Thank you for the easy explanation! You’re right, I did assume that that “January” and “one month” would just be the same. It’s super cool to see how the カ stands for a more complicated kanji, I love learning things like that!
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Just to be clear, the カ is a katakana “ka”. Writing kanji with kana isn’t so unusual, but it usually would be hiragana I guess.
Maybe you were on the same page, but “more complicated kanji” made me think you might be thinking it was the kanji “chikara”.
(Though copying and pasting what you wrote does confirm you wrote a katakana ka)
Good point.
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Jpdb in general has some weird definition issues.
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We’ll see about that:
入カ
出ロ
タ方
ー生
ニ日
チ葉
ｲﾋlﾅ物
ﾁﾅ目
ｲﾑ教
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That one i can’t read…
is it 科目 ?
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If anyone wasn’t clear on it, I meant “writing the reading of kanji with kana instead of the kanji itself”…
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Since no one really covered that, just adding a bit of info.
一月、二月 and such can be used to mean periods of time, although it feels very stiff and usually never happens at spoken Japanese.
Not only dictionaries back it up:
But you can also find it being used in Japanese law (it’s the regular example that comes to my mind. I’m not aware if it happens in other fields too)
For example, this law about corporate taxes clearly uses 一月 as a period of time.
３ 前項の月数は、暦に従って計算し、一月に満たない端数を生じたときは、これを一月とする。
(…) in the case the calculated amount of months includes a fraction that does not surmount to one month, that fraction shall be considered as one month.
Again in this accountant web page about corporate taxes you can see many entries of 〇月ごと, which clearly mean “every 〇 months”, and not January or March.
That being said, it’s really an extreme case and I think you should 100% never try using it. Dictionaries might have it because they are supposed to have everything, but on everyday life no one ever talks or writes like this. Just have it buried somewhere deep in your memory so when the day comes that you are reading about taxes in Japan (?) you’ll be able to “ohhhh, I remember seeing somewhere that this could happen” and go on.
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Does the law definitely use the reading いちがつ for that, and not いちげつ or ひとつき? (It wouldn’t be too surprising if there was a law-context oddball reading – my dictionary says 遺言 is usually ゆいごん but いごん in formal legal contexts, for instance.)
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That’s a very good question. Since it’s not something we usually see spoken nor has law furigana usually, I don’t think I can give a reliable answer on that. I do think I have seen Japanese natives reading it aloud as いちがつ in one or two occasions but again, 1. I’m not really sure, and 2. It’s enough in the realm of rare to assume that a native might just have read what they thought regardless of being sure if it’s correct.
The closest I can provide of a “source” here is the fact weblio does list いちげつ as meaning for いちがつ. And いちげつ clearly has “one month” as its primary meaning instead of January.
Is that a final answer? No.
But it’s all I can give you for now, sorry. lol
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Just a data point, but I asked a Japanese native who is also a company lawyer and they read both 一月に満たない and これを一月とする as ひとつき
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It’s 升目, it’s definitely the hardest to see
Thank you for the check!
I actually wonder what they would say about the 三月ごと in the second link.
Getting away with ひとつき and ふたつき is easy, but from 3 and beyond things start getting hairy.
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What does ぞ mean at the end of a sentence? I’ve seen it often in よつばと, and in the game I’m currently playing.
E.g. その人は悪い人かもしれないぞ。
Today I came actoss the sentence でもふと、俺って何のために働いているんだろう。What is ふと doing here? The usual “suddenly/enexpectedly” type of meanings don’t really seem to work, I think. Or is it meant to be like it suddenly occured to him (doesn’t make sense in English but maybe that)?
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Question.
Studying from Imabi, I met the two sentences “いいんじゃないですか。” (Isn’t that fine?) and “いいんじゃない！” which is translated as “that’s great!”. But I don’t understand how the second one can mean that, like I’m totally lost. Can anyone explain?
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Is this from a TEDx talk? Googling found this transcript which has
でも、ふと「俺って、何のために働いてんだろう？」そんな風に思ったことありませんか？
and ふと goes with 思う to express a sudden thought, something that crosses your mind unexpectedly.
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If there’s an exclamation point like that, it sounds fairly unnatural for an English speaker to say “Isn’t that good!”.
“That’s great!” is just far more likely in that situation.
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Ooooh here’s what what’s happening there, now I see
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Ain’t that great!
Is what I would say. @mariodesu double negatives are tricky I think, but enough exposure and context should make them clearer.
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