Every sentence is formed of two elements, they are the が-marked noun and the engine.
In all languages there are only two kinds of sentence:
- A is B i.e. Sakura is Japanese
- A does B i.e. Sakura Walks
さくらが日本人だ - Sakura is Japanese
さくらが歩く - Sakura walks
There are three possible engines:
- Verb - A does B
- だ-marked noun - A is B
- い-“Adjective” (*Adjectives) - A is B
The engine always comes at the end of the sentence (with the exception of sentence ender particles (*Sentence ender particles).
<<Invisible が>> The が-marked noun is not always visible in the sentence. It is still present as part of the core of the sentence however. The closest English equivalent to this invisible が is ‘it’. Take this example English sentence:
The ball rolled down the hill. When the ball got to the bottom the ball hit a sharp stone and the ball was punctured and all the air came out of the ball.
This is not a sentence we would ever say in English, once we have established that we are talking about ‘the ball’ we would instead refer to the ball by ‘it’:
The ball rolled down the hill. When it got to the bottom it hit a sharp stone and it was punctured and all the air came out of it.
If we were to completely omit ‘it’ the sentence would still be easy to understand, we don’t need to use this it marker each time, but English grammar demands it. Japanese does not, hence the ‘invisible’ が.
<<∅ pronoun>> ‘It’ by itself doesn’t really mean anything, we know what it means from context. All of the pronouns I/it/we/he/they can be replaced by an invisible logical particle (*Logical particles) (most often が) marked ∅ pronoun. It is important to remember that the が-marked noun is still there.
[∅が]さくらだ - (I) am Sakura
By default ‘I’ is the default value of this ∅ pronoun. However, if someone were introducing their daughter and said 「さくらだ」 we would understand from context that ∅ meant this/she.
[∅が]土曜日だ - (Today) is Saturday It is Saturday - (Today) is Saturday
From context it is clear that ∅ and ‘it’ mean ‘today’.
<<Egocentrism>> <<Animism>> English is an ego-centric language. Japanese is a more animist language. What this means is that English always wants a person, preferably I, but if not I then someone else, or perhaps it will settle for an animal, but always wanting an animate being to be acting. Japanese is not this way:
わたしはコーヒがすきだ
A textbook would translate this as ‘I like coffee’. ‘I like coffee’ very well might be the English equivalent for this simple phrase, but it is not what this sentence means, and it is not what this structure of sentence means.
The が is marking the coffee. The coffee is the actor in this sentence, not I. It’s not ‘I like coffee’, I am not liking it. But ‘As for me, coffee is likeable/pleasing’. The English ‘I like coffee’ is an A does B sentence. The Japanese is an A is B sentence. すき is a noun. An adjectival noun (*Noun-adjectives), but still a noun. It is not a verb like in English. This animism also applies to verbs:
わたしはほんがわかる - As for me, the book is readable
Japanese is very topic-comment focused.
Just as with が, every sentence also has a は は marked topic, whether we can see it or not
- アメリカ人です
- ∅がアメリカ人です
- ∅は∅がアメリカ人です
- (I) am the topic, (I) am the subject, and (I) am an American
Just as a sentence isn’t logically complete without a が-marked subject (invisible or otherwise) a sentence isn’t grammatically complete without a は-marked topic (invisible or otherwise).
As with が the default value of ∅ is ‘I’. The topic is usually a noun, and the comment must be a complete logical clause.
Topic-comment structure is fundamental to Japanese. Every sentence has a topic marked by は, and a comment consisting of a complete logical clause (a が marked subject and some engine). Both the topic and the subject can be invisible.
In sentences where both the topic and the subject are the same thing, we can use one or both particles. Choice of particle depends on whether we want to emphasise that the thing at hand is the subject or the topic. For instance, if the person we are speaking to isn’t aware of who/what something is, it is best to introduce that thing with が first to explain what it is/does. That is to say が marks new information.
A topic marker can only mark old information. This is important because old-information is unimportant information. New information is the thing we’re actually trying to convey to someone. は therefore cannot mark new information.
An English example would be ‘I fed the iguana’, if we used は people would ask ‘what iguana’ because you hadn’t mentioned it yet. The same is true in English, you would have to say ‘I fed my’ or ‘I fed an’. Keep in mind, there are limits to this. For instance, in English it’s very common to say ‘I fed the dog’ to someone, even if they don’t know you have a dog, because it’s very normal to own a dog, less so to own an Iguana.
本を買った - (I) bought a book
This is the most normal way to say ‘I bought a book’. As we know the ∅ defaults to ‘I’ when the context isn’t telling us that it’s anything else. There is no emphasis, it is just a mutual ‘I bought a book’. In this sentence ‘I’ is the subject and the topic.
私は本を買った - What I did was buy a book (you might have bought something else or nothing at all, but I bought a book)
If we choose to stress ‘I’ as the topic we are making 「わたし」 into the old information, and the buying of the book into the new information. は has an exclusivity/distinguishing (See は) function. When we use は we are either establishing or changing the topic. We know は not only changes the topic to whatever it marks, but it also implies that the comment on the new topic is different to the comment on the old topic. Even if there wasn’t an old topic it still implies that the comment is different than the comment on other possible topics. This means that the sentence is implicitly an answer to the question (even if it wasn’t asked) ‘what did you do?’.
私が本を買った - It is I who bought the book
Here we have reversed the emphasis. The old information is now the buying of the book and the new information is I. Why would we say this? Perhaps someone is looking at an empty space in the bookshelf and wondering what happened. Then we would place the emphasis on it being ‘I’ who removed the book (by buying it). The book being gone (i.e. bought) is known information by both parties here, even if the exact reason for the books disappearance isn’t known. Though, if you’re in a bookstore the most likely reason is that it was bought.
は and が can also mark particularities, as well as generalities:
花はきれいだ - More likely to mean flowers in general
Flowers are old information, we all know what flowers are, so flowers in general.
花がきれいだ - More likely to mean these particular flowers
Flowers are new information, so it must be some non-general flowers.
These are all tendencies however. There is no structural reason for any of these differences. They come entirely from expectations.
は also adds emphasis forwards:
おまえみたいな半人前に(は)休みはない - For trainees like you, there are no rests - As for trainees like you, as for rests, there is none
The topic is 「おまえみたいな半人前に」 but the writer has chosen to deemphasise this topic, and introduce a subtopic that is やすみ - ‘rest’. This places the emphases on the not existing of the tests.
No particles other than が and だ can ever be part of the core sentence (*Core sentence) and only が is present in every logical clause (even if invisible (Invisible が).
A logical particle tells us how the sentence logically holds together. It tells us who does what to whom with what, when and where.
All logical particles attach to nouns, they cannot attach to anything but nouns. If we see a logical particle attached to anything else then we know that that word is functionally a noun.
The noun and the particle attached to it are an inseparable pair. We must view the two together, they are a question and an answer which form a fundamental unit of the Japanese sentence.
