@athomasm @TamanegiNoKame Thank you so much, I think I’m getting it now. A hug from Barcelona!
No, bad. No hugging. A friendly wave from at least 1.5 metres away.
Person A is about to start some manner of commercial endeavour. Person B says to person A:
成功させてください
What exactly is the causative doing here? Is it an exhortation that person A should make it a success, or is merely a wish that the gods/fate allows them to succeed?
I think you’re right here. I take it to mean “Please make it succeed”.
Hey people I have another doubt.
(Thank you so so much in advance)
So I came upon this sentence in my textbook.
すごくやりがいのある仕事だと思うんですけど、責任も重いし、私に出来るかなあって。
So I get the meaning of the sentence (something in the lines of “I think it’s an extremely worthwile job but there are also huge responsabilities so I wonder If I’ll be able to do it”) but I don’t get neither the usage of the に nor the usage of the last って. I know って can work as sort of a topic marker and as a quotation marker but I’m not really seeing how it fits in here.
Thank you so much (and excuse my english)
I think the って is working like a quotation mark here, kind of implying a “I thought” or “I was saying to myself”. Quite informal but natural in casual speech.
The に here is kind of marking you as the topic for 出来る, or rather indicating you as the direction for it. So 私に出来るかなあって reads to me as “I’m wondering if it’s possible for me”.
So in total I’d translate it as:
すごくやりがいのある仕事だと思うんですけど、責任も重いし、私に出来るかなあって 。
“I think it’s a job very much worth doing, but the responsibilty is high, and I wonder if I’d be able to do it”
Hey everyone, I’m a bit confused on the structure of the following sentence:
毎朝、通勤に３０分かかります。- It takes 30 minutes to commute every morning.
It’s an example sentence for commuting to work (通勤) but I’m confused by the usage of に there.
If I had to phrase it I would have wrote something like: 毎朝、通勤は３０分にかかります。So could someone be kind enough to explain what’s going on?
This sentence structure…
[some activity] に (something) がかかる
…is a fairly normal way to use the verb かかる in this sense. I guess you can look at it as に is marking the indirect object of かかる.
I don’t think it’s all that different from the “to” in “It takes 30 minutes to get to work.”
It’s possible they aren’t filling the exact same grammatical role. I’m no expert in the details of grammar in either language.
Thanks Leebo! So there’s probably a hidden が between 30分 and かかる is there?
No, that’s only if there is a noun there, not a unit of something. You can ignore it in this case. I suppose you could say there is an invisible 時間が, but that seems needlessly complicated. Units typically come directly before a verb.
I edited it to avoid that confusing wording.
I came across this sentence while watching a series (line was spoken by an old guy):
“暑いなぁ… まだ梅雨にも入っとらんというのに…”
I translated this as
“It’s (so) hot… Even though we haven’t even entered the rainy season yet…”
Apparently this is correct-ish, though I don’t really understand what “入っとらん” is doing. Is it just an old-man way of saying “入っていない”, similar to how てごらん is sort of an old-man version of “なさい”?
I believe this is the dialectal ておる. I’m not sure which dialect it is exactly, but as you noted it’s typically used for “old man” characters in media.
base conjugation
入っているー＞入っておる
negation
入っていないー＞入っておらん (dialectal negation where ない slurs to ん)
And finally, similar to how ておく often slurs to とく, I think ておらん is slurring to とらん. If anyone knows more about the dialect feel free to correct me.
That’s makes sense to me in any case! Thanks!
「いつ 辛い料理を食べられってなりましたか？」
Would this be a reasonable way to ask “When did you become able to eat spicy food?”
The typical way to say “become able to [do something]” is ～られるようになる
いつからい料理を食べられるようになりましたか
Is there a meaning to “ように” here that would make the meaning evident, or is “[potential form]ようになる” just an all-in-one package of meaning?
Well, if you wanted to break it down to the literal meaning, one meaning of 様 (typically written in hiragana, especially in grammar points) is “state, condition, appearance.”
So [potential form]よう is like “state of being able to” and になる is “to become.”
But most people don’t bother breaking it down to teach how to use it.
Thank you, I think for me understanding the meaning deeply helps a lot with remembering. I am very bad at pattern matching.
「おかげさまで ウチが 行商に来るのを 楽しみに待ってくれてる お客さんが、だいぶ 増えてきたんですよ」
In Animal Crossing, I see a lot of verb conjugation strings ending with くれる or くれている this way, and I’m struggling to wrap my head around them. Jisho has several meanings for this verb: to give, to do for one, to do to someone’s disadvantage…
My attempt at a literal translation of just the bolded would be… “the guest waiting with anticipation and giving”. I suspect I’m way off.
When you’ve got ～てくれ, then nine times out of ten, it’s going to be the “to do for one” meaning. Specifically, Vてくれ = do (verb) for (someone). It’s the less formal version of ～てください.
So it’s something like “guests who are waiting in anticipation for me”.