I believe I've bounced on and off your "friend" list at least twice (currently off.) I've long since giving up trying to figure out what motivates people to adjust their lists. I don't maintain one, myself.
To be fair to the guy you're hollering at, your original post does read like you were thinking of a hard plastic cover protecting the screen in one place, and touch controls in another.
There was nothing in your original post that indicated you were talking about a protective shell which resides underneath screen touch sensors. I think this is less a case of him being a bad listener, and more a case of you not making yourself understood properly.
Game companies love cut scenes. They are easy to make, they stretch "playing time", and they provide much prettier material for the marketing department than the actual gameplay does.
I don't mind them so much, as long as I can hit a button to skip them. It's also nice if the planned it well enough so you watch the cut-scene while data is loading. (That seems to almost never happen anymore though. It's: wait for the cut-scene to load, watch cut-scene, wait for the level to load. That is t3h suck..)
Then there are games like that dreadful Lord of the Rings series on the X-Box, which seem to be 90% cut scenes (and those are actually just low-ish resolution clips from the movie.) Bleah.
(IIRC Pete Townsend recently spoke out against earbuds because he experienced hearing loss from headphones)
In spite of his claim to the contrary, don't you think it's possible that his hearing loss might have had something to do with being the guitarist for "THE LOUDEST ROCK AND ROLL BAND IN THE WORLD" for four decades?
The guy was exposed to 90 - 110 db's almost nightly for most of his career. No matter what he says, that's the main reason he's nearly deaf now. If headphones damaged his ears, it's because he had to crank them up to overcome the hearing loss from his wilder youth.
"omoshiroi" and "subarashii" are nowhere near the same meaning as "sugoi"
That was my point. He could have said "interesting", "wonderful", etc., but instead chose to keep repeating the same expression, not because the language lacks the variation in way you can appreciate something, but because he was so amazed by what he was seeing that he could think of nothing else to say.
Which is why I think they were probably wrong to "fix" his repitition in the translation.
Ah... I did find "attractive" as an alternate meaning for "kakko ii", which is closer to what you are saying, however still not the same.
A girl who sees an impressive motorcycle jump would probably not describe the jump itself as "kakko ii", but she might find the rider more sexually magnetic for pulling off the feat, and describe him as "kakko ii" even if he has a rather plain-looking face.
(kakko can also mean "suitability" as well as "appearance", so if a girl in an anime describes a guy as having "good suitability", I can see why some translators might choose to use the word "cool". Coming right out and saying "sexy" would lack the sideways-speaking subtlty of "kakko ii.")
even more odd - the wa particle is actually written with the character for ha. It's pronounced 'wa' though only when used as a particle, so is usually written with the w.
Markers create several of the (extremely rare) spelling quirks in Japanese.
"wa" is, as you said, spelled with the "ha" character.
The object marker "o" is spelled with the "wo" character (which is used for almost nothing else.)
The directional marker "e" is spelled with the "he" character.
If you remember those three, know that "g-" sounds in the middle of phrases are "ng-" sounds, and know what all the markers mean, you can usually read aloud just about any hirigana or katakana sentece in correct Standard Japanese, even if you don't know what most of the words mean, which is pretty cool.
Actually, it's not just that "kakko" means appearance and "ii" means good.
I just checked the Random House Japanese-English dictionary, and the expression "kakko ii" is specifically listed, and it means "good looking." The alternate definition "cool" is not listed.
It might sometimes be used that way in coloquial slang, I suppose. Do you have another reference which says so?
Heh. My point was, my head features all kinds of daily reminders that I'm no longer what most people would call a "young" man.
However, -kun is kind of relative, just as the word young is, so you can apply it to an old-timer like me if you want to express your observance of my child-like nature (for better or worse.)
Technically, it's probably a mistake to address somebody with -kun instead of -san on an internet forum (unless you've meet them IRL), because that implies that know they are male. -san is gender-neutral.
By the way, I'm very flattered and amused that you referred to me as "Golias-kun", which implies that I'm a young male. I suddenly feel a little better about my receeding hairline. So thanks for that.:)
Now all I need is a Honda ASIMO to get out of the car and go in to the office to my job for me, and it's non-stop anime & World of Warcraft from then on. Woo-hoo!
Your explanation is mostly correct (and well-said), except that when you apply the small-tsu to some consonant sounds (s, sh, or any voiced consonant), it becomes an elongated sound rather than a stop.
Also it's not quite right to call the nasal consonant a "standalone -n", because it's not always pronounced like an "n" sound in english.
In "teNpura", it's pronounced "m".
In "arimaseN" (your example), it's supposed to be an open nasal vowel.