が can work in A is B sentences, as well as A does B sentences. The other particles can only (There is an exception: see *で in A is B sentences) work in A does B sentences i.e. that is sentences with a verb engine.
- が - Who (or what) did it?
- を - Whom was it done to?
- に - Where did they go?/Where are they?
- へ - What direction?
- で - Where was it done? With what was it done?
For basic use of が see: *Core sentence
The の particle can replace the が particle in ‘subordinate clauses’.
Remember, the の particle the the possessive particle, and is the only particle that has an exact equivalent in English: ’s.
さくら*の*ぼうし - Sakura*’s* hat
Let’s look at a sentence where の can replace が.
私がたべたケーキは(∅が)おいしかった - The cake I ate was delicious
Remember, The が particle marks the thing doing/being something in the sentence. ‘I’ am eating the cake, so ‘I’ am marked by が. In this sentence, the main が is not actually visible, it is the invisible ∅-pronoun ‘it’ (the cake).
This is the kind of sentence in which we can use の in place of が. We can’t use の for the main が of a sentence, we can only use it for an adjectival が.
Let’s look at an English equivalent:
Sakura’s shouting at the waiter upset me
‘Sakura’s shouting at the waiter’ is a noun, and it is the thing that did the act of upsetting me. The shouting belongs to Sakura because she is the one that did it. This is very similar to the Japanese, only the Japanese doesn’t turn the logical clause into a noun but into an adjective:
私のたべたケーキは(∅が)おいしかった - My eaten cake is delicious
For basic use of だ see core sentence (*Core sentence).
The copula has a て-form, で, which is used to apply particles to the logical clause:
ふつうの ウサギ*では* なかった - As for being an ordinary rabbit, (it) wasn’t - (It) wasn’t an ordinary rabbit
では here is the て-form of the copula だ, meaning ‘as for being (an ordinary rabbit)’
The を particle marks the object of the sentence, the thing that some verb (the engine) is being done to. が marks the thing that is doing the verb.
わたし*が*ケエキ*を*たべる - I eat cake
The core sentence here is ‘I eat’. The extra を particle marked noun, is telling us more about the engine (eat). What are we eating? We are eating cake.
わたしがぼーる*を*なげる - I threw the ball
The core sentence is ‘I threw’, and the extra を particle marked noun tells us what we threw i.e. the ball.
Nouns that can take する can drop the を particle to form a ‘true’ する verb.
The に-particle marks the target (indirect object) of an engine. Along with が and を:
- が tells us who does the doing
- を tells us what it is done to
- に tells us what the ultimate target of that doing
わたしがぼーるをさくら*に*なげる - I threw the ball at/to Sakura
Sakura is the destination, the target. It is important to note here that the logical particles tell us what happened. The order of the words doesn’t really matter the way it does in English.
わたし*に*さくらがぼーるをなげる - Sakura threw the ball at/to me.
ぼーるがわたし*に*さくらをなげる - The ball throws Sakura at me
Obviously this final example doesn’t make any sense (although we might want to say something nonsensical like this in a fantasy novel or something) but we can say whatever we like in Japanese so long as we use the right logical particles.
If we are going somewhere, or sending something somewhere, or putting something somewhere, we use に.
[∅が]みせ*に*いく - (I) will go to the shop
に gives us the target of an action in the literal sense, and also the target in a volitional sense, i.e. the aim of our action.
[∅が]みせ*に*たまごをかい*に*いく - (I) will go to the shop to buy eggs
かい is the い stem of かう, to buy (*Verb stems). The logical particles can only mark nouns. The い-stem of a verb is the equivalent noun form of it. Just as in English ‘I like swimming’, swimming is a noun, ‘I go to the shop for the purpose of buying eggs’, this buying is also a noun.
As well as identifying a place we will go to, に can also specify a place we are currently at:
∅がみせ*に*いる - (I) am/is at the shop
This に is still marking a target, just not a future target. In order for something to be somewhere it must’ve gotten there, and so に specifies the target of some past action. We can also use this for inanimate objects:
ほんは∅がテーベルのうえ*に*ある - As for the book, (it) exists/is on/at the table.
This use of に also applies to times as well as places, see: time expressions (*Time expressions).
Finally, に can also mark a transformation. If a becomes b, then に also marks b, the thing a is becoming.
さくらは∅がかえる*に*なった - Sakura became a frog
Of course this example is a bit of a joke, but there are of course various every day things that become other things. This form of expression is also used much more often in Japanese than in English.
ことし∅が十八さいになる - This year (I) become 18 years old
あとで∅がくもりになる - Later (it (the weather) will) become cloudy
See also how to use 「なる」 with adjectives (Becoming an adjective)
The の particle, or the possessive particle functions just like the English ’s.
さくら*の*はな - Sakura’s nose
わたし*の*はな - Me’s (my) nose
Luckily in Japanese we don’t have to worry about his/her/my/their, we just use の.
<<の-adjectives>>
Because this is the possessive particle we can use this in another slightly different way. 「あか」 has an adjectival form in 「あかい」, but not all colours have this form. The Japanese for pink, 「ピンクいる」 (lit: pink-colour) doesn’t have an adjectival form in 「ピンクいろい」, nor can we use it as a secondary engine with な. So what are we to do? Well we can use the の-particle:
ピンクいる*の*どれすが - The pink dress (literally: The dress belonging to the class of pink things)
うさぎ*の*OSCAR - Oscar the rabbit (literally: Oscar belonging to the class of rabbit)
A similar example with の that isn’t structurally very complicated, but is very unlike what would be said in English. This comes from the song ‘the bells of notre dame’:
朝のパリに響くのは鐘だよ
Where are the A and the B of this sentence? This is an A is B sentence. The は-marked topic is 「朝のパリに響くの」 so の is bundling 「朝のパリに響く」 into a single noun which we’re talking about, ‘Resounds in morning paris’ -> ‘That which resounds in morning Paris’. The A or が marked topic is that which has just been defined for us by の (the resounding thing in a parisian morning).
Why is it being put this way? Because it can be. It may be cumbersome in English, but not in Japanese.
This is a very simple particle, it duplicates a single use of に. When we say a is going to b we can freely substitute に with へ. This is all it can do, it cannot even mark the case where something is, only where it is going.
[∅が]こうえんにいく - I go to the park
If we say ‘I went by bus’ or ‘I ate with chopsticks’ we use で for the thing we did it with, the means by which we performed the action.
[∅が]バス*で*こうえんにいく - I go to the park by bus
<<で in A is B sentences>> で is not absolutely restricted to ‘a does b’ verb sentences (though most of the time it’s used in verb sentences). What で is really restricted to is clauses that modify 用言 (See *Active and inactive words)
So what is で actually doing? As we know, there are three ‘positional’ logical particles, they are:
- に - Where something goes to or where it is once its got there
- え - Directional particle
- で - The boundary or limit within which something happens
Usually the limit described by で is a physical area, though it doesn’t have to be. で tells us the boundary within which an action or (here’s the new part) a state of being takes place. In other words, it can be adjectival.
