Evening. I have a sentence like こじ開けらんねーかな. Is こじあけらん the same as こじ開けられない？ What is らん here? The overall meaning I read as something like “Can’t force open, huh?”. Am I right in thinking that this is the passive form of こじ開ける and then らん is just some spoken way to make it easier?
It could also be potential, which I suspect it is.
I think you are spot on. The ないーねえ transformation is pretty common when speaking and I think he れ gets slured to ん as well to make pronunciation easier.
Yes, I’m sure you’re right. It will be potential. Thanks for confirming things for me!
Me again. I’ve been struggling quite a bit around てくる and ていく. I’ve gone through the Tofugu entry on it and still can’t fully grasp it. I’m fine with the movement part as it’s simple away and toward. It’s the other way it can be used.
One thing I just don’t understand, even in the examples, is why the need for the てくる / ていく part when it seems like the ている form would work fine.
ここまでは軽いストレッチをしてきました。
Would this not have the exact same meaning with ている?
I came to this due to a sentence: さっそく遅刻してくるとはな。Again, I just don’t understand why くる was used instead of something like している or even する.
Isn’t that one the “movement” one? The person being spoken to is arriving, i.e. coming to the location of the speaker, late.
(As for why, why say “arriving late” rather than “being late”? No particular reason, either is fine.)
I never considered that. This sentence came later after another conversation about being late that was done earlier in the game. A conversation that had ended already. I honestly thought the whole thing about being late was done in terms of arriving. I guess it makes sense to count as movement still though, despite coming later.
So it’s just preference to use てくる / ていく outside of movement scenarios?
No, it’s not just preference. They add a meaning of looking at the action as something that’s run up to this point (or is going to run on from this point), often as something that’s either gradual or ongoing. You don’t have to talk about something considering it that way, but it’s not “this adds no meaning”.
It feels very hard to see that meaning. In the example earlier:
ここまでは軽いストレッチをしてきました。
“We’ve done some light stretching up to this point.”
I can’t see why ここまでは軽いストレッチをしていました。 is any different? The same in all the other examples I read on Tofugu.
Is it just emphasis? てくる just implies it was really gradual and is emphasising that gradualness?
I think the difference would just be in whether the action was done “up to and including current point in time”, or just “in the past”.
軽いストレッチをしていた
I had been doing some stretching in the past, definitely not now
軽いストレッチをしてきた
I’ve been doing some stretching and either just finished or maybe still continuing to do them even now
軽いストレッチをしている
I’m doing some stretching now
You cannot really express the process that has been happening up until right now with just ている. If you add an explicit indication of time with ここまで・今まで , it will either still mean “in the past but not now”, or become a bit confusing as to what the sentence actually means.
This is just my understanding, please take it with 2mg of salt.
Without further context, I would think this is more of a connector て plus normal verb くる rather than this auxiliary てくる: “came here while being late”. In a similar vein to 弁当を持って来た.
I think saying “up to and including current point in time” has made this stick. For some reason that made this into perfect sense for me. I still find the ここまで part confusing with the rest, like it adds the same nuance but overall I understand. Appreciate the help!
I often hear what I think is: て こと で
or maybe it’s actually って こと で
but I’m unsure of what it really means.
Is it just a throw-away “throat-clearing” statement, or is it actually supposed to be conveying some kind of meaning?
As far as I’m aware, it’s like the shorter, more casual version of っていうことで or ということで. It’s difficult to explain the meaning in English, but according to a couple of hinative posts I’ve read it means something similar to だから or なので.
Though as I’m a bit fuzzy on it myself, if anyone else has a clearer answer, please feel free to correct me!
Mioneko posted first, but I already typed this so…
ってことで＝ということで（と言う事で）
It’s not meaningless, it’s a logical connector, it just depends a bit on こと from the preceding conversation that it’s referencing. If you take it literally to mean “with that said, ..”, you won’t be far off I think.
JMdict even almost got an entry for it (but didn’t): JMdictDB - Entries
Hopefully a simple question:
On the page for 鳴るthere is a sentence “電話が鳴っている” translated “the phone is ringing” can someone explain why it’s 鳴っている and not just 鳴る and what the difference is?
The dictionary form of verbs is the present or future tense. The ている form describes an ongoing action or situation. So it’s the difference between “the phone rings (or will ring)” and “the phone is ringing”. Tofugu has an article on ている, or consult your favourite grammar reference.
Evening. Small question. When using 行く and 行う, do these both conjugate to past tense the same way like I think they do [行った]? Does context explain which is used in these cases?
Yes and yes. Note also that 行う is transitive, whereas 行く only takes something marked with を for the special case of “location being moved through/along”, so where there is an を attached to the verb this can be a helpful clue of which one it is if you’re unsure.
Hello, I’ve been restarting lessons recently and today I was working through some exercises in the 新完全マスターN4 grammar book.
I was working on exercise 1 on page 75 where question 3 gives the sentence 天気はこれからだんだんよく____そうです。it asks me to conjugate なる for the gap.
To me this read like a person making a prediction about the near future based on observations which, I thought meant using the り short for of the verb so I answered なりそうです. The answer key says it’s なるそうです which I thought was for passing on information you’ve heard like “I read in the forecast that the weather will get better”.
What do I have wrong here?
Well, you got it already, don’t you? How else would you know about the assumed change in weather if not from the weather forecast, is the implied context. Therefore it’s information you heard and you’re passing on. 
Ah, maybe I’m the problem then, I was a navigator on ships and trained to read the weather signs so I can look at the sky and get signs that “it looks like the weather will improve”.
The example I had in my lesson that used the り form was a person looking at a cloudy sky and saying it looks like it might rain soon. To me it reads as the same thing.