Japanese - Ask questions thread

Basically if you have a question about the language, ask it and fellow 4channers might see it and answer it for you.

To start it off. When an animate object (iru) dies, is it considered inanimate(aru)?

>>163
"Tara" actually ends with a "small tsu" (sokuon). I'm wondering if this means a cut-off of the real word of some kind. For instance, we have "tara-tara", a lot of small expressions beginning with the word "tara", and also all the words beginning with "tara-". Which is more likely in that case? It seems that it can also be a conjugation of "tari", but it doesn't say what "tari" means.