The quick or short Language Questions Thread (not grammar)

I think the second? But more like ‘a person prone to being sad who has never had a boyfriend’.

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Thank you.

If you were talking about a “damsel in distress,” would 困る be a good way to say that? Like 困ったお嬢さん・困るお嬢さん?

The “Damsel in distress” Wikipedia article in Japanese offers 3 ways to say it.

囚われの姫
捕らわれの姫君
苦難の乙女

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Thanks! Silly me only checked Jisho :man_facepalming:

Not to mention ダムゼル・イン・ディストレス. :slightly_smiling_face:

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What is アニメカード supposed to mean?? Google images shows credit cards with anime backgrounds while Wikipedia doesn’t have any direct results but has anime about card games show up. I didn’t quite understand the web results either. Should I just understand it as like Pokemon and Yugioh cards?

Maybe a phone card?

Plus, I’m sure Japan had just plain old collectible cards too. Though why you’d translate that as “an anime card” I’m not too sure.

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目玉 vs 眼球 which is the more common / less formal one, and which is the more technical / medical term (I’m guessing the latter?)

Yeah, when you have an option between kunyomi and onyomi and they appear to basically mean the same thing, you can usually guess that the onyomi option is more formal/scientific.

And in this specific case, 眼球 always literally means eyeball. Whereas 目玉 can have other meanings as well, such as “special feature / centrepiece” or “sunny side up fried egg”. So those things are also good to check.

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Hi,

In some (or perhaps most?) of the music schools, to graduate you have to pass kind of practical exam - in the school I attended that would mean for example playing an approx. hour long gig.

What would be Japanese word for such kinds of vocational schools’ final practical exams? (And more specifically, music one, if there is one)

Since school systems can vary greatly between countries, and English isn’t my first language, I don’t know how should I search for it in E-J dictionaries, that’s why I’m asking here.

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I’m not a musician, so I don’t know either, but if a wikipedia article exists in your native language, you might be able to switch it to Japanese to find out the term. I often use it for finding the names of animals.

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Yeah, sometimes I do that too. This time I couldn’t find anything (perhaps I didn’t search hard enough), so I went with basic descriptive 卒業試験の演奏. (It was only for FB post anyway :wink: )

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My girlfriend graduated from a music school and she called it a 卒業演奏.

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So, there’s a character in Digimon Universe: Appli Monsters who is a YouTuber (well… “AppTuber” is the bland name version) whose catchphrase is “ノレる?ノレない?超ノレ[る/ない]!”

What verb is this ノレる? That’s how it’s written when it’s shown in text in-series, but Jisho’s got nothing and my Google-fu is failing me. Crunchyroll translated it as “groovy”, and while I don’t know if it’s that specifically, I wouldn’t be too surprised if it were slang of some description.

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I think I also heard that one before.
According to Takoboto it means “to get into the swing (and sing, dance etc.)”. It was listed as a translation under “乗る”.

Googling “ノレル曲” will suggest searching for “盛り上がる曲” too. In this case 盛り上がる means to get excited or hyped. So I guess it fits the translation kinda ^^

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Hello friends, can you be of help?

Which Kanji is correct (or most used, I guess) to describe how old someone is? I have 才 in WK already, but Duolingo uses 歳 and that is coming up for WK as well. Both pronounced the same (さい) and are able to be used as “x years old”. What gives? Is the “genius” one less used?

The strictly ‘correct’ kanji is 歳. I believe 才 is used as a phonetic simplification in Japan because it’s so much easier to write. That’s about it. Neither is wrong, but one is used as shorthand. I’m not sure what to give you as an analogy… OK, for example, the way one writes numbers on cheques in Chinese and Japanese is different from the way one writes them in everyday life: in Japanese, 一 becomes 壱, 二 becomes 弐, 三 becomes 参, 十 becomes 拾 and so on. Characters that are pronounced the same way but written with more strokes are used so they can’t be easily modified for fraudulent purposes. Similarly, I think 歳 should be used in formal contexts, but 才 should be just fine for everyday usage.

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The ‘genius’ one can come across more childish, for the reasons @Jonapedia mentioned.

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I remember talking to someone about this earlier. Essentially kids use the simpler one and it may be seen more frequently for young ages. Additionally, the simpler one is used informally. The more complicated one is the proper choice though.

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