碎的念

Here’s a useful pair to keep in mind: nanimo nai and nandemo nai. The first one means “There isn’t anything,” “We have nothing,” etc. The second one means “It’s nothing.” Thus, nanimo nai tokoro is a place where there exists nothing: they don’t have any furniture or entertainment or anything. Nandemo nai tokoro is a nothing place, a place that’s nothing at all, a worthless, boring dump.

《What the Textbooks Don't Tell You》 — Jay Rubin

Iyashikumo (“even a little”)…ijō (or kara ni wa) is a pair that, together, means “insofar as so-and-so is the case” or “as long as you’re going to do so-and-so.” Kenkyusha and my mother give us Iyashikumo yaru kara ni wa yoku yare / “If you do it at all, do it well,” and Kenkyusha Iyashikumo tatakau kara ni wa akumade tatakae / “If you do fight, fight to the finish.”

《What the Textbooks Don't Tell You》 — Jay Rubin

Aruiwa, an adverb meaning “maybe” or “perhaps,” anticipates an expression of the same meaning, ka mo shirenai, as in Aruiwa sō ka mo shirenai / “It might be so.”

《What the Textbooks Don't Tell You》 — Jay Rubin

Tatoe (tatoi) is an adverb meaning “even if” or “even supposing” that warns you that you are going to get a -te (-de) mo, which also means “even if” or “even supposing,” as in Kare wa sonna tokoro e tatoe iku koto ga atte mo goku mare da / “Even if he does go to such places, it’s very seldom” (Kenkyusha).

《What the Textbooks Don't Tell You》 — Jay Rubin

A much heavier-sounding version of tada…dake is hitasura…nomi. Hitasura, an adverb meaning “intently,” and, by extension, “concentrating solely upon” or just “solely,” turns out to be nothing more than a fancy written-style version of tada, likewise anticipating dake (or nomi, a written-style dake), as in Kenkyusha’s Kanojo wa hitasura naku nomi de atta / “She did nothing but cry.”

《What the Textbooks Don't Tell You》 — Jay Rubin

Tada, an adverb, and dake, a postposition, both of which can work independently and which are usually translated “just” or “only,” often work in pairs, with the tada warning you that the dake is coming.

《What the Textbooks Don't Tell You》 — Jay Rubin

Expressions such as naze nara or naze ka to iu to or dōshite ka to ieba (“if you ask why”) warn you that an explanation is coming, probably with a construction such as kara da (“it’s because”) at the end.

《What the Textbooks Don't Tell You》 — Jay Rubin

Maru-de is an adverb meaning “entirely” that often warns you a comparison is coming, as in Maru-de shachō mitai ni mieru / “He looks as if he were the president of the company” and Maru-de kichigai no yō da / “He looks as if he’s mad” (both from Kenkyusha).

《What the Textbooks Don't Tell You》 — Jay Rubin

This translation can only be understood if you realize that it is possible to say something in Japanese like this: Bifuteki o taheta tsumori de kane o ginkō ni azuketa / “I put my money in the bank with the tsumori that I had eaten a steak.” Well, where’s the steak? It has vanished. Or rather, it never existed. I denied myself the steak, told myself that I was being good and doing the right thing by saving my money instead.

《What the Textbooks Don't Tell You》 — Jay Rubin

They rarely go on to discuss the use of tsumori after perfective verbs, where we see that the word means something more like “belief” or “mind-set” than intention. Makino and Tsutsui give a good example: Yoku yonda tsumori desu / “I’m convinced that I read it carefully.” “I am of the tsumori that I read it carefully [no matter what you may say].”

《What the Textbooks Don't Tell You》 — Jay Rubin

明治初年的政治小说，东海散士的《佳人之奇遇》(1885)是用“一斋点”的训读体来写的。后来梁启超亡命到日本，把这篇小说翻成中文，题为《佳人奇遇》，在《清议报》上连载(1898—1900)，开了中国近代政治小说的先河。梁启超不大懂日语，却能阅读且翻译日文小说，主要原因就在于它的文体用的是易于复文的“一斋点”汉文训读体，保留了大量的汉字

《汉文与东亚世界》 — 金文京

/ˈɔːlmənæk/

Almanac

《现代英文选评注》 — 夏济安 夏志清

「两位数」，不错的表达。

in two ciphers

《现代英文选评注》 — 夏济安 夏志清

Tame, then, signals purpose for future actions and cause for past actions or unalterably established facts.

《What the Textbooks Don't Tell You》 — Jay Rubin

Tame means “because” or “owing to” when it follows a structure implying a completed action or unalterable state; it means “for the purpose of” when it follows a structure implying an incomplete (i.e., future) action. Notice that, even though both of the sentences about exams describe past events, the exam was still a future event in the first case: the studying was done for the upcoming exam. Likewise, the eating of the fish has yet to occur in the first sentence about fishing: he is fishing for the sake of being able to eat a fish.

《What the Textbooks Don't Tell You》 — Jay Rubin

If you’ve read “Wa and Ga: The Answers to Unasked Questions,” however, you realize that a wa-topic is never the subject of a verb. And if you’ve read the paragraph before this one, you know that people don’t do wakaru: things do it themselves, so for that reason, too, watashi can’t be the subject of wakaru. Kenkyusha gives us Share ga wakaru as “to see [i.e., understand, or get] a joke” and Share ga wakaranai as “miss the point of a joke.” In both cases, you are saying that the joke itself (subject marked by ga) wakaru’s or doesn’t wakaru. If we put “me” into the latter sentence, we get a form that looks like this: Watashi ni wa sono share ga wakaranai.

《What the Textbooks Don't Tell You》 — Jay Rubin

got one!” he inflects the verb tsuru (to fish) with the potential ending and says Tsureta! / “It has spontaneously caught itself on my line!” And when a Japanese writer talks about the successful completion of a novel, he will often say Shōsetsu ga kaketa, meaning not boastfully “I was able to write it,” but far more modestly, “It was writable,” “It wrote itself.”

《What the Textbooks Don't Tell You》 — Jay Rubin

“So…that…” is the key to interpreting positive statements of extent using hodo (or the virtually equivalent gurai or kurai).2 Try to break the habit of mechanically using the word “extent.”

《What the Textbooks Don't Tell You》 — Jay Rubin

The no da’s are constant reminders of the presence of the narrator: observing, questioning, judging, and often subtly hinting to us that he or she knows more than we do

《What the Textbooks Don't Tell You》 — Jay Rubin

Here, by the way, is an example in which the “suffering passive” implies no suffering. The narrator of Murakami Haruki’s “Tony Takitani” informs us that Tony’s father was a somewhat widely known jazz trombonist in the prewar days: Kare no chichioya wa Takitani Shōzaburō to iu, senzen kara sukoshi wa na o shirareta jazu-toronbōn-fuki datta / “His father was a jazz trombonist by the name of Takitani Shōzaburō who ‘suffered’ the knowing of his name somewhat from before the war.”

《What the Textbooks Don't Tell You》 — Jay Rubin