Starting with #16:
Zizka said:
Strangely enough, I'm not getting the "even" tone from the translation.
Could you explain what you mean by this?
But I agree that the translation is not perfect. As Toritoribe-san says, から is the best fit for (6), but the translation kind of obscures this by saying "*when* Kimiko's father comes home."
Zizka said:
(11)の: The issue here is to understand how こと works in conjunction with 学校. I looked up こと in my dictionary and found out that の can be used with こと to express: "about"
Yes. You can think of this as "things about (or related to) school" if you want to mentally distinguish it from について and connect it to other meanings of こと.
Zizka said:
(12)と . So the verb here is 「話します」. 学校のこと is what is being discussed. Could it be a direct object of 「話します」. It somehow doesn't feel quite right. I think it's と as in the quotation と.
(12)I didn't get this right although I got it in the first place. Should've followed my instincts!
Yes, your initial feeling was correct. It's a direct object, not quotative.
These are examples of the quotative:
行くと言っていました。
(He) said he would go. (indirect quote)
「はい」と言っていました。
(He) said, "yes." (direct quote)
ジョンと言います。
I'm called John./My name is John.
行こうと思っています。
I think I'll go (lit. "I'm thinking, 'why don't I go.'") (volitional "quoted" with と)
You can probably find more in your Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar.
In 学校のことを話します, 学校のこと is the direct object of 話す.
If you use と with 話す, it would be interpreted as the "with" meaning, e.g. きみ子のお父さんと学校のことを話しました.
Zizka said:
(14)Again... も. Here it makes sense however as in "even the younger brother participated".
Yes, note that the translation says "(Shinji chats with us) too." This is explicitly stating that it's not a contrastive nuance (i.e. "Shinji chats with us, but others don't.")
Moving on to question #17...
Zizka said:
Remember, particles mark the noun they follow. Here, に is marking 宿題, and 宿題 is not a frequency.
Also remember that "relative" time expressions like 毎日, 毎月, 来週, etc. take no particle.
If the question read 毎日(0)宿題(1)たくさんあるので, the answer for (0) would be "no particle."
Zizka said:
(About #1) が I can somehow imagine.
Do you understand why now? The explanation is quite simple, but I'd rather see if you understand it before I outright explain it.
Zizka said:
も, も however... not so much.
Your initial response of と…は is also valid (and certainly not ungrammatical in any way).
This is another case where the question is rather unclear and problematic. If they wanted to elicit も…も as the sole correct answer, they should have given the English translation as "...both Kimiko and I study until..."
Finally, #18...
Zizka said:
Unlikely to be topical, since note that "Kimiko" doesn't rule the whole sentence (that is to say, "When Kimiko doesn't understand English" is a single noun clause.)
Note that "When Kimiko doesn't understand English," and "When I don't understand Japanese" are parallel structures with similar roles in the sentence.
Zizka said:
The way the English verb "understand" works, with "I understand (X)", X is considered the direct object of "understand", but in Japanese, the thing that you understand is marked with が, not を (for contrastive/inclusive meanings, は／も are also valid). The literal meaning of the verb is closer to "X becomes/is clear". This is why the natural way of saying "I get it." or "Understood." to someone who has just explained something to you is 「分かりました」
I have to run for a bit, but hopefully this gives you something to chew on until Toritoribe-san or I can get to the rest.
(edit--whoops, fixed the formatting, which was all messed up due to an unclosed quote. Also, I just wanted to note that even though my post appears below your latest one, I hadn't refreshed and thus didn't see it until after I posted my response, which is why I explained some things in #18 like ～が分かる that it seems you already managed to figure out by yourself. Good job with that! I'll try to get back and respond to your latest reply after, unless Toritoribeさん gets to it before me.)
