Possibly it’s because 見ている is the verb of the sentence, whereas 見られたくない is acting as an adjective describing 時? You could replace it with こんな and it would be “Why do you always see me during such times? (times that I don’t want anyone to see me?)”
It’s a relative clause, which doesn’t have to (never does? or at least usually doesn’t) have the same subject as the main verb
Not sure if I’d call it a shift of subject, really. There’s nothing stating that the subject remains consistent. It’s mostly the topic that’s specified when it changes. This is just two different implicit subjects for two different verb phrases.
That’s just semantics though. You’ve got the idea. English makes it explicit - why do you only see me when I don’t want to be seen. Japanese just leaves the subjects out because they can be inferred.
Not sure I’d say that. A relative clause can have any subject, including the same subject as the main clause. A sentence like 電車を乗ってる時しか漫画を読まない works just fine, even though the subject for both clauses is the same.
Okay, yeah, makes sense. I didn’t really wanna say either way since even though I couldn’t think of any where it is the same, through my usual case of “can never come up with examples on the spot” plus my not having enough knowledge to smoothly/naturally be able to output in Japanese… that doesn’t necessarily mean anything.
I think that’s the gist of it. We often obsess over は and が, and who the subject/topic is, but when one reads a book, the sentences can literally be all over the place. The action might also be performed by no one in particular.
What I might meant here is the following for clarity:
なんでいつも(俺が)見られたくない時に限って(君は)見てるんだ
Yeah sometimes I feel like I’ll never get used to it (and I’m still only reading mangas which offer visual support ).
Oh the moment I’ll need to get used to books frights me a bit
This thing of the subject not remaining consistent is the whole point of my curiosity for today’s problem. Having only read Takagi-san and the first volume of AoT, I’m not used at all to it happening and didn’t even consciously knew this way was possible
I just met another sentence that confuses me because of the same reason, but I’m not even sure.
私が日直の時は早く来てねって約束。
Context
Takagi is doing day duty - or whatever it’s called, when Nishikata arrives. She says おはよう。忘れてなかったんだ、[…]. This is the beginning of the chapter so there’s no particular context, except that in a past chapter Nishikata lost a 勝負 with her and agreed at helping her with 日直).
That sentence is said by Takagi as soon as Nishi enters the classroom, and his response to her is simply “まぁね…”
An instinctive guess is that this sentence means, a bit literally, “[You didn’t forget then]. The promise of (you) coming early when I (do?) 日直”
I’m confused because there even is 高木 marked by が here (私), but then she says 早く来てね and the subject of that verb - unless I blundered for some reason - is Nishikata who comes early.
Is there an implicit predicate in the first part? Otherwise I don’t know where 私が日直の時は ends logically
EDIT: I realized something just after posting this. Could it be that this is simply Takagi-san quoting what Nishikata said in the past?
Also apologies for turning this thread into a book club, I just asked here since I thought these couple problems were related to similar grammar
I’m not sure actually. I think that it was Nishi that promised it after being totally annihilated in a challenge by her.
Otherwise, why would she say something like “忘れなかったんだ”?
That makes sense too, really. Like I said, just going off memory, and it’s been a long time since I read that bit. Doesn’t really change the sentence, just the implied subject.
Because they’re both showing up early despite only one of them having day duty, and not having forgotten about the promise is the reason for that
You can turn a nounXがnounYだ into a relative clause nounXがnounYのnounZ. It’s as if の can act as the 連体形 of だ in this special case…
表紙が緑色の本 : a book with a green cover (表紙が緑色だ)
明日が雨の場合: if it rain tomorrow (明日が雨だ)
アナタがピンチの時はいつでも現われますよ: when you are in a pinch, I will always appear. (あなたがピンチだ)
Clear, this is another thing I had sensed intuitively but never thought about it logically, and then it happens that sometimes Nishikata just starts talking weird and I can’t see the sense of the sentence anymore
Hi all, quick question. Just saw “one month” written as 一ヵ月, was wondering why this is, and is this the common way of counting months? I had assumed it would just be 一月? Thanks!
一月 is January, as you probably learned, though sure it wouldn’t be impossible to imagine it overlapping. Other such overlaps exist and people just work things out by context. In this case it happens to be different.
Yes, カ月 is the common way of counting months.
The カ stands for 箇 in 箇月, which is a possible, but fairly rare, way to write it. Occasionally you’ll see 一ヶ月 where the small ケ is meant to look like one half of the top part of 箇. The pronunciation remains the same, despite ケ usually sounding like “ke”. A hiragana か is also fairly common.
I don’t know about 一月 being used for anything other than “January” when it’s read いちがつ, but there is the reading ひとつき which means “one month.” I feel like that would probably usually get furigana though or else be written ひと月 (though it also depends on the media). I haven’t come across this one myself in reading yet, but I’ve seen it in a cap of Sailor Moon
But generally speaking if you see 一月 without ヵ etc. in between, it’s gonna be the month of the year
Indeed, 一月 is not used as a way to write ひとつき in any of the pieces of fiction tracked on jpdb (of which there are more than 5000). In contrast, ひと月 appears in 950 entries.
They do list it as appearing as 一月 on the JLPT, but I figure that is either incorrectly parsed, only mentioned in the study materials for completeness, or used with furigana as you said.
I’m never quite sure if I can trust jpdb for that kind of query – does its parser honour furigana in the input, or does it just ignore input furigana and then assume “一月 as a noun => guess it is the most common reading” ? I’m pretty sure I’ve seen cases where its parser has picked completely wrong readings for sentences in its example corpus…
Edit: For instance jpdb has this sentence filed under いちがつ but it’s clearly the “period of time” meaning, not “January”:
あれから一月と少しの時が流れた。