FLASH!

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

I get my car this Friday!!! Which kind of sucks but is really awesome nonetheless. See, this Friday is the Sayonara Party for all the leaving JETs and it will be held at a beer garden which means all you can eat and drink! But for the new DD, it'll just be eating for me (^^)

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In other news, here's a great post I got on the local mailing list that I thought you'd all find interesting. I love this country!!!

BEGIN EMAIL:

I was teaching a lesson today to some pretty high level students...I do teach occasionally! And one of my students came out with a pearler of a sentence:

"How much underwear have you been stolen from your balcony?"

Where else but in Japan would you hear that!! But I had no idea how to explain the grammatical error.

Why do we have to say 'have had stolen'? I couldn't work out for the life of me any way of having it make sense to them.

HELP! I look forward to your explanations

Cheers!

3 shared their love:

Anonymous said...

Congrats on the car! Go, NINA!! (mom)

Anonymous said...

Re the grammar: "How much underwear have you been stolen from your balcony?" should be "How much underwear has been stolen from your balcony?" We're not talking about "you"...we're talking about underwear. (Just a thought from a grammar nutcase.

"Do your best. Smile at everyone."

NinaSama said...

See, there's the problem. We all know what it "should be" but why? The person is getting confused between

How much underwear have you had stolen.

and

How much underwear has been stolen.

It's a difficult concept because...well, I want to say that there isn't anything like it in the Japanese language but that's way more advanced that I am so I don't actually know. But I doubt it. So can you explain the grammar of those two sentences?

I hope you can't. I probably wouldn't understand if you could. And someone already replied to this guys letter in a novel sized email (-.-;

 
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