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(English below) 初めまして、グレーソンと申します（グレーでもいいです）。２６歳でアメリカ出身です。専攻は言語学で、趣味は読書や語学です。高校と大学の時に日本語をたくさん勉強しましたが、この頃は全然練習するチャンスがないし、卒業してからあまり日本語の会話していないし、日本語が下手にならないかと心配しています。忘れてしまった日本語を勉強し直して、日本語の会話の自信を築きたいです。よろしくお願いします。 Hello! My name is Greyson (but "Grey" is fine too). I'm a 26 year old from the US, I majored in Linguistics, and my hobbies include reading and learning languages. I studied Japanese a lot in high school and college, but nowadays I never get the chance to practice, and I haven't really had a conversation in Japanese since graduating, so I worry my Japanese is getting a bit rusty. I want to relearn the Japanese I've forgotten over the years, and generally improve my conversational skills and confidence speaking. (Apart from Japanese I've mainly studied Latin, Italian, and French, but for now at least my focus with iTalki will be Japanese. I'm much less confident in the other languages.)
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  • Answered
    The sentence means "That was the only thing he had which looked like/worked like a wheelbarrow" or "instead of a wheelbarrow, he just had a box with a string tied to it." 「手押し車のようなものは、箱に付かれた紐しかありませんでした」(sorry if my Japanese is wrong, 翻訳してみたけど、間違うかもしれません) The wheelbarrow chose this particular house because the house didn't have a wheelbarrow, and needed one. I guess the wheelbarrow in the story wants to be used.
    0 voted
    May 3, 2016
    1
  • Answered
    Using "of" is optional! In the sentence "their last sight on earth is of a firewall a hundred yards high," the of is implying that "their last sight on earth is THE SIGHT of" and so on. You could also say "their last sight on earth is THAT OF a firewall," where that means "the sight." All three options mean the same thing. However, I personally think using "of" like that is kind of clunky, so I'd avoid it unless you want to go for a dramatic effect.
    0 voted
    May 3, 2016
    1
  • Answered
    すみませんが、意味があまり分かりません。言いたいことを日本語で書いてくれませんか？翻訳すれば僕は答えられるかもしれないんです。
    0 voted
    May 3, 2016
    0
  • Corrected

    My day !

    Today is my last day i stay at home for the holidays. Tomorrow, I'll be back in the city to go to school. Luckily, I got to meet my mother's friends who she had  lost contact with them for very long time. It's been about 30 years since the last time my mom saw them. They had a hard childhood but they were always there for each other. And now, they've found each other again. It's so wonderful. They are very very happy and they talk about the past all day. I'm very glad to have met my mom's friends too.


    Notes: "There for each other" means that they were always together, and always supported and helped each other through the hard times. You can also use more exclamation marks (these things ! ) in a story like this. It's emotional! Sentences like "it's so wonderful." could easily be "it's so wonderful!" instead.

    0 voted
    May 3, 2016
    1
  • Answered
    You wouldn't ever say "the time is come," it would always be "has come." "The time has come for me/us" or "my time has come" can mean someone's about to die, but it can also mean something you've been waiting for for a long time is happening. If you've been studying English for years and then have to go to America, you could say "My time has come" as in "The time has come for me to finally use the English I've been learning." If you want to say it's finally a certain day of the week, you'd usually just say "It's finally Wednesday/Sunday" or something similar.
    0 voted
    May 3, 2016
    1
  • Answered
    Really speaking with a native-sounding accent is hard. It's definitely useful to learn about how things work (like liaisons), but it's hard to actually use those things while speaking out loud. Personally I'd recommend just listening and talking to native speakers as much as possible, or trying to imitate what people say or how a singer pronounces lyrics as exactly as you can. Getting your mouth used to unfamiliar sounds is most important, so it becomes intuitive. Generally, I'd say vowels are the most important, and make a language sound the most authentic. They're hard to get right, but you can always ask a friend to help you with a certain sound or tell you if it sounds right. This answer is kind of vague, I'm sorry! I struggle with pronunciation in languages I'm learning too, but I hope some of this helps.
    0 voted
    May 3, 2016
    1
  • Corrected
    0 voted
    May 2, 2016
    0
  • Corrected

    Books can talk to us!

    Books are magical things — read one, and in a matter of seconds you are inside of somebody's head. The moment you start reading a book, you are shown lots of wonderful things.
    In addition, books can both teach and communicate with us. No matter how old one is, it will always has something to share with readers through the centuries.


    Note: the "—" symbol in the first sentence could also be ":". What these punctuation marks mean is that the sentence after them is like an explanation of the first. "Books are magical things because (when you read one) you are instantly inside somebody's head."

    0 voted
    May 2, 2016
    1
  • Corrected
    0 voted
    May 2, 2016
    0
  • Answered
    Responses like "sure" and "any time" have almost the same meaning as "you're welcome," but I think they're more casual. If you're talking to a friend you can say "of course," because of course you helped them, you know each other well. If you're talking to a stranger or a teacher, like if they thanked you for holding the door open for them, you should probably stick with "you're welcome" and similar phrases. There are small differences in meaning between all the options, but you can mostly just sue whichever you like.
    0 voted
    May 2, 2016
    0