Talk:Japanese/Lessons/Other uses of particles

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Sorry, but the last example was, er, not correct Japanese and I commented it out.

At first, the correct sentence for "the new self I see in my dreams is strong but kind." is,
 * ぼく が ゆめ に みる あたらしい じぶん は つよい けど やさしい (or つよくて やさしい)

Thus, when you separate this into parts, perhaps,
 * 1) ぼくが ゆめに みる あたらしい じぶん - the new self I see in my dreams (noun part)
 * 2)  は つよい けど やさしい -  is strong but kind

I cannot evaluate whether or not this correct one can be used as an example here, since I lack grammatical abilities... - Marsian / talk 03:53:52, 2005-09-04 (UTC)


 * I agree about "kedo" in this example. other changes are not needed. the accent of this sentence is not that *I* see that new self in the dreams (that would justify the "buku ga" part), but rather that the new self of my dreams is such and such. thanks though for "kedo" - i really messed that part --lastguru 08:42, 4 September 2005 (UTC)


 * I agree with Marsian's proposed changes. The word order is strange. Did you take this example from a song or poem? Also, wouldn't つよくてやさしい mean strong and kind instead of strong but kind?


 * The boku ga is not emphasizing boku. It's just that ga is used to mark the subject in subordinate clauses, where wa cannot be used. ToothingLummox 18:41, 4 September 2005 (UTC)


 * OK, OK, I admit, I took the idea of construction of this example from a song. It goes "Naritai jibun yume ni miru no wa ..." (look in the google yourself). I am an awful in making examples. I have one person who promises to make examples... still no real results out of her except for excuses... If you want, you can start making examples for the future themes... I am going to research the point of using "boku ga" there some more. About the meaning of "kedo": I had "demo" from the beginning, which seems to be plain wrong, so I relied on Marsian's advice... are you suggesting that he is also wrong? --lastguru 20:34, 4 September 2005 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure what you mean about me suggesting that Marsian is wrong. Do you mean つよくてやさしい vs つよい けど やさしい? I think that there is a very slight difference of meaning between the two. Here's what I think. The one without kedo is strong and kind. The one with kedo is strong but kind. I think either is grammatical, but you should trust Marsian's native ear. Consider a cute and dirty child vs a cute but dirty child. They mean alsmost the same thing, but the second is more natural in most situations. ToothingLummox 23:11, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

Isn't kirei an adjective? And isn't na used after na-adjectives, not nouns?


 * There are no adjectives as such in Japanese, and it is misleading to call them adjectives. They are either attributive nouns, or attributive verbs. In both cases they act like nouns and verbs correspondingly. There is much confusion over this theme inspired by most text books, but I am not going to support that confusion. What acts like a noun is a noun; what acts like a verb is a verb. Unless you convince me that I am wrong... --lastguru 20:34, 4 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Let's compare kirei (clean), midori (green), and semai (small) in front of a noun:
 * kirei na heya          (a clean room)
 * midori no heya       (a green room)
 * semai heya                            (a small room   note: semai = narrow, and is used to mean small in two dimensions)
 * Clearly they connect to the noun differently. kirei is not the same thing as a "true" noun.


 * hmm... Thank you for pushing me to the research, and these examples... I would have not chosen better ones :). I knew, I knew we will find something fishy during the course, something that is described misleadingly or not at all in most text books. One of these things seem to be "no" and "na" relations. why do you think kirei is more adjective then midori? the four classic colors (akai, aoi, shiroi and kuroi) are attributive verbs (i-adjectives), not nouns (well, actually they do have a noun form: aka, ao, shiro and kuro, but that's another story). The reason "no" is used there as I understand is that there is perhaps a subtle difference between these colors and other nouns... most other nouns may be put in both "na" and "no" constructions. Basically, "no" and "na" are of a very close meaning and the description I gave for the "no" should be corrected (it is not an indication of possession, and has never been). Both particles transforms a noun to an attribute. This page: http://www.kortlandt.nl/publications/art191e.pdf says that "na" means a direct attribute (???such that the object possesses by itself???), while "no" - indirect (???such attributes or evaluations that we are giving to the object???). More discussion on this topic would be appreciated. --lastguru 17:24, 8 September 2005 (UTC)


 * For the time being, let's try to avoid using words like "adjective" and "noun" and "verb". What I'm trying to point out is that there are different kinds of words, and they need to be distinguished. -no and -na for the most part do not attach to the same words. When they do, there is usually a change in meaning. And after all, it is possible for a word to belong to more than one part of speech (English book is both a noun and a verb).


