Short Grammar Questions (Part 1)

Example sentence for 自立 here on WK:

もしあなたが強くで自立した日本人女性で、男なんて必要ないというなら、これをシェアしてください。

Should 強くで be 強くて? Or is this a valid grammar point separate from “い-adjective + ~くて” that I’m unfamiliar with?

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At least I think this is grammar, sorry if it’s not. Watching Woman in the Dunes, I think I heard「きたないえな」- it was translated as “Man, this is foul”. But I can’t find anything on え, な, or えな in the A Dictionary of Basic Japanese that makes sense of what heard. For instance え, i.e. へ is used as “and”, な is negation, and since きたない here means “foul”, it can’t be a negation?

You may have heard きたねえな, which would be a courser way to say きたない + な

In colloquial, course language all kinds of words ending in おい or あい can become ええ
すげー
やべぇ
でけっ

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I’m reading NHK Easy News and a lot of times I keep seeing this phrasing when it defines words:

おわびー「わび」のていねいな言い方。あやまること。また、そのことば

I’m not sure I really get what it means by “Morever, that word”. Is it saying it means to apologize and, also, it mean exactly what あやまる means?

It would help if you mentioned what word this definition was for or posted the article. I think it’s basically saying that this mystery word means to apologize and also the apology itself (the words used to apologize).

Assuming that it’s not a typo, the -くform of -い adjectives can sometimes be treated like a noun. I’m not sure when/why, I’d have to research it more

I did mention it. It’s defining おわび. So I guess it’s just trying to emphasize that it literally means わび .

Here’s the article https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/easy/k10011719721000/k10011719721000.html anyways.

強くで is a typo! It should be 強くて.

My bad, I thought that was supposed to be part of the definition. :joy:

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It’s just how dictionaries are written. The そのことば is there to show that おわび describes not only the act of apologizing, but also the apology itself.

私は詫びにきたのではありません。 → Act of apologizing, the action.

心からのお詫び。→ The apology itself. The words that make the apology.

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Is there any explanation for how the meaning of verb stems are affected are affected by る and す?

For example:

浸る (To be soaked in)
浸す (To soak)

Just that in such pairs, る tends to be intransitive and す tends to be transitive.

Edit:

But to be clear, they’re not different endings of the same verb stem. They’re different verbs. There’s just a noticeable pattern to a lot of the pairings.

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I looked at this question and noticed that the word for lizard, トカゲ was written in Katakana. Most katakana is phonetically similar to words from other countries, but I seem to struggle what this could represent. Does anyone know? Or if this is a Japanese word, why was it written in Katakana?

Katakana has a variety of uses. One of them is writing animal and plant names. Even if they are Japanese in origin.

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There’s a few answers to that question here. One of them states:

Others say it can be due to kanji complexity, or due to wanting the word to be more readable or stand out within that sentence.

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Very interesting! Thank you! :blush:

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Recently, there was a lenghty article on Tofugu on the subject of transitive and intransitive verbs:

Enjoy!

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Can someone please explain the difference between のです/んです and でしょう.

From what I can understand you are essentially saying something is probable but are looking for reassurance or agreement?

I can’t really understand the difference between them though.

Thanks

I learned those as marking an explanation. The literal translation of “…のです” is “The thing is, …” which has a similar purpose in English.

They can also be used in a question to ask for an explanation or show that you are interested in the answer, but they would have the question marker か after です in that case.

Um what is the difference between 連れる and 連れてくる ?
On Jisho it says that both of them mean “to bring (someone) along”.
Is there any specific use for each of them or something?