世界で一番おいしいラメン - The most delicious ramen in the world
Why are using で in this case? 「世界で」 is defining the limit within which something is happening, in this case it’s defining the limit within which the state of being applies. We are talking about the most delicious ramen in the world, the limit of the state of being the most delicious ramen is the world.
この町で一番おいしいラメン - The most delicious ramen in this town
We could say:
世界の一番おいしいラメン - The world’s most delicious ramen
But this isn’t modifying the quality of おいしい (putting a limit on おいしい) in the same way that で is. It is modifying ラメン.
We can also say:
このラメンは世界で一番おいしい - This ramen is the most delicious in the world
But we can’t say:
このラメンは世界の一番おいしい - This ramen is the most delicious in the world
Because in Japanese words can only modify words that come after them (See: *Japanese word order), they can’t modify words that come before them, の cannot modify おいしい which is an adjective, it can only modify ラメン which is another noun, and because ラメン is on the wrong side of it, we can’t use it.
Finally, since we now know that a noun+copula functions as a 用言 (an active element) we can also say:
世界で一番有名なアンドロイド - The most famous android in the world
世界で couldn’t modify 有名 on its own because 有名 is a noun, but joined with な (the connective form of the copula だ) it can.
The same thing is happened when we say:
みんあで踊る - We all dance - The limit of dancing is all of us
二人で踊る - The two of us dance - The limit of dancing is the two of us
一人で踊る - Dance alone - The limit of dancing is by oneself
Non-logical particles are not part of the logical structure of a sentence. They are neither the thing we are saying something about, nor what we are saying about it. They also do not tell us more about the engine of the sentence as the other logical particles do.
See also: *Core non-logical sentence *は vs が The は-particle can be thought of as a flag. It simply marks something as the topic of the sentence, but doesn’t say anything about it.
An exact translation of the は particle would be ‘As for x’. 「わたしは」 therefore means ‘As for me’, not ‘I am’ (わたしが).
A commonly mistranslated sentence is:
わたし*は*日本人だ -
I am Japanese
Referring back to the core sentence (*Core sentence) we can see that the が-marked noun is invisible so we don’t explicitly know who or what the subject is. One may ask ‘well why don’t we just treat the は particle as if it is marking the subject’. In this example it is obvious that the topic marked by は is the same as the subject marked by が, but there are many more cases where this is not true, leading to much confusion down the road. Let’s look at a similar sentence. You are at a restaurant, the waitress is asking what you would like:
わたし*は*うなぎだ -
I am an eel- As for me, eel
Treating は as ‘I am’ doesn’t work. As we now know the default value of the ∅ pronoun is ‘I’, but in this context it’s clear that we’re talking instead about what we want to eat. 「わたしはうなぎだ」 therefore means ‘As for me, eel’.
わたし*は*[∅が]日本人だ - As for me, (I) am Japanese
わたし*は*[∅が]うなぎだ - As for me, (what I would like to order) is eel
わたし*は*[∅が]さくらにぼーるをなける - As for me, (I) threw the ball at Sakura
ぼーる*は*わたしがさくらに[∅を]なける - As for the ball, I threw (it) at Sakura
This time the を marked noun (not the が marked noun) has become invisible(Invisible が), because what we’re throwing is now marked by the は particle, ∅ here has taken the value of ‘it’. Even without は we might already know what ‘it’ was that was thrown from context. The important thing to understand here is that as we change the logical particles from one noun to another we change the meaning of the sentence, but when we change the non-logical particle は from one noun to another it makes no difference to the logic of the sentence. It may make some difference to the emphasis, but it makes no difference to who is doing what or what they’re doing it to.
Japanese is a ‘topic prominent’ language. Topic-comment structure is a very fundamental aspect of Japanese in a way that it isn’t in English. It is for this reason that we so often say ‘as for x’ when that isn’t how we would say something in English.
アフリカはライオンはいるがトラはいない
In this sentence we have three はs in a very short space. These are all topic markers. The first は is the overall topic marker, it’s saying ‘speaking of Africa’, everything that follows is going to be a comment on the topic of Africa. Everything that follows must be a logical clause, it doesn’t matter how small the clause is, but it must be a logical clause. What we have in this example is a sentence consisting of two logical clauses, each of which contains a ‘sub-topic’. Each logical clause also has a topic statement preceding it. In full:
アフリカはライオンは[∅が]いるがトラは[∅が]いない
Note how there is the contrastive conjunction は used in this sentence. You can tell that it is this が and not the other because it follows a verb (いる) and the logical particle が can only mark nouns.
Why are they doing this?
It is because は is used to distinguish things.
アフリカはライオンはいるがトラはいない - Speaking of Africa, speaking of lions, they exist but speaking of tigers, they don’t exist.
We would never say something like this in English, but we would in Japanese because the topic marker は is very agile, whereas the methods of introducing a topic in English are not, so they seem forceful or cumbersome.
When we introduce something using は we are implicitly saying that the comment on the new topic is different from the comment on the old topic. If we wanted to say that the comment is the same we would use the topic marker も.
も is another non-logical topic-marking particle. も marks the topic of the sentence in the same way that は does. The difference is that while は can mark the topic of the sentence and can also change the topic of the sentence, も declares the topic of the sentence but can only change the topic of the sentence. We cannot use も unless we are changing the topic of the sentence.
For context, up until this point the topic of our conversation has been the rabbit, now we are switching to talk about Alice.
アリス*も* ウサギの 穴に とび こんだ。 - Alice also jumped into the rabbit hole.
When we change topic with も we’re saying that the comment about the previous topic (the rabbit and that it jumped) is the same as our new topic (Alice). When we change the topic with は we are doing the opposite, we are drawing a distinction between the two.
も = as-much-as/even:
いちま円もかかた掛かる - He took as much as 10,000 yen
ケエキを食べてもいい - Is it alright if I eat this cake? lit. If I go as far as to eat the cake is that alright?
In English ‘as much as’ can also be said as ‘even’. The same is true in Japanese.
- 誰もない - Not even someone
- 何もない - Not even something
- 少しもない - Not even a little
See also でも (でも).
Note: See also と-conditional <<と and>> Alogical particles aren’t simply markers. The と particle ‘ands’ two nouns together. It is therefore doing something in the sentence, it is joining a noun to another noun and inheriting its logical particle, but the と particle has no function of its own.
さくら*と*メイリー*が*あるいていた - Sakura and Mary were walking
When putting two things together we can use the と (exclusive ‘and’) and や (non-exclusive ‘and’) particles. や lists things but not exhaustively, there may be more: ‘fish and chips (and stuff)’.
ぎっしり ならんだ とだな や 本だな だった。- tightly lined-up cupboards-and bookshelves-was
「おもしろい ことが ない」*と* アリスは 言った - Nothing interesting is happening said Alice
おもしろい ことが ない- No interesting thing (abstract thing) exists - Nothing interesting is going on here
アリスは 言った - Alice said
The と particle marks a quotation. When we quote someone as saying something or as thinking something we use this と particle. We also use these square brackets which are the equivalent of English quotation marks, but in speech we cannot see these, so we also use と (and clearly use と in writing regardless also).
