Re: OT: Japanese help

En réponse à Mark J. Reed :


>I'm trying to translate the sentence [fragment] "[It] Cannot possibly
>lose". I have "Toutei makeru kirenai shimasu", but that's just a guess.
>The dictionary has "kirenai" for "cannot; be unable to", but there's
>no part of speech given.  The -ai reminds me of "ai" and therefore
>makes me think it's one of those nouns that turns into a verb by adding
>"suru".  Wild guess.
Wrong guess. As Garth said, it's the negative form of a verb (you must look 
at -nai, not just -ai here :) ). And a typical case of dictionaritis: 
"kirenai" can indeed be used to mean "cannot", but in a very special 
construction and with a very special meaning: "not to be able to ... 
everything" where the "..." stands for the verb put in front of the word, 
which must be in the form it normally takes before the -masu politeness 
suffix. So with a verb like "yomu": to read, you can form the expression 
"yomi kurenai": "not to be able to read everything". Such an expression of 
course excludes the use of a direct object, so even if you wrote "toutei 
make kirenai" (not "make", the -masu form of makeru is "makemasu"), it 
would mean "it cannot possibly lose everything" and would prevent the use 
of a direct object, which is not what you meant. Like Garth said, "dekinai" 
is what you need for "cannot".

>Toutei is listed as "(cannot)  possibly", so I'm pretty confident about that
>choice.  Also about "makeru" for "lose, be defeated".  But I'm not sure what
>form it should take in conjunction with "kirenai".  For all I know I should
>use "makeimasu kirenai" (or vice-versa) and leave off the "suru".
NEVER put politeness suffixes on any verb except the very last one, and 
only if it's in last position in the sentence! (excpet for possible 
particles) So you cannot use -masu on makeru here (and the correct form 
would be "makemasu" anyway). If you really want to make the sentence 
polite, add "desu" after "kirenai", or change it to "kiremasen" (I won't 
enter in all the deference and humility forms you could make. Those are 
just simple politeness).

But for what you want, I think Garth's sentence is correct (at least, it 
looks correct to me. But I don't know enough Japanese to give you more than 
an impression).

Christophe Grandsire.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang. 

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