Checking it again, there are some verbs I was able to recognize (like the just learned 見る or the omnipresent 行く) but the lack of furigana is a problem. Atm I know around 20 verbs and the majority of them I learnt on the genki book without worrying about kanji that I’d be learning anyway further in time on WK (good choice?)
I’d expect more distance in a family of such a high status (opinion based on my behavioral knowledge rather than japanese’s lol) so perhaps it could’ve been possible…?
This would feel weird to me too
Let me ask you, how do you happen to know english and japanese so good? I’m not a native english speaker too, but mine is way under your level
I think it’s an OK choice, but it’s really up to you. I would study the kanji at least once simply because it’s a good chance to learn them in context and to reinforce my memory with links to something meaningful (e.g. an event in a textbook story), but if it’s more enjoyable for you to leave the kanji for later, then you can go ahead.
I mean… I guess? In Chinese period dramas, imperial and noble families are also much more formal than commoners are, so that wouldn’t surprise me. But would one need to use a different level of speech in order to convey an apology? I’m not that sure… especially because I’d expect the high status of an emperor to be quite fixed in a traditional context.
I’m actually a bilingual native English and Chinese speaker. My main language is English. I don’t really speak much Chinese to my mum, but her native languages are two Chinese dialects (that aren’t Mandarin), so it wouldn’t be wrong to say that she still has some notions of how people interact in traditional Chinese culture which she has passed on to me. My grandparents are from China, but they travelled to Singapore a really long time ago, probably just after World War II.
It’s true that everyday English in Singapore is quite different from standard English, so I had to spend a lot of time on separating casual, conversational Singaporean English (Singlish) from standard English, but I managed it after a few years of searching and practising as a teenager. (I would check grammar sites every once in a while and read to dictionary in order to fix the minor errors I was still making because they were so common in Singlish.) It’s probably possible to do it more quickly, but if my experience with French and other languages is any indication, what you need to do is to pick a specific model, and then learn to imitate that. (E.g. I refused to translate anything directly from English to French unless there was no other way. Even when I found out that “dans le passé” existed as a valid literal translation of ‘in the past’, I only used “par le passé” for a while because that way, I wouldn’t mix the two up.)
I don’t want to derail the thread too much, but I did explain what I do to learn languages here:
But besides that, what I do a lot of is just breaking things down literally. I strongly believe that meaning comes together in a certain way in native speakers’ heads, even if they’re not conscious of it. That’s the whole reason why we ‘feel’ certain phrases just ‘make sense’ in our native languages. Certain pieces of meaning just ‘ought to’ go together with other pieces. Certain words only describe certain others (e.g. in English, you always ‘make a mistake’; you can’t ‘do a mistake’. In French, however, “faire” is both ‘to do’ and ‘to make’, and that’s the case in other Romance languages – there’s usually just one word that comes from Latin’s facere, and it means both things). Therefore, when I learn something new, I need to understand why it means what it does for a native speaker of that language, or at least how I can understand it.
An example in Japanese would be how people say でんわにでる to mean ‘to answer the phone’. It’s literally ‘to come out/appear on the phone’. I can’t explain exactly why we say this in Japanese, but I can say that it’s as though ‘the phone’ is a place, and it’s almost as though the person on the other end will hear you ‘popping up’ as you answer. I learn the sort of impression each word creates, and bit by bit, I understand how to use it elsewhere as well. I believe in learning to think like a native speaker, even if all I have is my best guesses, and so far, it’s worked pretty well. It’s like making a scientific theory: it doesn’t have to be perfectly true, because we have no way of knowing whether something reflects 100% of reality. (We can’t test absolutely everything: it’s humanly impossible.) However, so long as the theory explains everything we see, and survives every experiment we throw at it, it’s as good as true, and will be very useful for predictions and new applications.
Sounds more than legit but honestly some kanji just scare me lol I’ll wait for WK to do its work
My fault, I’m not used to forums and I keep doing questions in the wrong sections, in fact, this is the first forum I ever joined haha.
I will check this, thanks for the link
Sounds so true to me (for the little to nothing I know), I always tried to break everything down bit by bit because I just feel I’m better understanding how to use things. The fact you told me this gives me some confirmation bias
I think you and @Jonapedia hashed this one out already, but I wanted to point out that you don’t have to think so lofty.
In fact, if you’re watching anime and you have two characters in a 先輩 and 後輩, pay close attention to how they talk to each other.
This is probably the most common one you’ll see outside of business relationships. It’s also played for laughs sometimes when a character complains why no one talks to him politely even though he’s technically their senpai.
The official translation says: “From the beggining, it had been whispered that Kinzo had built a mansion on this island specifically because of the existence of an entrancing mistress…”
However I interpreted it more like “from the beginning, when he built his mansion on the island, there were already rumors about him having a mistress”.
I don’t see any indicators for cause and consequence that may imply he built the mansion because of the mistress, unless それこそ is acting that way?
There is a fair chance they didn’t speak what we nowadays consider Japanese or at the very least a somewhat archaic form of it, but that would depend on the period. @Jonapedia would here be the best person to ask since he has legit interest in the historical aspect of Japanese. Probably also @Killua099 , but I’m not sure they’re still around.
Other than 将軍 it would be worth researching 幕府 and 大名.
I would’ve translated the sentence like this: It was whispered that the existence of the lover/mistress who entranced (let Kinzou fall into trance?) was precisely the reason why (he) established residence on this island in the first place (from the beginning?).
