February 21, 2008

The February pandemic

February is everywhere this month, for reasons I have yet to ascertain. But I know this, around the second month of every year, we get stuck with something I and my friends call February. It brings with it cold and dullness of mind.

I think it would be a good time for me to take a break from the internet (which always gets boring when infected with Febs). I want to get that LOST video done and then be off into books or something for a while. But some jerk made me feel bad about reading because it's passive. So maybe I will study, but Februaries have gotten into my Japanese too. The other day I couldn't remember how to spell the word for 男. I tried おとく and just stared at the screen.
Today I forgot that 次 is not すぎ. Februaries up in my Japanese, verbin my nouns.

And I gots to write a resume.
--
your words for the day are 大学芋 with got it's name from popularity among college students, and すごい and すごく which are two words that are similar enough to kill me.
大学芋すごい人気である。 大学芋すごく人気がある。These may or may not be correct; have fun with that.

8 comments:

  1. hi, claytoninan
    you make a good point.
    sugoi is an adjective because it has declensions and sugoku is a form followed by a verb and a keiyoudoushi and etc.
    The question is what is ninki

    if it is a keiyoudoushi(so the formal form is ninkida, desu etc),
    sugoku is grammatically correct but
    if it is a noun, sugoi is also right.

    I feel like it is both. when you sei ninkida, it looks like a keiyoudoushi so it goes with sugoku but you can also say ninki ga aru. in this case, isn't it ninki a noun? then it makes sense to say sugoi ninki.

    in a similar context, we say sugoi genki and sugoku genki as well.

    then, what about
    sugoi kirei and sugoku kirei. both are used on the street.
    here kirei is definitely a keiyoudoushi(kirei da), well i think, because you can't say kirei ga aru.
    but because the form looks close to genki, i think japanese confuse them. so sugoi/sugoku kirei.

    does it make sense?

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  2. claytonian,
    大学芋 looks like it means college potato? I'm going to look that up after this comment but just wanted to say I've had to do the same as you periodically. Take a step back, get other things done, then return at a later time. It is possible to study a foreign language too much imo.

    naoki,
    Well here's something. When I was in Kyoto this past summer I saw some children playing with hanabi on a corner. I said "sugoi kirei" and they said "imi wakaranai" so I said "sugoku kirei" and they understood. Thanks for your info.

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  3. claytonian,
    大学芋 looks like it means college potato? I'll look it up after this comment. I just wanted to say that I have had to do the same as you periodically. Take a step back, get some other things done, and return to studying later. It is possible to study a foreign language too much. I sometimes feel TOO consumed.

    naoki,
    Well here is one for you. When I was in Kyoto this past summer I saw some kids playing with hanabi on the corner. I said "sugoi kirei" and they said "imi wakaranai" so I then said "sugoku kirei" and they understood. Thanks you for your comment.

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  4. basically, it is sweet potatoes somehow slightly hardened, and drizzled with honey

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  5. Mike, it seems you saw purists in grammar.

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  6. 大学芋 are those hard, glazed sweet potatoes that they serve as a side dish at some 和食 restaurants and izakaya. Sometimes they have little black sesame seeds sprinkled on them.

    From what I've been lead to believe,
    すごい modifies nouns.
    すごく modifies adjectives and verbs.

    すごいきれい is grammatically incorrect but in common use. The correct way is すごいきれい. (すごくきれい brings up twice as many hits on google) Again, this is just what I've been lead to believe up till now. (Sidenote, すごいおいしい is another commonly used term, but it's grammatically incorrect. Try typing it in to google Japan and it comes up with もしかして: すごくおいしい)

    すごい人気だ。 人気 is a noun, which is confusing for English speakers because it's an adjective in English. すごく人気がある because it modifies ある which is a verb. (大学芋、人気がすごくある。)

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  7. Alex, seeing what you say on sugoi oishii, it seems that japanese are shaky between adjectives and adverbs, confusing sugoi and sugoku
    as native english speakers do.

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  8. well, i found another thing. i make this my last comment.
    i thinks confusion between to sugoi and sugoku happens because the word is colloquial. A formal word having the roughly same meaning is like totetsumonai/ku but we never ever say totetsumonai genki as a keiyoudoushi but we can say so, i think, if we see that as a noun.
    we couldn't say, though, genki wo ataeru wo morau until a couple of years ago(then genki has a full status of a noun) but from around that time, some on tv began to use
    that ataeru/morau phrase. it still sounds very weird to me.
    this leads me to think genki seems in mutation from an adverb to get another status of a noun but has yet to succeed and in ten years i'm sure it will.

    we don't say totetsumonai kirei or oishii. but we say totstumonai ninki(noun as you say),
    -ku ninkiga aru but not -ku ninki( another evidence, it seems, of a noun}.

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