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)?

>>720
Tans are good as long as you don't get too dark, especially if you're blonde.  They only like pale on their wimmins.

>>720
lol i didn't mean your a greasy weeaboo
going to japan to score > going to japan for animu

I've noticed, in a few anime, that characters will sometimes have an 'end of phrase marker' such as Suiseiseki' infamous "desu" or Naruto's "-ttebayo" While these addendum's often have, in their own way, individual meanings I've noticed that they are often superfluous when used to the extent these characters use them. So my question is:

Does the usage of these phrases, or any other phrase as they are used by these and other such characters, have an otaku/wee word for them? Or even a general Japanese word for them? I don't think they have a word for them in English

The only lead that I have gotten was the google search 'inflectional ending japanese', but that doesn't seem to be what I'm looking for.

¯\(°-°)/¯

>>723
I doubt there is a word for it, maybe you could just call it a gimmick trait or gobi gimmicks (if they fall under gobi, I dunno)

There's also a bunch more, like in disgaea, the penguins end their sentences with the slang form desu, 'っす' or how rena from higurashi says kana like every fucking sentence, and when a normal person would say it, she says it twice

>>723
口癖 kuchiguse = catch phrase

wee word
seriously?

What's the difference between 覚める and 目覚める?

One 目.

Well I'm going to reply to myself here but...
>>712
http://kakijun.main.jp/
For the interested, Google turns up more stuff for kakijun too.

>>713
Thank you I had the first one but not the other.

How would one say "It is very boring tonight" or "It is a very boring night" ?

>>729
今晩が詰まらないだ
konban ga tsumaranai da

>>730
Didn't your mommy ever teach you that you don't put da after adjectives

>>731
its technically correct and more polite. (i put da instead of desu out of habit)

Does 「ウサビッチはおかしい」 basically mean.. "The usabicchi show is funny"？

ウサビッチ is pretty much a show about two rabbits escaping jail.

>>733
basically
it can also mean strange

Counters are annoying
instead of counters for every different object in existence,
is there such thing as a general counter?

anyone know where i can find some japanese text for kids, i mean like the kind of text a japanese 1st grader could read for practice?

it's just that when i was learning english i started by reading children's books and that help me a lot

Yes I do.
Go to a big book store, they have everything what your looking for.

>>736
I tried children books, they really fucking suck.
With children books, you don't have any kanji, and japanese is retarded without kanji. By seeing kanji you can sometimes know what the word is roughly about, and you know where words start and end, without this, it becomes kind of a pain in the ass.

I'd suggest finding stories that have furigana/rubi at the top of kanji, this way you know where words are and to recognize kanji.

Personally, I'm at the level where I read highschool level short novels. I dl a .txt of the book from share/winny, save it as .html, give it some nice font/background color for the eyes, and I install add-ons rikai-chan, and word wrap to read it, and it works fucking wonders. So far I've read kino no tabi book 1, zero no tsukaima book 1-3 and currently on book 4 (1-3 is translated on baka-tsuki so it was nice to follow)

to start off, maybe try something like this
http://contest.thinkquest.jp/tqj1999/20190/eng/index.html
★ represent difficulty, less=easier. Just click on a random one, each word is hyperlinked which usually has a definition and reading for it.

So what do they call the dialect or whatever that people used a long time ago? You know, じゃ instead of だ, et cetera

古言? *looks up kanji for gogen* nope that's not it..

does 'mata kimi ni aeru' mean what i think it does?

wat

Can someone help translate this?
応援団２の「あの日、あの時」三枚目の文言です。
[ID] 二つの○○（ローマ字表記半角英数）
[PASS] 二つの○○○○（英語半角英数）
I get that it's asking for a day and time from Ouendan 2, but other than that I'm lost.

>>742
cheering party 2 of "that day, that time" is the wording of a comedian
[ID] 2 .. (romaji half-width Ascii list)
[PASS] 2 ... (English half-width Asscii)

is there more of this? I need context to make sense of this (im not such good translator)

>>740
又君に会える　-　(to) meet you again
alternatively
会える - to meet
合える - to suit/fit
逢える - to meet (dramatically)
和える - to dress salad (??)
遭える －to engrave

take your fucking pick

oh shits
you abouts to get your salad dressed again

>>740　また黄身に和える？

what does "あの頃のあいつによろしくと" mean, exactly? I think it's something like "Take care of her this time" but I'm not sure.

会う see,meet
合う fit, suit, be suited ((to)); become ((a person)); match, go well with
逢う　Thing to meet intimate person like lover and a family, etc. movingly chiefly .
and meet so that the lover may do sex. <<<<<<<(-_-)
遭う meet (with);  encounter;　meets with a misfortune.


