The "I found some Japanese I don't understand" thread.

[Hatt0riMember]

もしかしネコは猫の名前だ。That’s what I thought… :)

[マーク・ウェーバーMember]

To make ネコ and 子猫easier to distinguish from one another would be my guess. I did however also read on Wikipedia a while ago that it is used by the writer to highlight the words he wants to emphasize. I remember it being compared to how we can use cursive writing. ]

[JoelMember]

Cursive? For emphasis?

… Did you mean italics?

[Hatt0riMember]

Do you think they did it for learner’s sake, or is it something a Japanese person would write as well? Among changes I mentioned before, they also took a lot of kanji out of sentences and replaced them with hiragana.

Isn’t cursive the same as italics?

• This reply was modified 12 years, 9 months ago by  Hatt0ri.

[マーク・ウェーバーMember]

I found out where I read it(pretty obvious, but I couldn’t remember it lol)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katakana

“Katakana are also used for emphasis, especially on signs, advertisements, and hoardings (i.e., billboards). For example, it is common to see ココ koko (“here”), ゴミ gomi (“trash”), or メガネ megane (“glasses”). Words the writer wishes to emphasize in a sentence are also sometimes written in katakana, mirroring the European usage of italics.”
So yes I did mean italics, though I thought cursive was the same as italics :P In Danish it is called kursiv, so I figured cursive would be the same :P

[Hatt0riMember]

Yeah, we call it kurziv, I also thought they were the same thing.

[JoelMember]

Cursive is joined-up letters. Running writing. =)

Also, happy 200th reply. =D

[MisterM2402 [Michael]Member]

I don’t think it’s anything to do with emphasis. They do it a lot for animals and plants, even when the kanji are easy. Like キツネ、ウサギ、クマ and so forth.

[マーク・ウェーバーMember]

Valid point, but why is 子猫 in kanji and not katakana then? :S

[JoelMember]

At a guess, I’d say it’s because “cat” is the name of the species, but “kitten” it just the name of the young. I couldn’t really say, though – the use of katakana for scientific nomenclature hasn’t been taught to me in detail yet, just mentioned off-hand as one of the uses of katakana…

[ElenkisMember]

From what I’ve read, writing the names of animal and plant species in katakana is convention because their kanji is usually rare and complex, or they don’t have kanji at all. How many people even know how to read 麒麟? :) So people, especially reference materials, tend to just write them all in katakana.

I’m not sure why katakana and not hiragana, maybe just to make it more obvious that it’s a species and differentiate it from other words.

[マーク・ウェーバーMember]

It is starting to make sense, I have also just as Joel, only heard mentioning of this as kind of a side thing, so most of this was new to me.
I am still puzzled over why 子猫 was kept kanji though, but thanks for clarifying :D

[MisterM2402 [Michael]Member]

I think Joel is right: CATakana for the “main animal” and kanji for a name used to describe its young. You could easily call the kittens “cats”, but it differentiates them.

[PencilMember]

I’m reading a horror manga, and during a murder scene, the attacker yells out 「痛いかったら悲鳴をあげていいからね、君」。

I know that 痛い means painful/ouch, 悲鳴 is a scream, and I can guess from context that he’s saying something along the lines of “Scream as loud as you want!” but the actual mechanics of the sentence are throwing me for a loop.

First off, I have no idea what that conjugation of 痛い means (I might have it wrong, it could be 痛かつたら but I don’t understand that, either.)
Secondly, あげて means something like to launch or raise up (at least, according to Rikaikun), so is it something along the lines of a scream/voice being ‘launched’ into the air? Like, to ring out?
Finally, いいからね is apparently something that’s used at the beginning of an imperative, but in this case it’s ending the speech bubble…so would the end of the sentence have a meaning like “You’ll do what I just said, right?” or something similar?

Any help with any of this would be much appreciated.

[missingno15Member]

Ｐｉｃｔｕｒｅ？

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