| Tom Punks |
12th February 2014 04:34 AM |
Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrenekoi
(Post 3061547)
Well, actually it's irrelevant for native speakers considering it was aimed to japanese people.
Still, I always found it strange how much complain people made of it not making sense... I guess we just work poetry on a different way here on Brazil (and Japan) compared to you guys in the US.
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Well, it's not irrelevant for this topic at all, lol. OP was asking whether or not it was intentionally ungrammatical, not whether or not the Japanese audience understood the song title. :P
The reason native speakers complain that it doesn't make sense probably isn't because it's technically ungrammatical or lacking in semantic meaning. If you analyze it, really, the phrase is grammatical enough and there is a meaning to be taken from it. It's just that it sounds unnatural to a native ear; hence, we native speakers like to complain it doesn't make sense. That's really all it is. :)
In this case, being a non-native speaker probably helps in understanding the title. xD
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ayu-me
(Post 3061507)
When it comes to "Greatful days", technically "great" is actually a noun, meaning a very successful and/or admired person and it could apply to the song (days spent with great people). "Greatness" is also a noun, and saying "days full of greatness" or worse, "greatnessful days", would be a bit of a mouthful for an Ayu song title so simply shortening it to "greatful" makes sense. Shortening/simplifying words is nothing new in any language.
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But "great" IS an adjective. Yes, there's a noun with the same form with a completely different meaning, but that word isn't really relevant here. At least, I find it a bit of a stretch to say that the song is referring to days full of successful, highly esteemed people. :P
And yes, "greatness" is a noun. However, it's derived from the adjective "great." The point is, there's already an adjective there. There's no longer any need to make more adjectives; there already IS one. "Greatnessful" is equally redundant to "greatful" - and not only that, but the word "greatnessful" would never actually occur in English. The suffix -ful can't be added after the suffix -ness. :) If she really meant for the song to refer to days full of greatness, she could have named it that: "Days of Greatness" or something to that extent.
As is, it's most likely either a misspelling of "grateful" or she found the word "grateful" somewhere and misinterpreted its meaning. Or maybe she did just think it would be cute to coin the word "greatful" even though it's redundant and unnecessary. :shrug But even the "correct" term "grateful days" doesn't really make sense in English; I always assumed she took it from the Dragon Ash song and misspelled it to be honest.
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