Right in front of their eyes, or a second hand account?
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少しづつふくらんでくる思いあり桜の季節にえらぶ便箋
Not sure if this is a grammar question per se, but I came across this poem in my Hobonichi and I am curious what to make of あり. Is it like when a masu-stem is used to connect two bits of sentence? I feel like I am missing a verb in the latter half, but I guess that’s poetry for you?
I could be wrong, but this is actually a 短歌, right? A traditional form of Japanese poetry? In that case, the grammar used might be classical. The spelling used for づつ is old anyway. (It would be ずつ under current conventions.) In that case, あり is a verb that ends a sentence, and there’s no need for a particle in front of it to connect it to its subject. Searching the poem text brings up this sort of split anyway:
少しづつ ふくらんでくる 思いあり 桜の季節に えらぶ便箋
so you can see that あり actually ends the 2nd five-mora block, so it wouldn’t be surprising if it ends a phrase or even a sentence.
As for a verb missing in the second half… yeah, that’s normal. It’s like using noun phrases in songs to paint a picture of what’s present at a particular moment without explicitly saying what each person or thing is doing.
All in all, I think the poem reads something like ‘There are/I have gradually growing feelings. A piece of notepaper one chooses in sakura season.’ It might be a reference to a letter that’s supposed to be written in springtime.
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Ahhh, thanks. I’d love to learn a bit more about Japanese poetry, but maybe I should get the prose sorted out first 
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Right in front of their eyes.
Hello, back again with another question regarding the に particle. Here’s the sentence:
今日はオームの法則に関する実験を行います。
From the research I did, I believe that the に in オームの法則に関する is being used to direct the action of being concern. However, I’m not sure if I’m right.
Are you referring to a particular explanation of how に works in different uses? Like in a specific textbook or reference book?
I’m not sure I really follow the description you gave, but Aに関するB is basically a set grammar point that means “the B that is related to A”. Is there a reason you want to break it down more than that?
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Yeah, I was referring to the fact that に can be used to direct an action or motion verb at an object (though I wouldn’t call オームの法則 a physical object).
The answer you gave, however, made a lot of sense. I knew from the translated sentence–Today we will carry out an experiment about Ohm’s Law–that the 実験 was related to オームの法則 in some way. However, I didn’t know that there was a grammar point with に関する. Thank you for your response and sorry for confusing you with my description.
If you really want to break it down, you can just take note of the fact that に is often used to draw attention to a particular point, thing or person. There is a link ‘to’ something, so you use に, because the link is directed towards something (Ohm’s Law). Something like を would be a little strange here because it tends to designate the person or thing undergoing an action or the zone of action for certain movement verbs (e.g. 空を飛ぶ=to fly through/in the sky). Like you said, に tends to have more of a directional feel. You’ll get a better idea of how these particles work as you’re exposed to more Japanese. It is completely true, however, that に関する is a set structure, and you can choose to remember it that way instead.
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i wanna makes sure of something.
i keep stumbling over ichidan, godan, る-verbs and う-verbs … but i learn my grammar with the japanese from zero books so i don’t actually know what those mean.
here’s the JFZ system:
-
regular verb
= every verb that does not end in る or with an iru/eru sound (*)
e.g. 曲がる, 飲む
→ convert hiragna う-form and conjugate -
いる⋆える verb
= rhymes with iru / eru
e.g. 変える
→ drop る and conjugate -
いる⋆える exception verb
= rhymes with iru / eru but is actually just a regular verb (*)
e.g. 帰る (there’s just about two dozen or so) -
irregular verb
= unique cases
くる, する
is the following correspondence correct?
- godan, う-verb
- ichidan, る-verb
- godan, る-verb
- irregular
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is there a script for self study that show sentences for my current and previous levels?
I noticed the ichidan/godan verb split is used very often (makes sense, since it’s the linguistic split), but that creates issues with verbs in the godan group. I think it makes sense to split them like this
- 〜る godan verbs like 帰る, 切る, etc. They have the aru/iru/eru sound, but for iru/eru sounds that also depends on whether the sound is in the leading kanji (like 帰る) and there are exceptions like 着る.
- 〜く godan verbs like 書く, 聞く, 開く, etc. (that also includes 泳ぐ)
- 〜う godan verbs like 買う, 洗う, 習う, etc.
- 〜ぶ／ぬ／む godan verbs like 死ぬ, 学ぶ, 転ぶ, etc.
- 〜つ godan verbs like 立つ, 育つ, 打つ, etc.
- 〜える／〜いる ichidan verbs like 代える, 変える, 教える, 開ける, etc. Here the leading え／い sound is outside of the leading kanji
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I think that’s correct. I can’t think of any exceptions for now. I guess JFZ managed to find a neat way to avoid grammatical terminology. Interesting.
EDIT: What @AndyMender said is useful for the practical side of applying godan and ichidan conjugation knowledge. I remember doing a breakdown with examples in a fairly recent post (within the past 3 months?). You might want to give it a look.
Found it: Grammar Doubt 3! - #12 by Jonapedia
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No exactly, the mapping to other system is:
jfk , mina no nihongo , japanese grammar , genki
regular verb, group 1, godan, う-verb
いる⋆える verb, group 2, ichidan, る-verb
いる⋆える exception verb, group 1, godan, う-verb
irregular verb, group 3
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I absolutely second this! I think @Jonapedia 's breakdown is very very insightful and it should probably be stickied somewhere 
ah. i’m beginning to understand what george-sensei (author of JFZ) really did and really appreciate it.
2-5: is there any difference in how i would conjugate the verbs from 2-5? if not, why not group them together? → everything not ending in る
6: exceptions are probably rare but: 混じる
yeah, the author is not the scholarly type and his decision for the new naming convention is based on feedback he got from his students, who according to him always had trouble with the terminology - so he rearranged how exceptions are handled and found more sensible names.
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I think Andy is grouping them this way because, for example, く verbs all conjugate to いた いて, and ぬむぶ verbs all go to んだ んで, etc.
I don’t personally think I would break verbs down that much for classification purposes, not least for etymological reasons (those are just きた and にた、みた、びた with sound changes over time), but it does help to break them down at some point when learning some of their conjugations.
Btw, 混じる etc are their own thing. There’s a practice in Japanese of taking a kanji by itself with its onyomi and putting じる (which is related to する, it used to be ずる) onto it. It isn’t dissimilar to things like 勉強する
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Yes, hence the split into several groups:
2. 〜く (dictionary form), 〜いて (て form), 〜き (verb core), 〜か (plain negative form), 〜け (potential form)
3. 〜う (dictionary form), 〜って (て form), 〜い (verb core), 〜わ (plain negative form), 〜え (potential form)
4. 〜ぶ／ぬ／む (dictionary form), 〜んで (て form), 〜び／に／み (verb core), 〜ば／な／ま (plain negative form), 〜べ／ね／め (potential form)
5. 〜つ (dictionary form), 〜って (て form), 〜ち (verb core), 〜た (plain negative form), 〜て (potential form)
There are some slight differences among the groups in different conjugation forms, hence I think it’s useful to keep them separate, at least for writing purposes .
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I explain the differences and also talk about the etymology and how I use it to make all the different forms feel ‘natural’. Just open the post I mentioned earlier and look under ‘godan verbs’. It’s all there. The main difficulties lie in learning the 〜て・た forms.
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ah, yes, of course - could’ve thought of that myself 
fair enough. せびる then! 
clutching at straws now …
thanks but i’ll pass on further reading, since i have no actual problems with grammatical understanding to address and you all already helped me resolve my slight issue with the corresponding terminology 
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