It just looks strange and cramped so I wasn’t sure.
If you click on it, it should show you in proper proportions. Im not sure why discourse kinda crushes it down.
I asked some natives who said yes they believe it’s 殊. They said it’s emphasizing or limiting to the noun that follows.
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ran across this sentence (its a line from a play):
お父様かお父様なんていやしない。
My question is about the [noun]か[noun]なんて construction.
Am I correct to think this is just an emphatic way to say “whether or not [noun]”?
Thanks for your help
Hi, I need some help with this sentence:
“その申し出を断るなんて君はばかだ”
trad: “It was stupid of you to have turned down the offer”
The traduction is in the preterit form and I don’t see the marker…
I think I need a short grammar question for your English question…
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According to the Japanese you wrote, there wasn’t any past tense included. So maybe, “It’s stupid of you to turn down that offer.” might suffice if that makes sense.
Without context or a source, it’s really difficult to do more than this.
I think, that I understood basic particles, but the combination of them always confuses me.
ほぼ同じ意味ではありませんか？
Why is は not enough in this case? Or is it a completely different particle?
ではない (and the polite ではありません) is the negative form of the copula (the opposite of だ or です, to oversimplify). The では can be abbreviated in spoken Japanese to じゃ, for じゃない or じゃありません as well.
Removing the で would change the meaning.
As it is, it means “Isn’t it basically the same meaning?” and without the で it becomes “Isn’t there basically the same meaning” (as in, doesn’t basically the same meaning exist?).
EDIT: lol, I didn’t see the 意 the first time
Oh, I see! That makes totally sense!
I totally didn’t know that the じゃ of じゃない is an abbreviation.
So much things got clear now.
Thank you very much 
Context: This is from a Graded Reader, so not “real-life” Japanese. It is a fairy tale. In the story, it gets very very hot and they describe that it doesn’t rain any more and that the rivers run dry and basically everything dies. This description contains the sentence:
山の木は、一本もなくなりました。
I do not understand what 一本も means in this context. From what I’ve learned so far, I understand it to mean “as much as one tree died” - but this does not make sense with the rest of the story… I would rather expect something like “all trees died”.
What’s going on here? Can anybody explain this construction?
も = not even a single tree died
One of the weird bonus powers of も.
I wouldn’t be reading that as 亡くなる but as 無くなる
一本もない = not even one (tree) exists
一本もなくなりました = It became that not even one tree existed = not even one tree was left
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Quick grammar question:
Last night I was trying to write about my plans for the December JLPT, and I wanted to say that I wish I could have put it back even just to January or February. How would I say this in Japanese?
"I wish I could postpone it until January or February " isn’t that hard: 1月か2月まで延期できればよかったですが。(That might still be a little clunky, but I’m pretty sure it’s at least grammatical.)
But where/how would I work in the nuance of “even”? (As in, even one or two more months would be helpful.)
1月か2月でも, 1月か2月にも, and 1月か2月までも all seemed kind of right and kind of wrong to me for different reasons. What’s the right approach, if indeed this is even a natural kind of thing to make explicit in Japanese in the first place?
Maybe using the time period, 一ヶ月だけでも延期 (etc. etc.)
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Maybe using the time period, 一ヶ月だけでも延期 (etc. etc.)
Oh! Yeah, that wouldn’t leave me with any particle questions. Don’t know why I couldn’t think of that at the time.
Well, I feel like I’m copping out by changing it. There should be a grammatical way to do it with the calendar months, but I’m not sure だけ would sound right. My first guess is にさえ or something. I don’t think まで would work. At least, I can find no examples of までさえ in the BCCWJ.
I might be overthinking it, I’m not sure. I’ll try asking around later.
But yeah, I’m gonna say my official best guess is １月にさえ延期
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Thanks. I’m still curious to know the grammatical way to do what I first attempted too. I tried searching for examples myself, but was having trouble finding any. (Which could mean it’s just a really unnatural construction.) I could also ask around in person, but since it was a small question I thought I’d try here before pulling a teacher into grammar talk.
You could also translate it as “You’re stupid for turning down that offer.”
Even though there’s no past tense used, there’s an implied sequence of events there. 君 had to turn down the offer at some point in the past to be an idiot now in the present. If 君 hadn’t turned down the offer yet, he wouldn’t be an idiot yet and a conditional would be used. The English translation just makes the fact he refused it in the past more evident in the grammar, since a quirk of English is an obsession with the time that actions take place. I hope you can understand what I’m trying to say.
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Oh wow, thank you! I keep tripping on this ない + なる construction. Thanks for reminding me 
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