I69: Ooku, hittou, you ni iu

[andycarmenjapanese8100]

I69:

オタク狩り 深夜12;30 家路を急ぐオタク。
Otaku Gari (Otaku Hunting) A geek heads home at 12;30 a.m.

The road is not in a hurry. Why is "o" used?

アメリカやロシアを筆頭に日本や中国等多くの国が、宇宙開発に力を入れている。

Amerika ya Roshia o hittō ni Nihon ya Chūgoku nado ōku no kuni ga uchūkaihatsu ni chikara o irete iru.

With America and Russia at the head of the list, a lot of countries, such as Japan and China, are putting effort into space development.

Why is this "ooku no kuni" and not "ooi kuni"? It doesn't come before a verb so I don't understand why it's conjugated like that.

（1,2,3...3人組か。モヒカンを筆頭に全員チンピラ風。これって・・・世に言うオタク狩りってやつ！？）
They all look like thugs, especially the one looks like a leader with a mohawk.

Why is the particle "o" used here when there isn't a verb? Is something omitted?

これって・・・世に言うオタク狩りってやつ！？
Kore tte... yo ni iu otaku gari tte yatsu!?
Is this what is generally known as an Otaku-Gari? Otaku Hunting?

The dictionary says "you ni iu" means "to tell (somebody) to (do something)". Nothing is being told to do anything here.

Maybe it's a different "you ni iu". The kanji for "you" is "世" which means "world; society; age; generation." That doesn't help at all.

"kore tte... you" this generation? This society?

"ni iu" - why is this "ni" and not "to" if it's being used to define something?

[mmmason8967]

オタク狩り 深夜12;30 家路を急ぐオタク。
Otaku Gari (Otaku Hunting) A geek heads home at 12;30 a.m.

The road is not in a hurry. Why is "o" used?

With verbs of motion, を marks the place or area that is traversed.　So it's "hurries along the road home".

アメリカやロシアを筆頭に日本や中国等多くの国が、宇宙開発に力を入れている。
Amerika ya Roshia o hittō ni Nihon ya Chūgoku nado ōku no kuni ga uchūkaihatsu ni chikara o irete iru.
With America and Russia at the head of the list, a lot of countries, such as Japan and China, are putting effort into space development.

Why is this "ooku no kuni" and not "ooi kuni"? It doesn't come before a verb so I don't understand why it's conjugated like that.

I think there's a distinction between ooi and ooku no, with ooi meaning "a large quantity" and ooku no meaning "a significant proportion". Or to put it another way, ooi is related to dozens, hundreds, thousands, etc, while ooku no is related to few, most and all.

So if you wanted to say "there are a lot of countries in Europe", you'd use ooi, and if you wanted to say "many European countries are land-locked", you'd use ooku no.

（1,2,3...3人組か。モヒカンを筆頭に全員チンピラ風。これって・・・世に言うオタク狩りってやつ！？）
They all look like thugs, especially the one looks like a leader with a mohawk.

Why is the particle "o" used here when there isn't a verb? Is something omitted?

I think that the verb related to モヒカンを and 筆頭に is inferred, a bit like the way "from me to you" infers a subject, an object and a verb, none of which are actually there.

これって・・・世に言うオタク狩りってやつ！？
Kore tte... yo ni iu otaku gari tte yatsu!?
Is this what is generally known as an Otaku-Gari? Otaku Hunting?

The dictionary says "you ni iu" means "to tell (somebody) to (do something)". Nothing is being told to do anything here.

Maybe it's a different "you ni iu".

I think yo ni iu (not you) is an idiom meaning something like "known to all as" and that you can more-or-less substitute yuumei na wthout altering the meaning too much. Does it help if we replace yo ni iu with yuumei na?

これって・・・有名なオタク狩りってやつ！？
Kore tte... yuumei na otaku gari tte yatsu!?

マイケル

[community.japanese]

マイケルさん、

今日は。
You can say
これって・・・有名なオタク狩りってやつ！？
Kore tte... yuumei na otaku gari tte yatsu!?

andycarmenjapanese8100　さん、
If you have any questions, please feel free to ask us.
マイケル might give you better answer though.

Yuki 由紀
Team JapanesePod101.com