This is a discussion topic for the N3 Lesson 1 reading passages.
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Can someone explain the last part of the sentence?
最近は１ヶ月ほど毎日ゲームばっかしやってる。
I’m pretty sure ばっか is casual for ばかり but how does it go together with the last part? What is しやる? Is that a grammar point? Is that a dialect for する? How would this be different if it was:
最近は１ヶ月ほど毎日ゲームばかりしてる。
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The way I read it it’s ばっかし (nothing but) + やってる from やる.
最近 / は /１ヶ月ほど毎日ゲームばかりしてる。
Recently / topic marker / 1 month / (span of time) / everyday / game / nothing but / do
Recently (the last month) you’ve done nothing but playing that game.
I can’t guarantee it, but it matches the official translation of “Recently, for about a month you have done nothing but play every day!” pretty much, so I feel fairly confident.
Hey!
ばっかり is how people say ばかり in a conversation to emphasize what they are saying. ばっかり ばっかし and ばっか, are just different ways of saying ばかり in a casual conversation, and the meanings of those aren’t really different. People use whichever is easiest to say, and different people might have a different interpretation for each of those words.
@mathijsdm is right, it is ばっかし+やる+ている. As stated above, how people interpret the word can be different, but the meaning is mostly the same. To me, 毎日ゲームばかりしてる sounds like ‘All you do is play video games everyday’, and 毎日ゲームばっかしやってる sounds like ‘All you do is play video games everyday’ with a slightly more passive aggressive nuance.
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Ah. I see now in my dictionary that there are many spoken forms…
ばかり
ばっかり
ばっか
ばかし – marked as colloquial
ばっかし – marked as colloquial
@Fuga @Jake @Asher
My question is, how would I even know to look that up?
– These grammar points don’t mention the alternates:
たばかり | Japanese Grammar SRS
ばかり | Japanese Grammar SRS
ばかりだ | Japanese Grammar SRS
ばかりに | Japanese Grammar SRS
ばかりでなく | Japanese Grammar SRS
– There’s no note in the reading to explain these conversational forms.
– ばっかし in particular is a spoken form.
– I only happened to know ばっか from reading it once before.
There’s not enough information to understand this.
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Good point Fred. A lot of these are actually quite common, but will almost never (if ever) appear on the JLPT. Naturally though, that is not a reason to not at least expose students to them. I will add a note to the caution section of each of these points highlighting the possibilities, but also stating that they need not be learned for JLPT purposes.
As for ばっかり, I would not consider that one an alternate form of the word, rather than simply an emphasis sound change, something that is possible with almost any word.
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Only if there’s a note where you expose them to it, to help explain the non-standard word usage. Otherwise, it’s a word that has no context.
Normally I’d agree, but I’ll refer you to my dictionary, which labels it as a common spelling, in contrast to ばかし・ばっかし which it calls a colloquialism. (My dictionary is imiwa on iPhone.)
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I actually meant including a note on the grammar page itself here, so that an extra note on the reading is not required. However it can’t hurt to have a note in both places!
Monolingual dictionaries list all forms as colloquial forms of ばかり, which comes from 許り. As the furigana elements of words cannot be changed, changing ばか to ばっか is not possible (for a real word) except when it comes to words like する and くる which also tend to drop the kanji, as they are rule breakers. Of course things that get used alot slowly get adapted into a language over time, and then eventually accepted into dictionaries, as is true for all languages.
I will include all of the forms on the grammar pages 
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The “Game Otaku” passage was an amusing read. Takashi reminded me of myself before I started learning Japanese. Though I wish the last passage has been themed around Yu-Gi-Oh instead of Pokemon.
I have questions about two sentences one for the 2nd passage.
why is 上で here translated as while? I always understood it as “upon”, “upon understanding that breaks are important, I do my work but go overboard”
休憩が必要とわかった上で、仕事しているけど３～４時間直過ぎてしまう。
I remember tobira explicitly mentioning ために isn’t used for negatives and potentials, yet it is used here.
次も負けないためにポケモンの研究頑張るよ。
Hey @Youssef !
It looks like it was translated as ‘while’ to sound more natural, but since we want the English translation to be a closer translation, we have changed it to ‘Although I’m working upon knowing that breaks are important, 3 to 4 hours will pass in a flash’.
You are correct about ために not being able to be used with negatives. This is a mistake you can see natives make, especially in casual conversations. However, because it is not correct grammatically, we have changed it to 勝つために.
Thank you for bringing both of these to our attention!
No Thank you! I had some doubts about these grammar points thank you for clearing them up to me.