I don’t really use these kinds of vocab in Japanese, and the immersion Anime tool doesn’t really have anything for these terms, maybe dramas but I don’t watch J-dramas.
Any tips otherwise I’m just going to like effectively suspend this term?
There’s a reason why you don’t encounter it, according to Wanikani
You can also add numbers to this word. For example ５年来 means something to the tune of “for five years.” But this is a pretty formal word. Just keep that in mind.
If it any help that’s my note for it:
If it’s a counter of time you’d have to use the question for how many, in this case years, and the answer would be FOR SOME YEARS, or FOR YEARS.
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Funny, I had to come up with a mnemonic for that one today because I couldn’t remember exactly how the meaning was phrased. I remember that it looks like it should have to do with years to come, but come rhymes with some— it’s ‘for some years’. Works for me.
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I’m not sure if it will help, but what I did is memorize it as a counter for years as in “for X years” . I do essentially the same thing with all of the counters in general. For example ~日 (X days), ~歳 (X years old), etc. So, following that pattern made it a little easier to remember that WK wants “for some years”. I suppose I could add a user synonym “for X years” too, but thus far I haven’t needed to.
I think the reason I’ve found that easier to remember is because “for some years”, while it’s undoubtedly correct, is just a strange way to phrase it that is virtually never used, so I too had a hard time with it until I changed the strategy per the aforementioned.
I mean, it’s possible you could say something like “I played football for some years”, but in reality, you’re much more likely to say “I played football for a few years”, “I played football for several years”, or something else along those lines. It seems a lot easier to get there via “for X years” → “for some years”.
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Thank you for the tips!
I’ll try thinking of this term as a counter, and either as “come → some” or for “x years”.
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In my dialect, this is quite natural, and is approximately synonymus with “for many years” (too many to count). A lot more that a few, or several.