It seems to me that talking about how old people are is fairly straightforward, but talking about objects or abstract concepts is a bit more challenging. I asked a native speaker how to say “Greek Mythology is 2700 years old.” and she responded with:
ギリシャ神話は、2700年前のものです。
I would be grateful if somebody could break down the grammar at the end of the sentence, specifically the “のもの” part.
もの just means “thing”, so ２７００年前のもの is just “a thing of 2700 years ago”
Which would be the better way to point out a dead fish in a pond?
すみません、池に死んでいるコイがある
すみません、池にコイの死体がある
Or just a totally different way lol?
死体 is a pretty strong word and would sound a bit over-dramatic for a dead fish.
Just go with 死んでいるコイ
Cool, I’ll keep that in mind for the future 
I’m not sure if more than 1 person is following the thread, so I’ll just link my question here.
ジョジョはいまだにみじめさと落()ち込()んだ気持()ちがつづいていたが…！ How should I break up this part? It doesn’t seem to be one word, but I can’t get parts to show up in a sensical way on Jisho. sweat_smile
いまだに and みじめさ
Perhaps いまだに threw you off.
Thanks, yeah it did. I don’t think I’ve noticed it used like that before.
Sometimes you’ll see いまだに as 未だに, where in this case the 未 is read as いま instead of just ま (from まだ). So it’s not 今 for いま if that’s what you were thinking.
It was somewhat and the kanji didn’t register in my head when I looked it up, so thank you for the clarification.
Update: I found a dead bird at work, so it was my golden opportunity.
僕：死んでる鳥がある
上司: え、鳥が死んでる？
僕: はい
Bossman: I’ll go give it a Buddhist funeral/rites
Is a living thing that died really ある? Somehow would have still subconciously have chosen いる probably.
I think we had this discussion a long long while back 
Robots, animals, people, other living things, dude taxi driver in his 車 (addressed as タクシー) - いる
Inanimate things, dead things - ある
@WeebPotato already covered most of it, but trees are also ある
Please check this translation from a premed Anki deck of mine.
This:
is translated as:
Sometimes parents make children feel awkward.
Does this look right? The part that consuses me is that I ascribed the awkward feelings (
There is no causative here? I don’t know why you think that? Do you think its causative because of the translation?
The dictionary for 煙たい has basically the same example sentence 父親は子供にとって―・い存在だ.
So the sentence seems solid to me.
にとって is a grammar point you can look up, but it seems you know that already.
I think you get confused by the translation. Perhaps more along the lines of “Sometimes parents are an awkward existence for their children” is more word for word though pretty strange in english.
Though awkward is also a pretty rough translation for 煙たい overall if I look at the JP definition.
That would sound strange in English, but at least it would explain the grammar in the original sentence better. I was quite confused myself, because I couldn’t align A with B here. To me in cases like this it’s unclear whether the Japanese sentence is off or the English one is?
I haven’t checked a JP dictionary yet, but would 煙たい used that way align with the meaning of 煙たがる, for instance?
Yeah the thing is according to the Japanese definition 相手に威圧感を覚えるなどして、安易に近づくことが出来ないと感じる様子だ。
If I interpret it correctly roughly something along the lines of
“Being reminded by the other party of an intimidating air, not being able to to get close to a state of feeling at ease (lighthearted)” is kind of an attribute you prescribe to your parents which actually triggers these feelings in yourself.
So its an adjective of something that has an effect on yourself. Which makes it reeealy awkward to translate I feel like…
My translation doesn’t capture that the awkward is the feeling of the children. The causative in the englisch translation captures that way better.
Don’t know. Maybe my own understanding is way off too? ^^
