It feels to me like one of the set of XをYに expressions that sometimes are attached to an explicit して and which sometimes have the して implicit/omitted , like Xを中心に(して) and so on.
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Not that it matters that much, but perhaps then the Short Japanese Culture Questions thread would be best.
Thanks, hadn’t seen that thread
I mean, I assumed you were looking at a professional / official translation, but I suppose perhaps that’s not the case? If it’s “just some guy’s” translation, I don’t see any reason to use it to confirm your understanding.
I would put it in the same category as trying to use Tatoeba’s “anyone can upload” sentences for learning.
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I mean fan translations can be good, and it’s not like I’m trusting it blindly. Sometimes it’s just a complicated sentence and looking at the translation can help make it “click”, even when it’s a bit liberal with the meaning. But I should probably not stick with this particular one
What is the “formal” name for the small tsu? ie. ちょっと
促音
Well, that’s the name for the linguistic principle it represents. I suppose it’s used for the symbol itself as well.
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Question
I found these two sentences:
朝ごはん食べに来たんぬ。5回食べたんぬ？
What is that んぬ ending? I’m quite confused, it’s the first time I see it. I know ぬ is also the precursor of the modern ない but doesn’t seem like a negative to me here
It just looks like a weird anime-style sentence ending particular to a specific character. But I assume if the context were that obvious you might not ask the question…?
Is it some kind of cutesy anime context? Or did you see it somewhere serious.
(As always, the full context is always better than going back and forth trying to get the context.)
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Oh yes, apologies.
I saw these sentence in the instagram story of a Japanese adult person (girl mother of two that made a story about her cats). The stories are a close pov of a cat who approached for some reason, and the two sentences are respectively in the first and the second story separately. Also there isn’t any " 。" period at the end of the first one, I added it since I didn’t know how to link the two
(I suppose there is no previous and following context to this, it was just a couple of random IG stories)
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Then it’s probably cutesy ‘this is how I talk to my cats’ speech.
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So… what is that んぬ?
I asked to BingIA just to see its answer. It told me that “that んぬ at the end of the two sentences is an archaic negation form that substitutes ない. You can think of it as a shorter version of ないのだ” and linked the ぬ wikitionary page
Is it right?
Looking at it a bit longer, I think it’s の, in a cutesy talking-to-my-cat way.
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You mean there’s no negation??
No, like you thought, that wouldn’t make sense. It just means: Did you come to eat breakfast? Did you eat five times?
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Oh okay, I understand 
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I think this 始投式 in いじゃねえか始球式ならぬ始投式ってことで is some kind of kanji wordplay, but I’m not sure I get it. Is it something like “If it’s not gonna be the first (baseball) pitch we’ll make it the first (fishing line) pitch”?
Context:
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Question,
there is a sentence of a manga I’m reading (からかい上手の高木さん) that I don’t understand.
くっそおおお！！なんでいつも見られたくない時に限って見てるんだ！！
context
Nishikata is having the best time of his life during a typhoon and it’s caught acting weird by Takagi-san
Intuitively I’d translate this as “Why do you always look at me when I don’t want to be seen!”.
It’s the only sensed translation I can think of, yet I don’t understand how this can make sense logically, because the first verb - 見られたくない - not want to be seen - has the subject as 西片 who thinks it, while the second - 見てる - to be watching - is 高木さん who looks at him (in uncomfortable moments).
The only explanation that comes to my mind is that there is an implicit shift of subject, and given this is something that can happen, I never consciously thought about it.
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I think there might be a missing 俺が for 西片 so the topic is 高木さん. Would that make sense?
As in, it’s grammatically possible for 2 people doing those 2 actions.
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