Oh, goodness, no apologies necessary, please. We're only human, right? With regards to the E-J (English-Japanese) dictionary, as you probably already know, the info is not always that reliable, which is not to suggest those books are not a good source of information--because they are, and the scholars who wrote them do in fact labour at finding the correct usage. It's just that some of the information, having been taken from obscure sources or non-Standard usage, is not always correct. A case in point is "Please me go now!", which is a fine example of a rule used correctly, but used in the wrong context: "me" comes after a word, so the s(native) peaker interprets it as the object of "Please". The (native) speaker is using the correct rule, albeit in the wrong context.
My heart goes out to those who write E-J dictionaries. Writing a dictionary is difficult job in itself, let alone being a non-native speaker living in a non-native speaking country, where, in the past, when most E-J dictionaries were written--check the date on your sources--English language resources were a compilation of prescribed rules that read like Einsteinian equations (e.g., V1+O+bare V2) coupled and compared with written prose based on modern usage, be the usage representative of the Standard or not. How were they to know if the modern usage they "read" represented a Standard usage? From the way I see it, the assumption of the day seemed to be: If it's in black & white, it's correct, so let's use it. Writing an E-J dictionary was and still will be an arduous undertaking, especially if the authors use language sources that don't "speak" the language (i.e., use books only).
I enjoyed reading your post a great deal, Paco. You've taught me a thing or two.
Note, I live and work in Japan.
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