barryg@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Lee Gold) (12/24/85)
Forgive me, Mark Edwards. After sending off the first message, I suddenly realized that kanajo wasn't some esoteric type of kana but a misspelling of kanOjo (meaning "she"). That makes "Nihonjin no kanajo ga iru mo" probably mean "I once had a Japanese lady." Problems (as analyzed after some desultory study of Japanese for ten years) Kanojo is a pronoun, not a noun -- and so doesn't take adjectival constructions. Mo- goes at the start of a sentence, not the end. The verb (in polite form goes at the end. Ga is an emphatic particle. Your verb is present form, not past. I'd write that sentence as "Mo- nihonjin no musume wa imashita." >Ima watashi no kanajo wa nihon ni modotte, juku o oshiete iru. Kanajo >wa mochiron nihonjin desu. Kanajo wa sugu america ni kaette kuru to >omoimasu. This group seems to mean, "Now my lady has returned to Japan; I am studying at a private school. She was certainly Japanese. I think she will someday return to America." Problems (besides those cited above) You seem to be confusing modoru (to return) and kaeru (to go back to one's proper place, to go home). You seem to be confusing the progressive (e.g. I am teaching) with the passive (e.g. I am being taught). Combined with a misuse of -o, this means you said you were teaching a school instead of learning AT a school. I'd rewrite that group as "Ima kono musume wa nihon ni kaete ga juku ni naraimashita....Sugu ni kanajo wa amerika ni modotte to omoimasu." Comments from native speakers would be greatly appreciated. --Lee Gold
das@ucla-cs.UUCP (12/25/85)
In article <2541@sdcrdcf.UUCP> barryg@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Lee Gold) writes: [Mark Edwards:] >>Ima watashi no kanajo wa nihon ni modotte, juku o oshiete iru. Kanajo >>wa mochiron nihonjin desu. Kanajo wa sugu america ni kaette kuru to >>omoimasu. > >This group seems to mean, "Now my lady has returned to Japan; I am studying >at a private school. She was certainly Japanese. I think she will someday >return to America." No, I think he means that his girlfriend is teaching at a private school. There's something weird going on here. I, a native speaker of English, knew almost immediately what he was saying when he said >(nihonjin no kanajo ga iru mo) despite the errors, while a native speaker of Japanese didn't understand it. Perhaps the context helped -- remember, he was explaining why he was studying Japanese: > Whats my execuse ? Two years in Japan (knew nothing before I went). > (nihonjin no kanajo ga iru mo.) Now, why did I recognize "kanajo" as a mistransliteration of "kanojo", while a native speaker did not? And how come despite the syntactic error of his using a pronoun instead of a noun, I keyed on the semantic essence, "female", and understood what he meant, while a Japanese was confused? Would a native English speaker be confused by the following written exchange, or would s/he understand it despite the errors? Q: So why are you studying English, Taroo? A: I lived two years in America. (too, there is an American she.) [This is a written exchange, so Taroo's not raising his little finger. :-) ] Someone postulated that English speakers understand malformed English because there are so many English speakers for whom English is not their native language. Is there some way that this linguistic "forgiveness" carries over to English speakers using other languages, then? -- David Smallberg, das@locus.ucla.edu, {ihnp4,ucbvax}!ucla-cs!das
edwards@uwmacc.UUCP (mark edwards) (12/30/85)
In article <2541@sdcrdcf.UUCP> barryg@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Lee Gold) writes: > >That makes "Nihonjin no kanajo ga iru mo" probably mean "I once had >a Japanese lady." > >Problems (as analyzed after some desultory study of Japanese for ten years) > Kanojo is a pronoun, not a noun -- and so doesn't take adjectival >constructions. > Mo- goes at the start of a sentence, not the end. The verb (in >polite form goes at the end. > Ga is an emphatic particle. > Your verb is present form, not past. >I'd write that sentence as "Mo- nihonjin no musume wa imashita." First of all please don't put words in my mouth. The only error as I see it is "kanajo" (Should be kanojo). I showed the romanji sentence to a Japanese native and she looked at it uncomprendingly. Then I read it to her, the light went on. The Japanese often add things at the end of spoken sentence, and since my spoken is much better than my written, it comes across that way. As for the plain verb, I learned to speak in Aomoriken or hicktown Japan. > >>Ima watashi no kanajo wa nihon ni modotte, juku o oshiete iru. Kanajo >>wa mochiron nihonjin desu. Kanajo wa sugu america ni kaette kuru to >>omoimasu. > >This group seems to mean, "Now my lady has returned to Japan; I am studying >at a private school. She was certainly Japanese. I think she will someday >return to America." > > Problems (besides those cited above) > You seem to be confusing modoru (to return) and kaeru (to go back >to one's proper place, to go home). > You seem to be confusing the progressive (e.g. I am teaching) with >the passive (e.g. I am being taught). Combined with a misuse of -o, this >means you said you were teaching a school instead of learning AT a school. > >I'd rewrite that group as "Ima kono musume wa nihon ni kaete ga >juku ni naraimashita....Sugu ni kanajo wa amerika ni modotte to omoimasu." Again you are putting words in my mouth. I know the correct use of kaeru and modoru. If you think of them in my frame of mind, her real home is here, thus kaeru. And she has temporarily returned to Japan. Oshiete iru means oshiete iru. She has a teaching license and is teaching juku. ================================================================ But since I do not always spell english correctly or utter well formed english sentences, is it possible to do the same in another language? Can I sue my grade school teachers and school for lack of a good English education ??? I'd make millions. mark