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10-11-2010, 09:57 PM
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2. Non-native = wrong. Maybe not grammatically wrong. But I never said it was. 3. Multiple means "more than one." Stop arguing about what English words mean with a native English speaker whose job is to be very good with English and who used to be an editor of an academic journal, please. 4. If you can't give correct help, you are by definition doing the opposite of helping. If I walk around the gym telling everyone you're supposed to do deadlifts with a curved back (which, I might add, can cause serious injury), I don't care how much I want to help, I'm literally hurting people. My point is that you should wait a little while longer before helping people. That's all. Well, also that you shouldn't dictate to me what simple words mean in English  Truce? 
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10-11-2010, 10:02 PM
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And I think posting your level in general is a good idea. When I'm unsure, I'll either say so and point out my level (near fluent), or I'll link to searches on Eijiro or Google that suggest I'm right. That seems to have worked in the past.
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10-12-2010, 09:39 AM
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10-12-2010, 11:48 AM
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However, I'm sometimes not so sure about using tokidoki at all. While I love using "sometimes" in English, I don't feel that the Japanese-English dictionary equivilant gets nearly as much usage. I think that words like たまに, だいたい, ふつうに, etc get way more use... there meanings might not be the exact same as English's "Sometimes", but the usage is quite similar. I might be crazy, but judging by the way that I've mostly heard tokidoki used, I'd say that it's better suited as like a one word response to a question. ex) Q:最近学校行っている？ A:ま、時々やね or something like that. Instead, "once a week" or something of that ilk sounds more natural. 週１回学校に行っている That's just my experience though. I distinctly remember learning 時々(tokidoki) very early on and realizing that people seldom use it (like the word "seldom"... saying "hardly ever" would be a more natural choice). I'd like to hear what natives think about that idea though.
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10-12-2010, 06:42 PM
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Aren't you living in Japan and married to a Japanese woman?
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10-13-2010, 12:28 AM
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.
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10-13-2010, 02:04 AM
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10-13-2010, 02:33 AM
"Would you say the nuance is something like in the second example, there's a bit more emphasis on the "sometimes"? It kind of feels that way to me, since the most natural place I think for たまに is at the beginning of the sentence (if I'm right about this, I'm jumping for joy that my ear hasn't devolved too much over the years!)."
I think that on the first example the emphasis would be on たまに, and on the second example the emphasis would be on school. The reason being for this is the use of the particle は. It's like you're changing what you're talking about from something else to school. It's kinda like "ya I work full time and have 3 kids... as for school, I sometimes go" or "I'll go to school sometimes, but I usually stay at home and play video games all day" (which is an unfortunate reality for some students!!). I think in both of those English examples you can see that the emphasis is taken away from "sometimes" and placed more on the idea of "school vs. something else". At least that's how I'm thinking of it at the moment! I could be misleading everybody, though. Something I've noticed though is that on a lot of the google results for these things there is a negative connotation for most if not all of these examples. I didn't get that same feeling when searching "sometimes I go to school" or "I sometimes go to school" on google.
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10-14-2010, 12:26 AM
So I asked about this one-- the word oder would be like:
"watashi ha tokidoki (verb)" When I asked my wife if she used "tokidoki" she said that she does, but when I followed up with "like when?" she kinda froze and said maybe she uses "tama ni" more often. Then I asked if she would use "tokidoki", how would she use it. She had an example of using it as a like a one word response, like what I mentioned before. She then said she might use it like "watashi ha tokidoki (verb)". It looks like our opinions on it are very similar, which could be a result of her Japanese rubbing off on me or of my Japanese rubbing off on her... or it could just be that's how it is. ------- I may be quick to draw conclusions, but I think that there is a big lesson here for language learners. 1. Your text book isn't the best source for learning (which is hugely ironic and unfortunate... this goes for both English textbooks in Japan and Japanese textbooks that I've seen in America). a. One reason for this is what I guess I'd call teacher-induced-avoidance-behavior. b. Another reason for this is induced errors caused by oversimplification of a language. I think it's a stretch to try to fit even the basics of a language in a 200-300 page textbook. You'd have to gloss over quite a bit of material which would rely on the students filling in the blanks, which is obsurd. 2. Just because you use a word in your own language a lot (ie: sometimes) doesn't mean natives of your target language will use the dictionary equivilant of that word as often. a. This has to do with interference, which in this case would be your mother language (or even second/third languages for mutli-lingual folks) influencing your target langauge. --------- As a note for general word order, while there is a "correct" word order in Japanese, it's pretty common to mix things up. You don't have to follow such strict rules, and most Japanese people don't a lot of the time. Different word orders suggest different areas of emphasis. "明日学校行く” ＯＫ ”学校行く、明日” ＯＫ ”明日行く学校” Ｘ ”行く学校明日” Ｘ I think this is why listening is so important. If you're serious about learning the language, take your time and put in the hours of listening it takes to develop an ear (natural Japanese, not textbook Japanese listening). It's also important study some written Japanese to correct hearing mistakes... but I think a good ear will give you at least basic writing skills. --------- (linguistic nonsense)----- I think textbooks are good at producing quick results-- they are great for presenting material that the learners will be tested on. However, in real life when "tests" turn into dealing with the language in everyday situations you have the benefit of not having to worry about what a teacher or text book thinks you should know. Instead you can focus on language that occurs from situation to situation (case-by-case). This kind of learning takes longer to get results but I think it's more "permanant". This way you can take examples from your target language and connect them together to create more output of your target langauge. At least i you make mistakes this way, they will be more "native-like" mistake. This is instead of going to a more "advanced" textbook, which usually still compares your mother language to your target language.
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10-14-2010, 03:40 AM
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S-O-V yukiwa gakkouni ikimasu. S-V-O yukino ikutokorowa gakkoudesu. ( not really svo but English and Japanese are not one-to-one languages) O-S-V gakkouni yukiwa ikimasu. O-V-S gakkouni ikunowa yukidesu. ( again not actually dvs) V-O-S I can't make one V-S-O I can't make one The point I wanted to focus on is that Japanese has special post articles like: wa, ga, ni, mo, no. to, de, ka etc... . These postfixes create word relationships or more precisely, they tag words as objects, subjetcs or verbs among other things. wa & ga tags subjects ni and de tags objetcs masu tags verbs Because of this, the word order is very flexible. Yet, just like in English, each sentence has a different feel and focus. 
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