The quick or short Language Questions Thread (not grammar)

I think this can be rephrased as ‘In America, the older generation, at (the) least, doesn’t like eating apples’ or as ‘In America, for the older generation, at (the) least, people don’t like eating apples’. Therefore, what really needs to be translated is ‘at least’. ‘For’ is part of the same block as ‘the older generation’ and can probably be handled by は or にとっては. Since your statement proposes a possible limitation to the assertion, I think something like 少なくとも would work:
「アメリカでは、少なくとも年上世代にとっては、りんごを食べるのは嫌です。」

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Sorry maybe wrong thread

保育士 (ほいくし)
Is this referring to the licence or the job title?

I’m not sure what exactly it would mean for it to be a license… A 保育士 is a person who works at a nursery school or childcare facility.

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I can’t remember exactly what I said, but the other day, a native correcting my Japanese told me that using more than 1 ~的 (e.g. 圧倒的 , 伝統的, etc) in a sentence can make the whole sentence come across as rather “vague and doubtful”. I was just curious if this was a personal thing or something that’s generally true?

I think you really need to provide us with an example. As far as I can remember, I’ve never seen or hear a sentence with two 的 adjectives in it. However, I’d just like to suggest that a possible factor is the fact that 的 can also simply indicate that something characterises something else without necessarily being precise about the way in which that occurs. For instance, in Oregairu, one of the characters often says 小町的にポイント高い, with 小町 being her name, and it basically means something like ‘in a way typical of Komachi’ or perhaps ‘as Komachi’ or ‘to me, as Komachi’, and ポイント高い just meaning ‘that gets a lot of points/is really good’. (I think it would best be explained using the concept of scoring points in a relationship, though not necessarily a romantic one.) As you can see, it’s not necessarily particularly clear, at least when it’s used as a form of slang. Another thing to think about is that, possibly because of 的’s similarity in function to の in Chinese, 的 adjectives are one of the few sorts of adjectives that can be easily fused with nouns, particularly nouns written in kanji. Perhaps it feels strange to have more than one of these adjectives that are ‘so close to the noun that they can fuse with it’ in one sentence. Once again though, I think you’ll really have to provide an example in order for us to evaluate whether it was a general thing or just something that you happened to do in that sentence (e.g. picking two 的 adjectives that conflicted in some way).

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What’s the differnece between 学ぶ and 習う, as they both mean “to learn” according to wanikani? I’ve tried looking at the example sentences, but cannot figure out is there any difference.

習う contains the implication that someone is teaching you. You cannot perform the action of 習う on your own. 学ぶ has no such implication contained within it.

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家: いえ vs. うち

Hi all!
In WK, we learn both the above readings for 家。
However, the only one given a mnemonic is いえ、so I assumed (perhaps wrongly) that that was the primary/most common reading。
In Mango Languages, they teach 家 only as うち。
Can anyone shed some light on which reading to use for when? Are both just commonly used?

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Here’s how I think of it:

いえ is your house. うち is your home.

In addition, the word うち itself, outside of referencing your home, has further connotations:

So, for the most part, you’d usually use いえ when talking about your house as a place and うち when you include the connotations noted above.

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Thank you! That’s very helpful! Here is a pic as payment:

ella ear

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Is there a change in nuance when using 擬態語 with verbs as opposed to just する? For example,

ニコニコする
ニコニコ笑う

Thank you for the answer! So is 学ぶ good whether or not someone else is teaching me? Or only when I’m learning on my own?

Yes, 学ぶ just means that you are learning and it doesn’t give any more information. If you want to specify you are learning alone, there is a kanji compound you can make into a verb for that. 独学どくがくする

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Can 彼が嫌いな女の子 mean both “The girl that he dislikes” & “The girl who dislikes him” ?

Yes, since が can be a subject or object marker (with regard to likes and dislikes), so on its own it’s an ambiguous construction.

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Having a lot of trouble trying to understand what he is saying :sweat_smile:
The double use of ‘前’ threw me off (well, the entire sentence threw me off, but that was a big part :joy:)
Translation tools gave the general idea that he’s saying something about getting fired…? Which kinda makes sense since —>

Context: the girl started her very first part-time job, but she really struggled at it (…she was pretty bad to be honest :joy:)

Here, 一人前 is one word.

image

I would say this is meaning 3, because of the reference to getting fired. Don’t have time to write a breakdown at the moment.

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Oh wow, so they were all together :scream: Thank you, I was going in circles!!

You should read Aria. That word comes up a lot there. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Sort of. :slight_smile: