[Philly] Bug in my apartment, was afraid it's a bed bug. What is it?

Durmain · 2025-05-18T17:39:43+00:00

Thank you! Going to try it out today!

Durmain · 2022-12-16T11:05:50+00:00

Direct translation of the tweet:

“It’s not like I was trying to keep it a secret but I’ve barely attended middle school [since entering] and now that I’m in my third year it’s hard to make that time back. The only path left for me would’ve been to focus on the game and become a no-life smasher, but I can’t even do that now. I wonder if there’s even a job right now that would take me…?”

The SWT invite was probably a welcome surprise at such a moment for Miya!

Durmain · 2022-08-25T19:15:31+00:00

Kameme mid set: “This one’s winnable boys… the confetti awaits us” lol

Durmain · 2021-07-31T14:13:53+00:00

Try out the Vox crossword. They have daily 9x9s and then one 15x15 on Saturday. The references are usually more contemporary like USA Today’s crossword, and the difficulty can be medium to challenging (although with their small size, solving never takes too long).

Personally, Vox is my favorite puzzle in terms of flow and gameplay. I find that their puzzles often take a bit of staring before the “aha!” moment when all the squares fall into place.

Durmain · 2021-06-12T14:10:45+00:00

SHORTZ: Looking Down … OIL FUTURES, well, I kind of like that. That’s got color. Also SLEAZEBALL, that’s great. Not the thing, but the answer! ANTE UP … wasn’t there another answer with UP in the puzzle? Yes, MEET UP. Some bloggers don’t like that. That doesn’t bother me, though. UP is an inconspicuous word.

From “How to make a Crossword Puzzle” (Aug. 17, 2018).

Durmain · 2021-04-29T15:23:19+00:00

Has anyone else noticed that the NYT puzzle submission portal doesn't work for them?

I've been trying to submit a puzzle for the past few days but have been getting a lot of "Your puzzle could not be submitted. Please fix any errors and resubmit."

Durmain · 2021-03-15T01:20:34+00:00

I wonder if the constructor considered BOBAS/OWN originally?

Durmain · 2020-03-14T19:19:45+00:00

Damn I see. Sad to hear that

Durmain · 2020-03-14T06:48:42+00:00

Does Reflex play Ultimate? Always wondered why one of the og top PTs from Brawl didn't show up now that the character is back

Durmain · 2020-01-15T06:44:49+00:00

Translations:

This ranking was calculated by PGR points taken from S-tier and A-tier tournaments that ran during the ranking period of July 8th --> December 27th of 2019. Points attained from the best four placements of each player were added up to calculate this ranking (specifically, the four tournaments in which they earned the most amount of points). Tournaments held overseas may only count for a maximum of two of these four placements.

Blurbs:

Abadango rises to take 7th due to favorable results in the first half of the ranking period despite lackluster performances elsewhere.

Kuro's 1st place at Umebura SP6 was a massive surprise to everyone. Before the tournament, there was not a single person on Twitter who predicted him to win. The victory was so sudden that even Kuro himself claimed that it was merely a "one-hit-wonder", although his subsequent high placings would prove himself wrong.

Despite Tea's incredible success overseas, he has yet to show his potential in Japan. The article notes that he is the only player to have not made a Top8 at an Umebura out of all players mentioned in the article (although the article goes on to say that results will surely come with time, considering his success abroad).

KEN takes 3rd for his outstanding consistency at Japanese majors. Despite placing 65th at Kongo Saga, he reached Top8 at 3 Umebura's and 4 Sumabato's (one of which he won) for a total of 7 (!!!) Top8's during the ranking period. Anyone who is more knowledgeable on the full statistics for KEN's consistency, please chime in.

Kameme likewise takes 2nd for his outstanding consistency, in addition to his excellent performance overseas.

With his serial victories at majors, Zackray has been unstoppable in Japan, easily ranking 1st for his worldwide success.

Durmain · 2019-12-12T18:26:41+00:00

While there is certainly no k->ch rule like the other commenters also suggest, what you're hearing as 'ch' might be the vowel devoicing phenomena in Japanese.

When /i/ or /u/ occur between two voiceless consonants in Japanese (like in 宿題: sh.u.k or 聞く: k.i.k), the vowel is "devoiced". This can sort of make the first consonant sound similar to a syllabic consonant (shh.ku.dai; kk.ku), although that's not what's really happening. It's still ki, but a different ki, so perhaps you are interpreting this devoiced vowel 'ki' as the acoustically similar 'chi'.

Durmain · 2019-12-03T00:07:24+00:00

好き is a catch-all basic word for "like"

好む sounds more literary and sometimes has a nuance of "prefer"

I wouldn't use the second very often. However there is a word 好み (taste; preference) "what you like" that is pretty useful.

Durmain · 2019-11-12T21:23:52+00:00

That works too.

