Beginner Lesson #61 - World’s Oldest Woman について vs

[tintinium]

I'm curious, what's the difference between について and こと.

In the dialogue, they say
shokoseikatsu ni tsuite hanashimasu.

Is this the same meaning as:
shokoseikatsu no koto wo hanashimasu. ?

ni tsuite means attached, right?

[Jonas]

について best translates as "about" or "regarding". It always (as far as I can think of now. Cant think of any examples for adjectives or verbs) comes after a noun.

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[subject]について[action]


For example

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温暖化　について　議論します
ondanka  nitsuite      giron shimasu

Discuss about/regarding global warming


Note that usually no particle follows について (sometimes の or が is used, but it is not that common).

Your last sentence with こと is gramatically wrong, and you should use ことについて instead.

Jonas

[tintinium]

I see. I remember learning ラジカセはCDをついてあるますか。　I can't remember if that's completely accurate.... it was the equivalent of saying, do you have a Radio-Cassette player with a CD player attached. Is this the same について as in the lesson? In other words, kind of "attaching" politics... or "regarding" politics. Is it a form of the verb 付く？

[Jonas]

What you are looking for is probably something like

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ラジオかセにはCDプレイヤーがついてありますか

Meaning "does this radio have a cd player"

This 付くand について isnt related, as far as I know (confirmed with 2 japanese people at the office too). について is also never written with kanji

[tintinium]

I see. So について is another in the long list of homonyms in Japanese. I first assumed when I heard it, it was the particle に with ついて. Thanx for all your expertise, Jonas!!!

[Jonas]

I would think the に is the particle "ni", but it would be best to think of について as a fixed expression. There are other examples of particle+word expressions that should be thought of as one expression, like かもしれない. There is no point (imo) in thinking of this as [か][も][知れない], since they are always used together as one expression.