Short Grammar Questions (Part 1)

Hi guys, could you please help me understand why do we change the い for く in 高い in this sentence pattern?

たかてもいい
“I don’t mind if it is expensive.”

Isn’t い changed to く only to form negative sentences?

There are a variety of reasons to change い to く in an adjective. Making the negative (for instance 高くない) is just one of them.

In this example it’s the て form of the い adjective. 高くて

This is just how you make the て form of an い adjective.

大きい 大きくて
小さい 小さくて

Another reason to use く is when you are using the word as an adverb.

高くとぶ fly high
大きくなる to get big

This isn’t everything, but that’s enough for a beginner to start with.

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many thanks :slight_smile:

This is excellent, thank you!

What’s goin’ on at the end here?

えんだいのうえに、おぜんをのせて、うなぎのやけるいいにおいをかぎながら、ごはんをたべるってわけなのさ

I don’t understand the って thrown in after たべる, and I’m not sure what わけなのさ is at all.

Not quite sure I can explain it the best, because the stream of kana is really confusing, but here goes:

  • って is likely a truncation of という and could be used to turn ごはんをたべる into a noun statement

  • わけ is used to emphasize that the speaker understood the reason for something happening and is used at the end of a sentence clause usually

  • なの is just the emphatic の after a statement with な being added after な-adjectives and nouns. Sometimes this gets truncated to なん in spoken language.

Not quite sure whether the terminal さ plays any specific role other than just emphasis.

EDIT: Thank you @jneapan - senpai :smiley:
I swear I only ever hear it from VTubers and in anime/manga, in colloquial speech.

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It’s very colloquial :slight_smile: and sometimes overused.

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For context, this is from a page or two long short comic that I’m fairly certain is crack parodying typical romance confessions. Character A is teasing character B that B clearly likes A. There’s just one line I don’t get.

B: もう我慢できねェ‼︎

I don’t get how the できね works here. I expect it to mean “I’m already at my limit, [so quit it!]” but just looking at the form, I feel like it should mean “I can endure more!”

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I’ve always taken できる to be the potential form of する, in function at least. So 我慢できない would be “I cannot 我慢する anymore”, which fits with your expectation of “I’m already at my limit”

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Ah, I forgot to account for the possibility of that ne being nai. Thank you!!

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I think “I’m already at my limit” is usually もう限界(がない). 我慢 typically refers to patience or perseverance so it’s more like “I can’t take it anymore (because I’ve lost my patience)”. It’s used quite colloquially, too:
我慢しなさいね - just hang in there, okay? (be patient)

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That makes sense, thank you!

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HOW?

Where did you get 気持ちな?

Machine translation tends to just try its best even if you give it something with mistakes.

It’s not necessarily a mistake… I can imagine ways to use な there, but it’s completely devoid of context to determine what the use is. So machine translation just flails around a bit.

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I didn’t realize it’s actually 気持ちいいな
sounds as if there’s a single i

Is there any reason to choose one of these sentences over the other?

  1. 失業率が去年より少しだけ上がったというのをニュースでみました
  2. 失業率が去年より少しだけ上がったというニュースをみました

I would say perhaps sentence 1. sounds a little more natural, but I could be wrong. Is this a trick question? :smiley:

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Basically all that changed here is which definition of ニュース is being used.

In sentence one, the definition is 新聞・ラジオ・テレビなどでの報道

In sentence two, the definition is 新しく一般にはまだ知られていないできごとや情報

So as for a reason you would choose one over the other… I guess it could depend on precisely how you saw something. Like, if you saw the news, but you weren’t “watching the news” then maybe sentence one would not be appropriate. Like maybe all you saw was someone mention it in a forum. That’s not definition 1 of ニュース.

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Can you even use that definition with を見る doe? Don’t think I’ve seen that.

EDIT: Yes I have and yes you can. Didn’t take long of looking back through my books to find

ネットでアニメ化決定のニュースを見た直後、伊月はすぐさま土岐に電話した。

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It doesn’t jump out at me as impossible, and I think 聞く and 読む come to mind as more precise wordings, but I could ask around.