama for the second person pronoun. It doesn't carry the same negative connotation it does in modern Japanese.) Note the particle change: from の to が. That's how 我 tends to work: it takes が a lot rather than の in old-timey speech or phrases. 我が君 wagakimi "my lord," 我が国 wagakuni "our" (or my) "country", etc. * Be sure that when you use it as a particle, you're reading へ as 'e' / え, not as 'he' / へ. The h is silent.
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09-19-2015, 09:01 AM | #403 |
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Would the archaic way to do it really have a scrambled word order with に up front and が following?
Non-topic sentence initial に-marked clauses are pretty rare from my experience. Obviously I'm no expert on older forms of Japanese but it sounds weird and unnatural to hear に anywhere but after the topic/subject. |
09-19-2015, 05:36 PM | #404 |
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A, I feel like it really depends on the emphasis the speaker wants to build. (Put an ellipsis between the two halves, either 貴様に...我が力を見せる or else 我が力を...貴様に見せる, and see what I mean.)
B, 99% of my exposure to archaic Japanese comes from non-primary sources. Specifically:
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09-19-2015, 05:52 PM | #405 |
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Oh, also: it's still not technically sentence-initial に in either case. Because technically both sentences lead with the omitted 我は. The が is, as far as I understand it, not a subject marker. 我が君 is synonymous with 私の主(あるじ).
There's similar が/の shenanigans in the other direction: の in place of an expected が. Like ... the whole "n1のないn2" construction. Examples ... well google it, for starters, and then for a specific one from my own early years with the language, this old eroge's title. It always bothered me because the の makes no sense as a 101, 102 の there and would make perfect sense as a 101, 102 が. "The Faceless Moon," "The Moon Without a Face," "Face No Have . Moon," 顔がない月. But it's a の! "The Face's ない Moon?" Not only nonsensical, but not at all the intended message either. So, rewinding ... since possessive が is not subject marker が, the sentences are both of them technically topicless and subjectless as written, with an implied topic/subject.
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10-25-2015, 07:23 AM | #406 |
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Found this on Tumblr today. It's a Japanese children's book that teaches basic English with the help of adorable Pokémon. Here's the table of contents. I sure hope the scanner scans them all! Not only is it cute, but used in reverse it could be a decent resource for entry-level students of Japanese.
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11-07-2015, 12:28 AM | #407 |
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*Ten thousand years later*
Thanks for the pointers on 我, I didn't realize it was a more aggressive pronoun. For the character in question, I was kinda going for a gender-neutral-to-the-point-of-genderlessness, like you might hear from a robot or something. But I didn't really know what to go for because of the two genderless characters that come to mind for me, one uses 我 (or possibly 吾) and the other uses 僕 (or possibly ボク), and the 僕 user appears feminine so I figured the writers were just using the contrast between the feminine appearance and more male pronoun(?). On that note, another pronoun(?) I've heard a few times is わが (no idea what the kanji is), which I'm not sure is a pronoun at all because I generally hear it used in Summoning Chants and stuff, especially since the character's tend to use a different pronoun in normal speech. On a last note for 我, would お前 be a better second person pronoun for a modern user of it? |
11-07-2015, 09:47 AM | #408 |
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わが is just 我 + the particle が (or alternatively, according to my dictionary, means "my/ours"). It's a different reading of the same character, effectively.
If you want something kinda neutral, 私 (pronounced わたし) is probably the most neutral one I can think of. It's pretty general use and doesn't really carry many gendered implications unlike some alternative readings or things like 僕. If the character in question is using 僕 and is a woman/girl/female/feminine in appearance, the writers are likely trying to portray some tomboyishness or something of that sort, though 僕 is slowly generalizing to some extent. In modern speech, お前 is pretty rude/aggressive/forward, so it would be seen as somewhat brash in the modern context. Archaically... well, it literally used to mean "the honorable (person) in front of me" but it lost that meaning over time. When coupled with 我 and used in the right context, it might make sense, but お前 has a pretty different meaning in daily use Japanese. |
11-07-2015, 10:29 AM | #409 | |||
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Quote:
Quote:
僕 is traditionally males-only but has been appropriated by many teenage girls over the last twenty or thirty years. The whole bokukko thing. In that sense it'd be wrong of me to tell you that a girl can never use 僕 -- plenty of girls do, especially in anime where 90% of the time the characters are in their teens or early 20s -- but it's also not right to say that 僕 is classified as a gender-neutral pronoun. It's not. Quote:
It really depends on who they are and who they're addressing. I don't know though. Not native speaker, don't feel too authorized to weigh in on this, but ... I feel like there's a class mismatch between 我 and お前. For example, an aristocrat who might use 我 would probably be well-bred enough to not use お前 even when addressing an enemy he looks down upon. *shrug* (Like, when I think back on Fate/Zero, Tokiomi -- the magus who most commonly used 我 -- would probably have used pronouns like 君 even when talking to Kariya. Would have to double check but eh.) In general, お前 sounds uncouth and gruff ... if you want to use a military comparison, I feel like it'd be one of those "man of the people" generals who would use a label like that (お前ら) to address his men. And by the same token he probably wouldn't use 我々, but instead something uncouth and gruff like 俺ら when using 1st person pronouns.