う=　える
=　Action that will be made in possibility and the future.

和える　Cooking method.

-------------------------------------
「また君に会える」
I can meet you again.
「また君に逢える」
I can make love to you again.
「また君に遭える」
I do not want to encounter you again.
「また黄身に和える」
It becomes a high calorie.
「また黄身に会える」
maybe,He likes to eat mixing the raw egg with rice.
「また黄身に逢える」
the raw egg was mix with rice is a Japanese favorite food.
「また黄身に遭える」
However, there is a person who hates it, too.

>>747
「あの頃のあいつによろしくと」
is wrong Japanese.
However, it's Cool.
"Tell it to his past,"best"."

>>746
dress the egg yolk again?

Anything really different between these that is worth mentioning?

連合
連盟
同盟

and
勉強
書斎

>>751
勉強 = to study
勉強 = a place where you study (eg a library)

as for
連合,連盟, and同盟 it all depends on the context used, though im not sure which is which.

a similar example would be "Miru" to see
見る　
診る　
both of these are to do with seeing something.
however one is used to say "i watched a move" 映画を見る
and the other is used to to say "the test was looked at(or examined) by a teacher" 試験は先生で診る

Sup.

は/がfag here. Anybody that knows Japanese, please help me out here.

So I was listening to It can obtain bearing (http://minoritypeople.imeem.com/music/NsT-cbq2/iku_megumi_it_can_obtain_bearing_okinawa_island_song
_uned/), it's the soundtrack played in episode 14 of Samurai Champloo. The song's unedited, so there's some talking there:

母親はずっと前に死んだ。ムクロは殺したの。

Since I'm not quite stable on particles yet, please correct me if I do something wrong in this analysis:

Most people would probably use ムクロが here, to keep the topic as 'her mother', and also to specify that Mukuro was the one that killed her.

The difference between ムクロが殺したの and ムクロは殺したの is that the が example roughly translates to 'It was MUKURO who killed her', while the は example roughly translates to 'Mukuro killed her'.

Am I right? Thoughts?

---

Asked that in /a/, but I guess this is the best board to ask about this on. Additionally, I wonder if 上げる is used both for 'to raise/lift' and 'to give (something to someone)', or if to give is another kanji?

Is there some site or something similar that explains the radical (bushu?) system? Like how all kanji with this and that kanji have this and that reading, and such? A list over all radicals would be nice too.

>>754
Let me try again.

Is there some site or something similar that explains the radical (bushu?) system? Like how all kanji with this and that radical have this and that reading, and such? A list over all radicals would be nice too.

I just noticed something (I use JWPce): Bushu and radical isn't the same. Searching for radicals seemingly give you all kanji with that one radical, whilst searching for bushu only gives you all kanji that have the radical in a set position (for example the bottom). Any input on this?

By the way, this is my 4th post in a row, did this thread/board die completely?

>>756
The text boards have never been popular, but it doesn't help that there is no way to enter the text boards through the home page anymore, gotta added /frames/. Moot essentially fucked over these boards by doing so

I'm pretty sure radicals and bushu are the same. You most likely just saw different organization methods. By searching 部首(bushu) I found this http://kanji.ifdef.jp/radical.html
It says radical in the url and 部首 at the top.

But to go further in-depth, radicals have 7 places where they can go, which determines what end tag they have on them. see http://japanese.about.com/library/weekly/aa070101a.htm

>>757
Thank you. I also just found out about onpu (音符), which dictate a range of readings for kanji. I wonder if there are more determiners than bushu and onpu, and I'd also fucking love to know where I could read up on them (I already read the link you provided).

did this thread/board die completely?
posting slowly is preferred here. I'm not going to repeat what the guys over at tae kim's place said but in my (short) experience:

some radicals are not used 鼎、黽、鼠、龠...
some would appear not to be used but they are in some form
ex.毋 is unused but 母 is
some take different forms depending on position within the character
ex.心 vs 忄
some radicals are written differently depending on style ex.令 vs written 令 (seal radical at bottom)
etc.

So what I'm saying is you write everything with the 214 radicals but sometimes you have to use your imagination (lots of imagination) to j-j-jam everything in together to write a given kanji. ex. 貫 has 母 radical from earlier squeezed in at the top

As an aside, as a learner what shocks me most is that everything has a reading, everythiiing. Sometimes rikaichan will give you almost no information on a character but the reading will be there... who comes up with those, damn.

>>749
Strange. Where is 'past' in there? Everywhere I look said aitsu was 'he' or 'that guy over there', but in that sentance you'd think it would mean past.