The quick or short Language Questions Thread (not grammar)

They haven’t said anything in Japanese so far, or I would just have copied them.
I’ve used casual so far. I guess I’ll take your advice and not overthink it (: thanks.

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How do I apologise to the person after me in a queue for taking too long with whatever I was doing? Like if I was consulting my Japanese teacher about something and made the next student in line wait for quite a while.

Something like this :smiley:

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Need some help with the beginning part of a dictionary definition. This is with スーパー大辞林:

Basically, I don’t really know what the (動ア下一) and the part in <<>> are.

Any help?

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動 verb
ア the end of the stem (which is the え of きえ) is in the あ row (if the stem ended at き, this would say カ)
下一 (しもいち) basically just the official category of える ichidan verbs.

いる ichidan verbs are 上一 (かみいち)

The part in double angle bracket things is the same kind of classification, but for when it was in classical spelling and form. That’s obsolete for our purposes.

But basically it’s an abbreviated way to explain precisely how to conjugate the verb.

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I don’t understand this part. Using the あ row to describe the end of the stem is the usual way when classifying verb, even when the stem doesn’t end in あ ?

You’re asking me to explain why they include that information?

Ah no, I just didn’t understand. But I got it now, take the end of the stem and shift it to the あ row. It’s just a bit odd presentation, so I was confused. But if there is an actual reason for this scheme, I’m curious about it !

Other shimo ichidan verbs with different classifications would be like

上げる 動ガ下一
離れる 動ラ下一

Maybe it seems weird since we don’t think of it like that, but they look at what row the stem ender falls into to classify it.

I can’t say anything beyond “that’s part of the info you’re asking about” which is why I was confirming what you wanted to know.

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Ah no, I’m just slow today, it’s the name of the row itself in the hiragana chart ! Like カ行, ラ行 etc. Sorry for the confusion.

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You’re a lifesaver. :smiley::+1:

Especially since I wouldn’t have expected the かみ/しも readings for 上/下.

But now I have a way to look all this up. Thanks so much.

For some reason, き in the か row makes perfect sense but I never thought of the あ row in the same way.

:exploding_head:

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Ok, so here is the current edit of the sentence.

The question is, which is more appropriate- ずっと or いつも? How do they affect the nuance by being within a quotation? Here’s the discussion so far.

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This is really just me going by feel, but I think that いつも愛してる feels almost like a factual statement or a statement that outlines when it’s true:
‘When do you love me?’
‘Oh, all the time.’
(I know that question is a bit strange in English, but that’s what いつも seems to respond to in my opinion.)

ずっと愛している, on the other hand, means that the loving has been done to a great extent, possibly for a long time. You’ll notice that for emphasis, speakers often drag out the first syllable – ずーっと – as though indicating just how much something is being done or how long it has continued. (That’s also how I remember the meaning of the word: I feel that ‘ずー’.) That’s the sort of word it is, and when it refers to a period of time, that length of time isn’t necessarily limited to the past or the present. You could say
「ずっと愛している。これからもずっと愛する。」
in order to say ‘I have always loved you [and am still loving you now]. I will also always love you from here on.’ You could probably also repeat 愛している as the second verb if you wanted to emphasise that the state of loving (‘I will always be loving you’) is what continues rather than just the action (‘I will always love you’). That’s how the nuance changes, I believe.

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Is 後生だから still used?

Compared to other langauges how often does Japanese people speak metaphorically? curious

Please don’t ask the same question in two places. You should either delete this post or delete the other topic you made.

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I just came across this sentence. I’ve never seen the small ケ like that before. How is that read? What does it mean?

It’s pronounced か. ヶ月 means “number of months”, so 三ヶ月 means “three months”. It can also be written 箇月 among other ways.

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You’ll also occasionally see ヶ in place names like 茅ヶ崎 or 霞ヶ関, where it’s read as が and essentially functions as the の posessive marker.

WaniKani never teaches it, tragically.

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How do you say something like “at least for~” ? For example, “In America, at least for the older generation, people don’t like eating apples”.