In "geNki" (a word anime fans may be familiar with), it's pronounced "ng"
Even though you are asking what it is, you know that you are asking about a thing which is called a rootkit, therefore rootkit is your focus and "wa" is correct.
"ga" is only correct when there is not a specific and tangible thing which your sentence can speak about.
Actually, the more common mistake is to confuse "kawaii" (cute) with "kowai" (scared.)
"kakko ii" means "good looking", so I could see somebody thinking it's a synonym for "kawaii", and they wouldn't be 100% wrong, although "kawaii" definitely translates much more closely to "cute."
By the way, the word for "cool" (or, perhaps more accurately, "amazing") is "sugoi", not "kakkoi"
"Rootkit ga" is incorrect, because rootkit works as a focus, even though you are asking where it is. You only use "ga" as a subject marker when you can't use the noun as a focus. The correct marker in that sentence is "wa."
The "wa" marker is considered part of the focus, so it is also omitted if the focus in already understood.
(BTW, it's not called a "subject". The marker for subjects in Japanese grammar is "ga". In Japanese, if the noun in what english speakers call a subject is something you can specifically talk about, it's called a "focus", and the focus marker, "wa" is used.)
However, the focus here is not "anata wa" (you.) You're asking for "Your name", so the focus is "anata no namae wa".
But addressing an individual as "anata" is almost always improper, as is using "namae" in reference to the person you are speaking to. You should use "onamae" instead. The correct way to ask "what is your name" is:
onamae wa naN desu ka.
So the post you are replying to isn't completely right either.
Just out of curiosity, how is the stand alone t syllable pronounced?
It's a stop. You hold the silence of the "t" a moment longer.
The "i" and "u" are "whispered vowels" in Japanese if they appear between two non-voiced consonants. For example, the "u" in "desu ka" is whispered, so to westerners it sounds like "dess ka".
(Note: Some people from certain regions of Japan, most famously near Osaka, sometimes voice the whispered vowels, and might even insist that whispering them is not required by Standard Japanese. This is why Osakans and other characters from the Kansai region of Japan are sometimes depicted in anime translations as having a sort of Southern hillbilly accent in English.)
However, double-consonants also exist. (In hirigana and katakana they are written with a small "tsu" character before the sylable.) It adds a consonant-only sylable. In the case of "T" or "K", it's a moment of extra silence as you hold your tongue on the start of the consonant. If, on the other hand, you apply it to something like "sa" or "shi", then you hold the sibilant sound longer: "ssa" or "sh-shi".
Japanese is very rhythm-based. Each sylable needs a full beat.
I also find it amusing that you translated rootkit into how the Japanese would probably say it. Such is the price they pay for ending all their "syllables" but one with a vowel.
Japan has a system of converting borrowed words into sounds which can be spelled with the katakana alphabet. It gives their language a great deal of flexibility.
I've never seen a double u before.
Actually that's a RU followed by an U. It's a six sylable word (assuming I nihoNgo-ized the word properly) ru-u-to-ki-t-to.
It did make me wonder... is Japanese really so short of excitable superlatives? Or is Kensuke just totally inarticulate?
The second thing.
Which is why they were probably wrong to translate it like that.
He could have said things like "omoshiroi", "subarashii", etc. But he didn't. He was gobsmacked, and his repition of the same adjective over and over was a humorous indicator of his state of mind. Make him sound like a human thesaurus, and you strip that element out of the story.
To be fair, you, the guy you were correcting, and everybody else in this thread are probably better at translating Japanese than the PSP is likely to be.
A quick look Google's Japan/English tool (beta, of course... this is Google, after all) will confirm that translating correctly between Japanese and English with software is damn near impossible with current technology and programming logic.
Oh, and a more accurate romanization of the question you were trying to write (assuming the borrowed word "rootkit" is used) would probably be
ruutokitto wa naN desu ka.
"Nani" means "what", but when it stands on it's own like that (to ask "what is it?") it's almost always shortened to "naN."
(The capitol "N" represents the Japanese nasal sylable, which has pronunciation dictated by the sound which follows it... in this case, it should be pronounced just like the Enlgish "n".)
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I believe I've bounced on and off your "friend" list at least twice (currently off.) I've long since giving up trying to figure out what motivates people to adjust their lists. I don't maintain one, myself.
To be fair to the guy you're hollering at, your original post does read like you were thinking of a hard plastic cover protecting the screen in one place, and touch controls in another.
There was nothing in your original post that indicated you were talking about a protective shell which resides underneath screen touch sensors. I think this is less a case of him being a bad listener, and more a case of you not making yourself understood properly.
