halacha - Swallowing fingernails

Although it is permitted to bite ones nails, and is not considered uncouth as is stated in Moed Koton (18a):

אמר רב שמן בר אבא הוה קאימנא קמיה דר' יוחנן בי מדרשא בחולו של מועד ושקלינהו לטופריה בשיניה וזרקינהו שמע מינה תלת שמע מינה מותר ליטול צפרנים בחולו של מועד ושמע מינה אין בהן משום מיאוס ושמע מינה מותר לזורקן

However, some people have a (IMO very disgusting) habit to swallow the nails after they bit them. Is this permitted? Is it considered as if you are consuming human flesh which is forbidden as stated in the Rambam (Maachlos Assuros 2:3):

והאוכל מבשר האדם או מחלבו בין מן החי בין מן המת אינו לוקה. אבל אסור הוא בעשה

Furthermore, the nature of biting nails is also that inevitably some parts of the skin around the nails is pulled off with the nail and that is consumed together with the nail.

Are there any poskim that discuss this?

halacha - Speaking lashon hara about someone who does not mind

Is it permitted to say negative things about someone when the person spoken about says that he does not mind and does not care if people speak negatively about him?

orthography - 皆さんはどんな字を書いていますか？ / How do Japanese speakers write kana or kanji by hand?

この頃メタの方で「手書きの文字をチェックしてください」という質問は受け付けるべきかという話題がありました。個人的には受け付けてもよいと考えているのですが、何人もの学習者がわけもわからず同じような質問を繰り返すのでは生産性がない、という意見があり、これはその通りだと思いました。学習者は教科書などから字の書き方を学ぶと思いますが、初学者用の教科書体といえども、毛筆の運筆を残していたり、規範的すぎて普段自然にみる文字とはかけ離れた部分があると思います。

また、今まで漢字・仮名のような独特の書き方の文字に接してこなかった人にとっては、教科書を見るだけでは、何に気をつけて書けばいいかわからないこともあると思います。

そこで、学習者にまず日本で行われている普通の手書き文字はどんななのか一定の認識を示し、そのうえで疑問点を明確にして質問を投稿してもらえるように、日本語の手書き文字のサンプルを集めたいなと考えています。

• 自分はこういう字を書いている


• こういう字が一般的だと思う


• こういう書き方もアリだと思う

など、皆さんのご意見を募りたいと思います。よろしくお願いします。

（これはメインに置くべきかメタに置くべきか正直わかりません。移動すべきであればフラグを立ててください）

Recently we have a topic on meta about whether asking for checking handwriting is on-topic or not. I personally think those questions are not necessary to be ruled out, though I have to agree with an opinion that it's not productive to allow many learners to submit similar questions totally cluelessly. Who'd learn to write Japanese would refer textbooks or other resources, on which might be printed 教科書体 characters for novice writers, which is still somehow detached from what we see in the outside world by being too prim, prescriptive, or carrying over brushstroke style.

Moreover, those who haven't ever come into contact with peculiar writing systems such as kana and kanji would have difficulties grasping the gist however they stared at the textbook.

So I'd like to accumulate living samples of ordinary handwritten Japanese so that we can provide a certain reference point to possible questioners to help them know well what they're going to ask. Any suggestions e.g.:

• I write Japanese this way


• I think this is a typical example


• ... or an edge case

are appreciated.

Thank you for your cooperation!

(I'm not sure if this belongs on main or meta. If you think it should go meta, please flag it.)

Why keep Kashrut?

Is there a known reason for keeping kashrut or is it a set of guidelines proposed by sages who we respect and don't question the logic behind?

Is there anything in the Torah that suggests kashrut?

Answer

These prohibitions come from the Torah, Leviticus 11. The sages added boundaries and stringencies but the source is from the Torah.

There are explanations given behind Kashrut, although the Torah does not explain them, nor are they dependent on the explanations.

For one explanation, Rabbi S. R. Hirsch, in Horeb (Chukim ch. 68 paragraph 464) says that the laws of Kashrut are because "you are what you eat," i.e. imbibing something symbolizes and in a certain respect creates an internalization of that thing. Therefore, vicious animals are prohibited to ingest because it internalizes viciousness. Rather, kosher animals are gentle - split hooves cannot be used as predatory, and chewing cud gives a certain nature of contentment with very little. Similar ideas are explained for all the types of non-Kosher (fish, creepy crawly things, etc.).

