[steven]

I live in Japan and am married to a Japanese.
The thing is, I don't really write Japanese (or read) that well... so I'm positive you have me beat there judging by your posts. Just to give you an idea, I'm studying the 3rd year elementary school Kanji right now. I know most of the kanji that I study and most of the words, but I just wanted to get a fresh start to make sure I cover everything. I haven't put effort into studying reading/writing Japanese in years. So the majority of my knowledge of Japanese is from a speaking perspective.

I am pretty good at speaking... but I speak the way people speak around here and I don't really watch TV so I don't get much input from "standard" Japanese. So while I'm pretty confident with the basics, any nuances that I have or understand are most likely completely colored by the dialect here.

At any rate, I'm really curious on this one. I'd love to hear what natives say about this. Coincidentally I was thinking about this very thing about a week or so ago. I had seen the word "時々" written somewhere or spoken or something... that's when I recalled the emphasis (or what I percieved as such) put on that word when I first started learning Japanese. Ironically, I didn't hear the word used much when I started actually speaking to Japanese people. It's not like I never see it, but I hardly ever see it and that one time I saw it I was hit with that rush of slight confusion.

I always overthink things, but in this case, I think it might boil down to using specific words or phrases in the target language whose usage resembles that of the mother language. In other words, I think it could be categorized with "avoidance theory" (avoiding words or grammar that are seen as difficult). If you are familiar with Japanese English, I'd compare it to their way of saying "riding a bus/bike", "taking a train", "flying", etc... they say "by bus/bike/train/plane/etc." While it may not be wrong, it's just not nearly as natural. It's easy to learn for them because "by" resembles the particle で in that situation. In this situation 時々 resembles "sometimes" in its grammatical use.

I apologize for my long posts, but I'd like to share a good use of google as a language tool for those of you who don't know this. Incidentally, I think WWWJDIC has a similar function. Type a phrase in quotes in google and look at quantity of hits (as well as the quality of the hits... ie, are they in the mother language? are the posts saying things along the lines of "do people actually use this grammar?" etc.).

"時々学校に行っている” = 1 hit
"時々学校行っている” = 0 hits
"時々学校に行く”　= about 80 hits
"時々学校行く”　= about 25 hits
”学校に時々行く” = about 15 htis
"学校時々行く” = 3 hits
”私は時々学校に行く” = 2 hits
”時々私は学校に行く” = 1 hit
”私は学校に時々行く” = 0 hits

etc.

Keep in mind that google results generally suggest "written language" as it's technically written. However, internet language, in my opinion, can sometimes resemble a blend of spoken/written language as well as a unique language unto itself.

”週１回学校行く” = 2 hits (both of which carry a "negative" connotation)
”週１回学校に行く” = about 10 hits
”たまに学校に行く” = 200+ hits (As I suspected this word is translated as "occasionally" in my dictionary... this seems more natural to me even though the word "occasionally" isn't used as much as "sometimes" in English. When you get down to it though, is there that big of a difference between "occasionally" and "sometimes" in English? This is an area where dictionaries are very misleading)
”学校はたまに行く” = 13 hits (with a slightly different nuance)
”学校はだいたい行く” = about 5 hits (I think this has a nuance along the lines of regularly going to school... but there is a problem sometimes with going. This is instead of "sometimes going to school because I'm only required to go to school sometimes).
”だいたい学校に行く” = about 20 hits. I think this implies something like "usually going to school..." (which would be followed by "is a pain", "takes about 20 minutes", etc).

I said 普通に in my last post, but I think that would imply more than just "sometimes". In fact, it might imply that one goes to school as one is expected to go to school.

I feel like I'm sticking my neck out there with all these crazy examples. I just want to clarify that I'd be most comfortable with "たまに" (tamani) and the more specific ”週１回”/"毎週日曜日" approach.