Short Grammar Questions (Part 2)

It’s interesting that ‘half eight’ would be understood in Australian English. I have always assumed it was unique to the UK, but I haven’t had much exposure to Englishes other than the UK and USA.

Both British and American English do use ‘quarter past’, ‘quarter to’, and ‘half past’ (but not ‘half to’), as well as all the numbers between 1 and 29 on each side (‘15 minutes past’, ‘15 minutes to’, etc.).

A minor difference in usage is that Americans – but not Brits – can also use ‘of’ for the minutes before the hour:

“It’s a quarter of eight.” (7:45)
“It’s twenty of three.” (2:40)

Also Brits say things like ‘It’s just gone eight o’clock’, where Americans say ‘It’s just past eight o’clock’, but these are minor differences that don’t tend to cause misunderstandings of the sort that arise with ‘half eight’.

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Any ideas about this らした in この作家の本気に入ってらしたので? Is it like a slang らしかった? Dictionary didn’t seem to recognize it

Context:

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That would be my guess. Not sure though.

It’s 気に入っていらっしゃった, sonkeigo for 気に入っていた.

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Do you have a source? The English translation also went with a “seemed like” interpretation, so I’m not too sure. Not that the translation has been very literal so far

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Hmm, would that be used by someone not speaking very formally? I have seen that abbreviation, I’m just not sure it makes sense in this scene or by this character. (I read the series years ago though, so I could be forgetting some details)

Yuu is playing a nurse here so maybe she would talk a bit more politely, but I don’t think she used sonkeigo at any other point during the play

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I just googled てらした 尊敬語 and てらした ていらっしゃった and there were several hinative questions and several yahoo questions (which I can’t access):

I don’t know how frequently people would use this in casual conversation, but it’s definitely a toned-down version of keigo.

I wouldn’t trust English manga translations, tbh :sweat_smile: Bad / wrong translations seem to be popping up frequently in this forum.
It’s not even that bad in this case. „You liked this author last time“ might have felt a little unnatural to the translator / editor so they changed it to „You seemed to like this author last time“, unrelated to the らした / らしかった confusion.

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Yeah I think you’re right, thanks!

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Question on そう to report hearsay and conjectures
I studied this subject on different sources and am not sure about one thing. It seems that when you make a conjecture you modify whatever is the object of the conjecture, so if it seems 美味しい, it’s 美味しそう, if it seems like 走る then it’s 走りそう and if it looks like 大丈夫 then it’s 大丈夫そう.
When used to report hearsay, instead of modifying what comes before it, it just attaches at the end of it, so following the previous examples it would be 美味しいそう and 走るそう and だあ丈夫だそう.
Is this correct? Does that mean that you can never use the “conjugated” versions (美味しそう etc.) to report hearsay?

These are two different versions of そう. The one that attaches to stems (美味しそう, 楽しそう, etc.) is something you say when you have direct sensory (usually visual) information to base the assessment on.

So it doesn’t make sense for it to ever be hearsay.

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Ok, clear, thanks! :+1:

Could you say 美味しそうだそう to talk about hearsay of someone else’s assessment?

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A mere curiosity on what I understood to be the negative version of this piece of grammar, なさそう (or なそう for actions that are not existence?)
What is that さ in the first one? Is it a fixed structure or anything I can make any further sense of?

Edit: a source reports that the さ is used to change ない into a noun

(Near end of article)

Upon further research, i found that さ is used to nominalize adjectives, I didn’t know of this piece of grammar, so now my question is if it’s normal to use it or a bit unusual
Like
富士山の高さは3,776mです

I think that’s just the same さ that turns any i-adjective into a noun. Like 美味しいー>美味しさ

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It’s a very standard thing to do and you’ll encounter it a fair bit. You can also see it done with み for subjective things

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Changing an adjective to a noun is a function of さ, but I’m not convinced (from that article alone) that the さ in なさそう is the same thing. For example, さ works for any adjective, so the noun form of あぶない is あぶなさ. Yet the correct そう form is あぶなそう, not あぶなさそう. So logically I don’t think that explanation makes sense.

I’ve always just thought of the さ in なさそう as a fixed structure, but I’m not exactly a language history buff, so there could certainly be a reason I’m not aware of. I tried googling a bit in Japanese to find the origin of the さ in なさそう, but couldn’t find anything. Maybe someone else can find one though.

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The ない in 危ない isn’t 無い though, it’s just a regular part of the word. 危なくない is the negative form and it does conjugate to 危なくなさそう

Edit: Oh wait, I see what you’re saying. Yeah you might be right

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The さ only applying to ない and not other い-adjectives is kind of the point though

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Yes, I know. :slight_smile:

This is the part of the article I’m refuting (bolded part):

Another more technical way to remember this is when ない is acting as an adjective, we use なさそう (the さ here serves to change the adjective ない into the noun なさ)

My point is that since the parenthetical applies to any い-adjective, not just ない, it doesn’t really make sense as an explanation for why ない specifically becomes なさそう and other い adjectives don’t similarly use さそう. Perhaps using あぶない as my example obscured my point. I could have said たかい and my point would have been the same (i.e. it’s たかそう, not たかさそう).

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