Short Grammar Questions (Part 1)

Japanese Language Grammar
8070

Yeah, commas in Japanese seem to work a bit differently to English and not really have any semantic meaning from what I can tell, I feel like they just get thrown in wherever a break in the sentence structure is good for clarity.

Also that translation was intentionally weirdly constructed to show sort of how I’d interpret the は in that sentence, maybe that wasn’t too clear - if I were to give an actual translation someone with a halfway decent grasp of English would use I’d never say it like that, and I’d arrive at something much closer to your sentence (though I hadn’t considered 鍋 being a sort of “adjectival noun” for ランキング - makes sense though) :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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8071

A little bit tangential to this but this is a very interesting answer regarding the role of こと、grammar - What is the こと in sentences such as あなたのことが好きだ? - Japanese Language Stack Exchange

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8072

It is tangential, but it incidentally helped me clear one doubt about こと used for indirection I had for a while. Big thank you!!! :pray:

Based on that discussion it looks like I actually did have a pretty good feel for the usage of こと in some previous sentences that I learned from context :slight_smile: .

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8073

This one is from a story called “けちくらべ”;

といって、わざわざ、おもてにえんだいをもちだすんだって。

All I really know here is that a bench is being taken out/being set up. What I don’t understand is the placement of the adverb わざわざ. It’s preceding the noun おもて…

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8074

Out of curiosity, what’s the full sentence with the part before といって?
I would translate it as:
They went to the trouble of bringing the bench to front (of something?)*.

* Or apparently “outside”. I only know 表 as “surface of something”, but I guess it could be used more generally as well.

The thing with わざわざ is that it’s also a remark so that comma after makes sense.

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8075

It’s not so much precending the noun おもて as it’s preceding the entire phrase おもてにえんだいをもちだす

It’s not uncommon for adverbs to not be directly before the verb they’re modifying but at the start of the entire clause instead, but the fact that they’re adverbs tells you they’re modifying the verb and not whatever comes directly after.

Also (and this is something I sometimes fall into as well), don’t be confused by the commas. They don’t hold as much meaning in Japanese as they do in English, you just plop a comma down wherever you feel it might fit. Any comma in Japanese can be left out without changing the meaning of the sentence, AFAIK.

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8076

Thanks guys.

Here’s the previous sentence for you @FirstMate-san

すると、けちべえは、はなをひくひくさせながら、「やっ。また、うまそうなにおいがしてきたぞ。」

The whole story here centers around this guy and how he lives right next to a unagi restaurant.

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8077

Yeah, I think I saw that one.

unagi-friends

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8078

The meaning of 承る（うけたまわる）is to listen or to understand. Like to comprehend the message given to you and not exactly consent to it. But the context sentence given (below) uses it when you’re the one leaving the message. Why is that? Is it like a very roundabout way, saying “Shall we leave a message?”

ご伝言を承りましょうか。

Would you like to leave a message?

8079

I mean if I would literally translate it, I would say it means “shall we take a message” and its just that that means the same thing as would you like to leave a message. 承る can be thought of as just like taking something in this case and it can be used for stuff like reservations too iirc, so its not limited to just hearing stuff.

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8080

I know that ～ましょう is usually translated into sentences with “we” but here I think “Shall I take a message” would still be a literal translation, because ～ましょう just expresses volition and politeness, not necessarily shared action.

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8081

Ah, I used “we” not in the sense of doing it with the listener, but rather because people who work at establishments refer to themselves and the establishments together sometimes. Like if you’re renting a car and the lady at the desk says “we can offer…”. It seemed like a sentence used by someone working at an establishment of some sort which is why I went with that.