What と does structurally, is it takes whatever it marks which could be a simple word or phrase, to a whole paragraph, to anything with all sorts of grammar going on, and turns what it is marking it into a single noun. This is used not only to mark things people say and people think, but to mark all sorts of things. This と structure can therefore make a quotation act as a modifier to whatever follows, in the previous example it is modifying 言う (to say), or to think or feel, but could be many things:
ホッとする
Note 「ホッ」 is the sound effect for a sigh of relief. We aren’t saying here that someone breathed a sigh of relief. What we’re saying is that they enacted what was expressed by the sound effect i.e. They were relieved. In 「山にのぼろうとする」 we’re enacting the feeling of setting out to climb the mountain.
でも ウサギは ピョンピョン*と* はしり つづけた。 - But as for the rabbit, (it) kept on running in a pyonpyon manner
「ピョンピョン」 - The sound of a small thing jumping along (an onomatopoeia hence katakana). Once again we’re using the quotation particle と to describe the way in which the rabbit ran, it ran in the way it sounds, it ran like a small thing jumping along (Note there are no quotation marks around onomatopoeia).
The most basic thing that can follow と is 言う in which case it can be used as a literal quotation of something that’s been said (as we’ve already seen) but can also be used as a way of saying how something is said or what it’s called:
ふしぎの国のアリスという本 - The book called 「ふしぎの国のアリス」
Note: という is usually written in Kana when it precedes something
<<って>> という can be reduced down as far as just って. という -> っていう -> って:
ふしぎの国のアリスっていう本 - The book called 「ふしぎの国のアリス」
ふしぎの国のアリスって本 - The book called 「ふしぎの国のアリス」
<<As subject>> Remember the は particle is the topic marking particle:
さくらは ∅が 日本人だ - As for Sakura, (she) is a Japanese person
さくらって ∅が 日本人だ - Speaking of Sakura, (she) is a Japanese person
This is a very casual use, we can’t use 「という」 in place of は but we can use って. The point is that this is still very logical.
<<Trying to do something>>
山にのぼろうとする - Try to climb the mountain
Note: に is normal here because we are climbing to the target of the summit.
Here と is encapsulating, not the words or thoughts of someone, but the meaning of 「山にのぼろう」 and putting that meaning into action (する). Why does this mean ‘try’? A precise translation may be derived from 「のぼろう」 - have the will to climb, and 「する」 to do. I have the will to climb the mountain, and I will do it, (but I may not have the ability). Hence, try.
<<Regard something>>
∅が さくらを 日本人と する - We Sakura “Japanese person” enact - We assume/take Sakura to be Japanese
We are thinking/acting according what is expressed by the quote.
<<As something>>
かばんを まくらと する - Use bag as a pillow
Not literally: turn bag into a pillow.
会長 として 。。。 - As President…
Note: して is the て-form of する and so another clause should follow The closest equivalent to this in English is ‘as’. i.e. ‘My opinion as a private person’.
We can also use it as ‘for’:
アメリカジン として 小さい - She’s small for an American. (As an American, she’s small).
<<か>>
か turns the statement it is attached to into an hypothesis or question. か can also, and especially in colloquial usage turn things into a negative. This is also done in English:
Do you think I’m going to do that? - I’m not going to do that!
ね is a marker for information that the speaker assumes the listener already knows. It is the marker for shared information/feelings. It is used to invite the listener to agree with you: ‘It’s a beautiful day isn’t it’ - ‘It’s a beautiful day ね’
よ is the opposite of ね. ね marks information that one assumes the listener to already know, よ marks information that one assumes the listener doesn’t already know.
よ can be assertive, and can be used to contradict, but most of the time it’s a friendly particle that introduces some information the listener doesn’t know but you think they will be interested in.
This might seem a little confusing at first, notice however it’s よね, you can’t say ねよ. The reason for this is that you’re introducing the listener to something that they don’t know, and then immediately treating that information as shared.
な is not really a particle in terms of Japanese grammar, it’s technically an exclamation, but it functions in much the same way. Earlier many sentence-enders involving な were discussed, in each of these cases な was the connective for of だ. This な is different.
While ね marks information known to the listener, よ marks information unknown to the listener, な marks a remark that is addressed to oneself.
暑いな - Gosh it’s hot
One may be intending to share this statement with someone else.
な can also be used within a sentence, hence why even though technically an exclamation it functions like a particle, marking that something is directed at oneself.
There are also occasions where men will use な where women would use ね. In these cases the difference in meaning is ‘You agree with me don’t you’ for ね and ‘Well that’s what I think and I don’t care if you agree with me or not’ for な.
See: (かな)
かい is simply a softened and colloquial form of か. In casual speech we don’t use か as a sentence-ender question marker very often (though we do use it in other positions). Usually we will just use a rising intonation (or a question mark on its own in typed speech), we may use の (which is ambiguous because it can mark a question or an explanation), but we can occasionally use かい. かい is a predominantly masculine (though older women may use it) and rather ‘folksy’ way of marking a question.
だい is just だ+かい. This is the form of かい we use in copula-ending sentences. Everything about かい applies to だい except a particularly common colloquialism which is 「どうだい」 meaning ‘how is [something]’.
This isn’t related to かい or だい but is an informal equivalent to ください, so usually it is added to the て-form of a verb to ask someone to do something. It is slightly feminine but not exclusively.
- せ - verbal exclamation mark that adds force - masculine - far more common in anime and manga than in real life
- そ - verbal exclamation mark that adds force - masculine - far more common in anime and manga than in real life
- さ - more common verbal exclamation mark, slightly masculine but not exclusively. Very likely to hear in real life
Often sentences end in conjunctions. This has been covered previously.
し is very similar to から, it’s most common and regular use is to combine reasons. Reason a し reason b し therefore… You can therefore use し with only one reason to imply that there are other reasons also. し has the effect of softening a reason, so saying something like ‘because riding a bike is forbidden here’ + し sounds a bit friendlier. This tactic of ‘vaguing’ things up is common in English using words like ‘like’ and ‘kinda’
There’s really no such thing as double particles or particle combinations as such, the particles are really just doing what they do all the time.
It is important to remember the distinction between logical and non-logical particles.
You can’t combine any of the logical particles with any of the others, because logical particles mark nouns with their function in the sentence. What you can combine them with is the non-logical particles, notably the two non-logical topic markers は and も. Combining in this way doesn’t clash at all logically as は and も don’t tell us anything about what a noun is doing in the sentence.
The two primary logical particles が and を don’t combine with the non-logical particles because any sentence that is directly transitive, that is a sentence where the actor acts upon an object directly. ‘I eat’ for example is intransitive, but ‘I eat bread’ is intransitive.
Any sentence with the を particle is directly transitive, the use of any other particle i.e. と or に is indirectly transitive.