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11-14-2015, 01:39 PM | #410 |
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Thanks a lot! That really helped. I'd never heard a female character use 私 (Which seems really odd in retrospect, considering I first had it introduced to me as a feminine pronoun...), so I didn't realize that it was genderneutral. On the flip side, I didn't realize 3rd person wasn't exclusively female!
Seriously, thanks for all the help. I can't imagine it's very satisfying for just me to be popping in on rare occasion. :x |
11-25-2015, 06:32 PM | #411 |
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If there's any kanji I've seen used way more than I expected, it would be 「味」. When I first saw it and looked it up, it was defined as "Flavour, taste". What I didn't realize was that this included ways you normally only see these words used for in poetry. I've seen it used in many ways since, but probably the one that most stood out to me was 「意味」, which if I'm not completely hopeless translates literally into "The flavour of the thought" or perhaps more accurately "The point of the matter/What I'm getting at is". これの方は 正解 ですか?
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11-25-2015, 07:31 PM | #412 |
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意味 is "meaning". (E.g. "What is the meaning of life?") 味 is "taste". 美味しい is "tasty". Cat on arm; will write more later.
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11-29-2015, 11:02 AM | #413 |
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So I'm writing a pair of fics in which Nagato and Mutsu get turned into much younger versions of themselves and I was wondering if there was a way to add something like "small" or "tiny" to their names. Not in the sense of like "Chibi Nagato" or "Nagato-chan" but something that might work to pass them off as different people to
It's a rather silly question ^^;
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11-29-2015, 11:59 AM | #414 |
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Hmm ... nothing I can think of sounds terribly natural and matches your criteria.
The Japanese aren't unaware of Spanish gato = "cat", as I am recently reminded by Digimon; and so in the same vein as Azusa --> Azunyan (from K-On!), you could go with Naanyan, Naganyan, etc. considering Nagato lends itself to the feline nickname suffix. Naanyan and Mucchan. I think those work, Puchimas-style. Sorry if that doesn't fit. :\
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11-29-2015, 12:09 PM | #415 |
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Oh no, I really appreciate your input! I'll think about a little more, but I think I'm going to go down the more cutesy name route since it does sounds a little more natural than the others. Thank you!
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02-05-2016, 01:19 PM | #416 |
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So, in my texts it has "部屋をきれいにしてほしいのよ。" as an example, and I was wondering- why not "部屋をきれいになってほしのよ。"? It's possible this is just my English Bias, but I would have thought 「なる」 would be a better verb... Are they pretty much interchangeable in this context, or do they have totally/slightly different meanings?
I know you can use 「する」 with に for making orders at restaurants, is it just that the meaning is similar in a Japanese way of thinking? Thanks in advance~! |
02-05-2016, 11:01 PM | #417 |
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に する is "to make (into something)" in English. Like ...
By contrast, 部屋をきれいになってほしのよ。would be, "I want your room to become clean." I think they're both fine. But they're no more (nor less) interchangeable than are their English equivalents. They communicate similar ideas, but there are technical variances that the human brain can pick up on. "I want to make A B" does not equal "I want A to become B."
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03-25-2016, 09:46 AM | #418 |
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I've just been comparing the English names for Pokémon natures with their original Japanese names to see how well the translations line up for words I already know. There are a lot of words I don't know, though, and one of these is the Japanese word that in English became "naughty": yancha. If it sounds familiar, that might be because you watch the Pokémon anime in Japanese: Yancham is the Japanese name for Pancham. This Pokémon has been depicted as naughty since Day One, and it's interesting to see why the anime writers might be always writing Pancham (whether wild, Serena's, or someone else's) as being naughty, much as they always animated Swift with stars (because Speed Star).
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04-25-2016, 07:46 PM | #419 |
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So hey guys, I have an cosmological topic to discuss with y'all.
I've determined over the past couple days that I really have to learn Japanese. But one of the biggest reservations for that is the sensation I've developed an understanding of "pidgin" as a result of Japanese audio, English subs. That is, Japanese grammar order isn't the same as English. So English native speakers have to rearrange the grammar in our heads before it makes sense. Even folks who can do this almost instantaneously, comparable to a true native speaker, still need to go through the "rearrange" step in their heads first. That's the scar of having to learn the language second-hand, and not natively. Subs have corrupted me in a sense where I've learned to intermix Japanese dialogue - usually nouns, verbs and pronouns, filtering out the particles - with English grammar. So when I try to understand stuff on a grammatical level, it comes across in my head as uncomfortable, awkward, and something I don't like. Best description: eating french fries with my left hand. I'm semi ambidextrous, having developed some fine motor skills in my left hand in high school. I do a lot of things left that feels natural now, which I started in high school, like brushing my teeth. But eating french fries, and dipping them in ketchup, never ceases to feel awkward. Even years after establishing co-dominance in my hands. To fully understand Japanese, I have to break down the "pidgin" sensations. But I fear that, once I do that, Japanese will never really feel natural to rearrange, and continue to feel awkward. Like reading some academic tone paper that is intentionally obtuse and dull. Has anyone here gone through something similar to what I'm hypothesizing?
