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- "にくとさかなは食べません。"
"にくとさかなは食べません。"
Translation:I do not eat meat or fish.
106 Comments
This sentence helped me see for the first time how helpful Kanji can be in reading quickly. Instead of a line of hiragana sounds that are meaningless until you mentally sound them out, the sentence you wrote is so clear: kanji noun + hiragana “and” + kanji noun + hiragana particle + kanji/hiragana conjugated verb. I am loving this language.
38
also, things designed to be easy to read may have kanji, but there is small hiragana for it on top
I think the idea is that the speaker doesn't eat either of fish or meat. Using and in English makes it sound like you just don't eat them together and most English speakers would say "or" in this context.
I think this sentence is intended to point out that subtle difference between Japanese and English. When negating multiple things, use and in Japanese, but in English use or.
I think this is a great illustration of how English and Japanese have fundamentally different structures. When the sentence says 「にくとさかなは」this establishes the topic. It is a lot like establishing the subject of the sentence in English by saying something like: "About meat and fish..."
So when you take the whole sentence and translate it in this way it would be like saying in English: "So about meat and fish...I don't eat them." In Japanese, both the "I" and "them" are implied by the fact that you're the speaker, and by the topic you set. But the same logic is going on...the 「と」still means "and", it's just that you treat "and" different when you're talking about something.
In general though と does not always mean "and", but in this circumstances it still means "and", it just gets translated to "or" because we tend to word or frame this type of thought in a very different way from how Japanese people do.
I don't know if this clarifies it? I found this stuff super tricky when first learning Japanese, but in time it will start to make more sense.
1340
Is it necessary to specify fish in this sentence? Does にく apply to any meat that is not fish, or meat in general?
18
When discussing foodstuff, fish is typically not considered meat. Food terminology and languages in general are often arbitrary in this way, regardless of science or logic.
Welcome to the world of Japanese where Kanji characters have multiple readings with now way for a new speaker to know how to them without context or memorization. I suggest using Kanjidamage.com or some other supplementary guide to learn Kanji.
kanji usually have 2 or more meanings, although there are some that have only one reading, most kanji have 2 or more readings depending on the context that they are in. they have often a kunyomi reading that is used in combination with kana or as a stand alone and onyomi is used in combination with other kanji. 食 character has the following most common readings kunyomi ta like in たべます and the onyomi like in the word meal 食事 (しょくじ).
Could someone explain this particle use to me? Like, は isn't acting as a topic marker here, else this would mean "meat and fish don't eat." If it was を, then would it be more like "I won't eat the meat and fish (in this instance)."? If all of that is correct, then I still wonder why the particle isn't が. I think I remember hearing that は implies that there are more items than listed, i.e. "I don't eat meat, fish, eggs, etc." where が might suggest that you have no other dietary restrictions? Is that it?
を is usually used when an action is happening to a topic. 'I eat the sushi' the sushi is getting 'eaten' if the sentence had been 'jack walks to the store' the store wouldn't say 'hey I just got walked to'. In the case of '肉と魚は食べません' it is more like talking about your habits or preferences, if you have a plate in front of you and you don't want to eat the fish and meat you would use 'にくとさかなをたべません' (I think)
777
I am not a native English speaker, but isn't "I do not eat meat or fish" grammatically wrong? Shouldn't it be "I neither eat meat nor fish"?...
363
と always means "and", so the Translation seems to be: I do not eat meat and fish. right?
Based on the comments on other questions, I'm piecing together how particles are used. Let me see if I'm on the right track.
Because the "ha" particle is used here, the meat and fish are the subject of the sentence. So it could stiffly translate to "Meat and fish are not things I eat."
If "wo" were used instead, I would be the topic of the sentence, so it would literally mean "I do not eat meat or fish."