Because of the directness of が (the thing acting) and を (the thing being acted upon) they can’t have a non-logical particle appended to them. If you wanted to attach a non-logical particle you would simply leave the logical particle out, and because が and を are so fundamental they would be understood by the hearer in Japanese.
We can pair the remaining logical particles with any non-logical particle, the reason for which isn’t to make any kind of unusual pair-combination, but to simply use the functions of both particles at the same time.
∅が冬には雪だるまを作る - As for in the winter, we make snowman
We don’t need this は, but we can choose to use it to make ‘in winter’ the subject of the sentence. は also differentiates winter from the other seasons, implying we only make snowmen then.
∅が春にも雪だるまを作る - We make a snowman in the spring as well
We do need に so that the topic is about in winter.
学校には行く - Going to school
This sentence carries the implication that we’re going to school but not going somewhere else (because of the exclusiveness of the は particle).
も = as-much-as i.e. ‘even though’. The て-form + topic-marker combination forms a complete logical clause that is subordinate to (requiring comment from) the following clause.
「ても」 doesn’t indicate a positive result or a negative result, it indicates a contrasting result:
雨が 降っ*ても* ∅が こうえんい 行く - Even though it’s raining we can still go to the park
<<でも>> This is where 「でも」 itself, rightly translated as ‘but’, comes from; 「でも」 wraps up whatever came before it literally meaning ‘as much as [that] is [so]…’. 「でも」 is the all purpose 「ても」 contrast marker. The で in 「でも」 is the て form of だ and it is attached to も, the inclusive and particle and the reverse subject particle of は:
∅が 空っぽの びんでも - It empty jar-is as-much-as
As we know だ (the copula) couples together two nouns. What is it coupling? It is couple the sentence that came before it and the ∅ pronoun (it). So 誰でも doesn’t mean ‘everyone’, it means anyone.
- 誰でも - Anyone - 誰でもできろ - Even if it’s anyone, they can do it - Anyone can do it
- 何でも - Anything - 何でもいい - Even if it’s anything, it’s good - Anything is good
- どうでも - However (Whatever way) - どうでもいい - Whatever way is fine
While も is the additive, including particle, は is the subtractive, excluding particle. So, while も means ‘as much as’, は means ‘as little as’. We tend to use 「でも」 in positive contexts, and 「では」 in negative contexts. Often this 「ては」 gets contracted into just ちゃ/じゃ.
We can use 「ては」 as the connector between two clauses, and it implies that the second clause is unwanted:
雨が 降っ*ては* ∅が こうえんい 行けない - Rain falls and (negative comment expected) we park-to can-go-not
This is much the same as how も is followed by a comment, here we follow は with a comment explaining why the rain falling is a bad thing.
[∅が] いもうとと けんかし*ては* ははに しかられた - I sister-with quarrelled-and (negative result) : mother-by scolded-got
「だって」 is usually translated as ‘because’ and ‘but’ and ‘even’ and ‘somebody said’. The reason for these myriad definitions is that 「だって」 isn’t really a word. 「だって」 is simply the copula だ, and って. This is not the て-form of だ, it is the same って as the contraction of the quotation particle 「という」 (って).
<<Somebody said>>
[∅が] 明日は [∅が] 晴れだ って(という) - (Someone/forecast/people) as for tomorrow (it) fine will-be says
<<But>>
- さくらがきれいだね - Sakura’s pretty isn’t she
- だって 頭が 弱い - But she’s not very smart (lit: head is weak)
Why does this mean ‘but’? What we’re doing is taking the thing that was just said and adding だ to it. Then quoting what they just said: 「だって」 - You say that (Sakura is pretty), and the implication is that something contradictory will follow. This usage usually has a childish, or somewhat argumentative tone.
<<Because>> Just as we can use 「だって」 as ‘You say a thing is so, but…’ We can also use 「だって」 as ‘You say a thing is so, this is because (some explanation)’.
What both of these phrases are saying is ‘You have said something, and I don’t dispute it, but here’s something we can add to it that undermines the narrative that you’re trying to put forward’. This is the same in both cases, it’s only the translation to English that mandates a distinction.
<<Even>> When we say 「だって」 to mean ‘even’ we’re not using だ to refer back to the previous statement. We are usually attaching it to something in particular within the statement we’re making.
- さくらができる - Sakura can do that
- わたしだって - Say (it) is me - I can do that
This has a different implication to わたしもできる which just means ‘I can do that too’, 「わたしだって」, because it is associated with the phrases above carries the tone of ’even I can do that’.
わたしだってホトケーキがつくられる - Even I can make hot cakes
In this example we aren’t saying anything contradictory to someone else but it still has the implication of even.
In Japanese the tenses are not the same past, present and future tenses we’re familiar with from English.
The basic, dictionary-form of verbs are in the non-past tense. The Japanese non-past tense is very similar to the English non-past tense. What is the English non-past tense? It is again the plain dictionary form of a verb: eat, run, walk etc. It is unnatural in English to say ‘I eat cake’, to mean ‘I am eating cake’. It is natural however to use the non-past tense to say ‘Sometimes I eat cake’ or, in the explicitly future tense ‘I will eat cake’. Japanese is just the same as English in this way. It is rare we use this form for talking about things actually happening right now, except in cases like literary descriptions.
Just as the ∅ pronoun (∅ pronoun) defaults to ‘I’, the non-past tense defaults to the future.
さくらが歩く - Sakura will walk
犬がたべる - Dog will eat
‘Sakura walks’ is possible, but isn’t the most natural way.
<<Present continuous>> In order to say something like ‘Sakura is walking’ we need to combine the verb 「歩く」 - to walk with the verb 「いる」 - to be. This is done by putting the verb into the て-form (*て-form).
さくらが歩いている - Sakura is walking
犬がたべている - Dog is eating
The core sentence here is ‘Sakura is existing’, the て-form verb, what we shall call a secondary engine which modifies the main engine. In what state is Sakura existing? She is existing in the state of eating.
<<Verb past>> To form the past tense of a verb we need to take the verb stem(*Verb stems) and add た for ichidan and った for godan.
犬がたべた - The dog ate
<<Adjective past>> If we want to put an adjective into the past tense we drop the い and add かった.
こわい ー> こわかった - Was scary
Because 「ない」 is also an adjective, the past tense of it is just 「なかった」.
| Non-past | Past | |
|---|---|---|
| さくらがはしる | さくらがはしった | Positive |
| さくらがはし*ら*ない | さくらがはし*ら*なかった | Negative |
As we know 「さくらがはしる」 is not very natural Japanese, instead we would say 「さくらがはしっている」. For this, all we need to do is put the 「いる」 into the past tense:
さくらがはしっている -> さくらがはしっていた - Sakura was running
If we want to make it clear that we are talking about a future event we can add a time expression. By prefixing a sentence with あした (tomorrow), we can make it clear that what we will be doing, we will be doing tomorrow.