 * It is pretty obvious that when you attach different particles to the same words you get different meanings, isn't it? And we will not be able to avoid naming word classes as we need to differentiate words. Until now I am sure that nouns and verbs should go separate as their usage is completely different. So we can use these names. As for adjectives, we can hang with the proposed classifiers (attributive nouns and attributive verbs) just because the usage of these attributive words are too much like the nouns/verbs than would be possible to separate. --lastguru 01:01, 9 September 2005 (UTC)


 * I missed this part of your post before. So then we agree that not all "nouns" are identical? That there are "normal" nouns and "attributive" nouns? The distinction is very important to make.
 * purely "normal": The vast majority of nouns simply cannot take -na. Also, I'm fairly sure these same words cannot be made into adverbs by adding ni.
 * purely "attributive": There are some words that can only take -na. These words cannot serve as "normal" nouns, but at least some of them can become adverbs.
 * both?: Those words that take -na sometimes (often? but definitely not always) can also take -no, but it seems to me that the meaning is often quite different (it's as though it were a "normal" noun). Additionally, it seems to me that these dual na/no words are able to function as "normal" nouns in sentences. All of this suggests to me that these dual words are both "normal" nouns and "attributive" nouns.


 * Anyway, my amateur linguistics aside, do we agree on the basic point that -na and -no words need to be distinguished? And that some words can take either -na or -no but that the meaning tends to change? Pretty much everything beyond that is more than the students need to know. What to call the adjective-type words should probably be discussed on the japanese-wiki group. ToothingLummox 04:29, 9 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Same as countable and uncountable nouns, animate and inanimate nouns, these two categories may as well be distinguished, as there are some slight diffeences in usage. The "-na" particle is nevertheless used more often than we may ever point out, as it is used in process of creating new words (in other words, it is a normal process, natural development of the language, for a "pure" noun, or how would you call this, to become used also with "-na"). You may count this as "yes" and start putting such comments in the vocabulary given on the previous pages. --lastguru 12:34, 10 September 2005 (UTC)


 * In the link you pointed out, words were chosen that can take both -no and -na in order to focus on the difference between the two. I don't think you'll find many cases of kirei no or midori na. You also won't find genki no or byouki na. And you defintely won't find sensei na or kuruma na but you will find both sensei no and kuruma no.


 * Well, that is obvious too that some words are more commonly used as are direct objects, some - as indirect objects, and some can work in both situations. Lets compare two words in English: child and heaven. how they are different? they are both nouns, aren't they? but if you want, for example, to say that something has properties of a child, you would say "childish"; when you would point out properties of a heaven, you would say "heavenly". Then there are countable and uncountable nouns, like cat and time. Would you classify the examples I gave into diferent parts of speech? no, you give then names such as "countable noun". And as much as some nouns like "-no" and some - "-na", some nouns in English like "much" and some - "many". As for your examples... well maybe some of them are appropriate although you are pointing out they are not. quich google search (and i was looking for romaji!) reveils for example this: http://www.waxinlyrical.com/lyrics/kireinayozora-angelastellv.html, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0161610/ , and I was too lazy to check other words. So you see, the combinations are legitimate.  --lastguru 01:01, 9 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Well, the kirei no example you found is a typo. Both the page url and the lyrics in the song itself have kirei na. The genki example I gave wasn't so good, however. genki can defintely be used as a noun (it was even one of the examples on that page you gave). genki no kamisama means the god of vitality or somesuch. The meaning is quite different from genki na kamisama, which would be more like an energetic god. Oops. Anyway, bad example aside, I stand by everything I wrote.


 * P.S. searching in romaji is probably not the best way to find reliable examples of Japanese.  ;)
 * -- ToothingLummox 02:11, 9 September 2005 (UTC)


 * I know romaji search is no the best thing, but my Japanese comprehension abilities are still very limited, unfortunately. The main problem is that I do not know much words, grammar is lesser problem for me. If you do not have such a problem, try searching for "みどりな" in the google - there are some matches, which I was too lazy to translate. Anyway, I stand by everything I wrote too, so lets just stand there and observe each other from the distance? The ultimate goal of the course is to make students aware of Japanese like of their native language, btw. --lastguru 12:34, 10 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Google hits
 * みどりの: 2.5 million
 * みどりな: 895
 * of which some are the na we are looking for and some are
 * midori nakayoshi   96   getting along with green (or is it a girl named Midori?)
 * midori nakamachi 21  station name
 * midori nakama 16   green bunch
 * midori nara 12 if it's green
 * midori nado 7   green, etc.