Game companies love cut scenes. They are easy to make, they stretch "playing time", and they provide much prettier material for the marketing department than the actual gameplay does.
I don't mind them so much, as long as I can hit a button to skip them. It's also nice if the planned it well enough so you watch the cut-scene while data is loading. (That seems to almost never happen anymore though. It's: wait for the cut-scene to load, watch cut-scene, wait for the level to load. That is t3h suck..)
Then there are games like that dreadful Lord of the Rings series on the X-Box, which seem to be 90% cut scenes (and those are actually just low-ish resolution clips from the movie.) Bleah.
(IIRC Pete Townsend recently spoke out against earbuds because he experienced hearing loss from headphones)
In spite of his claim to the contrary, don't you think it's possible that his hearing loss might have had something to do with being the guitarist for "THE LOUDEST ROCK AND ROLL BAND IN THE WORLD" for four decades?
The guy was exposed to 90 - 110 db's almost nightly for most of his career. No matter what he says, that's the main reason he's nearly deaf now. If headphones damaged his ears, it's because he had to crank them up to overcome the hearing loss from his wilder youth.
"omoshiroi" and "subarashii" are nowhere near the same meaning as "sugoi"
That was my point. He could have said "interesting", "wonderful", etc., but instead chose to keep repeating the same expression, not because the language lacks the variation in way you can appreciate something, but because he was so amazed by what he was seeing that he could think of nothing else to say.
Which is why I think they were probably wrong to "fix" his repitition in the translation.
Ah... I did find "attractive" as an alternate meaning for "kakko ii", which is closer to what you are saying, however still not the same.
A girl who sees an impressive motorcycle jump would probably not describe the jump itself as "kakko ii", but she might find the rider more sexually magnetic for pulling off the feat, and describe him as "kakko ii" even if he has a rather plain-looking face.
(kakko can also mean "suitability" as well as "appearance", so if a girl in an anime describes a guy as having "good suitability", I can see why some translators might choose to use the word "cool". Coming right out and saying "sexy" would lack the sideways-speaking subtlty of "kakko ii.")
even more odd - the wa particle is actually written with the character for ha. It's pronounced 'wa' though only when used as a particle, so is usually written with the w.
Markers create several of the (extremely rare) spelling quirks in Japanese.
"wa" is, as you said, spelled with the "ha" character.
The object marker "o" is spelled with the "wo" character (which is used for almost nothing else.)
The directional marker "e" is spelled with the "he" character.
If you remember those three, know that "g-" sounds in the middle of phrases are "ng-" sounds, and know what all the markers mean, you can usually read aloud just about any hirigana or katakana sentece in correct Standard Japanese, even if you don't know what most of the words mean, which is pretty cool.
Actually, it's not just that "kakko" means appearance and "ii" means good.
I just checked the Random House Japanese-English dictionary, and the expression "kakko ii" is specifically listed, and it means "good looking." The alternate definition "cool" is not listed.
It might sometimes be used that way in coloquial slang, I suppose. Do you have another reference which says so?
Heh. My point was, my head features all kinds of daily reminders that I'm no longer what most people would call a "young" man.
However, -kun is kind of relative, just as the word young is, so you can apply it to an old-timer like me if you want to express your observance of my child-like nature (for better or worse.)
Technically, it's probably a mistake to address somebody with -kun instead of -san on an internet forum (unless you've meet them IRL), because that implies that know they are male. -san is gender-neutral.
By the way, I'm very flattered and amused that you referred to me as "Golias-kun", which implies that I'm a young male. I suddenly feel a little better about my receeding hairline. So thanks for that. :)
Now all I need is a Honda ASIMO to get out of the car and go in to the office to my job for me, and it's non-stop anime & World of Warcraft from then on. Woo-hoo!
Your explanation is mostly correct (and well-said), except that when you apply the small-tsu to some consonant sounds (s, sh, or any voiced consonant), it becomes an elongated sound rather than a stop.
Also it's not quite right to call the nasal consonant a "standalone -n", because it's not always pronounced like an "n" sound in english.
In "teNpura", it's pronounced "m".
In "arimaseN" (your example), it's supposed to be an open nasal vowel.
In "geNki" (a word anime fans may be familiar with), it's pronounced "ng"
Even though you are asking what it is, you know that you are asking about a thing which is called a rootkit, therefore rootkit is your focus and "wa" is correct.
"ga" is only correct when there is not a specific and tangible thing which your sentence can speak about.
What's an example of a subject that can't be used as a focus?
dare ga kono osake o nomimashita ka.
("Who drank this sake?")
