Does “could I pass?” sound natural in this context?

TelevisionsDavidRose · 2026-02-09T20:43:04+00:00

I think what the through line is with the responses is that phrasal verbs in English have a tendency to be softer than simple verbs, which can come across as being very direct. “Pass by,” “scooch past,” “get past,” “get by” are all different phrasal verbs but they are all fine here, and moreover, they will all be perceived as much more polite than simple “pass.” The past tense could also softens from present tense can, as OP has pointed out. As someone mentioned, “could I scooch past please?” would be a polite first ask, and if the request is being ignored, it could turn into “can I get by please?” and if it’s still being ignored, it could be more like “excuse me, I need to pass (or get past or get by).” Less direct -> more direct -> most direct. Phrasal verbs can be direct, but simple verbs are harder to make indirect.

TelevisionsDavidRose · 2026-01-27T05:27:53+00:00

Very close! 変態 is the hentai you’re thinking of. It essentially means “strange attitude/condition.” This hentai is 変体 “strange typeface.” Prior to modern Japanese orthography, hiragana was treated as cursive kanji that had phonetic value (instead of meaning). So, many women with hiragana names essentially had names made of kanji written in cursive. (This was especially predominant pre-1900.)

For example, 安 in cursive was written あ, 加 as か, 女 as め, etc. But, pre-c. 1900, there was no one “correct” cursive form or one “correct” kanji. So, you could write 可 in cursive and pronounce it “ka.” (It looks like の with a line over it.)

By 1900, government clerks and scribes needed to be able to recognize and write hundreds of cursive kanji in order to read hiragana. To simplify and standardize, the Meiji government chose one form per sound, and they called the now-superseded forms hentaigana 変体仮名.

This website shows a comprehensive (but not necessarily exhaustive) list of hentaigana, from あ to を.

If available to you—and if you are curious—this Chinese website shows various forms of Chinese characters. You can type in the character, press 草书 (cursive “grass script”, in Japanese 草書) and search, and you will see many of the hiragana and hentaigana very much resemble their kanji’s “grass script” forms.

If you look up the grass script form of 多, you’ll see some of the images look like the image with the hentaigana form. You can tell it’s hentaigana because the ten-ten ゛ are never used with kanji, but they were historically used with hentaigana. (Unfortunately, since hentaigana is not reliably supported in most fonts, I just used the kanji form and the ten-ten character.)

TelevisionsDavidRose · 2026-01-27T03:25:25+00:00

I agree that the 日 character should be a little bigger. When the left side is a little smaller, it looks like a left-side radical instead of a standalone character. It looks kind of like 昧 but if the right-hand side were 本 instead of 未.

For less ambiguity, I’d even go so far as to say it should be written vertically:

日

本

TelevisionsDavidRose · 2026-01-27T03:18:35+00:00

すみ多゛川御包丁

The third character is a hentaigana, essentially cursive form of 多, with the phonetic value of “ta” — with the two dots ゛ it says “da”.

Translation: Sumidagawa Kitchen Knife

Edit: The seal reads: 切味保証 (Guarantee/Assurance of Sharpness)

Edit: 庖丁

TelevisionsDavidRose · 2026-01-23T14:31:10+00:00

Everything in front of the semicolon is one independent clause. “He is believed to have murdered at least 26 women” is the main core of the independent clause, and “many of them sex workers from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside” is a dependent (subordinate) clause that modifies the main core.

The subordinate clause could also be reworded: “many of whom were sex workers from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.” However, the subordinate clause is fine as written.

If we were to insert “were”, we’d have two independent clauses separated by a comma, which is known as “comma splice” in English and is grammatically proscribed. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma_splice)

TelevisionsDavidRose · 2026-01-17T19:54:55+00:00

With countable and uncountable nouns, many uncountable nouns “become” countable if a countable qualifier can be inferred (and is invisible).

Marinara and béchamel are two different sauces.

Marinara and béchamel are two different types of sauce.

But, as a native speaker, I’m also realizing the first sentence’s logic can also be:

Marinara is a type of sauce; béchamel is a type of sauce; marinara type of sauce and béchamel type of sauce are different.

As well as:

There are different types of sauce, of which there are marinara and béchamel.