 * Using kanji:
 * 緑の: 2.2 million
 * 緑な: 60,000
 * of which
 * waga tani wa midori nariki 15,100 movie title "How green was my valley"
 * 〜wa midori nariki 834  how green was 〜
 * ’’midori nado''        100   green, etc.


 * 先生の: 3.5 million
 * 先生な: 162,000
 * sensei na no: 50,000 Is (someone) a teacher? and similar
 * sensei nan     1,000 verbal contraction of above
 * sensei nara       523 If someone is a teacher


 * ピンクの (pink) 3.6 million
 * ピンクな 140,000


 * きれいの: 97,000 interestingly most of them apparently related to cosmetics (e.g., "the secret of kirei", "the school of kirei")
 * きれいな: 3 million


 * Anyway, these results are interesting. It seems to me that what we are seeing here is largely a break between more formal and more informal/playful uses of the language. Performing the same searches on a corpus like [Eijiro] does not turn up the less common forms. In any case, simply saying that -na turns nouns into adjectives (as the lesson originally said) is totally inadequate.


 * These results also bring us to issues of what kind of Japanese we want to teach here. This issue really needs to be addressed, and soon.
 * Also, saying that the students should become "aware of the language like native speakers" is a bit (just a bit) ambitious and a bit odd. It's too ambitious to be useful to those of us contributing to the course. It's odd because you haven't defined which native speaker you are talking about. Additionally, native speakers don't think about all of the grammar, linguistics, etc. The goal and audience of the course really need to be discussed (as I have been pushing for).


 * -ToothingLummox 17:52, 10 September 2005 (UTC)


 * You also won't often see kirei preceding particles like ga and wo.


 * I have, I have heard that. There is a cute song in Inu Yasha anime: "Kirei wa kitanai, Kitanai wa kirei, Ii wa warui, Warui wa ii, Shinuru wa ikiru, Ikiru wa shinuru". --lastguru 01:01, 9 September 2005 (UTC)


 * I did write "often". In the examples above you have every old thing in front of the particle. This is not really normal. ("clean is dirty, dirty is clean...") On the other hand, it is not in the least strange to place midori in front of ga. (midori ga utsukushii Green is beautiful). (btw should shinuru be shinu?)
 * P.S. Be careful when using songs as examples. Language tends to be freer and poetic in songs and poems.
 * --ToothingLummox 02:11, 9 September 2005 (UTC)


 * The song I posted is spelled correctly. "shinuru" is a classical rentaikei form of "shinu". You can read up on this here: http://www.classical-japanese.net/Grammar/verbs.html . Regarding songs and classic literature, I think students should be able to comprehend these by the end of the course. The living language is not only official papers and modern TV news broadcarts, but also the legacy form old times. There should be no problems for students to read poems and classic literature, as well as historical movies. --lastguru 12:34, 10 September 2005 (UTC)


 * --ToothingLummox 23:24, 8 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Notice that semai conjugates differently from "normal" verbs like kariru (to rent), etc. Take the past tense:
 * semakatta                             (was small)
 * karita                                    (rented)


 * yeah, and why does the group 1 verbs conjugate differently from group 2 verbs? :). And as far as I know, verbs may also be used as attributes... go figure... the more i look on this matter, the more i see that there are no adjectives as such in japanese, only nouns and verbs... maybe sometime i will tell that this all is a BS and there are no nouns either, only nominative verbs... LOL... :) --lastguru 17:24, 8 September 2005 (UTC)


 * I was only trying to point out that semai needs to be distinguished from kariru. -- ToothingLummox 23:24, 8 September 2005 (UTC)


 * In the list of conjugations, yes. --lastguru 01:01, 9 September 2005 (UTC)


 * So there has to be some way to distinguish these different categories. Many textbooks use na-adjective or noun-adjective. They also have Japanese names (keiyoudoushi etc), and I imagine linguists have still other names (perhaps the ones you're using?). Anyway, you can call them whatever you want, but they need to be distinguished. Also, some abbreviation should probably also be adopted, for instance NA for na-adjective. Keep in mind that there is no reason to burden the language student with long or unfamiliar names; most textbooks rightly avoid doing so. ToothingLummox 22:55, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

The primary difference between kedo and demo (but):


 * kedo appears at the end of one clause and connects it to the next to make a single new sentence.


