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I figured this would be the appropriate location for this post since it pertains to a textfugu assignment, if not I am sorry. I have recieved feedback on my first journal article and no surprise that all responses are in Japanese. What is the best way to go about translating people’s responses and corrections so that I can understand and use the? The big issue is the large amount of unknown kanji but there are other aspects I don’t understand as well. Such as: kinou nani wo shimashita, which I thought ment what I did yesterday, is supposed to be kinou shitakoto.
Any help that couldallow me to better utilize this recourse would be greatly appreciated.
I’ve just started there too and have the same issue. Plus there’s the issue of getting different corrections for the same sentence.
Given my Japanese is poor, and often their English is poor, it is hard to always ask for explanations.
Any advice people have from their experiences?
I usually just went over the explanations word by word with Rikaichan to get the basic gist of it.
Failing that, I just ran it through Google Translate and hoped for the best. :/
昨日、何をしました = “what did you do yesterday?” with an implied か on the end. It’s kinda non-sensical without the implied か.
昨日したこと = “the things I did yesterday” as a noun-phrase. As in, you can stick a は on the end, and then say something about it, like 昨日したことはたのしかった.
If you’re really stuck, and Google Translate is getting you nowhere, feel free to post stuff here – we’ve got a “The “I found some Japanese I don’t understand” thread” thread for just such an occurrence. =)
@ Joel – Thanks, I think I’ll have to take you up on that thread!
Awesome thank you, but how did you know it was nonsensical? I don’t entirely understand why. I do understand the alternative now though.
AnonymousIt’s not quite nonsensical, in the context it is. But his reasoning is: because without either intonation in speech, obvious context or some type of grammar, that sentence is a statement, not a question. It makes no sense to use a question word in a statement. It’s literally: What did you do – But not a question.
Oh ok, nani always implies a question. I used it as my title not realizing that nani would make it a question instead of being a statement.
AnonymousIt doesn’t always implies a question, that’s why I started with “It’s not quite nonsensical…”.
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