あした[∅が]ケーキをたべる - Tomorrow I will eat cake
Note how we simply preface the sentence with ‘tomorrow’, just like we would in English. This is the case with all relative-time nouns, ‘yesterday’, ‘tomorrow’, ‘the day after tomorrow’, ‘next week’, next month’, ‘next year’.
For non-relative, i.e. absolute time expressions we must use the に-particle:
火曜日*に*[∅が]ケーキをたべる - On Tuesday I will eat cake
We must attach に in all the same places we would attach on/in/at in English. ‘On Tuesday’, ‘in March’, ‘at 12 o’clock’. Fortunately in Japanese we only need to use the one particle.
そのとき、白い ウサギが とおり すぎた。
「そのとき」 - That time. In this sentence it is used to mean ‘just at that moment’ (just as Alice said that)
The て-form of a verb is its connective form.
Japanese verbs fall into three groups: Ichidan, Godan, and irregular
The first group are ichidan (lit: one level) verbs. Morphing these verbs is easy, we simply remove the る and add our new ending. Ichidan verbs can only end in either いる or える (phonetically).
The second group is by far the largest, the godan (lit: five level) verbs. This group contains verbs that end in all of the possible verb endings: う つ る - ぬ ぶ む - く ぐ - す. Each of these ending groups has its own way of being morphed, though although they’re ‘five level’ verbs, two of the groups use the same method so we only need to learn 4 methods. Confusingly this means that godan verbs can end in いる or える, most of these will still be ichidan verbs, and fortunately even if a verb is morphed incorrectly, you will probably still be understood.
- う つ る -> って
- ぬ ぶ む -> んで
- く/ぐ -> いて/いで (Note: this is the combined group)
- す -> して
There are only two irregular verbs, くる and する. いく, is partly irregular, but not completely.
- くる -> きて
- する -> して
- いく -> いって (
いいて)
These are the only exceptions
See: present continuous tense (Present continuous)
あそんで くれなかった - (She) didn’t play with Alice (didn’t play for Alice’s benefit).
あそぶ is to play. This has been put into the て-form. 「くれる」 means to ‘give downwards’ i.e. as Japanese is so polite we place ourselves below others, so someone else is giving us something. 「あげる」 to contrast is to ‘give upwards’ i.e. to give to someone else. What is being given? In this case the thing being given is what is attached to it via the て form, i.e. ‘playing’. Specifically, (she) is not giving the act of playing to Alice. In Japanese we frequently use ‘give’ for actions, for doing something for our benefit as well as for literally ‘giving’ nouns. If someone does something for our benefit, we turn that action to the て-form, and attach it to 「くれる」. If we do something for someone else’s benefit, we turn that action to the て-form, and attach it to 「あげる」.
おねえちゃんは つまらない 本を よんで いて あそんで くれなかった。
「よむ」 (read) -> 「よんでいる」 (reading) -> 「よんでい*て*」 - We have put the 「いる」 into the て-form, why have we done this?
おねえちゃんは つまらない 本を よんで いる - Big sister is reading an uninteresting book.
This by itself is a complete clause (sentence), by turning the engine of the sentence (いる) into the て form we’re saying that something else is going to follow this clause, i.e. ‘and’.
おねえちゃんは つまらない 本を よんで いて - Big sister is reading an uninteresting book and…
Note the ends of the two clauses:
おねえちゃんは つまらない 本を よんで いて
あそんで くれなかった
For the first clause we do not know what in what tense the action is taking place. In English we would place the tense marker on both clauses, in Japanese we only do this at the end. よんで いて could mean ‘is reading’ and it could mean ‘was reading’. Because くれなかった is in the past tense, then the entire sentence is in the past tense.
See: copula て-form (Copula て-form).
まずは、下を 見てみた - First (she) tried looking down
「見てみた」: When we add みる to the て-form of another verb we’re saying to ‘try’ doing something. We’re literally saying ‘do it and see’. 「食べてみろ」 = Try eating (it) and see. 「やってみろ」 = do and see (give it a try). 「見てみた」 = Take a look and see.
See also: Trying to do something with と (Trying to do something).
<<てある>> The て-form of a verb + 「いる」 meaning to be in the state of doing that verb. 「てある」 also means to be in the state of that verb, however there is a difference:
窓が開いている - The window is open
窓が開けてある - The window is open
What is the difference? 「いる」 simply means is open, however 「ある」 carries another implication. Notice the use of the other-move verb in 「ある」 and the self-move verb in 「いる」. 「開けてある」 therefore signals that the window is open because someone opened it.
Notice how we’re using いる, the verb for animate objects to describe the openness of an inanimate object. Because we have used the self-move verb the inanimate object is an honorary ‘willed being’ with a state of its own. In the example with ある the state has been caused externally, and so the window maintains its inanimateness.
「ておく」 is in a sense the second half of 「てある」 (て-ある):
窓が開けてある - Exist in the state of having been made open
窓を開けてあく - Open the window so that it remains in the state of openness. Establish the window as being in the state of openness
In many cases this is used to mean ‘doing something in advance’ but it is not the only meaning, as we see here. What is literally means is putting the action in place.
The fundamental basis of negatives is the adjective 「ない」. This adjective means ‘non-exist’. The word for exist (for any inanimate thing) is ある. If we want to say that something exists:
ぺんがある
But if we want to say that something doesn’t exist we say:
ぺんがない
Now, why do we use a verb for being, and an adjective for non-being? This is something that happens all throughout Japanese, when we do something we use a verb, but when we don’t do something we attach ない and are therefore using an adjective as the engine of the sentence. This has a very logical reason, when we do something, an action is taking place, and so we use a verb, but when we don’t do it we are describing a state of non-action, so that’s an adjective.
Above we have said ‘There is no pen’, how do we say ‘This is not a pen’?
これはぺんがある - As for this, it’s a pen
これはぺんではない - As for this, as for being a pen, it’s not. (Note: で is the て-form of だ)
<<other-move>> Transitive and intransitive are better thought of as Self-move and Other-move.
In japanese, a move-word 「動詞」 (どうし) is a word that denotes an action or a movement. So a self-move verb is a verb that moves itself. If I ‘stand-up’ that’s a self-move action. But throwing a ball is an ‘other-move’ action, one is not throwing themselves, they are throwing a ball. It’s as simple as that.
Japanese has a lot of pairs of words, these could be called forms, or just closely related words, that give the self-move and other-move variations of the verb. For example:
- 「出る」 (でる) - leave, exit, come out - Self-move
- 「出す」 (だす) - take out, bring out - Other-move
Most of the time we can tell which is a self-move word and which is an other-move word by following a few simple rules.
The first thing to know is that there is a root word for self-move and a root word for other-mode:
- ある (to be) - Self-move
- する (to do) - Other-move
Knowing this there are three laws of move-word pairs.