 * demo appears a the beginning of a sentence. The two clauses remain separate sentences.

ToothingLummox 18:41, 4 September 2005 (UTC)


 * maybe... thanks... --lastguru 20:34, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

you did it again...
So, you have commented out my example... again. Is this example so incorrect that you have to comment it out instead of just correcting it? I myself think that the example was indeed correct, just complicated. Please note that nobody is requiring the students to form such examples themselves, and the next page goes about creating simple sentences. A complicated example was inserted here on purpose, to give students something to think about, and I think I have introduced the theoretical material for them to be able to understand the example fully. It is not that I am not valuing our cooperation (although you may doubt that after our recent discussions, I am really happy and grateful for all your help and support) or the substitute examples you gave, it is just that I think a more complicated and not standard example should also be used in our course. Any comments? --lastguru 11:10, 10 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Well, the first time it was actually a native speaker who commented it out.
 * The word order in the example is strange. Maybe it's an example of post positioning or perhaps it's a list.


 * The new me, the one I see in my dreams, is strong but kind.
 * The new me, what I see in my dreams, is strong but kind.


 * Anyway, while it is encountered in songs and poems, it's not that common a word order. Clauses normally precede what they modify. I don't think we do our students any favors by introducing this less common form here. There were also a couple of small errors here and there (の isn't need to connect miru and jibun).


 * This particular example aside, I think the students have not really been prepared to deal with it.
 * I think that the use of relative clauses (such as the kono shiroi neko ga miru yume) is inadequately explained above.
 * Relative clauses
 * they come before the word being modified
 * は cannot be used as the topic marker, and so issues of focus change
 * if the subject comes immediately before the verb, ga can become no
 * verbs and attributive verbs connect directly to the noun being modified
 * attributive nouns connect with -na.
 *  kao ga kirei na onna no ko
 * The girl with the pretty face
 * nouns connect with -no
 *  otousan ga sensei no onna no ko
 * The girl whose father is a teacher.


 * Also, nominalizers could have been dealt with more carefully. In addition to no, there is another nominalizer koto. The two have some usages in common and some distinct (a little like English to read and reading).


 * --ToothingLummox 15:21, 10 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Hmm... "あたらしい　じぶん　ぼく　の　ゆめ　に　みる　の　は　つよい　けど　やさしい" does not form a complete sentence.
 * "あたらしい　じぶん　は　つよい　けど　やさしい" is OK.
 * "ぼく　の　ゆめ　に　みる　の　は　つよい　けど　やさしい" is NOT.
 * &rarr; "ぼく　の　ゆめ　に　みる　 じぶん 　は　つよい　けど　やさしい" or "ぼく　の　ゆめ　に　みる　の　は　つよい　けど　やさしい じぶん " is acceptable.


 * I can imagine two cases (I use ぼくが instead of ぼくの for clarification):
 * Beginning with ぼく は じぶん を ゆめ に みる. &rarr; ぼく が ゆめ に みる のは、じぶん.
 * &rArr; What kind of じぶん? &rarr; あたらしい じぶん / つよい けど やさしい じぶん
 * &rArr; ぼく が ゆめ に みる の は、つよい けど やさしい、あたらしい じぶん.
 * So, if you want to insert parentheses, maybe they should be put as: ぼく が ゆめ に みる のは じぶん.
 * Beginning with じぶん は、つよい けど やさしい.
 * &rArr; What kind of じぶん? &rarr; あたらしい じぶん / ぼく が ゆめ に みる じぶん
 * &rArr; ぼく が ゆめ に みる あたらしい じぶん は、つよい けど やさしい.
 * So, if you want to insert parentheses, maybe they should be put as: じぶん は、つよい けど やさしい.  - This is what I proposed first
 * In both cases, a noun "じぶん" is modified by the phrases (er... clause?) before it, not after it. Compare Lastguru's example, in which じぶん is modified by the phrases after it: "あたらしい じぶん は...". Perhaps this is why I and ToothingLummox felt the example strange.


 * BTW, maybe ゆめみる is better fitted than ゆめにみる for this kind of expressions. Ordinary, you don't actually see yourself in your real dreams but you just imagine the ideal form of you when you are awake... Well, ゆめにみる can also mean it, but ゆめみる is more specific. Also, ゆめ に えがく or おもい えがく has nealy the same meaning. Hope this helps. - Marsian / talk 04:59:14, 2005-09-11 (UTC)