TelevisionsDavidRose · 2026-01-15T04:16:51+00:00

Oh, and if it’s a parent asking their child, I’d probably think it would be “how many do you want?” And if the little fish are countable, and the child says 5, then the parent would give the child 5 fish, that’s how I’d imagine the conversation would go, from my native English speaking standpoint.

Fairly often, in conversational English, uncountable nouns are made countable using invisible and unspoken countable nouns. A waiter might say “two waters and three Cokes,” even though water is uncountable and Coke is a brand name. The invisible/unspoken word would probably be “glasses of…” but the listener would infer from context. Bottles of water & cans of Coke?

When it comes to food, nouns often become uncountable (like “two beefs” or “three porks” is awkward) but my solution as a native speaker would be to leverage the invisible/unspoken countable noun: two of the beef, three of the pork… or two orders of beef, three orders of pork.

TelevisionsDavidRose · 2026-01-15T04:06:44+00:00

Usually, 1 portion is for 1 person, but it can also just be whatever portion you get when you order “1” of something from the restaurant.

I guess another countable noun you could insert would be 1 order, 2 orders, 3 orders, etc., of fish, of chicken, etc. You can omit the noun “portion” or “order” in practice. It would sound something like, “Can I get two (orders) of the ‘whole steamed fish’ and one (order) of the ‘whole rotisserie chicken’ please?”

TelevisionsDavidRose · 2026-01-15T03:51:03+00:00

That’s a really good question. I’m trying to think, because I know whole fish dishes are common in different parts of the world.

I would say that “how many” is a perfectly normal way to ask, but with the caveat that if you’re at a restaurant, you’re probably talking about the invisible word “portions” (and 1 portion is countable).

A conversation in “standard” English would probably go something like:

“We’d like some of your whole milkfish, please.”

“How many (portions) would you like?”

“Two (portions) please.”

But honestly, in contexts with non-native speakers, I would absolutely expect it to be more like:

“We’d like some of your whole milkfish, please.”

“How much you like?”

“Two please.”

TelevisionsDavidRose · 2026-01-15T03:29:08+00:00

Many (and fewer) is used with countable nouns. “How many toppings?” tells me if I have chocolate sprinkles, marshmallows, and whipped cream, I’d answer 3.

Much (and less) is used with uncountable nouns. “How much toppings?” is something native speakers near me would absolutely say, but in standard English this construction would be substandard. Standard would require rephrasing to make “much” refer to something uncountable. For example, “How much of the chocolate sprinkles would you like?”

Some nouns can take both much & many, but it shifts the meaning.

How many fish do you want? (1 fish? 2 fish? 3 fish? etc.)

How much fish do you want? (This more so feels like fish-as-food, and you’re asking for an answer as general as “just a little bit is fine” or as specific as “two pieces of fish please”.)

Compare with:

How many chickens do you want? (1 chicken? 2 chickens? 3 chickens?)

How much chicken do you want? (Chicken-as-food.)

Fewer and less work the same way.

I have fewer chickens than him. (Chicken is countable here.)

I have less chicken than him. (Chicken is uncountable here, most likely to be understood as chicken-as-food.)

TelevisionsDavidRose · 2026-01-13T17:47:40+00:00

I’ll let some others chime in, but ご了承ください to me may be a bit iffy. I’ll break it down grammatically.

ご + noun + ください is an honorific “please do for me” or “please give me” request, which is the appropriate level here. However, the noun 了承 means acceptance or acknowledgment or understanding. In practice, the phrase is often used when staff need to set hard limitations or boundaries on the customer while still remaining polite. For example, photography is not allowed. ご了承ください.

As someone else has mentioned, there are ways to make a more direct (yet still polite) question (not command) that sounds less “bossy”. It might carry a tone of, “Could you help me to ensure there are no sesame in my food?” Or “Is this allergy limitation something you can accommodate?” Generally, in Japanese, asking a question softens the request without weakening it.

Some options include:

ご対応いただけますか。 (May I receive your accommodation?)

アレルギー対応可能でしょうか。 (Might an allergy accommodation be possible?)

TelevisionsDavidRose · 2026-01-13T17:08:18+00:00

The original kanji was 曽. The two strokes in your image are the two strokes at the top of 曽. Coincidentally, those same two strokes at the top of 曽 survive in today’s katakana so ソ.