Since "who" is the subject, and is an unknown variable, you can not use it as a focus, so you must use "dare ga" instead of "dare wa".
A slightly different example:
yuki ga kinou amari hurimaseNdeshita.
("It did not snow very much yesterday.")
Weather phenomenon like falling snow are not really considered tangible objects in the Japanese language, and so they can not be used as a focus.
Actually, the more common mistake is to confuse "kawaii" (cute) with "kowai" (scared.)
"kakko ii" means "good looking", so I could see somebody thinking it's a synonym for "kawaii", and they wouldn't be 100% wrong, although "kawaii" definitely translates much more closely to "cute."
By the way, the word for "cool" (or, perhaps more accurately, "amazing") is "sugoi", not "kakkoi"
iie, chigaimasu.
"Rootkit ga" is incorrect, because rootkit works as a focus, even though you are asking where it is. You only use "ga" as a subject marker when you can't use the noun as a focus. The correct marker in that sentence is "wa."
The "wa" marker is considered part of the focus, so it is also omitted if the focus in already understood.
(BTW, it's not called a "subject". The marker for subjects in Japanese grammar is "ga". In Japanese, if the noun in what english speakers call a subject is something you can specifically talk about, it's called a "focus", and the focus marker, "wa" is used.)
However, the focus here is not "anata wa" (you.) You're asking for "Your name", so the focus is "anata no namae wa".
But addressing an individual as "anata" is almost always improper, as is using "namae" in reference to the person you are speaking to. You should use "onamae" instead. The correct way to ask "what is your name" is:
onamae wa naN desu ka.
So the post you are replying to isn't completely right either.
I kind of assumed the parent post did that deliberately, as the PSP is far less likely to be called "cute" than the DS.
Just out of curiosity, how is the stand alone t syllable pronounced?
It's a stop. You hold the silence of the "t" a moment longer.
The "i" and "u" are "whispered vowels" in Japanese if they appear between two non-voiced consonants. For example, the "u" in "desu ka" is whispered, so to westerners it sounds like "dess ka".
(Note: Some people from certain regions of Japan, most famously near Osaka, sometimes voice the whispered vowels, and might even insist that whispering them is not required by Standard Japanese. This is why Osakans and other characters from the Kansai region of Japan are sometimes depicted in anime translations as having a sort of Southern hillbilly accent in English.)
However, double-consonants also exist. (In hirigana and katakana they are written with a small "tsu" character before the sylable.) It adds a consonant-only sylable. In the case of "T" or "K", it's a moment of extra silence as you hold your tongue on the start of the consonant. If, on the other hand, you apply it to something like "sa" or "shi", then you hold the sibilant sound longer: "ssa" or "sh-shi".
Japanese is very rhythm-based. Each sylable needs a full beat.
Arigato, Golias-sensei.
dou itashimashite.
I also find it amusing that you translated rootkit into how the Japanese would probably say it. Such is the price they pay for ending all their "syllables" but one with a vowel.
Japan has a system of converting borrowed words into sounds which can be spelled with the katakana alphabet. It gives their language a great deal of flexibility.
I've never seen a double u before.
Actually that's a RU followed by an U. It's a six sylable word (assuming I nihoNgo-ized the word properly) ru-u-to-ki-t-to.
It did make me wonder... is Japanese really so short of excitable superlatives? Or is Kensuke just totally inarticulate?
The second thing.
Which is why they were probably wrong to translate it like that.
He could have said things like "omoshiroi", "subarashii", etc. But he didn't. He was gobsmacked, and his repition of the same adjective over and over was a humorous indicator of his state of mind. Make him sound like a human thesaurus, and you strip that element out of the story.
To be fair, you, the guy you were correcting, and everybody else in this thread are probably better at translating Japanese than the PSP is likely to be.
A quick look Google's Japan/English tool (beta, of course... this is Google, after all) will confirm that translating correctly between Japanese and English with software is damn near impossible with current technology and programming logic.
"Koko-wa-dokodesuka-rootkit?"
You just said "Where is here? Rootkit."
Oh, and a more accurate romanization of the question you were trying to write (assuming the borrowed word "rootkit" is used) would probably be
ruutokitto wa naN desu ka.
"Nani" means "what", but when it stands on it's own like that (to ask "what is it?") it's almost always shortened to "naN."
(The capitol "N" represents the Japanese nasal sylable, which has pronunciation dictated by the sound which follows it... in this case, it should be pronounced just like the Enlgish "n".)
Actually, desu ka is used to end a sentence. It's kind of like a verbalized period. It roughly correlates to the "be" verbs in English.
Actually, it's more like a verbalized question mark.
The "verbalized period" you speak of would be "desu".