nihongo wo benkyou shitai

Yes, the blog has been somewhat ignored recently, but what with being on holiday 3 times (photos here and here) and revision for this year's 日本語能力試験３級 I have been a busy, busy boy.

The good news is that after having gone through the past papers I have lots of blog entries lined up covering essential grammar points. I'm planning to post them after the exam when I have more time...

みんな、今年の試験に備えて本当に一生懸命に頑張ってください！

日本語：	[verb (base 6)] ばかりいる
日本語：	[noun]
English:	Nothing but..., all [it] ever does is...

Today's grammar point is one that I've come across many times over the years and I was pretty happy that I understood. However, whilst revising for the JLPT (in under two weeks time!) I realised that I have some confusion about exactly how it is used. After doing some digging, my investigations reveal that ばかり can be used in two ways and that's the source of my confusion. Today we'll look at one usage; indicating that some activity is performed to the exclusion of everything else.

In this context, the use of ばかり is pretty simple. With verbs, first conjugate to the て-form, then add ばかり. Note that because we're talking about a state of being, we have to add いる. With する verbs, ばかり is placed before the する; for example, 運転ばかりしている.

It can also be used after nouns, and in this situation the inference is that there is nothing but that noun.

手作り例文を見よう！

English:	All he ever does is complain about global warming.
Jenglish:	[he] [global warming] [about] [complain + nothing but]
日本語：	彼は地球温暖化について不平と言ってばかりいる。

English:	Because of the JLPT, recently I've done nothing by study.
Jenglish:	[JLPT] [because] [recently] [study + nothing but]
日本語：	日本語能力試験で、最近勉強ばかりいる。

相変わらず、インタネットを探す・・・

例文第一：

最初の例文はこのウェブサイトを見つかった。

日本語：	おもいでを歌い続けてばかりいた
Jenglish:	[memories] [WO] [sing + continue + nothing but]

The odd thing for this small example is that I know what the English is - I just can't easily see the translation. In essence, I believe the use of the verb 歌う here is analogous to the English phrase "to sing it's praises". There's also an element of continuation provided by 続く so whatever we're talking about, we're still very pleased with it. The only problem is the use of おもいで. The direct translation is along the lines of memories or recollections, but I feel that it would be better to here translate it as 'experience'.

だから、この日本語を英語に翻訳するときは：I'm still have nothing but praise for the experience.


例文第に：

このブログに次の例文を見つかった。

日本語：	ゴロゴロ寝てばかりいる猫と楽しく遊ぶ方法
Jenglish:	[purring] [sleep + nothing but] [cat] [TO] [enjoyably] [have fun + how to]

Sounds like a normal cat to me! Again, nothing too complex here. I've translated the と particle as 'with' and ゴロゴロ as the sound of purring.

翻訳は朝飯前じゃないけど、割合に簡単だと思う：Ways to enjoyably have fun with a cat that does nothing but sleep.

またね・・・