I thought I knew, but as you say, it can get complicated TuT. I didn’t think it’d be such a struggle when sentences get ambiguous. For example the sentence you presented from DoJG, I could only think of the indefinite pronoun version. Had to peek behind spoilers and even then digest for a few minutes to see the nominalizer version.
!!! This! The last piece of the puzzle! Thank you, sir~ 
The one in your sentence is もの 
But as PM said, when I or Japanese people read the sentence we aren’t thinking that much about it
Yes, もの doesn’t actually mean exactly “thing” like it does in English. It means
事㈠よりは割合に具体的に感じたり考えたりできる対象。
Which can refer to a thing or to a person. We can distinguish the two by Kanji. We often use 物 for things and 者 for people.
じゃまもの as 邪魔者 vs 邪魔物 is an illustration of how the Kanji can change the interpretation, but both are もの
I think in just being slow today
Practising using から as a way to give ab explanation
I have the prompt
友達に教科書を借りました。
And I have to give a reason why
Naturally, I borrowed a textbook yesterday because there was a test today
So:
友達に教科書を借りました。今日テストがありましたから。
Now the question , should there be a は after 今日？my brain says no but I can’t decide why
Usually with that kind of exercise you’re expected to give one sentence, not a sentence plus a tagged-on sentence fragment (which you might see conversationally but not so much written).
は or not : are you talking about today, or contrasting today with other days when you would do something else? If so, you can indicate that with は. But if “today” is part of the subordinate phrase in this structure it doesn’t get は.
Sounds better without the は
No reason to add it unless you want to be contrastive like PM said but there’s nothing suggesting it should be
Hi. I’ve been wondering about: 何度も見ちゃう
I’ve understood it in the context to mean something like “I look at it over and over” but I can’t figure out why it would mean that. Taking it literally I got something like “How many times, completely looked”.
I read it in a book club but didn’t wanna revive a week’s thread that’s hasn’t been interacted with for a few months. Unsure on the etiquette
The threads are left open to be used. People sometimes post years after a book club has ended and still get a response pretty quickly. So feel free to use them in the future if you want!
何度も wouldn’t mean “how many times”. Often も is attached to a question word mean “any”/“every” + question word. For example, 誰も is “everyone” or “anyone”, どこも is “everywhere” or “anywhere”. 何度も might have some link to that (e.g. “every time”) which just gets lost in translation to English, but it means “over and over” or “time and time again”.
Regarding しまう・ちゃう, it doesn’t always literally translate to “completely”.
Obviously I can’t get more specific without the actual sentence and context in the book you were reading.
Adding to this; It also can imply accidentally doing something. like ケーキを食べちゃった Oh no! I ate the cake. Like you meant to share it or you’re on a diet or you ate the whole thing. Essentially, expressing regretful actions. So in this case 見ちゃう can mean, the speaker doesn’t mean to keep looking at the thing over and over, but ends up doing so.
She’s looking at a text she received from her crush quite some time ago. Very much the sort of thing where she probably keeps looking at it a lot.
This would fit perfectly. I’ll try to keep in mind that way of reading ちゃう.
Thank you both for the help. Really cleared it up for me
What is the も doing in this sentence? It came up in my reviews on MaruMori
このリンゴは色も良くて、安い！
Translation given: This apple has a good color and is also cheap!
I would’ve thought the sentence would be このリンゴの色は良くて、安い
Your sentence translates to this apples color is good and cheap
Your other option, if you wanted, would be このリンゴは色が良くて、安い
Would it make sense if it was このリンゴは安くて色も良い?
You can just flip the も around to be in the front for situations where you’re listing qualities like this.
I’m doing the exercises of Japanese from Zero Vol. 2 and there are two Sentences that I don’t understand. Page 202, A7-6. I know the Grammar, but they don’t make sense.
おじさん は おとうさん の おとうと です。
Does This mean “Uncle is Younger Brothers father.”?
おばさん と いとこ の じゅんくん です。
Aunt and Cousin …
Is there a “なまえ は“ missing?
“Uncle is father’s younger brother”
You have the possessive from の backwards.
“Aunt and cousin Jun-kun”
This の is being used as a descriptor. So “cousin” is describing Jun.
Yes that makes more sense! Thank you, for some reason I never considered including も when listing multiple qualities with -て form
Does anyone know about what grammatical function さら plays in the following sentence (fragment):
常子はそれをつゆさらお恨みに思うわけではなかった。
I’ve seen phrases like つゆにも思わない many times, and maybe even with つゆさら before, but I just assumed the さら puts further emphasis. However, I can’t find つゆさら in any dictionaries nor any entries for a suffix さら applying emphasis, so I’m at a loss.
While it doesn’t impact my understanding, things like these will stay in my head forever if I don’t get an answer so if someone has an explanation I’d be very grateful!
I might look into it a bit more but it looks like the さら probably comes from like さらさら (更々) or さらに’s meaning for just “全く、、、ない”. So the meaning kinda just would overlap with つゆ.
I’m not familiar with this construction and Google doesn’t really yield any result for the two being used in combination in this way. One thing I found interesting though is that ゆめ、つゆ、さら basically all follow the same pattern and meaning, right? Well, 夢更 is apparently a word (with, again, the same meaning) . So… maybe our author got a little creative and decided to just smash a different pair of two together this time?
Good catch with the 夢更! I still don’t know how exactly how the さら became a suffix like that, but since the “全く、、、ない” meaning matches I feel like it’s definitely the case. The author is 三島由紀夫 so it is very like him to be creative like that 
I don’t think that its a suffix so much as it just happens to be the latter half of the word. 更 appears at the end of other words as well like 尚更、今更、殊更、and 満更… though they don’t have a connection to the meaning at hand with the exception of 満更. 今更 seems to be a pretty direct result of the 改める definition of 更 + 今. So I guess all things considered it wouldn’t be surprising if the 全くない definition of 更 ended up at the end of a word as well in some Japanese persons attempt to be creative. I guess it already has with 夢更, but it wouldn’t be surprising if it happened again
I suppose that wasn’t linguistically rigorous of me. What I meant was that I would like to know the rule, or at least the intuition behind the fact that it often is put at the end of the compound.
It looks like ゆめさらさら has existed since the Heian period, so maybe it just got shortened to ゆめさら later on.
