Re: [Lingo] verb-iru

[Niels Kobschaetzki <n.kobschaetzki@example.com>]

On 12.01.2009, at 16:59, "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>  
wrote:

> Niels Kobschaetzki writes:

<snip>

> > Back to 知る - you can ask for it if you know it or if you are  
> > knowing
> > it (知りますか/知っていますか).
> > In English the answer would be "I know it" or "I am knowing it" while
> > the first one actually means "I am in the state of possessing the
> > knowledge about it".
>
> Note that 知る is irregular in the sense that for practical  
> purposes
> the form 知っていません does not exist (except among  
> gaijin ;-).  It's
> the only such verb.

You can't say まだ纔瘢韭絎竢躬？
Didn't know that (and it seems that the iPhone-sentence completion  
didn't either ;))


> > which we do not have really expressions for in English (like 懐 
> > かしい -
>
> "nostalgic", "familiar", and a couple dozen idiomatic forms.

Sure a lot of people are translating it that way but I think that it  
is not really the same. I've never heard someone saying "aah,  
nostalgic" or "that's familiar". Sure, you can say that but still  
nobody does in the way people use "懐かしい". I often hear it in  
the form of an exclamation but those mentioned words can't be really  
used as an exclamation, can say (at least the equivalent words in  
German can't be used as an exclamation and I never heard anything used  
in "natsukashii-situations" in that frequency neither in English nor  
in German)

Niels