Learning Japanese

[endarion88]

ok guys sorry, i really dont want to take advantage of your kindness but i have no one else to ask so i hope you will forgive me

やっぱりなんだか得をしたように恩えてしまうあたり、彼も相当ステラにやられていた

i really can't get a decent sense out of this, something about him getting the kindess of begind threated as equal?? dictionaries didnt help much, i can get the single words but not the full sense of this line so i hope someone can explain how this line is structured

[Avatar of Dreams]

Firstly, it's 思えて not, 恩えて. It's really important not to get kanji wrong when asking for translations.

やっぱり - The situation is in line with what the speaker expected. I rarely translate this as it's too difficult to put into English without messing up the flow of the sentence.
なんだか - somehow
得をする - to benefit
'verb'+ように思える - able to think/believe 'verb' happens
'verb'+あたり - similar to 'verb'＋のは, just less straightforward and more indirect
相当 - considerably
やられていた - やる is a vague verb so no context means I can't accurately translate this but assuming ステラ is a person's name, she definitely "got" whoever 彼 is.

So I would translate this along the lines of "The fact that he believes that he somehow benefited means that he too was considerably done in by Stella".

[endarion88]

Originally Posted by Avatar of Dreams

Firstly, it's 思えて not, 恩えて. It's really important not to get kanji wrong when asking for translations.

やっぱり - The situation is in line with what the speaker expected. I rarely translate this as it's too difficult to put into English without messing up the flow of the sentence.
なんだか - somehow
得をする - to benefit
'verb'+ように思える - able to think/believe 'verb' happens
'verb'+あたり - similar to 'verb'＋のは, just less straightforward and more indirect
相当 - considerably
やられていた - やる is a vague verb so no context means I can't accurately translate this but assuming ステラ is a person's name, she definitely "got" whoever 彼 is.

So I would translate this along the lines of "The fact that he believes that he somehow benefited means that he too was considerably done in by Stella".

thank you very much again and sorry i din't see the error with that kanji. in my book i don't have the verb+のは form, by your translation i get is something like "the fact V happen means> remaining sentence?

[SlendermanHD]

Originally Posted by endarion88

thank you very much again and sorry i din't see the error with that kanji. in my book i don't have the verb+のは form, by your translation i get is something like "the fact V happen means> remaining sentence?

A verb followed by no means a nominalization (verb used as a noun) plus the wa particles makes it also the topic of the conversation. It is also my first time seeing atari playing the same function as koto or no in this case.

[Yu Ominae]

After a long talk and some reflection, I thought my folks were right that someone with N5 credentials may not be suitable for a job that requires constant communication in Japanese.

I cancelled all my interviews for now. This means I need to seriously hit the books.



My problem still is because I studied under the equivalent of N5, my parents think I'm some kind of super Japanese fluent machine and that I don't speak as much Japanese as I do since some of their needs IMo are too complex that I can't even formulate the proper question without sounding like an ass.

[MT-G]

Originally Posted by Yu Ominae

My problem still is because I studied under the equivalent of N5, my parents think I'm some kind of super Japanese fluent machine and that I don't speak as much Japanese as I do since some of their needs IMo are too complex that I can't even formulate the proper question without sounding like an ass.

Try to talk to a japanese with an app like HelloTalk. I did language exchange chat and voice record with japanese people that want to learn english there.

[Yu Ominae]

Found the books at least.

Most of these guys helped me get to N5. But some of the latter will help me study for N4.

[Yu Ominae]

Since the Minna no Nihongo books that I got has some chapters that partially go to learning for N4, I wanna ask if Nihongo Chukyu J301 is a recommended book to use in studying for N4 and maybe later on, for N3.

Here's the page itself.

One of my old classmates (I still keep in touch when I can) mentioned that the local Japanese foundation is using this, although their curriculum may call for a book change.

[Kirihara_R]

J301 .? Iirc the first lesson of the book is "shita wo dashita einstein".? If it is then it will help you from n4 to n3 but for me if its self study it will be hard since it lacks explanation and guide . (Im just lucky because I have a teacher when im using this book). I think the book have a lesson 1-7 and the rest 8-10 will be in j501.

[Yu Ominae]

That's the hard part for self-study. Folks aren't willing to spend more money to study at the local foundation and instead, just wait until my old man has something that I can work in.

I have such a pitiful life.

[Kaizou]

Thanks for the basics to speaking Japanese, OP!

Arigato!

[Tranhieu]

I didn't get to liking ramen!

or

It's not like I wanted to eat ramen!

Which one? Or both are wrong? The janai here confuses me.

[Honoakari]

Well the way I understand it...

"[If you do that], I'm going to end up (nacchau) wanting (-taku) to eat ramen (raamen tabe-)."

The "ja nai" is something like "don't you realize it?".

[Tranhieu]

You mean as in a tag question? If that was the case should there be 'ka' and a '?' instead of '!'?

[TwilightsCall]

Originally Posted by Tranhieu

You mean as in a tag question? If that was the case should there be 'ka' and a '?' instead of '!'?

Both ways are acceptable. There are like 7+ ways to form a tag question like this in Japanese, and some of them will be ambiguous with their declarative counterparts.

In this case, I'd say that following なっちゃう with じゃない will almost always be a tag question, as it sounds incredibly strange (to me at least) otherwise. If you wanted to say 'I won't want to end up eating ramen' (switching the tag question to a declarative), then you'd probably end up with something like:

ラーメン食べたくならない
raamen tabetaku naranai
I won't want to eat ramen (after some event)

Or to keep it closer to the original meaning:

ラーメン食べたくなっちゃうわけじゃない
raamen tabetaku nacchau wake ja nai
It's not the case that I will end up wanting to eat ramen (after some event)


The first way would be more common. The second way would be if you were explicitly stating it in response to someone telling you you would want to eat ramen (after some event).

[Tranhieu]

Originally Posted by TwilightsCall

Both ways are acceptable. There are like 7+ ways to form a tag question like this in Japanese, and some of them will be ambiguous with their declarative counterparts.

Thanks, I learned something new today I thought it had some declarative meaning like the 2 you listed and mistakenly turned the sentence into past tense

So normally do people use -chau with janai in tag questions like this? My experience is limited but this's the first time I've come across this kind of wording.

[TwilightsCall]

Honestly I don't think it's all that common, but using it like a declarative would be even less so.

The thing with tag questions is that they can be put basically at the end of any sentence, so if it doesn't sound right as a normal declarative, it's probably a tag question. It can be a bit frustrating to try and tell the difference between the two as Japanese likes to drop its question particles, but eventually you'll get a feel for it and probably start interpreting them as tag questions before you even consider the declarative meaning.

[Tranhieu]

Thanks for the explanation.

[Asuras]

As was evident in my earlier post, I'm still a learner of Japanese, but during a conversation with some online friends they asked me to show them what (if anything I could do). It took me about 15 minutes to try and translate this, so I'm coming to you guys to let me know if I even got it right at all. xD



The first sentence only, I think, says something along the lines of, "However, we only breathe a percent of air, we must breathe 2 proportions of air." Is this right? I'm not sure what to make of the second part of the sentence, mostly. What's going on with the 空気中の実? Is 割 a counter of some sort?

[erneiz_hyde]

"However, the air we breathe only contains 20% Oxygen. The remaining 80% consisted of Nitrogen, which is supposed to suffocate us."