As Vanilla said, it’s just a と made into the topic, so と+は
Not a special grammar point nor anything like that.
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Thanks: that’s was my first thought but the fact that the “dare” is marked with “wa” and another “wa” appears in the same sentence marking 相性 threw me off. Is it normal for sentences to have two "wa"s? With subordinate clauses the “wa” often becomes a “ga”.
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It feels fine to me in this case, but I think I understand what you’re getting at. No it’s not normal for sentences to have two wa’s in the sense that a vast majority or them won’t. If you need more than one for contrastive purposes or whatever, people certainly won’t hesitate to throw in a second one though.
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I hope this is the right topic for this question!
How do you say “For me, the 31st of January is convenient.”
My suggestion would be: 私のために、1月31日は都合がいいです。
However, DeepL says to use 私にとって in this case.
So what would be the difference between these two expressions and which one should I use in this circumstance?
Another short question: I want to write: “Thank you for organizing the meeting.”
Would ミーティングを開催していただきありがとうございます。be appropriate?
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I’d go with にとって.
私にとって is something like “as far as I’m concerned”.
私のために is more something like “for my sake/benefit” - like you’re doing something to benefit me specifically. It feels a bit strange here, to me.
I’m not sure about 開催する as the verb here, but otherwise it looks okay. This Hinative answer suggests 会議の準備する - so 会議の準備をしていただきありがとうございます in full.
Not sure how natural that is, though. Someone with better Japanese might be able to weigh in on that.
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Alright, thanks a lot, learned something new. I’ll go with 私にとって then.
That’s always my problem. Not sure how natural things sound. But thank you anyway!
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のために is more like “for my sake,” which is still grammatical, but sounds really weird. There are a choice few situations where you may say, for my sake, this date is best, but even in English it’s odd. just saying 私に is conversationally alright, and 私にとって would be considered polite imo.
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You can also say 私には. That would be the simplest variant.
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That’s just the contrastive wa, isn’t it? Japanese Particles : The Contrastive wa
I hope there’s a simple answer to this: I had learned before that “to search/to look for” is 探す（さがす）. I just encountered 捜す in WK (same reading) and was wondering if there is any difference in nuance between both forms?
thanks!!
In this case if you look the word up on jisho.org it says “to search for; to look for; to hunt for; to seek – esp. 探す for something desired and 捜す for something lost”. (Daijisen will tell you the same in Japanese: ふつう、見えなくなったものをさがす場合には「捜」、欲しいものをさがす場合には「探」を用いる。)
(Typically, there is no absolute rule about kanji selection when a word can be written several ways, which is why the dictionaries say “especially” and ふつう.)
Incidentally, I could not have told you this without looking it up – I just read both as さがす and don’t think at all about the kanji choice the author used.
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I also forgot that nuance and actually thought it’s the opposite with 捜す vs 探す. Incidentally, I do see 捜す way less than the 捜 kanji in various compounds meaning “to search” or “to investigate” and mostly see 探す.
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You might find this useful word choice - do people actually respect the nuances of 探す vs 捜す? - Japanese Language Stack Exchange
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I’m rereading Lingo Mastery’s short stories for beginners and translating them myself for practice, and I came across something that felt odd in one of them.
Is 買ってあげた ever actually used to mean “bought in order to give,” or does it only mean “bought and then gave”? Because the old man in this story is talking about a ring that he bought to give to his ex a long time ago but never did, which is why when I first saw the line, I blanked and thought 恋人に買ってあげた指輪 was a ring that his lover bought for him.
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Ah, okay. tbh, くれる, あげる, and もらう all still give me trouble. And あげる having a bunch of meanings doesn’t help…
I thought “bought in order to give” (esp. when it was never actually given) would be something like “恋人にあげるために買った指輪,” but I guess that’s me thinking in English. Edit: Ohh but “bought to give” and “bought for” are technically two different things… Grammar gives me a headache.
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A bit late to the party, but
Just sounds wrong
This makes sense but just sounds like something a JSL would say and not choice most people would make in this situation I feel.
Also sounds weird.
The most natural choice is to literally say none of this in my opinion. Also switch the wa to a ga and you get
１月31日が都合がいいです。
But, since I’m sure you want to know what you should use if you DID say watashi, I would use use は. I think most Japanese would probably pick it over nitotte in this situation.
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Going off what @Vanilla said:
私にとって I feel like has the nuance “from my perspective”, and it highlights your own viewpoint, so stating something objective (like whether or not you’re free on a certain day) sounds strange (although I can’t say it’d be completely incorrect).
私は is definitely the most straightforward option if you really want to specify your situation (although the person you’re talking to should already know you’re talking about yourself). Don’t underestimate the power of は in cutting out a lot of the fluff we’d typically add to our speech in English.
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Thanks for your answer, but darn, I already sent the mail… Well, I’ll know next time and I am sure somebody else in this forum will benefit from this as well.
And I guess in answer to both of you, there were several people in question, so with 私 I wanted to specify that for me, this date would be alright, implying that I have no idea what the others would feel ok with. I thought that if I write without 私, it would feel as though I am deciding for everyone else as well.
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Honestly, “sounds like something a JSL would say” is hardly the worst impression you could give as a JSL 
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