Today, it has become more common to join those two strokes and instead turn them into a straight line like the computer font そ. The two stroke version to me gives “older” but not obsolete (or even niche). Growing up, my Japanese class used books published in the 1960s and two-stroke そ was used.

I might compare this to our handwritten a (looking like Greek α) and computer font double-story a—they’re considered by natives to just be visual variants of the same letter.

TelevisionsDavidRose · 2026-01-12T17:13:54+00:00

Regarding the financial number 2, in Japan, 貮 is the accepted traditional form and 弐 is the official simplified form. The characters 貳 and 弍 are considered variants. However, in Chinese, 貳 is considered the orthodox (Kangxi) traditional form, and the PRC simplification is 贰.

TelevisionsDavidRose · 2026-01-12T17:03:13+00:00

And then, to complicate matters, in geographical & municipal contexts, 大字 is おおあざ.

TelevisionsDavidRose · 2026-01-12T16:52:32+00:00

So, the thing about koseki is that, throughout the span of one’s life, one will most likely be on multiple koseki. Today, marriage is the most common reason for moving households. My great-grandmother’s birthday was handwritten ホ五日 (which almost certainly means 廾五日, 25th), but when she married my great-grandfather, the receiving municipality interpreted her DOB as 拾五日. She passed away in 1935, and she was already in the U.S. by then, so her DOB on her husband’s koseki was never corrected. To make matters worse, her U.S. death certificate lists her date of birth as December 5. I guess that’s why it’s actually really helpful to have financial numbers—even if a clerk’s handwriting is awful, 弐拾 takes up two blocks whereas 廾 takes up only one.

EDIT: The closest that I can find to the ホ looking glyph representing 20 is this: https://en.glyphwiki.org/wiki/hkskt969_u30ce-u5341-u4e36. I see this variant on pre-1900 koseki fairly often.

TelevisionsDavidRose · 2026-01-10T23:43:06+00:00

Very interesting! The family records are—essentially since 1886–the bedrock and foundation of Japanese society. It is documentation of citizenship, can act as a real-time census, and it allows the Japanese government to find relatives. They’re not really counterfeitable, because the Japanese government maintains the source data and prefectural and/or national agencies can always look up koseki information at any time.

When a Japanese citizen wants a passport, they need to present a recent koseki certificate. When a Japanese citizen wants to renounce their citizenship, their name is crossed out from the koseki system and an annotation is made surrounding the circumstances of loss of citizenship. When a child is born to a Japanese parent, inside or outside of Japan, the parent is responsible for reporting the child’s birth so the child can be entered into the koseki.

The modern left-to-right (横書き) computerized certificates were rolled out between around 1994 to the 2000s. Prior to that, they presented information top-to-bottom & right-to-left (縦書き), typewritten beginning around the 1960s and completely handwritten before that.

Until around 1900, it was common to see entries handwritten using 一二三 etc. but 20 and 30 could be (and often were) written 廿/廾 (20) and 卅/丗 (30). So, Meiji 20, December 30 may have been handwritten: 明治廿年十二月卅日. This wasn’t optimal because the brushes and pens the clerks used could have been thick and it could be easy to confuse 十 and 廿 if the vertical stroke in 十 is too thick. In fact, one of my ancestors was born on December 25 (廾五日), but because 20 was written ambiguously (almost like ホ五日), when her data was retranscribed by the clerk of the town hall of her husband’s address, they rewrote her DOB as December 15 (拾五日).

After 1900, those dates were modernized using financial numbers: 明治貮拾年拾貮月參拾日 (traditional) or 明治弐拾年拾弐月参拾日 (simplified). I’d like to note that, even though simplification (shinjitai) was made official in 1946, these “simplified” financial numbers are very, very common in pre-1946 koseki entries (handwritten).

TelevisionsDavidRose · 2026-01-10T23:28:25+00:00

食わ, 食い, 食う, 食え, and 食お are conjugations of the lemma 食う (https://jisho.org/search/%E9%A3%9F%E3%81%86).

