You need that one too! It’s a different に, marking the time. The sentence would have two 
5 Likes
Ohh my. 
Thank you for the tips!
I have a beginner’s question, but sometimes I tend to forget simplest things (or they turn out to be the things that I somehow skipped/missed while learning?)…
If I want to say “I heard this song on a radio”, is この曲をラジオに聴いた。correct? Or should I use で instead of に?
It should be で. If you’re trying to say ‘by means of something’, i.e. “I listened to the song by means of the radio”, it’s always で.
2 Likes
Thanks. I knew that general rule, but somehow had a doubts for this case - no idea why. Kind of temporary brain fart 
(so it turns out I made a mistake while writing one YT comment under the song I liked Oh well, that such things happen )
1 Like
Apologies if this has been asked before, I tried searching around and didn’t find anything.
Does it matter which order you put the actions when using ながら? For example, “walking while eating” and “eating while walking” are technically the same thing. In English I wouldn’t really care which order they’re in, but want to make sure it’s the same in Japanese.
Yes it does matter. ながら marks it as a secondary action.
1 Like
Okay, so I think the rule is that the action that comes first in the Japanese sentence is the one that comes after “while”, correct?
Not necessarily because, as you mentioned, in English the order doesn’t matter.
As an example, from the Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar they have the following sentence:
歩きながら本を読むのは危ないですよ。
which they translate as:
It is dangerous to read while walking.
You can’t use the English translation to assume how the Japanese sentence is written.
Got it. Thanks!
1 Like
Doesn’t it? In my mind, “eating while walking” is “I’m walking from A to B, and I’ll eat something on the way”, whereas “walking while eating” is “I’m in the middle of eating a meal, but I need to walk somewhere in the middle”.
4 Likes
Recently heard this phrase from an anime:
「バレなきゃ犯罪じゃないですよ」
“It’s not a crime if you don’t get caught”
So I completely get the 犯罪じゃないですよ part, that’s obvious.
But how does バレなきゃ tie into here?
バレる can mean “to be exposed”, which makes sense by context, but wouldn’t バレなきゃ mean “have to be exposed”? Kind of like how 行かなきゃ, for example, means “have to go”?
I think I’m missing something. Maybe because of the double negative it changes something? Any help appreciated. I feel like I’m missing something super simple.
なきゃ is only the contraction of なければ (= if not). In casual speech the phrase なければなりません (= must) is often abbreviated to なきゃ (+ omission). But in this sentence there is no omission.
5 Likes
Took the words right out of my mouth. But more to the point, in this sentence, there’s explicitly a “then” clause following the “if” clause - it’s 犯罪じゃないです
2 Likes
Hmm, but where’s the negation here?
The way I see it, it’s saying “if you’re exposed, it’s not a crime”, which doesn’t make sense here. Where’s the negation to say “if you’re not exposed”?
バレなきゃ = バレなければ is the ba-form (= if) of the negation (バレない).
Thus “If (you) don’t get exposed”.
2 Likes
It’s in the な (or なけ I suppose) of なければ. The affirmative ば form for ばれる (if you are exposed) would be ばれれば.
5 Likes
Hi, a little stuck on this phrase and need some help please: ‘自信なげに振る舞う’. I thought it was the げ(seeming) grammar point, but upon looking up that grammar point the な part is confusing me. It seems that for affirmative, it would be 自信げに, and for negative (無い) it would be 自信なさげに. I could be way off base though, not really sure - so any help would be greatly appreciated 
Googling it brought up this
Where they say that 自信なさげ is wrong, and they go on to explain it there.
2 Likes