The quick or short Language Questions Thread (not grammar)

lets do it

Oh, I’m not asking you in particular, if you don’t know what a Jukugo is, you most likely don’t know the answer to my question ^^ but if you do, I have already provided examples above

your thoughts seem logical

It is a thing indeed! It’s called transitivity and there’s actually many more patterns than just the one you discovered. The “indirect” ones are called intransitive verbs, and the ones where you do something to an object (like 手を上げる) are called transitive verbs.
If you want to know more, here’s a link to a tofugu blog post about transitive and intransitive verbs, and here’s a post from imabi with some more details on certain types of patterns / pairs.

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Oh sweet ! Those are getting bookmarked and to read when I’m not full of tacos, thank you !

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Tacos? :eyes:

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Have I run into an expression here?

こうすれば鉢かづき姫は恥ずかしくて、自分からどこかへ行ってしまうだろうと考えたのです。

I think this expression shows up again again later (and I hope this provides context)

観音さま。
今夜、嫁合わせがあります。
お兄さま方のお嫁さんは、とても美しい姫君たちと聞きます。
わたしの様な鉢かづきが出て行って、いとおしい若君に恥をかかせるくらいなら、いっそこのままどこかへ・・・」

Am I dealing with some kind of locational expression? Or is she just literally wondering where to get away to?

Gracias in advance

Is there anywhere where I can learn common conjugations or sentence patterns that Japanese people use in super casual speech? (everytime i think i understand something, they throw new things at me D:)

Today my labmates jokingly taught me how to “order” one of them to get food for me – 「めしもってきお」or 「めしとってきお」 I don’t know if I transcribed/remembered it right, especially the last bit (I think the whole phrase might have been longer >_>). I think it was some sort of conjugation for くる but I have no idea how to go about searching for it.

Appreciate any help!

Just out of curiosity, where are you? Super casual speech will typically revert to whatever dialect people speak in that region. So when my girlfriend is shouting at a video game in Kansai-ben, I typically have to ask what the hell she was saying.

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I’m in Nara! So I hear a lot of Kansai-ben, even from Tokyo people.

Ah, my girlfriend is originally from Nara, so I’m sure it’s often similar. Sorry can’t answer that question though.

I do own a Kansai-ben book that is meant for natives who speak other dialects, but I assume you wanted a free resource.

If your Japanese is not already at a high level, it will be kind of difficult to understand, because they assume you don’t need help with standard Japanese.

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It’s alright! Super casual speech is just really tricky for me to get my head around, especially since my textbooks teach standard Japanese. Unfortunately, my Japanese is still at ~N4 level, so I won’t be able to read that yet. Thank you, though! It looks like a really interesting book and I hope I’ll be able to read it one day.

I have trouble understanding the difference between 混じる and 交じる they both translate to something different in wanikani, first one is To Get Mixed Up In, and the other is To Be Mixed, which obviously don’t mean the same thing. Now at first I assumed they were different vocabularies with the same reading as usual but then I read the context sentence for 混じる…

悪魔からのメッセージは偽りだが、我々を混乱させるために嘘と真実が入り混じっている。
The message from the demon is a lie, but he will mix lies with the truth to confuse us.

Shouldn’t this be 交じる or 交ぜる/混ぜる?
Now honestly I can’t read the japanese sentence nor understand it, but if the sentence is really “he will mix lies with the truth” then it should be (To Be Mixed) not (To Get Mixed Up In)
From my understanding to the translations, 混じる is used for when you are get mixed up with bad guys in a situation or something, or generally speaking, for when we talk about someone that got mixed up in some situation
Edit: Ok never mind 混じる has To Be Mixed as a meaning as well, so i guess they’re the same after all…

I would say ignore the minor differences in the English glosses. They are nuances of the same word.

When the two things can be separated again after mixing them, like cards or balls, use 交じる.

When the two things can’t be separated again after mixing them, like paint or batter, use 混じる.

Source

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I am having trouble figuring out what this word すむ means in the following sentence. It is from a story I am reading where a chapter starts with the main character saying the following while reading a flyer she got in the mail:

「あら、駅まえどおりにすむ、かわいいねこコンテスト賞金百万円。かえりがけには、参加賞一万円進呈ですって!」

If I had to guess, I think すむ means hold, as in the “cute cat contest” will be held in the “avenue in front of the station”. However, none of the dictionary definitions I can find for すむ seems to fit (住む to dwell, 済む to end, 澄む to become clear, …)

Or maybe I am just parsing everything incorrectly >.<

Any help is appreciated.

It’s 住む. It’s a contest for cute cats that live on the street in front of the station.

Since it modifies ねこ, it’s unlikely that “hold” would be a candidate, no matter the verb, unless this is a world where cats hold contests.

EDIT: or I guess it could be 棲む, which is apparently the same meaning as 住む but used for animals. But both mean live. I don’t know how often that is used.

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I see. I did consider the possibility that すむ was “to dwell / reside”, but I find it strange that a contest would be limited to cats living in a specific street. I guess there could be an implication that it involves that street and the ones nearby?

That makes sense. I got a bit lost there when parsing the sentence. Thank you for clarifying!

Is there any resources to help explaining the different nuance of the same word written with different kanji ? I’m talking about word like 作る that can be written 造る and also 創る. (Albeit, in this case, the difference is big enough that even jisho.org mentioned it, 造る usu. for large-scale building, manufacturing, etc.; 創る usu. for creating) But very often neither jisho nor J-J dictionary mentioned what difference of nuance it make.

For example, today I came across a text where the writer used 眼 (め) for eye, instead of the usual 目. No mention of any difference in J-J dictionary I looked into, but then I asked a native and they immediately said that 眼 has a more medical and scientific feeling. So, that’s my point, there is clearly a slight difference of nuance, but how to learn about this stuff ??

If you search for two kanji or two words plus 違い, you can usually find a blog post or something, if there’s a meaningful difference.

This was the first result for me.

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Thanks ! But I was wondering if there is more general resource, like some kind of dictionary which explicitly distinguish those nuances ? Even Japanese people must want to check about them for some rare cases, and it seems odd to always look for blog post.

Edit : Lol, in the same text, two lines later there is 眸 instead of 瞳… It’s going to be a long read…