始まる->始まり Is there a rule of making nouns from verbs (besides nominalization)?

Lately my ears started catching words ending in り that seem like nouns created from verbs. I'm sorry I don't have any other examples besides the one from the title 始まる (to start) -> 始まり (the start). Is it just a small number of word pairs like that or there is some magic grammar formula to produce such nouns? ありがとうございます！

Answer

As a rule, a verb's 連用形 (conjunctive/continuative form) can become a noun (名詞化). I think that technically it doesn't matter what word it is. All can take that form and become nouns. In regular use, though, I think you'll find that words that are used this way are relatively limited. So we have common words like 始まり、綴り、しゃべり、 etc. It may be useful to think of these as distinct words that happen to follow this rule of nominalization, because there are quite a lot of words that you wouldn't normally use this way (though I don't think that means you can't). It's just a matter of what's most natural. For example, you wouldn't say 彼の言いを聞いてください. Rather you'd say 彼の言うことを聞いてください, or something along those lines that uses other forms of nominalization.

In my experience, outside of the 'usual' words that you can use, compound verbs seem to be the most common targets of this form, like 話し合い or 打ち合わせ or もの探し. You can also use these verb stems as suffixes. For example you can add ～作り to the end of something to refer to the act of making something (ケーキ作り, or making cake).

There are some words that take on unique meanings in this construction, though, so be wary. Like 見合い, which refers to arranged marriage rather than the literal act of looking at each other.

What are the differences/characteristics between katakana, kanji and hiragana?

I know that romaji is the conversion from those to the roman alphabet, but what are the differences or characteristics between katakana, kanji, and hiragana?

Are they used on a different context? Is one of them more formal than the others? Do they have something in common?

Answer

I think the Wikipedia article on the Japanese writing system explains it pretty well, but to summarize:

• Hiragana and katakana (collectively referred to as kana) are syllabic writing, that is, each character represents a syllable such as "ta" or "o". They're purely phonetic so they don't have direct connotations as kanji do, and both have the same set of syllables. In modern writing:
  
  
  
  • Hiragana is generally used for Japanese words when they're not written in kanji, and for all the grammatical "glue" such as conjugations and particles.
  
  
  • Katakana is usually used for loanwords and onomatopoeia. There's no strict rule though, so you will see katakana used for other purposes as well, such as emphasis.
  
  
  
  
  


• Kanji is ideographic writing, that is, each character represents a concept or an idea. For example, 水 means "water" while 朝 means "morning". Each character also has one or more readings, and the correct one depends on which word the kanji is part of. Many kanji (such as my two examples) can also act as stand-alone words.

quotes - Use of past tense in quoting others

In my textbook, it says the translation of "Roberto said it was interesting" to be

Robert-さんはおもしろかったといっていました.

Since we quote the person in the same tense they used, does this imply that Robert thought it was interesting, and that it is no longer interesting?

If Robert still thinks it's interesting, would this make more sense?

Robert-さんはおもしろいといっていました.

Answer

I think this is a bit tricky. In short: you are getting it right, but in this particular example he doesn't necessarily think it is no longer interesting: his comment was probably made on something that had finished earlier.

There's no tense agreement in Japanese, so we can think of these two pairs

Robert さんはおもしろいといっています。 -> Robert さんはおもしろいといっていました。

Robert さんはおもしろかったといっています。 -> Robert さんはおもしろかったといっていました。

and your observations are justified. ("Robertさんはケーキを[食]{た}べたかったといっていました" means he said he had wanted to eat cake [before the time of his remark], and "ケーキを食べたいといっていました" means he said he wanted.)

However, the expression "おもしろかった" rarely means that '[sb] thought it was interesting but no longer'. Rather, the phrase is more like [sb] enjoyed it being interesting/funny/entertaining. Like, after finishing a book, we'll exclaim "ああ、おもしろかった！". So if what "it" in the example refers to took place earlier, we can safely interpret おもしろかった as "he enjoyed it".

Let's add some context. Let's pretend our Robert is a student, and he commented about some lectures.

Robert さんはその[授業]{じゅぎょう}がおもしろかったといっていました

He enjoyed the class, and said it had been interesting after it's finished.

Robert さんはその授業がおもしろいといっていました

His comment was most likely made during the class or mid-term.