HOW DO I SAY "…." THREAD

[CimmikMember]

I would try to use it in a Lang-8 entry to see if it is correct.

[JoelMember]

Yeah, I’d probably go for that as well. I tend to shy away from usage questions, because one thing that rarely got covered in my Japanese classes is which of umpteen apparently similar words get used in which contexts…

That’s one of the dangers of dictionaries. I’d go “hey, I want to find out the Japanese for “bow”, so I can use it when I talk about bowing to people”, so I go to the dictionary, look up “bow”, and it suggests 弓 (ゆみ). But that’s not bowing, that’s a bow-and-arrow.

[Jack JenningsMember]

Im a currently trying to pronounce different words from my general life, one I am wishing to say is council worker. I wondered what the correct word for this would be in Japanese as the one jisho gave me was しかいじゅいぎょういん is this correct ? How would I pronounce it also correctly ?

[JoelMember]

Any chance you could copy the kanji that Jisho is suggesting? Having a bit of trouble working out what some of the middle bits are supposed to be. That said, I don’t think that’s quite the word you’re after.

Just so I can make sure we’re not getting English regional differences, can I just check: by “council worker” do you mean “someone employed by a city council to lean on a shovel all day pretending to do road maintenance”?

I’m thinking possibly 市会の労働者 (しかいのろうどうしゃ）, but I’m not at all sure. Having trouble finding “council worker” in its entirety in any dictionary…

[Jack JenningsMember]

this is the one I was getting for kanji :)協議会の労働者

[JoelMember]

… That’s not what you wrote in your last post. =P

But yeah, 協議会 means “conference, convention” so it’s not the word you’re after.

[Jack JenningsMember]

thanks for the help :)

[MisterM2402 [Michael]Member]

By “council worker”, I was assuming he meant “civil servant” or “someone who works for the council”, but maybe he didn’t.

And yeah, しかいじゅいぎょういん isn’t related to 協議会の労働者（きょう・ぎ・かい・の・ろう・どう・しゃ）in any way, I think you copied the wrong word. Did you mean 市会従業員（し・かい・じゅう・ぎょう・いん）?

[JoelMember]

MisterM2402 [Michael] wrote:

By “council worker”, I was assuming he meant “civil servant” or “someone who works for the council”, but maybe he didn’t.

Aye, that’s why I asked for clarification (which appears to not be forthcoming). Civil servant would be 公務員 (こうむいん).

従業員

Well that makes a bit more sense. I thought the い might have been a typo, or something..

[Jack JenningsMember]

Civil servant is what I meant, sorry to have been confusing :)

• This reply was modified 10 years, 5 months ago by  Jack Jennings.

[Arthur SiuMember]

I was wondering what’s my Chinese name in Japanese. 萧征石。

[JoelMember]

荒征石

I have to admit, I’m not entirely sure what you’re asking. In any case, the character 萧 doesn’t seem to exist in Japanese, but I’m ninety percent confident that 荒 is the Japanese equivalent. If I were to hazard a reading for it, I’d say こうせい いし, but since kanji have special readings used only in names, it could even be らいく　し, say.

[CimmikMember]

Okay. This thread has been sleeping for 3 months, and now I’ll wake it up with a question.

I wanted to write this on Lang-8 (Japanese of course):
“This year I want to hear less news than last year because I’ve realized that they make me feel sad.”

I wrote:
「ニュースは私を悲しいになるの見出したから、新年は、去年未満ニュースを聞きたい。」

It was corrected to:
「去年、ニュースは私を悲しくさせるものばかりであるとわかったので、新年は去年よりもニュースを聞きたくない。」

And another one corrected it to:
「去年、ニュースは私を悲しくさせるものばかりであるとわかったので、新年は去年よりもニュースを聞きたくない」

I don’t really understand the correction. Can someone help me breaking it down?

[JoelMember]

Both the “corrected to” and the “another one corrected it to” are exactly the same. Did you make a copy/paste error? =P

Anyway, I’m not sure how much you want me to break it down, so forgive me if I’m explaining things in too much detail:

悲しく = the adverb form for 悲しい – you don’t make an adverb by sticking a に on the end, that’s only for な-adjectives. =)
させる = causative form of する = “make me do”
ばかり = just, only (making me sad) – the もの is there to make it a noun (though I’m not sure why it’s もの instead of こと) because if you stick ばかり right after a verb, it means “ready to (verb)”
である = formal literary version of だ. No idea why he’s gone for that version.
Xとわかった = I’ve come to understand X
新年は去年より = in the new year, more than last year
聞きたくない = I don’t want to hear

So:
Last year, I realised that the news was only making me sad, so in the new year, more than last year, I don’t want to hear the news.

[CimmikMember]

Thank you, generally it makes more sense to me now.

However, there’s still a bit in it I don’t understand.

Why should 悲しい be changed to an adverb at all. Doesn’t it mean “sadly to make me do”? Isn’t this how adverbs work? I just used the Xになる pattern, to say “to become X”.

I didn’t see they both wrote exactly the same correction brfore now. It wasn’t a copy/paste error.

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