by Matthew

A student of mine was talking about this the other day. He said something about it being a famous story in China. He didn’t elaborate. Does anyone know more? My Google searching was fruitless.
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[UPDATE] So, forgive my inadequate listening skills. It turns out that actually it is:
漁夫
[ぎょふ ] fisherman
And the expression is:
漁夫の利
where 利 [り] is […]

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by Matthew

Keiko’s post included this 案にたがわず which made me think, “w.t.f. is たがわず?”
It is one of those ず　negatives. If you don’t know the grammar, then it is formed the same way as a normal negative, but you swap ～ない for ～ず. As an aside, the same applies for ～ぬ to make a negative.
Group 1 verbs […]

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by Matthew

すごい！『石の上にも(^_^)v』に書くように、意識して話します。　《あ》シリーズ:
*案外(あんがい) / unexpectedly; contrary to expectations / 案外な unexpected / 案外難しい　more difficult than expected.
洪水の被害（こうずいのひがい）は案外少なかった。　The flood damage was less than we expected.
*案の定(あんのじょう) / So, 案 is plan, scheme, proposition, proposal or suggestion (and so on). From which we get stuff like / …という案を出す propose that… /　案を立 make a plan / 案を作る work out a […]

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by Matthew

Yesterday I came across the sentence 慌てる乞食はもらいが少ない。 In doing so, I had to find out how the hell to read 乞食 (こじき） which is a composite of 請う・乞う　（こう - does anyone know if there is a difference in these two kanji? I suspect that 請う is less desperate? Like ask for or request. Whereas 乞う […]

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