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04-25-2016, 07:51 PM | #420 | |
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Spanish can pretty frequently have a word order that is pretty dramatically different from English and I do just fine arranging the words properly and spontaneously. Japanese is a much more extreme example and while it takes some getting used to, after 4 years I am generally able to deal with the word order. I think you're making a lot of assumptions based on a limited experience. I will say that, at first, it does take a little bit of time to get used to how Japanese functions as a language, but if you have enough exposure, practice and take the time to really properly learn the patterns, there's no reason why you can't think in the order that Japanese requires. To be perfectly honest, non-native languages are always going to feel a little "awkward" since you have to generally order and arrange your thoughts in a way that's fundamentally different from the language you have grown up with, but I think it's definitely not the case that one can't eventually master a language's word order, even if it is exotic to your native language's. |
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04-25-2016, 08:09 PM | #421 | |
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Quote:
The problem is, I'm aware that I've developed some kind of pidgin understanding of Japanese that has artificially arisen as a result of long-term exposure to something unnatural - listening to Japanese audio, while reading English subs. I've never taken the steps to full understand Japanese grammar, which has resulted in this situation. And I've also developed associations that this is how "anime subs" should be enjoyed. So I'm encountering a stronger-than-usual resistance to learning Japanese because of it, and it's making watching fansubs more unpleasant. Hence the french fries example. It's actually unpleasant to eat the with the left hand. I can't describe it any other way except the experience is overwhelmingly negative doing it like that. I've associated the behaviour so strongly with the right, it overpowers even the flavour of the food. I get your Spanish example. I'm not fluent, but when I was studying it I could converse pretty easily in it without getting confused. This is a very different sensation.
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04-25-2016, 08:42 PM | #422 |
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I think you've mistakenly self-diagnosed your problem as anime subtitle poisoning. I think what you've described has more to do with:
But pulling back to your described phenomenon, you're saying that you have to mentally rearrange words in an English language word order for them to make sense to you. It's similar to decoding in concept -- you're still a ribosome who can only read RNA, you can't read the native DNA straight up -- but instead of decoding words you're decoding syntax. What you've described, I never had to deal with in Japanese. But I think that's because I was exposed to SOV languages at a very young age. I'll never forget my earliest days in Japanese 101, I was amazed at how natural, how "Chewie ... we're home :')" it felt learning Japanese syntax. But for many students who have only ever spoken English, even the minor syntactic differences between English and French can be troublesome. Never mind the nightmare of an SOV language like Japanese! SVO - subject verb object - "Jane fed the dog." SOV - subject object verb - "Jane the dog fed." I suspect you've tried to identify a probable cause for this specter that is haunting your beginner's studies, landed on anime subtitles, and have decided for yourself that your brain is "ruined" by years of matching Japanese audio with English text. I'm not in a position to declare that your hypothesis is wrong, but I believe it is, and I believe that the problem will resolve itself in due time if you apply yourself to the study of the language in a serious manner. Like I said, in my experience I have been somewhat faster of a learner than my colleagues when it comes to foreign languages and even for me I can't escape the decoding beast until nearly one full year after studying the language for 10+ hours a week. Formal study too, mind you, not "hurrrrrrr I'mma watch some TV and plays some video games and ... :')" No! No, no, no. ^^; One year of formal study, and even then you might still be decoding, like a lot of my peers were in the 200-level. Everyone's different and it's not a contest. If you take longer to get past decoding, to get to native registering of the words and the ideas behind them, then so be it. But you have to give it time and serious study. Otherwise you're just going to be spinning your wheels in the mud.
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04-25-2016, 09:00 PM | #423 |
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Since we've gone and bumped this thread, though, some of my recent Japanese adventures ...
A friend of mine has a brother who loves Japanese four-character phrases, called yojijukugo in Japanese. I've come upon a number of such phrases in my time, so I passed a couple along to my friend, to forward along to his brother. But I can share them with you guys too since we're here talking:
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04-25-2016, 09:22 PM | #424 |
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It's not that I'm "ruined". I just have this fear that there will be a strong distaste for subtitles after a certain point of study. Or perhaps more directly, if I were to speak Japanese fluently, and read it fluently, there would be little desire to put the effort in to translate things for English readers.
Perhaps some background is in order. Spoiler: show In retrospect, I think a lot of fan translators had a pretty rough deal. They weren't paid for their work, and their work gets criticized both on the basis of the translation quality, and the quality of the original work. You translate some hentai you really like and everyone hates it, and then someone who claims language authority (either real or not) nitpicks your translation. The result is a lot of potentially interesting works, which fans like I would like to judge, don't get translated. I mean, I will always appreciate Ixrec for what he did in bringing Muv-Luv Alternative into the English speaking world, but I read a post on Reddit recently practically crucifying him. And he's practically the only big man left in the amateur biz. Anyhow, that's my fear. That once I go black, I won't go back.
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05-14-2016, 04:45 PM | #425 |
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So I fouFFnd an online Shiritori game when thinking about fun things I could use to practice and expand my vocab~!
My vocab is mostly verbs so this is utter suffering tbh |
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