- す and せる (え-stem) ending verbs are other-move
- あ-stem + る (aru) ending verbs are self-move
- え-stem + る (eru) flip self/other-move either way
Honorary members of the す family:
- む -> める is always other-move
- ぶ -> べる is always other-move
- つ -> てる is always other-move
The only wildcards left are:
- く/ぐ -> ける/げる
- う ー> える
- Some る-ending verbs not covered by the first two laws
Is there anything we can do to simplify this: える version have the opposite of the standard word.
There is a group of verbs in Japanese that are defined by their English translations, but the definition isn’t real. These are the ‘become’ verbs:
- 濡れる - Do (state of) wet (become wet)
- 濁る - Do (state of) cloudy/muddy (become cloudy/muddy)
Note: these stems apply to godan verbs. For ichidan verbs just drop the る.
Every verb ends in one of the う-row kana. Here is the kana-grid (う-row kana that aren’t used as verb endings have been removed), presented on its side.
| あ | い | う | え | お |
| か | き | く | け | こ |
| さ | し | す | せ | そ |
| た | ち | つ | て | と |
| な | に | ぬ | ね | の |
| ば | び | ぶ | べ | ぼ |
| ま | み | む | め | も |
| ら | り | る | れ | ろ |
As we can see there are four other ways in which the verb could end. These are the verb stems. For now we’re only looking at the あ-stem as this is the one we need for the negative.
To form the あ-stem we simply shift the final kana from the う-row to the あ-row. There is one only exception and this is the only exception in the entire stem system. This exception is that う itself does not become あ but わ. This is because, take for example a verb like 「かう」, 「かあ」 would not be as easy to say as 「かわ」. Every other う-row kana is simply changed to its あ-row equivalent.
| **わ** | い | う | え | お |
| か | き | く | け | こ |
| さ | し | す | せ | そ |
| た | ち | つ | て | と |
| な | に | ぬ | ね | の |
| ば | び | ぶ | べ | ぼ |
| ま | み | む | め | も |
| ら | り | る | れ | ろ |
The い-stem of a verb is what we might call the ‘pure-stem’ of a verb. In Japanese this is called 「連用形」(れんようけい) which means ‘connective-use form’.
そのとき、白い ウサギが とおり すぎた。 - At that moment a white rabbit passed by
「とおりすぎる」 is attaching the い-stem of one verb 「とおる」 - ‘pass through’, to another verb 「すぎる」 - ‘exceed’/’go beyond’ to give it extra meaning. We will see this a lot throughout Japanese. Connecting とおる and すぎる, ‘pass through’ and ‘go beyond’ means ‘passing by’.
はしり だした - Run + Take out = Broke into a run (started to run).
In this sense だした means modifies the verb to mean the action ‘erupted’.
でも ウサギは ピョンピョンと はしりつづけた。 - But as for the rabbit, (it) kept on running in a pyonpyon manner
「はしりつづけた」 = 「はしる」 + 「つづける」 = Continued running (running continued).
See also い-stem + そう (い-stem + そう)
To make a verb negative we must attach 「ない」 to the あ-stem of the verb (*Verb stems).
かう ー> かわない
はなす ー> はなさない
Remember for ichidan verbs we don’t need to form a stem and just drop the る:
たべる ー> たべない
Japanese adjectives are not the same as English adjectives. As we have learned Japanese sentences come in three kinds, depending on the type of engine they have. All three of these engines can be used like adjectives.
- Verb (*Verb-adjectives) - A does B
- だ-marked noun (*Noun-adjectives) - A is B
- い-“Adjective” (*い-adjectives) - A is B
Let’s start with the first one, the one we refer to as an adjective in English, the い-engine:
ぺんがあかい - Pen is red
An important note, 「あかい」 does not mean ‘red’, it means ‘is red’. 「あか」 means red.
If we swap the order of 「ぺんが」 and 「あかい」 then we can take this い-engine, and now use it not as the primary engine, but as a secondary engine. This would not be a complete sentence however without a new engine, for example, a new (primary) い engine.
あかいぺんがちいさい - Red pen is small
With a true adjective we also use the て-form (て-form) of the adjective
さくらが美しくてやさしい - Sakura is beautiful and kind
Any verb in any tense can be used like an adjective:
しょうじょがうたった - Girl sang
うたったしょうじょが… - The girl who sang… (Note: this sentence is not yet complete, it lacks a primary engine).
うたったしょうじょがねている - The girl who sang is sleeping
ある 日 アリスは 川の そばに いた。- On a certain day, alice was beside a river.
ある means ‘exists’ (of inanimate things) or, more accurately in English: ‘a certain’. ある日 therefore means ‘on a certain day’. Note also that this is the same as how we use might use Today, Yesterday, Tomorrow etc. but not how we might use ‘On Saturday’ (*Time expressions).
Verbal adjectives can create very complex sentences in which we can use entire other-sentences (clauses) in an adjectival manner.
しゃべる ウサギを 見た ことが ない。
Here 「しゃべる」 is being used as an adjective just as any verb can be. 「しゃべるウサギ」 - Talkative/talking rabbit. 「見た」 is the past tense of 「見る」 to see. It is modifying 「こと」, an abstract thing, meaning ‘The fact of having seen’. 「見たことがない」 means ‘The fact of having seen doesn’t exist’. The talking rabbit is the object of the engine of the sentence, ‘The fact of having seen’. So: ‘The fact of having seen a talking rabbit doesn’t exist’ -> (Alice) had never seen a talking rabbit. This is another example of the un-egocentric (Egocentrism) nature of Japanese; Alice is not the actor of this sentence, it is the ‘thing’ that does not exist.
<<な-adjectives>>
いぬがやんちゃだ - The dog is naughty
We can turn 「やんちゃ」 into an adjective too, but there is one important thing to note. Just as we have to add だ to a noun to use it as an engine, here we must add な to the noun to use it as an adjective. な is in fact the connective form of だ. Don’t be fooled by so-called ‘な-adjectives’, they’re simply nouns! Adjectival nouns.
やんちゃ*な*いぬが… - The dog who is naughty… (Note: this sentence is not yet complete, it lacks a primary engine).
やんちゃ*な*いぬがねている - The dog who is naughty is sleeping
An important note is that we cannot do this with all nouns, only nouns which are frequently used in an adjectival way. This group of nouns is what are referred to as ‘な-adjectives’. We can use all nouns as adjectives, but for the rest we need to use a different technique, の-adjectives (の-adjectives).
華麗なる探偵 - Magnificent detectives
「華麗」 is an adjectival noun so it could’ve been used with な, but the author has chosen to use 「なる」 instead. 「なる」 is not the same 「なる」 that means ‘become’, it is a contraction of 「のある」.
華麗がある探偵 -> 華麗のある探偵 -> 華麗なる探偵 - Detectives possessing magnificence lit: Magnificence exists detectives
What does the choice of 「なる」 over な actually mean? In modern texts the only reason to choose 「なる」 over な is just that it sounds a bit more old-fashioned or a bit more literary.
「たる」 is a contraction of 「とある」, meaning that the 「ある」 is belonging to the thing that is being described, rather than the thing describing it.
