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It’s not wrong wrong, I don’t think. It’s just weird.
Like I said, it doesn’t often get used. It’s kinda too formal for casual uses, and too casual for formal uses. You might use it if you were adding an extra sentence-ending particle, though. For example 大きいだよ or だよね. I’d need to grab the grammar dictionary to be more specific, though.
The な-adjective versions of 大きい and 小さい are 大きな and 小さな, and they’re only ever used pre-nominally.
Why wouldn’t there be two casual forms? =P
What exactly do you mean by “the kanji don’t work too well using dictionary translations”? You can’t find them in your dictionary? What dictionary are you using?
Though speaking of corrections, one fun little fact about 皆: Even though it can be read as both みな and みんな, when it’s written with the honorific as 皆さん, then it’s always read as みなさん. =)
こんにちは =P
Welcome! I’m in Sydney, here. You poor person. =P
Honestly, Koichi’s explanation of は vs が makes me sad.
は marks the topic of a sentence, while が marks the subject of the verb (though in the case of transitive adjectives like すき or きらい, it’s also used to mark what would be the object in English). When the subject IS the topic, the は replaces the が completely.
In the answer to the question, the topic is わたし. Since it’s apparent from the context that it’s the topic, it’s been omitted from the sentence (which often happens to わたし).
Either is fine, though the sentence-ending だ doesn’t often get used (unless it’s part of some other grammar structure).
Welcome!
If memory serves, someone else who joined here recently is about to move to Yokosuka. Wonder if you two will meet. Or work together. =)
Adverbs in Japanese don’t function quite the same as they do in English. For example, 部屋をきれいにする = Make your room clean (even though it looks like it should be “do your room cleanly”). In the Xになる structure, X is a noun (or a な-adjective, but those are practically nouns anyway). You can say 悲しくなる if you’d like, but since you said “the news makes you sad”, you need a causative verb.
Near as I understand, it’s been disabled because they’re going to be actually releasing it fairly soon (fingers crossed).
Welcome! What are you doing in Fukuoka, exactly?
N2? And you’re just starting Japanese? I passed N3 a year ago, and that was three years after I started learning Japanese. I mean, I guess you’re IN Japan, which means you’ll probably be learning faster than me, but… good luck with that, then. =)
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 hearSo:
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.Huh. Someone posted that exact sentence on HiNative quite recently. I didn’t know what to make of it then, either. =P Kinda wish I’d hung around to see if any native speakers replied, but it’s been well-buried by now. Wonder if there’s a search function.
The fact that it’s followed by かしこまりました suggests to me that it’s a standard phrase spoken by shop-people. Googling suggests さようでございます might be the respectful-polite form of そうです, but aside from the fact that さよう is a word (and it’s not さ on its own), it’s so specific and archaic that it’s gotta be a bad example sentence. There’s no way that version of さ can possibly rank in the top eighty most common words.
Anyway, that さよう is 左様, which is supposedly the origin of the farewell さようなら. However, the kanji 左 sitting on its own means “left”, and would be more typically read as ひだり (though it can be read as さ）.
I wonder if this さ is actually supposed to be the suffix -さ, which means “-ness”. As in, 大きさ = size (= “bigness”). Or 差 = difference. Surely Koichi would have checked that the example sentences are correct, though. Maybe we need to e-mail him and ask. Or Mami…
http://howtojaponese.com/2010/10/14/power-up-your-sou-sayou-de-gozaimasu/
Stick with firstname surname order – Japanese people know that’s how Western names work, so they’ll be expecting your given name to come first. As for kanji names, don’t ever do that, unless you’re required for legal reasons.
Using Wikipedia isn’t cheating. It really is the best way to find the standard Japanese spelling of foreign names. =)
Yeah, I was being facetious. Because TextFugu never gets updated. =P
Go make an account at http://en.gravatar.com/ using the same e-mail address you used for this. =)