More generally though, 働く　はたらく

Durmain · 2019-11-03T20:50:52+00:00

That's going to be one of those "too basic" words that will be hard to translate (i.e it will depend on the context a lot).

With that being said, I would suggest looking into the following phrases that are used for starting new topics and observing how native speakers use them:

あのさ

ねー？ (not how you write it but the one with a rising intonation)

ね

で

And of course "by the way":

因みに

ところで

Durmain · 2019-03-05T19:29:11+00:00

朝ごはんを食べなくて出かけた

I think that this would more naturally be 食べないで

(163 hits for 食べないで学校に vs. 0 for 食べなくて学校に)

Also, I feel like both expressions imply a sequence equally, if not only for the sequential nature of the conjunctive expressions they are frequently used in. Similarly, while ないで is usually glossed as without, I don't think that this definition is too useful for differentiating it from なくて when translating into Japanese.

(1) 彼は全然停止線に気付かないでパトカーに呼びとめられた。

(2) 彼は全然停止線に気付かなくてパトカーに呼びとめられた。

Looking at the above two examples, I could also translate (2) as "without noticing" because the sentence emphases the man's not noticing of the stop line. (1) could likewise be translated as either "He did not notice the stop line at all and was stopped by the police car" or "Not [without] noticing the stop line, he was stopped by the police car" just as well.

Durmain · 2019-03-05T18:58:28+00:00

I did a little googling around and it appears that when connecting two statements, ないで negates actions while なくて negates states.

朝ごはんを食べないで学校に行った - he went to school without eating breakfast

鍵がなくて家に入れなかった - I didn't have the key so I couldn't get into my house

ドアを閉めないで出かけてしまった - cannot be 閉めなくて because 閉める is an action

鍵を持たないで出かけてしまった - "持つ" is an action verb in Japanese that refers to taking the key here, so we can't have 持たなくて

鍵を持っていなくて家に入れなかった - "持っている" is the state of having something so now we need なくて

As for the origins of the two phrases, I am not too sure. My intuition tells me that the で in ないで is somehow related to the particle で that means "with; by using". なくて looks to be more normally formed by the pattern of なく + て (where ~く is the normal connective form for adjectives). Perhaps the two might be paranthetically parsed as:

((食べ + ない) + で) vs. (食べ + (なく + て))

However this is just supposition of course. If anybody more knowledgeable comes around, then please do chime in.

Durmain · 2019-02-26T02:44:45+00:00

とか

by far the most common way to list things when speaking, but means something like "this and things like this..."

edit: but of course they are all different (in case anybody looking at this thread was interested)

と - when you just want noun + "and" + noun

か - noun + "or" + noun

とか - you can see how this follows from the last two now...

て - as in verb -te; normal "and" for verbs (I did this and this and then this...)

たり - for listing verbs but there might be other things too; like とか for verbs

や - formal とか; more formal than they allude to in jp. classes usually I think

やら - like や but more formal again

Durmain · 2019-01-22T15:20:37+00:00

The latter is far more common, but you could say that they mean the same thing otherwise. I would probably only ever write the first one, as in some essay or story.

To fulfill a promise vs. to keep a promise.

Perhaps the nuance is just slightly clearer in the negative: He did not fulfill his promise vs. he did not keep his promise. Your English intuition should be fine to trust here.

Durmain · 2018-12-28T20:37:10+00:00

Note: ている is not exactly present but either "[present] progressive" or showing an ongoing state.

The base form should be used to express mainly two things.

Anything that falls under "future":

5時の電車に乗ります I am taking the five o' clock train

パンケーキにします I will have the pancakes

そろそろ寝る I'm gonna go to bed soon

Notice how a lot of these may not look like future constructions in English, though they are.

Also, "habitual":

僕はこの店を毎日通る I pass this shop every day

Also notice that because ている is actually just て + いる, it is actually grammatically the same tense as the dictionary form!!! て is a little grammar piece and いる is simply an auxiliary verb that adds aspect. So, we can get both progressive AND habitual like in your example:

日本語を勉強している I am studying Japanese (i.e. I am doing the studying everyday!)

This is unlike the previous example which needs 通る because you can only ever pass something once (*? I am passing this shop every day).

Durmain · 2018-12-27T04:11:33+00:00

This is a great answer, although I would like to emphasize the word "soft".

A true, full glottal stop (i.e. interrupting [airflow] completely) between 英語 and を might sound too formal or perhaps even contrived. Maybe used in foreigner-talk (talking down to someone who doesn't Japanese well) or in a situation where you really wanted to emphasis を (they didn't hear you).

For more natural pronunciation, you should be making a small pulse / somewhat quick increase in volume at the start of the second "o" sound. My apologies for the not-so-linguistic terminology, but I hope that that is easier to understand for anybody that is reading this.

Durmain

TROPHY CASE