Are 大きな and 小さな actually used in real conversation or are they mostly literary?
You’ll find both versions used pretty close to equally.
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In this example sentence:
かえりに、貝をかってきましょうか。
(from level 4),
could someone explain the conjugation of 買う?
買ってきましょう consists of two parts:
買って–>て-form of 買う
きましょう–>the verb auxiliary くる which indicates returning to the point where the speaker is after buying the shellfish. ～ましょう indicates the volitional form of くる.
Hopefully that helps a bit!
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Polite violational more specifically.
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Thanks for mentioning. It’s discussed in the link I included.
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And that explains why Japanese mothers shout 待ってて to their children in the street and not just 待って. Thanks a lot!
Yes, that helps a lot, thanks!
Didn’t meet this くる fella up until now…
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Question!
Learning 泳ぐ (to swim) and 泳ぎ (swimming) in level 9 right now. But can’t you just add a の to the end of 泳ぐ to make it a noun? I think I’m misunderstanding how to use verb+の.
So if they are the same counter but for separate nouns, you still will need to add the counter to both nouns (匹 in this case). I have 2 dogs and 2 cats, so if I wanted to tell someone, I could simply say 俺は犬二匹と猫二匹を飼っている. You can also say 猫を二匹と犬を二匹飼っています (EDIT: Maybe dont say this one. May get some weird looks and its probably better to stick to the first sentence structure).
It may seem weird that the first を doesn’t look like its taking a transitive verb, but its understood that it takes the same verb as the second を.
EDIT: some stuff
You actually have since day 1 (or so) in いってきます
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Not every verb can be turned into a noun the way 泳ぎ is turned into one there, so you need to be careful with that method. The various nominalization methods have different grammatical usages and (slight) nuances as well.
But as far as I can tell, there’s basically no difference in meaning between 泳ぎが上手な人 and 泳ぐのが上手な人, but natives I asked (small sample size) preferred 泳ぐのが.
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The pattern of a noun being made with the 連用形 of a verb is pretty much set in stone here. But it’s just that not all of them exist.
Wait, what’s different about ours grammatically? Or were you just referring to my second option? In which case yeah, the second option was just an alternative and not what I would say personally.
Ahh. I fixated on your 2nd example for some reason and thought they were the same except for verb conjugation. My fault. I’ll delete the comment.
Nahnah, at least keep some of it. I just thought I was missing something lol. The second part was something I just threw together that I thought would sound more formal while seemingly grammatically correct. If it would sound a bit off in spoken language, then that’s worth noting.
Also if a japanese person agrees with the first example, might as well say that just to add credibility or whatever. In the end, I’m still a noob and people shouldn’t trust everything that comes out of my mouth :3
お土産 (おみやげ) is not this kind of noun…
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Can’t wrap my mind around this sentence from a song
君の事どう思うか？ってさ, which is translated as “You ask me how I feel about you”. The thing that I just can’t grasp is how 君の事 could be reflexive, it sounds like “What do you think of yourself?”.
and while I’m at it,
Coincidentally, the next line has another grammar bit that’s been bugging me for a while.
別に嫌いじゃない」なんて言ったら (I wouldn’t say that I don’t like you). Lately I’ve been noticing supposition grammar points such as ～たら, なら, ば, と, etc being used unconditionally, and this sentence is a good example as there’s a ～たら (“if”) at the end, but no “then”. It sounds like me saying “If there’s a dog” then just ending the sentence there. I see conditional grammar points being used like this all the time but have no idea why…
Any elaboration would be greatly appreciated, thanks in advance
We know it’s a quote from the って, but there are two options with quotes, to interpret it as a word-for-word quote, or as a paraphrased quote. In this case, isn’t the paraphrased meaning much more natural? Especially when you look at what follows. Why would the asker start crying when the reply is 別に嫌いじゃない to the question “What do you think of yourself?”
One of the usages of たら is just “when” or “after”, not always “if”. It’s not always conditional. It’s one of the reasons I like たら, it can do everything the other conditionals can do, while the other conditionals are all more restrictive in their usage.
帰ったらちょっとテレビを見た。
When I got home I watched TV for a bit.
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Ahh so he hijacked her quote and used 君の事 to refer to himself from her point of view? It’s gonna take a while to get used to that, thanks for the answer.
But here’s the weird part, those rogue たらs I’m referring to are always at the end of the sentence. Even when it’s used as a “when”, it’s never at the end of the sentence and has a purpose, like in your example 帰ったらちょっとテレビを見た (and in all the examples in the link).
but in the song
なんて言ったら…and that’s it. The next line is もしかして泣いてる, nothing to do with that たら…