4826
> 日本人には、見知らぬ人と会話を始めてまだくつろいだ気分にならないうちに、相手の、年齢や地位、既婚か未婚かなどの個人的な事柄を知りたがる傾向がある。
>
> There is a tendency for Japanese to want to know a certain amount of
> personal information about someone such as age, position and whether they
> are married or not, before they feel comfortable talking with a stranger.

In this example, what does the うち in ならないうちに mean?

On a side note, I sometimes notice that Japanese punctuation differs from
English usage. Why would the writer put a comma after 相手の?
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-02-27T04:24:09.527
4824
2012-02-27T16:41:00.267
706
question
grammar punctuation
What does the うち in ならないうちに mean?
In this case, Verb＋ないうちに means something like: `while Verb hasn't happened
yet...`

In this case, ならないうちに also goes with the context; namely, the verb that
precedes it (くつろぐ・to feel at home with someone.)

So it becomes: `while a Japanese person hasn't had a chance to feel at home
yet with a stranger...` _or more naturally put_ : `before a Japanese person
feels at home with a stranger...`.

For your second question, I believe the writer is partly using the `、` here to
break up the sentence in order to indicate the second major subject of the
sentence (相手) in this case, _as well as to indicate that 相手の is not modifying
the following noun, as @Hyperworm suggests in the comments._
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-02-27T04:46:29.243
4825
2012-02-27T05:53:44.477
2012-02-27T05:53:44.477
1188
1188
4824
answer
うち means "inside," "between," "while." In this example, it is about the
temporal span. As `まだ` suggests, it is assumed that at some temporal point,
the person will become relaxed (`くつろいだ気分になる`). Until then, there is a time
span, and that time span corresponds to `くつろいだ気分にならないうち` "within the temporal
span where one has not become relaxed."

About the punctuation in Japanese, it is true that a standard has not yet
settled, and where to put them largely depends on the person, but in this
case, the writer put the punctuation to disambiguate the sentence. Without it,
there are at least two possibilities as for the modifee of `相手の`. That is
`相手の年齢や地位` or `相手の...事柄`. By putting the punctuation, you can tell that
`年齢や地位...事柄` is a unit to which `相手の` attaches and modify, which would mean
that `相手の` is modifying `事柄` rather than `年齢や地位`.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-02-27T05:04:49.727
4826
2012-02-27T16:41:00.267
2012-02-27T16:41:00.267
4824
answer