Lately I met a girl on hellotalk, and weve been skyping for up to 5 hours on some nights.
Now, my conversation skill is pretty much non-existent, but I am able to pick up pieces of what she says (shes studying English major so her english skills admirable). Ive had so much exposure to her casual way of speaking recently that im beginning to pick up her monologues:
"何て言うんだろう” or "何だっけ” she says quite often. Now I know that this is probably simple stuff, but nonetheless im feeling quite good about being able to pick this stuff up.
But, recently she just says “ある” a lot, especially when we speak in English. Am I correct in assuming that this is literally translated to “there is”? or am I missing something. Sometimes it occurs out of context and I can’t follow it
Why would she be saying it when you’re speaking English?
Are you sure it’s not あの? Which is the Japanese version of “um” and thus kind of hard to break the habit of saying, even when speaking a foreign language.
Apparently it has a meaning similar to: “I have had the same experience”
For example, the example she gave me was that if you tell her that you wake up in the morning and get out of bed all groggy and hit your toe on something, then she would reply うん！ある、ある！Which explains why I could never make any sense of it whenever she said it
If you ever watch Japanese gameshows, you will see the phrase come up a lot, I believe. At least that is the only time I’ve heard it (well, and in an anime once).
