I could have used either one. I would also say that these were interchangeable because I could not think of a situation where only one of the two sounds right.

The only slight difference, if one could call it that, is that ときがある sounds somewhat more direct than ことがある. Not that I have thought about this before, it seems I have learned to prefer the indirectness or softness of ことがある over the other one. You can be assured that it is not a matter of correct or incorrect.

I will sleep on this tonight, though, and let you know tomorrow if I have changed my mind.

I've never seen this being used before, can you explain it please?

Be happy to.

Certain words (verbs, adjectives and nouns) take what one might call the "tough guy" prefixes in casual speech.　The purpose of these prefixes is to emphasize the stem words they precede.

こっ　＋　ひどい　＝　こっぴどい really terrible
こっ　＋　はずかしい　＝　こっぱずかしい super-embarrassing

ぶっ　＋　殺（ころ）す　＝　ぶっ殺す to kill brutally
ぶっ　＋　こわす　＝　ぶっこわす to demolish totally

ぶん　＋　なぐる　＝　ぶんなぐる to punch furiously
ぶん　＋　取（と）る　＝　ぶん取（ど）る to snatch/capture by force

すっ　＋　はだか　＝　すっぱだか completely naked
すっ　＋　飛（と）ばす　＝　すっ飛ばす to drive extremely fast

ど　＋　真ん中（まんなか）　＝　ど真ん中 dead center
ど　＋　いなか　＝　どいなか the sticks

There are some other tough guy prefixes, too. If you ever use these, be aware of the rendaku that occur at the first consonant of the stem word. "Rendaku" is in Wiki. In the list above, I showed where it occurs by enlarging the kana.

Below is from manga/anime 「ど根性ガエル」. The frog on the guy's T-shirt not only has 「根性　=　guts」 but he has 「ど根性 = a whole lot of guts」. Oh yes, the frog lives on the T-shirt and makes the boy do things.

Ah that's cool! I understand now. You've also helped me to understand Rendaku. I'd come across this before but just accepted it as the done thing, rather than knowing the term Rendaku and the concept behind it.

Thanks very much! :D

Cool. Now you know why we say おりがみ when the word for "paper" is かみ.

Indeed! :D

I thought it was just what people did to make word pronounciaton easier.

Well, it is. :p

Final example: Did you know there was a rendaku in ありがとう as well?

Miscellaneous: Say つゆだく when ordering a gyuudon in Japan next time. They will give you extra gravy. Ain't got nothing to do with れんだく but what the hell? No books will teach you these useful words! So I will. I myself had a gyuudon yesterday and I asked for ねぎだく, meaning "extra onion".

Final word (I promise!): There is rendaku in the word つゆだく because the だく part comes from たくさん.

No, I didn't know that - I'm guessing it's the が in ありがとう? How did that come to be? Did olden day Japanese say ありかとう？

I can't stand gravy so I won't be asking for any of that, but in the case of noodles and other things, I do enjoy soy sauce. Would that be しょうゆだくおねがいします？

I do not think anyone said ありかとう in the old days, either. It is just hard for us to say it without using rendaku.

かたい（難い） is a word meaning "hard, difficult" but it is not really used all by itself. Something must directly precede it.　ありがたい(ある　＋　かたい) literally means "hard to exist", which is like "precious". If you do something nice to another person, your action is "precious". It does not just exist anywhere: It needs to be commended. Voila, that is how you thank others.

ありがとう is originally the Kansai way of saying ありがたい/ありがたく. As you know, Kansai, namely the old capital (= present-day Kyoto) is where Classical Japanese was formed.

Nevermind the Gyuudon jargon, then. I wanted to introduce those words because they are new and used only at gyuudon places. If one does not know them, one has no choice but to form a long sentence to say "extra gravy" or "extra onion".

And no, you cannot place a random noun to precede だく to say "extra ~~". You will need to say 「～～を多めでお願いします。」 . I have explained in the past a few times what "adjective + め" means but it means "on the ~~ side" or "rather ~~".

The soup in うどん or そば is NOT called しょうゆ.　It is called つゆ or おつゆ.　しょうゆ is only one of its ingredients.

Asking for extra soup would be 「おつゆを多（おお）めで（ＯＲ　に）お願いします。 」

Actually, rendaku is (also) one of those little things every language has to help make words easier to understand in noisy environments.

As an English example, if a word ends in a voiced consonant, then the preceding vowel is about three times longer than if it ends in an unvoiced consonant. Just listen to someone saying peas and peace until you're convinced. So if there's some noise, and an English person wonders, "Did he use a s or a z?" they can say, "Well, the vowel was long, so it must be peas."

This is so VERY unconscious that you can confront people on it and they will have no idea it exists. If you get it wrong, you will still be understood, but people will think you have a funny accent, even if they don't know why.

The Japanese are at least aware that rendaku exists. I don't know if you'll still be understood without rendaku, but it helps determine if a word is a compound or just two words next to each other. Compound word? Use Rendaku. UNLESS it's in one of a short list of phonetic environments. (but be aware of the long list of words in those phonetic environments that use rendaku anyways.) Linguists are still studying rendaku.

Fanboy story: In the anime One Piece, there's a character that gets called 青鼻 for the creative reason that he has a blue nose. Half the characters in the show call him あおはな and the other half call him あおぱな. No one comments on it. Ever. This was my introduction to Rendaku.

I *do* have a story of something the Japanese do without realizing involving pitch accent. To make it worse, even the experts don't know what the Japanese are actually doing.

For some background, pitch accent came up shortly before I joined. I wanted to tag to that conversation, but it was already dead. http://www.japanforum.com/forum/japa...beginners.html

There are actually two pitch accents: The way native Japanese hear it working, and the way they speak it. Japanese tell you that it's a matter of low syllables vs high syllables, and they *do* hear it that way, but if you look at the spectrograms, the truth is a word starts low, rises gradually to the "accented" mora, then drops sharply on the *next* mora, after which it rises gently for the rest of the word. That gentle rise is why pitch accent descriptions tend to show the first mora as low (unless it's the accented mora, in which case the drop appears right after and the first mora seems high.)

That's just trivia. The hair tearing thing is, if the accented mora is voiceless, and the mora after it is also voiceless (and the spectrograms show they're voiceless), a native Japanese person can *still hear* a drop between the two mora. And it's not like they're making something up, they all agree where the "drop" is, even if it's a word none of them have heard before. Last time I read about this was years ago, and the experts didn't really have an explanation why yet. I should probably check up on it.

I was surprised to hear Masaegu say he was taught the accent for every word in school, because they did a survey once, "How do you know the difference between 鼻 and 花?" and a lot of respondents answered, "Because the kanji are different," despite the fact that the survey was 100% oral. Maybe because they're words you learn as a kid instead of having to be taught?

I could go on... frankly I know more *about* Japanese than I know actual Japanese.