I came across this sentence while I was learning how to use the vocabulary word 一生:
先生は彼に英語を一生懸命に勉強するようにと言いました。(The teacher told him to study English hard.)
I couldn’t understand what is the purpose of に in this part: 一生懸命に勉強する. I believe the word 一生懸命 is used as an adverb here, which would mean that the word is affecting the verb 勉強する, but I can’t see the connection with the particle in between. Thanks in advance!
The main type of adjectival nouns (so-called “na adjectives”) take に when being used adverbally. 一生懸命 is one of those.
You could potentially think (if it helps) of na-adjextiveに as being like i-adjectiveく
「メアリーさんのホストファミリーはメアリーさんに会いにアメリカに行くことにしました。」
Can someone explain why this is the translation of “Mary’s host family has decided to go to see Mary in America” and not something like 「メアリーさんのホストファミリーはメアリーさんにアメリカへ会いに行くことにしました。」?
Is there somewhere I can be pointed to review the 会いに part of the phrase?
Vいに行く is a construction meaning “go to do x”
By Vい I mean a verb in its い form or ます stem or whatever you learned it as, so かき、よみ、たべ etc
Anyway so for example, 映画を見に行く = go to see a movie
Oh, I see now! I was looking for this. Thank you!
I have one more question. In the same sentence, there this: ようにと. Does the combination of ように and と affect the purpose of ように?
ように here is leaving a little bit unsaid. It’s like ように（してください）or similar. と is just the usual quotation particle.
Oh, so it like there is something said after the ように, but it is not said. Thank you for this info!
Hi all, level 18 lifetimer here, living in Japan. Been studying a few years now and, of course, working on it every day.
But my question is this:
Is there a difference between:
noun/verb-> じゃなかった and noun->particle->なかった
Or I guess the difference between the conjugated past form of ない（なかった）and じゃない（じゃなかった）
Reference phrase: その日授業がなかった
Thanks so much and apologies if this is a ridiculous question.
なかった comes from ある and basically means ‘there was no…’. じゃなかった comes from である and means ‘it was not’. So right now the sentence means: ‘That day there was no class.’ or ‘There was no class that day.’ but if you wrote じゃなかった instead it would mean: ‘That day was no class.’ or ‘It was no class that day.’ Weird thing to say, right?
And it was not a ridiculous question! Even the other day in Japanese class, a guy who has also been studying for years, had this same issue! For him it was the past tense that threw him for a loop. I think he would have recognized the mistake faster if it was present tense, or masukei instead.
Fan-fugu-tastic!
Thanks so much for that explanation @Saida .
Cheers!
Edit: just a quick note that my Midori-dictionary classifies じゃない as an い-adjective rather than a verb. Not sure if that conflicts with your explanation or just adds to it. Either way I get the usage meaning so thank you.
Nai, and ~tai even more so, can be classified as adjectival verb suffixes, I think. If it helps, you can think of ~nai as a suffix that appends to a verb’s mizenkei, and to an adjective’s adverbial form (or is that just a mizenkei that looks like an adverb?) to create a negation. You can’t do with it all you can do with actual adjectives, because although you can adverbialize it by appending く, you can’t negate it again (though you might sometimes hear なくない, but that is largely considered ungrammatical).
So good. Thanks again!
Yeah, I understand that, but why does 会いに appear before the destination in the example that I gave?
I understand the Vに行く construction, but I don’t understand why it is presented as verbに destination に行く
Probably just for clarity? When the verb in [verb stem]に行く takes に as a particle, keeping the destination next to 行く just keeps things tidier. If it takes some other particle, it’s not as much of a concern to have the destination marked by に somewhere else. But in any case, it’s always possible to split it up like that.
Thank you, Leebo!
I guess it’s because a verb in stem form is just a noun so it can be placed anywhere in the sentence that a noun can be.
Still, it’s jarring to see it put somewhere else without warning. 
I know 可愛そうcan (usually?) mean “seems pitiful,” but I keep hearing it in contexts where it seems like it might mean “seems cute.” Have I been over-warned about this one? Are both translations used?
Yeah, かわいそう as “pitiful” or “pathetic”, which is written as 可哀想 (it’s an ateji), has taken over the meaning. I wouldn’t say it’s “seems pitiful” since “pitiful” or “pathetic” already implies that it’s your thoughts about the target. You really can’t use 可愛そう the way you would use 美味しそう or something.
There’s just usually not much reason to use 可愛そう the way you’re imagining, in my opinion, because something being かわいい can be confirmed by looking at it and so you don’t have to imagine that it’s cute the way you do with deliciousness and おいしい
Thanks! I hadn’t realized that the pronunciation wasn’t related to 可愛い.
I’ll try asking people what they mean next time then. I can’t imagine that they meant pitiful/pathetic in today’s content.
Is it possible they might have been saying 可愛い、そうね and I was just mishearing a bit? Especially in response to someone else saying 可愛い first
Well, keep in mind that while “pitiful” and “pathetic” are often said with a negative, as in… condescending or dismissive, connotation in English, but it doesn’t have to be that strong. It can just be “you feel empathy for someone who had something bad happen to them.”
This is in reaction to a 5 yo doing cute stuff though
