Short Grammar Questions (Part 1)

It took me ages to understand the おおくりします that they use in the sponsorship announcements in anime and the like :joy_cat:

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At first I always understood it as お-クリスマス, but I figured that it probably doesn’t have anything to do with Christmas.

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Oh, is that what it is?

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I think so :sunglasses:

The full sentence (iirc) is ご覧のスポンサーの提供でお送りします。

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I was reading this short extract of a story from a newsletter I’m subscribed to:

診療だけでなく研究や教育も比重が大きい大学病院に対して、市中病院は診療が主な機能になる。医学部を卒業して以来、三十五歳の誕生日を迎えるまで大学病院で勤務を続けていた千晶にとっては、戸惑いが多かった。.

The translation provided for the first sentence was ‘In contrast to a university hospital, where importance is placed not only on medical care but also on research and education, the main function of a city hospital is to provide care.’ The contrastive use of に対して would certainly make sense here, but wouldn’t it be 大学病院であるのに対して?

「ぬかよろこび」のタネを見つけて、不確かなものに飛び上がってよろこべるのも、自然で、大事な才能じゃないかと思うんです。アイディアだって、みんな大好きな恋愛とかだって、「ぬかよろこび」みたいなものが推進力でしょう?

How does だって work in that last sentence? It seems to me that 「ぬかよろこび」みたいなものが推進力でしょう is the main element of that sentence (“things like short-lived elation must be the driving force”), but how does アイディアだって、みんな大好きな恋愛とかだって get tied into it? I get what the sentence means, generally, but I’d like to actually understand the grammar in a way that’ll help me understand it in future sentences as well.

The closest equivalent I could give you in english for this usage is like “even” or “even for”.

Something like nukayorokobi is kinda like the driving force for even love and ideas, right?

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Would it be correct to say that there are two だってs? Here it is presented as だ + って (or という), but the way you describe it makes it sound more like a たって form of です (which might well be the same という in the end…? IS IT というS ALL THE WAY DOWN?!).

I mean there are two in this case, but you don’t have to have two and can just have one

俺だって、読めない漢字はいっぱいある

I dont know about how people break it down or where it comes from honestly, I just know だって as だって lol.

https://jlptsensei.com/learn-japanese-grammar/だって-datte-meaning/

Why would it? The opposition here is between 大学病院 and 市中病院, not between one verb and another, or one state/action and another.

@Phryne My dictionary says it’s from だ+とて followed by a sound change. I think とて here is something like ‘といっても’. When you put everything together, you get something like ‘even if we say it’s ~/we consider ~’. I personally remember it as being similar to であっても, which looks a lot like だって.

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This whole thing functions as a single noun, so there’s no subject to ある. Everything up through 大きい is a clause that describes the 大学病院.

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I wonder if it’s also related to the たって verb construction?

Like 読んだって which is roughly the same as 読んでも in meaning.

Na adjectives would be e.g. 静かだって or 静かだったって which is similar to (noun)だって at least in structure if nothing else… which is why I wonder if they’re related somehow. They might just be coincidentally similar though.

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大辞林 says that this comes from adding とて as well, so yes, they are related. They both evolved the same way. I didn’t consider that possibility. Hahaha. Thanks for pointing it out.

And yes, I suspect that for な-adjectives, it’s literally exactly the same thing as だって for nouns, because な is the 連体形 of だ, just specialised for certain uses only.

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The grammar dictionary which I learnt the formation rules from provided the following distinction between Nounに対して and Noun {な/である/だった/であった} のに対して:

“Nに対して” and “N {な/である/だった/であった} のに対して” are different in meaning; the latter means ‘whereas’, but the former does not, as shown below:

  • 彼は女性に対してとても親切だ。He is very kind toward women.
  • 淑子が好きな男性は豪快な男性 {な/である} のに対して、由美子が好きな男性は優しい男性だ。The men Yoshiko likes are spirited; whereas the men Yumiko likes are considerate.

But as @kenbongort pointed out, unlike the example sentences given above, there is no subject to である so for that reason I guess Nounに対して can work when comparing something as well?

I think I need to revise the formation rules for に対して

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It certainly can, in my experience, but perhaps more importantly… ‘whereas’ is a conjunction that joins two sentences. That’s not what に対して translates as in your example. Your example says ‘as opposed to/in contrast to/as compared to a university hospital, which […], for a city hospital,…’. There’s no ‘whereas’ in sight, even if it’s possible to translate the sentence more loosely using ‘whereas’, but that would change the structure for the sentence. For that matter, because は comes after the noun, in the Japanese, there’s a very clear ‘noun versus noun’ structure:「Aに対して、Bは…」Grammatically speaking, your sentence juxtaposes two nouns that are modified or discussed in some way, whereas :wink: ‘whereas’ juxtaposes two independent clauses (i.e. clauses that can function as sentences on their own) of the form ‘A [to do] X’. That’s why the grammar dictionary’s comment is irrelevant here even though it’s correct, because the first half isn’t even an independent clause.

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Aaaa that makes sense. Thank you for the help!

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Is 見りゃわかるだろ a set phrase or can you swap 見る for other verbs?

りゃ is just shortening for れば, so grammar wise you could possibly use any verb that conjugates as れば, such as る行 verbs or 一段 verbs.
〇見りゃわかる、食べりゃわかる、考えりゃわかる

For other verbs you are left with regular conjugations:
行けば分かる、飲めばわかる、思えばわかる、etc

EDIT:
There could be some dialect where people say stuff as 飲みゃ or 行きゃ and I’m sure any Japanese would understand it right away if said, but I have never seen it in real life nor my IME suggests it, so I assume it’s not “standard Japanese abbreviation”, if such a thing even exists.

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Ah, thank you! Do you know if that shortening is a Tokyo dialect thing or more standard?

Based on my own experience I would say it’s “standard”, but I’ve only lived in Tokyo and Kanto area, so I sometimes find it hard to differentiate between actual 標準語 and 東京弁.

Japanese internet gave me a page saying it is used in Osaka-ben and in Yamaguchi-ben. Also people in this Yahoo Answers seem to agree that anyone would understand it.

So I assume the answer would be that maybe not every Japanese person will use it, but definitely any Japanese person will understand it.

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