Ooooooh. Ok. So that’s the logic. You read left to right. And it’s all a timeline. Damn now even I forgot my prior justification. Thanks!
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Think of running a race- the person in FRONT of you will arrive BEFORE you. The person BEHIND you will arrive AFTER you.
(Credit to belthazar for this explanation)
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There is even a thread about it : Before? After? In front? Behind? Soon? Recent?
EDIT: well, apparently there are SEVERAL threads on the topic… it wasn’ the one I wanted to link to; But weaverZ already posted the nice mnemonic to remember them.
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I’m just glad we didn’t bring 先 into the discussion. Oh wait…
@f3lix could it be you’re thinking of the 前 kanji only in the sense of physical distance? That something is “in front” of something else? I think kanji are often more conceptual so they cover a specific sentiment and not one meaning 
What could also help here is looking at the 前に grammar point to arrange events on a timeline.
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Still not advanced enough into WK to have the “after” meanings. Therefore they do not exist 
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I don’t think WaniKani covers any of the “after” meanings for 先, because these are usually in longer expressions and WaniKani focuses on kanji. 先 is also more “meta” 
.
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given words like 先生, i think it’s safe to say this kanji means something akin to “transcends time”. it just so happens to make more sense as past and future in certain situations. 
In some time expressions I like to think of 先 as a “tip” or “point”, which is its second meaning, because that translates more literally into English - a point in time. No idea whether that works in your language as well?
先生 the one who previously followed the path (and is now teaching it to you)
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I’m a little confused over the word 快速. I know it can be translated as “high speed” or “rapid”, but some J-J dictionaries tend to use the definition:
気持ちがよいほど速いこと。また、そのさま。
So should I take this word to mean something like “Pleasantly fast”? Or would that be me misunderstanding something…
Did you actually encounter it in a situation where it’s not merely a shortened way to say 快速電車? Most uses nowadays are just in that context.
The example I see in the dictionary for the use you mentioned is from a rather old novel, which is usually a sign that people aren’t using it much that way anymore. If you did encounter it in that sense, I guess “pleasantly fast” would be a valid literal translation, but making it natural would depend on the actual context.
It looks like describing baseball pitches is another context that still appears in recent usage. (still massively overshadowed by train references). I would still consider that usage merely “high speed” and not consciously related to “pleasantness.”
If you just learned it here on WK and want to know if you understand it completely… if you just think of it as being short for 快速電車 you’re probably fine.
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Please help in breaking down this sentence for me:
光源氏と自分をつい重ねてしまうのでな。。。
From DeepL it means “I can’t help but compare myself to Hikaru Genji” but searching for the words つい and 重ねて in the dictionary doesn’t seem to mean compare or any related meaning. Is there a grammar point or expression that I’m unaware of? Thanks.
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Is there are any context around that sentence that could help us?
As far as I know, 重ねる means “to accumulate” or to “pile up”.
Hmmm but actually for instance Jisho says that 重ねて means “repeatedly” and I vaguely remember hearing it in songs used that way. The added しまう confuses me, though.
I found it being used here サービス終了のお知らせ
重ねてしまう looks like a set expression. Found it in other sources as well.
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重ねる can mean “to take two things that are thought to be in the same category and place one on top of the other”, and so adding つい and しまう to the nuance, you can imagine it means the person doesn’t want to think of themself like Hikaru Genji (being in the same category as Hikaru Genji), but they end up doing so anyway.
This usage of 重ねる seems fairly abstract though. I could not find a lot of examples of non-physical things being used with 重ねる. Doesn’t mean they don’t exist though, just not given as example sentences.
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I was interpreting that usage of つい to be something like “the likes/idea of,” is that not abstract enough?
Ok, I’ll try.
So in the manga 藤原道長 is talking to 紫式部 about the novel that she wrote titled 源氏物語. 藤原道長 is worried about what would happen next in 光源氏 story and then the sentence in question is stated.
In the next page she says that compared to 光源氏, 藤原道長 accomplishments are higher and happened in real life.
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I’m not sure what you mean by that. I read it as “unintentionally” or “subconsciously”, emphasizing a similar nuance to しまう (meaning that the end result wasn’t desired and sought).
The abstractness is the idea of placing two non-physical things with 重ねる, and so my question remains even if you remove つい.
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Thank you. So it’s not as simple as “to pile up; to heap up; to stack up; to put on top of another” but to overlap/compare two things.
You won’t find the meaning of “compare” in a dictionary. I just think that “comparing” is basically the natural consequence of doing the action of 重ねる to two things like this. Because the “putting two of a group together” is one established use of 重ねる, so the idea that they’re similar is implied.
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It’s not uncommon when it comes to talking about a character in a story. You can see people talking about online if you look
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