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産むがやすし / 寝起き / 他人の目 / 会社にいると... / どうすんの

eeky

先輩
8 Jun 2010
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Hi,


1. 結局、イギリスに行く前の心配は、「案ずるより産むが やすし」ということになりました。

I see in the dictionary that 「案ずるより産むがやすし」 is a set expression, but I am confused by the grammar. Is 産む behaving as a verb? Is やすし an alternative form of やさしい perhaps?


2. This is in a list of symptoms:

寝起きが悪い

In what sense is 寝起き meant?


3. 他人の目を気にしすぎていませんか?

I assume 気にしすぎて means "worrying too much about", but what does 他人の目 mean? I assume it is not literally talking about other people's eyes.


4. 会社にいるとさ、やっぱり、いろんな意味で気遣うじゃ ない、忙しい時は、仕事に追い回されてるって感じにな るしさ・・・。

My translation: "When you're (working) at a company, of course, in a lot of ways you're worry-free, (but) when it's busy, you start to feel as if you're being stressed out by the work."

Have I got this right? One of the things that's concerning me is I see no Japanese equivalent of "but" to give any contrast between the two parts. I'm wondering if I somehow have something exactly the opposite way around to how it should be.


5.
A: で、さやかさんはどうすんの?ストレスたまった時 。
S: 私?私は、ぼーっと音楽聞いてたりとか、仲のいい友達としゃべるとか ・・・。後は運動かな。

My translation:
A: Well, さやかさん, what do you do when stress builds up?
S: Me? I chill out listening to music, or chat with some good friends, or things like that. Then maybe I'll do some exercise.

a) I guess どうすんの is a contraction (or slurred version) of どうするの, right?

b) Does 後は literally mean that the speaker exercises after doing those other things, or does it just introduce something additional to what's been said?
 
1.
Is 産む behaving as a verb? -> Yes.
Is やすし an alternative form of やさしい perhaps? ->
易し(やすし)。 It's an archaic form of 易い(やすい), meaning 易しい(やさしい).

2. In what sense is 寝起き meant?
寝起き is a state that right after one woke up.
寝起きが悪い literally means one cannot wake up easily, being fretful, sleepy, in a bad mood, etc.
This expression sometimes used figuratively when one does not feel at east because of guilt, etc.

3. 他人の目=他人がどう見るか

4. 会社にいるとさ、やっぱり、いろんな意味で気遣うじゃない、忙しい時は、仕事に追い回されてるって感じになるしさ・・・。
My translation: "When you're (working) at a company, of course, in a lot of ways you're worry-free, (but) when it's busy, you start to feel as if you're being stressed out by the work."

気遣うじゃない does not mean "you do not worry" but "you need to worry/pay attention, don't you".
The rest looks OK to me.

5.
a) I guess どうすんの is a contraction (or slurred version) of どうするの, right? -> Yes.

b) Does 後は literally mean that the speaker exercises after doing those other things, or does it just introduce something additional to what's been said? -> The latter. Similar to 'or' or 'otherwise'.
 
1)
Maybe you are wondering why a verb is directly attached to が? If so, that's why the nominalizer is not needed in classical grammar. That's the same as 産むのがやさしい/産むことがやさしい in Modern Japanese.

4)
The negative form of 遣う is not 遣うじゃない but 遣わない, is it?;-)

It seems to me that that's "and", not an adversative conjunction "but".
 
Thank you both.

4. I fear I misremembered a previous answer about "verb + じゃない", thinking it always meant negative, whereas actually it never means negative. I simply despair about these expressions with じゃない and ではない...

5. Does どうすんの have a similar status to standard English contractions like "don't", "can't", "that's", etc. in terms of casualness and acceptability as a standard part of the language? Or is it more casual than those, a bit like "gonna", "wanna" etc.?
 
4)
Maybe you are confusing it with "noun/na-adjective + じゃない" or "verb + ないじゃない"?

5)
The latter. That's colloquial, so it's not used in formal situations.
 
4. I am just confused generally with all expressions involving じゃない and ではない, and always have been. I have no intuitive feel at all for the most important aspect, which is whether they express a negative sense or a suggested/tentative positive sense. I have some notes from previous answers (many from you), but they have become such a tangle that they are now often more confusing than helpful. When I'm feeling particularly enthusiastic, I may try to impose some order on these and post them here for correction/clarification/extension. (Having said that, in this case the notes do actually say that "verb + じゃない" cannot be simple negative, so in this case it was my error.)

It's strange, in all the textbooks I have read, I don't think I have ever seen a single reference to this what seems to me incredibly confusing aspect of the language. I guess different people get hung up on different things. For example, I see some discussions (not necessarily on this forum) where learners get absolutely tied in knots about the difference between は and が, and yet this issue has almost never troubled me (probably blissful ignorance!).
 
Probably one of the reasons why you are stuck on expressions like ~じゃない would be that they are basically spoken-language. You seem to struggle often with conversation style examples, imo. When it's actually used in real conversations as a spoken language, intonation and/or accent can be of help to get the meaning, I think.
 
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