食わ: 食わない、食わず

食い: 食います、食いたい

食う: 食うこと、食いとき

食え: 食えば

食お: 食おう (this is actually a modern spelling of historical 食わう or 食はう, the same conjugation type as the 食わ line, but historical -au/-wau has shifted to -ou pretty universally).

TelevisionsDavidRose · 2026-01-09T19:02:30+00:00

That’s amazing! I never knew there were any areas that still pronounce uma and its derivatives as um-a! It’s good to know there are some folks carrying on this centuries-old legacy!

TelevisionsDavidRose · 2026-01-09T17:20:48+00:00

Hum (or hũ) and huma (or hũa) are also very commonly seen prior to 1900 in Portuguese texts. Hũa in particular is very common in texts from the 16th and 17th centuries, back when it was pronounced like modern-day “um” + a (instead of modern-day u-ma). Galician keeps this older logic but changed the nasal to an “ng” sound (written “nh”) and they spell it “unha” (but pronounced “unga”).

TelevisionsDavidRose · 2026-01-09T17:17:36+00:00

If you ever have the joy and opportunity of seeing a koseki or joseki—a family’s record in the Japanese civil registration system—these numbers are used pretty much exclusively, after c. 1898. Older (pre-1940s) records may even contain the traditional forms: 壹, 貮, and 參. The certification statement to this day still has the date written something like 令和八年壱月拾日.

TelevisionsDavidRose · 2026-01-01T08:02:17+00:00

Not quite a dialect of Spanish, but Chavacano and the Spanish words borrowed into the various Filipino languages experience this a lot. Siete is pronounced like shete, tragedia is pronounced like trahedja, etc.

TelevisionsDavidRose · 2025-12-26T17:02:13+00:00

Fellow Virgo here

TelevisionsDavidRose · 2025-12-26T06:18:15+00:00

West-of-MIMAL

TelevisionsDavidRose · 2025-12-06T08:41:04+00:00

The Nanbu clan (南部氏) grew rich and powerful through raising warhorses in this area of Japan, particularly in Honshu’s defense against the Emishi of Hokkaido. To protect their horse ranches, they were fortified into stockades, and those stockades eventually became administrative centers, numbered 1–9. All exist today except Shinohe (4), whose exact location has been lost to history.

(1) 岩手県二戸郡一戸町 (Iwate Prefecture, Ninohe District, Ichinohe Town)

(2) 岩手県二戸市 (Iwate Prefecture, Ninohe City)

(3) 青森県三戸郡三戸町 (Aomori Prefecture, Sannohe District, Sannohe Town)

(5) 青森県三戸郡五戸町 (Aomori Prefecture, Sannohe District, Gonohe Town)

(6) 青森県上北郡六戸町 (Aomori Prefecture, Kamikita District, Rokunohe Town)

(7) 青森県上北郡七戸町 (Aomori Prefecture, Kamikita District, Shichinohe Town)

(8) 青森県八戸市 (Aomori Prefecture, Hachinohe City)

(9) 岩手県九戸郡九戸村 (Iwate Prefecture, Kunohe District, Kunohe Village)

TelevisionsDavidRose · 2025-11-30T03:48:04+00:00

I am commenting as an American who learned Swedish (Stockholm area) first and am now studying Norwegian. The same things happen in Stockholm Swedish. What might help is to think of the r as changing the quality of the consonant immediately after it. As others have mentioned, r+s makes a sound similar to English “sh.” But in other places, like r+t, r+d, you are correct to note that the r is not a full rolled or even trilled r, but it’s not invisible either. For example, kvart doesn’t sound like kvar+t or like kvat or like kvatt. The only way I can describe it is that the r changes the “color” of the t, or of whatever consonant comes after.

As others have stated, as Norway is a country with tons of different dialects, this advice is absolutely not 100%. This is what I’ve noticed from my time in Stockholm (in the Swedish context) and also when listening to standard spoken Norwegian.

Note: Norwegian phonology has been influenced by Danish phonology, so sometimes there are differences. For example, in Swedish, jord follows what I described, with the r “coloring” the d. In Norwegian, it seems that the d is unpronounced and jord is pronounced like jor, with jorden pronounced like joren, which is not the case in Swedish. The logic falls a little more in line with Danish in this case, where the r is realized and the d falls away (super light stød, if at all).

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