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「人は話せるようになるとすぐ いろいろなことを尋ねます」I would like this sentence to be broken into Subject, Object, Verb... I can only distinguish a few of the particles, and I understand (because of dictionary) that「話せる」means to talk,「尋ね」is 'to ask' and「人は」is people, but I am confused a bit about what is fully making the sentence. Please help..

aguijonazo
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milkyspice
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1 Answers1

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  • 人は: "as for humans" (noun + topic marker)
  • 話せる: "to be able to talk; can talk" (potential form of 話す "to talk")
  • ～ようになる: "to come to ～; to reach the point where ～" (see this)
  • と: "if; when(ever); once" (conjunctive particle, see this)
  • すぐ: "soon" (adverb)
  • いろいろなことを: "various things" (noun phrase + object marker)
  • 尋ねます: "to ask" (ichidan verb in polite form)

All in all, the sentence literally means "As for humans, once [they] reach the point where [they] can talk, [they] soon ask various things". You can translate it more naturally like "As soon as a person learns to talk, they start to ask various questions."

naruto
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  • This sounds strange to use 人. Like, why wasn't it 赤ちゃん or something? – istrasci Aug 05 '21 at 16:54
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    By not using 赤ちゃん, this sentence can also apply to non-native speakers learning a new language. As for *why* 人は is required here, https://note.com/asaokitan/n/n4e1b9dc24a26 gives a nice explanation. – Hirotaka Sato Aug 05 '21 at 21:30
  • @istrasci I don't think 人 is unnatural because it's the shared topic of the entire sentence. Someone who can ask a lot of question is no longer an 赤ちゃん. Besides, this sentence is using only the simplest grammar points (it doesn't even say 尋ね**始め**ます), so someone who wrote this might have thought 赤ちゃん was too difficult. – naruto Aug 06 '21 at 00:11
  • @naruto: 話せるようになったら、どう呼ばれる？「幼児」?「小児」? – istrasci Aug 06 '21 at 17:42
  • @istrasci 「子ども」じゃないですかね… – naruto Aug 06 '21 at 23:38