English to Japanese - A phrase that I can not explain well!

maxwelll · 3 Jun 2013

Hello, I have an assignment in my Japanese class. I wrote the sentence "上の近所人はゴミがなけなったのに、ルームメートはゴミがなけたままです。" and my professor did not understand what I was trying to write.

I was trying to write "The upstairs neighbour does not throw trash, however, their room mate still does."

Part of the sentence i was trying to write is to incorporate one or both of the sentence structures "のに" or "まま". My problem might be that I tried to use both at the same time and made a sentence that makes no sense because of that.

I'm trying to figure out how to fix and make this sentence make sense while still using one or both of these sentence structures.

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.

SomeCallMeChris · 3 Jun 2013

To be honest, I can't understand either the English or the Japanese.
'throw trash' ? Were they throwing trash -at- you? Is this shorthand for 'throw out trash'? Is it a way to say 'litter'?

I think you also may be misspelling なげる as なける, if your meaning is indeed that they were throwing trash at you or out the window.

I don't think のに or まま make sense here, のに because it has the wrong tone. のに is like 'even though', the part after のに being contrary to expectations implied by the part before のに.
まま is simply not used in this way at all. In any interpretation of the English, it's not a continuous state, it's an intermittent action. (If you rephrased it to say 'upstairs neighbor continues to be a litterbug' then the Japanese of that might use まま, but I don't feel able to write that sentence in Japanese with any confidence.)

Mike Cash · 3 Jun 2013

A bigger problem is that you used past tense in the Japanese while indicating a different tense in English.

なげる means "throw" as in throwing a baseball. Use すてる for trash.

maxwelll · 4 Jun 2013

SomeCallMeChris said:
To be honest, I can't understand either the English or the Japanese.

'throw trash' ? Were they throwing trash -at- you? Is this shorthand for 'throw out trash'? Is it a way to say 'litter'?

I think you also may be misspelling なげる as なける, if your meaning is indeed that they were throwing trash at you or out the window.

I don't think のに or まま make sense here, のに because it has the wrong tone. のに is like 'even though', the part after のに being contrary to expectations implied by the part before のに.

まま is simply not used in this way at all. In any interpretation of the English, it's not a continuous state, it's an intermittent action. (If you rephrased it to say 'upstairs neighbor continues to be a litterbug' then the Japanese of that might use まま, but I don't feel able to write that sentence in Japanese with any confidence.)

I meant that they were throwing trash out of the window. The sentence is part of a longer paragraph. I'm sorry, I should have given more context.

I think I'll just ditch the sentence all-together and use のに and まま differently.

English to Japanese - A phrase that I can not explain well!

maxwelll

後輩

SomeCallMeChris

先輩

Mike Cash

骨も命も皆此の土地に埋めよう

maxwelll

後輩

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