Can someone help me with the translation of this sentence?
ちょっとバスを間違えて…
The topic of the chapter is to give a reason with the て-form. You learn that by giving reasons why you are coming too late for a meeting. So the person is saying: I took the wrong bus (that is why I am late).
I struggle with the translation of ちょっと. What exactly does it mean in this sentence?
It’s just filler so that you can soften the excuse. When we say “I kinda… Took the wrong bus…” In English it doesn’t mean there is some gray area between taking the right bus and taking the wrong bus… It just softens it.
That doesn’t mean you need to translate this into English with filler. It might be appropriate or it might not be. In English we are often more straightforward than Japanese in equivalent situations.
明日はちょっと… might be best translated as “I can’t go tomorrow.” Depending on the person and situation.
Anything you want to learn is better started sooner than later, so it depends on if you have the energy and time left over to add this to your studyplan. There are a bunch of apps you can use to practice strokeorder recall on the go.
Time is one of my biggest worries. I just realized last night I spent a month on only 1 genki lesson and am still not done lol. Maybe i will use Kanji Study but irregularly
Hi,
Which verb would be best suited to say that I’m rearranging my room (changing furniture placement etc)?
模様替えをする is what I’ve found.
模様替えをする
- remodel
- rearrange 《a room》
- alter 《a house plan》
- 《口語》 redo
- do 《the kitchen》 over
模様替えになる
- be remodeled
- be rearranged
I had a little argument with my fellow japanese learner.
He says that if you say not ひどい, but ひでえ to someone superior, then it will be an offense equal to saying an F word.
Let’s imagine some situation, idk, a teacher hands out a test result and you exclaim "ひでえ～”. What would it cause? A scandal like an F word?
Personally, I believe that all those え style adjectives are conversational and just a bit rude to superiors but not to that extent, not even close.
Although it doesn’t have the same vulgarity level of the English F-word, it has a similar kind of social inappropriateness. It might be more analogous to saying “What the hell?” or “No way!!” to your teacher when they hand you back a paper with a bad grade. Not super rude in most casual circumstances but saying that to a teacher or professor could get you in trouble or just be embarrassing.
Casual like with friends? I thought if you say those among friends, then nobody would even take notice.
Even in trouble? Interesting. I didn’t think that can bring the disciplinary punishment.
Well, I mean, you did mention an example involving a teacher. It’s basically like using slang when talking to a teacher, which can be very inappropriate. (This depends on the culture in question, of course.)
Yes that’s what I mean, your friends probably wouldn’t take any offense to it.
I guess it depends on what school you go to and in what country, I know when I was in school I’d at least get a stern talking to if nothing else if I ever said “something bad” to the teachers. Sometimes I’d get in trouble just for questioning them or standing up for myself when I got accused of things I didn’t do.
Yes, inappropriate and stupid at best. I imagine that teacher would be just a worse opinion of you and would take you for some dumb kid.
Classic thing.
Kinda feel this is what’s likely to happen in Japan, save with “kid” replaced by “foreigner”. If, say, this situation is taking place at work instead, and you said it to your boss, he’ll probably give you a Look, but in his head, he’ll likely be thinking “ah, how cute, the foreigner is learning casual speech”… and you’ll immediately be placed in the “don’t give sensitive client-facing tasks to” bucket.
I can’t find the video right now, but there’s one about Dogen using “すっげ” with his teacher and her telling him never to use that language with her again.
While it’s not literally equivalent to the f-word, the impact is about the same as swearing in front of your parents.
I love that anecdote. It starts here, at 17h35:
So yeah, it looks like in this precise settings, if a teacher ask you in polite Japanese 週末はどうでしたか? and you answer すっげえ楽しかった!! (really going for it, like suGGEEEEtanoshikkata) it has pretty much the same impact as answering “fucking fantastic!!” in English. 
There is one thing left though. What if you speak like that to your friend in a classroom and teacher hears you talking, what happens then? F-word being used to a teacher or near the teacher will cause the equal effect. But what about colloquial japanese just being overheard? It will be ignored, right?
Well yes, that would be ignored. It’s not actually swearing, just an extreme faux pas.
Would it actually be a faux pas to speak to a friend that way in front of a teacher? I think it’s only disrespectful if the teacher is supposed to be included in the conversation or otherwise acknowledged. Just being overheard speaking that way probably isn’t improper. I definitely speak differently when I’m speaking to my friends as compared to when I’m speaking to my teachers.
A little bit. Younger people definitely seem to clam up a bit if they realize a teacher or a adult overheard them speaking really casually. Maydaysan did a couple of videos about it on Tiktok. It might be more of a thing where students are trying to come off as good students, but think that sounding overly casual will make them seem less like a good student.
Maybe a good American comparison would be like if a teacher’s pet/ suck up said something like “damn” within a teacher’s hearing, realized the teacher noticed, and then got embarrassed about it.
Ah, I meant to speak to the teacher like that.