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8082

Hey, guys. I gotta more general question for ya. Could someone help explain the に particle to me? I thought I understood it, but many times I find it in a context that confuses me. As an example I’ll use this sentence from WK for the word 心持ち

今日あった男に心持ちほねっぽいねって言われたんだけど、何なのアイツ。

The statement is of what the man had said to the speaker that day. However, my English speaking mind sees に and wants to firmly believe that what was said was said to the man. This being the case because に means towards… If the action is towards the man, why is it the speaker that is receiving the message? Is it due to the passive 言う？ How confusing…

8083

Yes, it’s because of the passive 言われた. If it was directed towards the speaker, you would see a first person pronoun of some sort. Sometimes から is used to avoid that sort of confusion.

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8084

So sans the pronoun and thus the passive form is always towards the speaker? That helps out a lot, thank you.

e:

What if someone/thing other than the speaker is marked by は? Would they/it then be the one being acted upon?

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8085

You might be able to think about it like this:

with a non-passive verb, the subject does the action and is marked by が
私が殺す - I kill

With a passive verb, the subject gramatically STILL does the action and is marked by が - but the action is having something done to them

私が殺された。- I was killed.

In that situation, you might want to know who did that something to them. So that’s marked with に:

私がゾンビに殺された。- I was killed by a zombie.

And as usual, parts of this, especially が, are often implied with a topic or context.

In the particular sentence,
今日あった男 に 心持ちほねっぽいねって言われたんだ

今日あった男 に signifies that the “was said” was done by the 今日あった男 / “today encountered man” / “guy I met today”

There’s no は, and no が, and I’m not 100% sure 私が would work with 言われた exactly, but since it’s a person speaking who sounds kind of ticked off, and the thing said by the 男 is a comment about someone’s appearance, we can infer that it was said to/about the speaker.
Speakers do tend to omit themselves as subjects, and the passive form can be used to describe stuff that happened that involved you in an abstract, negative way too.

to sum up:

I’d phrase it more like: “in the passive form, the subject receives the action. The action was done by the one marked with に” and separately “a speaker omitting a subject is often talking about themselves.”

It takes a while to click, but eventually at least it’ll feel a lot more intuitive, in the same way you can read “I was stabbed” without having to stop and go “wait! Who stabbed whom?! ‘I stabbed’… so I did it… but it’s passive?? so it’s opposite and I didn’t do it someone else did?!” :slight_smile: just takes time. But maybe that explanation can help a little?
(sorry for the violent examples they just felt simplest in this context)

Incidentally, I don’t think you’re wrong to get confused about the two sense of に, I think in some circumstances it can create ambiguous sentences and other particles are sometimes swapped in for one of the two (the “targeting” sense or the “who the passive action was done by” sense) for clarity.

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8086

What’s the role of もの in the context sentence below? Can I delete もの without changing the correctness/meaning? Recently I have seen several grammar points using もの、is there any grammar point using もの in this case?

ああ見えて、コウイチは計算がものすごく速いんです。

8087

It’s part of the adjective - ものすごい

It’s not especially different than すごい… so it’s mostly just a slight variant. But I’d say it gives it more of like, an imposing, terrible, awesome in the “invokes awe” sense, connotation, where すごい would often be more casually used to mean terrific, great, awesome in the “way cool” sense.

In this case I’d say the use of ものすごい emphasizes a bit more that Kouichi’s 計算 is truly, almost superhumanly fast. Sounds more impressive / a little less like casual hyperbole than just すごく速い.

I think there’s some other adjectives with a weird もの- variant like this, but I don’t think it’s something you can do to every adjective (might be mis or uninformed though).

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8088

I went on a binge and found these:
物足りない - unsatisfactory
物静か - quiet

I agree with rodan that もの is used like this mostly for emphasis. I only ever encountered ものすごい (spelled in kana) so far. Sounds a bit like an overkill :smiley: .

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8089

It’s not emphasis in the two you posted. 物凄い can be thought of as being more sugoi but 物足りない and 物静か are different.

物足りない is usually an emotional or perceptive take on something. 物静か is often used for people or how they do something. I would say in a vast majority of cases you can’t replace one of those with the 物 version and just have it add more emphasis. They really are just different words.

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