But it feels it’s very close to the official translation.
What bothers me a little bit is that it’s 囁かれていた and not と囁からていた so your translation might be closer to how the sentence should be understood.
So the alternative would be: It was whispered from the beginning that the existence of the lover/mistress who entranced (let Kinzou fall into trance?) was precisely the reason why (he) established residence on this island.
Would you be able to elaborate a bit on how you got to that translation? I still don’t get it lol
For the record, here’s how I got mine: basically I took the core of the sentence to be 愛人の存在は[…]当初から囁かれていた, and the whole それこそこの島に屋敷を構えた would be acting as a modifier to 当初, but maybe I’m screwing something up here.
I also checked what weblio had to say about それこそ and it looks like it just adds emphasis to things.
One of the American conditions for the Japanese surrender at the end of WWII was that the Emperor would make a radio broadcast to the people announcing said surrender… except that he spoke in such an archaic form of Japanese that literally nobody could understand what he said. They had to release a clarification immediately afterwards which explained what was going on.
You can listen to the broadcast in question on Wikipedia if you want, but the recording quality is not great.
During the first recording he spoke too softly, and upon the advice of the technicians, offered to rerecord it. On the second attempt, his voice was considered too high pitched, with occasional characters being skipped. Nevertheless, the second version was deemed the official one, with the first serving as a backup.
I can’t imagine being the poor technician who had to ask the Emperor to repeat himself, and they for sure weren’t going to ask twice.
definitely Classical Japanese. It even contains one of the kanji for ここ (茲), and some of the verb forms just don’t exist anymore in modern Japanese.
I knew from my history classes in school that there was a radio broadcast about the surrender, but I didn’t know anything about how well it was understood by the general public. Thanks for sharing this!
I read it slightly differently. I think it breaks down more like
金蔵を夢中にさせる愛人の存在は、- the mistress who enchanted kinzou
それこそこの島に屋敷を構えた当初から - especially from when the residence was built on the island
囁かれていたのだ。 - was whispered about
basically I thiink that この島に屋敷を構えた modifies 当初, and it’s describing when the 当初 happens. and then それこそ indicates that there might have been some rumours before, but they really picked up when the residence got built.
there’s no と because there’s nothing being quoted. the mistress is the topic and 囁かれていた is the comment on it.
Right, but who built the residence in this case? The mistress/lover is the topic, but there is no passive voice used for 構える. That part confused me a bit.
Right, but often in such cases と precedes the final add-on to the sentence like in the case of と言われている or とされる.
EDIT:
Some more pondering later and I think I understood it now why the と is not necessary and would likely either give a different nuance or require the sentence to be structured a little differently and @theghostofdenzo 's breakdown sounds the most natural.
maybe I should have written it as “especially from when he built the residence on the island”. I don’t think passive vs active voice makes too much difference here though, especially in a translation. that kinzou had it built is clear from the context anyway.
I’m not sure how it could work if you added と as the sentence stands. there’s not really anything that makes grammatical or semantic sense as something people are saying. put another way, I don’t think you could put the bit before in 「」 and end up with a something that makes sense, which is usually how と works (even if it’s not literally quoting what people are saying).
Uhhh yes both are possible. The difference is subtle. You don’t have to be the subject btw it totally depends on the context .
The first one can have a contrasting nuance. Or you picking up on the “coffee topic”, for example someone wants to pour you coffee. “When it comes to coffee, I don’t drink it”
The second one feels more like a general statement. “I don’t drink coffee”
I think the english translation already hints a bit at the difference in nuance. It really depends on the context which one is more natural to use.
Ok, so if I’m at a bar and a friend asks me if I’m going to have coffee and I want to say that I’m not having coffee in that particular occasion, I use を
While if in that same instance I want to say that I never drink coffe, I use は because I’m like saying that, as for coffe, I don’t drink it
Got it?
I wouldn’t necessarily say that. It really depends on how the question and the conversation was flowing before. What the current topic is. What you are talking about in that instance. Context is everything in Japanese so if you don’t have a concrete conversation I can’t really comment on that…
The distinction between “never” and “just in this instance” would rather be expressed by a word like “never” the same way you did in english.
Not necessarily. “I don’t drink coffee” would pretty clearly mean that you never drink coffee. If you simply don’t plan to drink coffee today I feel like you’d probably just respond “nah, I’m having [drink] today” instead of directly stating that you’re not having coffee.
In Japanese maybe you’d say コーヒーは苦手 to indicate you (pretty much) never drink coffee. I can’t think of another way to say that you don’t drink coffee in general while not being overly direct. If you simply don’t plan to drink coffee today, I think something like 今日は[drink] might work (well I’m not actually sure what else to put after the drink, if anything, when talking to a friend and not placing an order, but you get the idea). If you just want to say that today you’re not having coffee while not saying the drink you plan to get, maybe just saying 今日はちょっと would work.
Do you mean something like
全然コーヒーを飲みません
?
Let’s say the context is that I’m eating at a pub with a friend (new friend he doesn’t know I don’t drink coffee) and he asks me if I’m going to have coffee after the meal (like ‘any coffee bro?’)
In this context, what would the differences be if I used は and を ?
I’m not able ti clearly see the difference
I usually say something like あまり好きじゃない (potentially followed by some vagueness indicator depending on situation and communication partner) which usually gets the message across.
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