Expressing want

[randomcarbon]

I get slightly annoyed when I see and hear Japanese people Anglicize their language. The sentence 'I drink water' (僕は水を飲む boku-wa mizu-wo nomu) mirrors its English equivalent perfectly. Direct objects are direct objects, subjects are subjects, and verbs are verbs

Comments

[rdg]

i do the wo->ga shuffle habitually, but not on purpose. bad habits die hard.

[randomcarbon]

It's been a long time. I just checked your profile. You're in DC now?

[rdg]

yeah.. just moved here on the 27th. i love it.

[randomcarbon]

I'm jealous. I've been a bit nostalgic for the place lately. Where in DC?

[no_sword23]

And in casual conversation you can circumvent the whole issue by just going with 水飲みたい (or　～てー), which is what MY students do...

More importantly, I thought you were using 俺 now! Backslider!

[randomcarbon]

Of course. I do drop it all in conversation. But I'm always aware that I am.

俺／僕：Heh. I said with GAY people. Are you gay?

[no_sword23]

If that's what it takes to hear you say 俺, then yes. Yes I am.

Elephant trunk is...

[anonymous]

It sounds quite similar to this famous Japanese phrase '象は鼻が長い' (zo-ga hana-ga nagai, or 'Elephant's trunk is long'). It's apparently often taken as an example in Japanese language studies. My friend was majoring in Japanese (although he IS Japanese) at university and explained to me how complicated this sentense was. After all what I can remember is this phrase is not yet gramatically explained....

.... Wait, or is that just me who didn't reach to the conclusion? I really can't remember. If you are interested go study at TUFS (www.tufs.ac.jp) - the place where you study languages!

Re: Elephant trunk is...

[randomcarbon]

Well, you wrote in the romaji version a phrase that differs from the Japanese. But, assuming two ga's, then there's an easy, if not entirely correct, solution to it. In classical Japanese, ga also served as a relationship determiner - in short, the present day no.

To wit, 象の鼻が長い.

But I'll look more into it.

Re: Elephant trunk is...

[anonymous]

I think the "wa" is meant to be in there -- that sentence is a classic, because it demonstrates how topic-comment structure works in Japanese, and how it differs from English. You can find a few dozen instances of it in romaji online. It's... pretty well grammatically explained, though.

elephant (topic) nose (subject) be-long.

Re: Elephant trunk is...

[randomcarbon]

Yea, the wa/ga is interesting. I know the difference intellectually, but application can sometimes be tricky.

Not to be rude, but, who are you? :-D

[randomcarbon]

So I don't forget: someone said roigashitai.

PvZsbasB

[anonymous]

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