Mina-san,
While I’m walking, I chew bubblegum. How about you?

私は、食べながら、他の事をぜんぜんできません。話すとか、読むとか。
Watshi ha, tabenagara, hokanokoto wo zenzen dekimasen. hanasu toka, yomu toka.
While I eat, I can’t do anything else. (Speaking, reading etc)

Watching TV is fine though

When i concentrate on something, I block everything else out and can’t do anything else.

普通は、jPodを聞きながら、運動する。
Futsuu ha, jPod wo kikinagara, undou suru.
Usually, I exercise at the gym while listening to jPod.

And you?

Useful structure in the grammar today. My friend used it in an e-mail the other day and translating ‘nagara’ as ‘while’ made no sense, but now I get it

By the way, any chance of a knitted scarf from Natsuko? As was said in the weather watch lesson, English weather continues to be unpredictable.

Can someone explain to me how “nagara” in the ‘despite’ sense is different from “no ni” or ‘no kusei ni”??

Also, why does the son say “Onaka MO pekopeko” and not “ga”, and what does “datte” mean in the context that it’s used?? that is all

From the intro:

“Eating dinner and eating. In some families it’s OK, in others it’s dame (forbidden).”

What is that supposed to mean? I know what dame means, but eating dinner is also eating, folks…

Sloppy editing, or what?

彼は学生ながらも会社をつくりました。
Kare wa gakusei nagara mo kaisha o tsukurimashita.
The speaker has a positive feeling as
学生なのに会社をつくったの？がんばるなぁ。すごいなぁ…。
This meaning has the implication that the student who started the company exceeded expectations of just being a student. “He is not only a student, but WOW he started a company.”

彼は学生のくせに会社をつくりました。
Kare wa gakusei no kuseni kaisha o tukurimashita.
The speaker has negative feeling as
学生なのに会社をつくったの？学生なら勉強しなくてはいけません。会社をつくるなんてまだはやい！
This meaning is the student should have been concentrating on school work, but he started a company. “He should focus on being a student, but he went and started a company (and that’s a shame).” The speaker is looking down on the student for starting the company.

And 学生なのに会社をつくりました。
Gakuseinanoni kaisha o tsukurimashita.
is sort of neutral.

英語はブランアンがかきました。Thanks Brian!

Dear Naomi,

Yes!! That’s where I got this phrase from: プロポーズ大作戦. Love that show!!

Thanks for the translation. Even though I have Rikachan, I didn’t know how to break up the parts-of-speech in that sentence. I guess the grammar there is a bit advanced for me.

留学したとき、先生に言われたのは「歩きながらアイスを食べるのは認めない」。すごく本当だと思うけど、おかしいじゃないか？アメリカ人だからこんなことは普段だろうな。 同時にすると一番便利だと思われるんです、アメリカでは。一石二鳥っていうことね

tryllidさん、

thanks for the comment!!

first off, it’s not “romaNji,” it’s “ROMAJI.” in japanese the spelling is ローマ字
which is ローマ(the city Rome) and 字 (letters).

when is katakana used…? it’s a big question, and to really master its use by native speakers, i’m gonna have to refer you to our PDF’s or anything else written by native japanese (our PDF’s are always written by native speakers, by the way).

but, as you said, romaji is used for foreign words. BUT, it can also be used as we use italics or underline or bold things in english. it can also be used to show an accent. it can also be used to just emphasize something.

that said, some words are just normally written in katakana

dame 駄目 has kanji, obviously.
but i normally see it written ダメ (strong) and だめ (softer) , when i see the kanji, i think it’s probably more formal or stiff (駄目) . i’m gonna ask a native speaker to comment on this tomorrow. but that’s my impression

a lot of my friends, especially female friends, have kanji names, but they never use them, they think using katakana or hiragana is more friendly. whereas kanji could be stiff or difficult.

for example my friend maki always uses マキ instead of 真季
seems friendlier, right?

so in japanese you’ll see the scripts being mixed up like this these days. the rules are not fixed. and it’s a lot more flexible than the alphabet!!!

it’s a lot of fun to play with hiragana, katakana, kanji and romaji!

please check out the forum, because this kind of question comes up a lot!!

and if you wanna learn how to write hiragana or katakana, we have tools in the learning center which will have you reading Japanese in no time at all!!!