stupid grammar questions

[Bueller_007]

わたしは よく いもうと の　あびました。Where's あびました derived from? I tried あぶ, but that's not it...

Type it again without the spaces, use your IME to convert it to kanji and your question will answer itself. There's more than one type of verb that can form an あびました. BTW, are you sure there's not a typo in that sentence?

さいふは どこへか ありませんでした。 Ok, the wallet wasn't there, but へか? Why not どこも? there's no wallet. Or maybe, for a specific wallet that's not Ok, but still ???

Never seen this construction before, but I would assume that you should read it as meaning "my wallet ended up [going] somewhere, and I couldn't find it". Again, are you sure there's no typo? If my interpretation is correct, it seems like it would make more sense to put a comma between the どこかへ and the ありませんでした.

3) 母は せいが 高いですが、父とひくいです。Wouldn't 父は be better? One is tall, the other short, why と?

Again, I've never seen this form, but I'm assuming that it's a truncated form of comparison. Short for 父に比べると. "My mother is tall, but compared with my father, she is short."

4) I must have a problem with しる　vs　わかる．I think somewhere that has been discussed, but I don't find the thread (at the time, I couldn't care less - I didn't even know the words... big error ). I thought that しる　is to know, vs わかる to understand, and that the difference is between a moment and a stretch of time (like... I understand japanese, which is a lengthy process ). However,
あ「あしたの 日よう日、出かけますか。」
B「そうですね。出かけるか 出かけないか わかりません I would have put しっていません, so that issue is still unclear to me.

http://www.japanesepod101.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=600

Use of 知らない implies that you are completely unfamiliar with something (i.e. you don't even know its name) and may carry the nuance that you don't even care that you've never heard of it. Using 知らない in the sentence above makes no sense, because it means that you're completely unfamiliar with the concept of your own going out or not.

Thanks so much - I don't know what I'ld be doing without the help you all are giving.

No problem, but a couple of requests. Again, please, please don't put spaces between your words, and use your IME to choose kanji, even for words you don't know. (The IME will almost always choose the correct words for you.) Sentences like the ones above are difficult to read, and sometimes the spaces aren't in the "right" place, which makes things even more difficult.

Also, can you post links or at least give some context for the sentences you want explained/translated?

Thanks.

[rdesiree]

Hm, that's strange...
I didn't gave any context because... as I said some posts ago, this is all from the past JLPT4 tests. I'm not reading anything else right now Sorry not to point that out!
That's why there is this hiragana stuff in, yeah I really hate that, too. It's so much easier with kanji, even for me who is just starting with the language.
For the typos, hm, I copied the stuff, blanks and all. These were the fill-in questions, I didn't re-type them but there is a blank before and after the particle to insert.

Strange thing is while I got around the same score in the grammar part of many tests (I have them from 1991 to 2005, so lots of stuff to train on), this particluar one (which contained all of these strange contructions) went less well, and I wondered if the result file was correct, which I got from a different source than the test file. hm, if even grammar-guru finds these contructions strange... I think I'll leave it at that.
あびあす：I decided that I don't know why there should be の; if I insert と instead 浴びる　makes sense.
Great, the link to the topic that should resolve my しるー分かる　problem, thanks!

[Bueller_007]

Hm, that's strange...
I didn't gave any context because... as I said some posts ago, this is all from the past JLPT4 tests. I'm not reading anything else right now Sorry not to point that out!
That's why there is this hiragana stuff in, yeah I really hate that, too. It's so much easier with kanji, even for me who is just starting with the language.
For the typos, hm, I copied the stuff, blanks and all. These were the fill-in questions, I didn't re-type them but there is a blank before and after the particle to insert.

Strange thing is while I got around the same score in the grammar part of many tests (I have them from 1991 to 2005, so lots of stuff to train on), this particluar one (which contained all of these strange contructions) went less well, and I wondered if the result file was correct, which I got from a different source than the test file. hm, if even grammar-guru finds these contructions strange... I think I'll leave it at that.
あびあす：I decided that I don't know why there should be の; if I insert と instead 浴びる　makes sense.
Great, the link to the topic that should resolve my しるー分かる　problem, thanks!

Yeah, I googled for those constructions before I posted about them, and 〜の浴びました got 0 appropriate hits, as I expected, as did どこかへありませんでした.

I'm guessing you got the wrong answer file or something... Nothing that weird would be in a level 4 JLPT test.

[rdesiree]

yup, nothing weird was in the test! Thanks for the help! Now, let me see that level 3 grammar stuff...hm lots of new constructions...