らんらんたる目 - Blazing eyes
The subtle difference is that 「なる」 means ‘is magnificent’, whereas 「たる」 means ‘in a blazing manner’.
<<Negative adjectives>> The adjective stem is simple, just drop the い and add く. This is how we make the て form, 「あかい」 ー> 「あかくて」, and it’s also the way we make the negative, 「あかい」 ー> 「あかくない」.
The only exception (besides ます) is いい (is good), which has an older form, which is still widely used in よい. When we morph いい it becomes よい again:
いい ー> よくない - Not-good
いい ー> よかった - Was-good
Note: 「よかった」 is a common phrase: 「∅がよかった」 - It was good (That went well, it turned out great etc.)
<<Becoming an adjective>> If we want to say ‘Sakura became beautiful’ we can’t use に because 「うつくしい」 isn’t a noun (*Logical particles), it’s an engine. To use 「うつくしい」 as a noun we must convert it to its stem 「うつくしく」.
さくらがうつくしくなった - Sakura became beautiful
ウサギは 早く 走る
「早い」 is an adjective. If we want to say the rabbit is fast we simply say 「ウサギが早い」. But if we want to say that the rabbit’s movement is fast we must use an adverb. In Japanese we can turn any adjective into an adverb by simply removing the い and replacing it with く. 「早い」 -> 「早く」.
Adverbial nouns can make に or と disappear when used as an adverb. Often (but not always) these nouns end in り.
As we know, any noun that can be used adverbially can be done so using the particle に. 「しずかにする」 - Act quietly. With an adverbial noun we don’t need the に:
ゆっくりにする - Act leisurely
ゆっくりする - Act leisurely
「あまり」 is a noun that means ‘excess’. We can use it in a literal sense: 「ごはんのあまり」 - The excess rice.
悲しみのあまりに泣いた - From sadness’s excess, cried
悲しみのあまり泣いた - From sadness’s excess, cried
あまり勉強しない - lit: (I) don’t study too much. read: (I) don’t study very much
Note: This under-exaggeration is another case of hyperbole (or rather inverse-hyperbole).
「ずいぶん」 means ‘sufficiently’. In English ‘sufficiently’ isn’t a noun, but in Japanese it is. Like 「あまり」 is often used with some inverse-hyperbole i.e. sufficiently = more than sufficient.
See: negative nouns (*Negative nouns), negative verbs (*Negative verbs) and negative adjectives (Negative adjectives).
For desire to have something see 「ほしい」 (ほしい). Remember: 「たい」 can only be used with respect to ourselves (がる).To express that we want to do something, we must add the helper adjective 「たい」 to the い-stem of the verb (*Verb stems). 「たい」 doesn’t mean ‘want’ in the English sense, it can’t, again, because ‘want’ is a verb, and 「たい」 is an adjective.
(わたしは)クレープガたべたい
The common English translation for this is ‘I want to eat crepes’, but as the pattern is just the same as with 「ほじい」 (ほしい), the desire-ability of the crepes is not a verb, it is an adjective.
There is no truly good translation of this into English. We shouldn’t be thinking in terms of ‘awkward English’ or ‘natural English’ when it comes to constructing and understanding these sentences. We should be thinking in terms of Japanese.
What if we took this sentence, 「わたしはクレープガたべたい and removed the optional parts so that we just had 「たべたい」? In this case, the meaning of the sentence would be what the common English translation is. ∅ defaults to ‘I’, and so the translation is ‘I eat-wanting am’ -> ‘I am wanting to eat’ -> ‘I want to eat’. Because there is no eat-inducing subject here, the want to eat is attributed directly to I.
So what is 「たい」? Is it an adjective describing the condition of something making you want to do something, or is it an adjective describing my desire? Well, it can be either. This is very common throughout Japanese. 「こわい」 can mean scared or scary:
おばけがこわい - Ghosts are scary
∅がこわい - I am scared
This isn’t confusing because が tells us what to do.
We cannot use these adjectives of desire (or any emotion) about anyone other than ourselves. If we say 「たべたい」 and there is no context to give the subject, then we must be talking about ourselves, and never the person we are speaking to or anyone else. Japanese simply doesn’t allow us to use 「たい」 or 「こわい」 or 「ほしい」 or anything else about anyone other than ourselves (がる).
<<らしい>>
らしい is a helper adjective. Adjectives that end in しい we can consider a sub-class of adjectives that on the whole express subjectivities. That is to say, they are adjectives not describing an inherent property of something, but a (possible) human perspective on it:
- かなしい - Sad
- うれしい - Happy
- むずかしい - Difficult
- やさしい - Easy
Like 「そう」 (そう), 「らしい」 can be attached either to an individual word or to a complete logical clause/sentence. We don’t need to change anything about the word, just attach 「らしい」 to it. As with 「そう」, if we attach 「らしい」 to a single word, we are talking about our (subjective) impression of that action or state.
And again as with 「そう」, if we attach 「らしい」 to a sentence we’re indicating that the statement itself is subjective, i.e. a deduction/hearsay/conjecture.
There is a difference however:
あの動物はウサギだ*そうだ* - I heard that animal is a rabbit
あの動物はウサギだ*らしい* - It seems that animal is a rabbit
These two can mean the same thing, but not always. 「そう」 is specific to ‘I heard’, whereas 「らしい」 means that from the available evidence, which could be what somebody said, or could be something else, it seems to be a rabbit.
When it comes to the difference between 「そう」 and 「らしい」 with respect to a single word, the main difference is that we can’t apply 「そうだ」 to a regular noun. We can only apply it to an adjectival noun. 「らしい」 can be applied to any noun, adjectival or otherwise.
「らしい」 has the ability to liken one thing to another:
あの動物はウサギだ*らしい* - That animal is rabbit like
らしい is not-necessarily conjecturing that something is something else, we may merely be saying that it is like that thing.
男らしい男 - Manly man
さくら先生は先生らしくない - Sakura-sensei is not like (does not have the qualities of) a teacher
それはさくらしくない - That wasn’t like (you) Sakura
こどもっぽい - Childish
「っぽい」 works very much like 「らしい」 (らしい) and is also a helper adjective but is much more casual than 「らしい」.
「っぽい」 cannot be used on the end of a completed clause, it can only be attached to a word.
「らしい」 tends to imply that the quality is something that the thing ought to have, 「っぽい 」 often tends to imply the opposite. This is not an absolute rule, just a tendency.
こどもらしい - Childlike
こどもっぽい - Childish
<<がる>> Because Japanese is such a logical language it doesn’t allow us to say something that we cannot know for sure. One thing that we cannot know for sure is someone’s inner feelings. We might think that Sakura wants to eat cake, but we can’t know for sure. So if I want to talk about her desire to eat cake, we can’t just use 「たい」. We need to add to 「たい」 (or 「こわい」, or 「ほしい」 or anything else) the helper verb がる.
To do this we take the い off of the adjective and add the helper verb 「がる」.
- たがる
- こわかる
- ほしがる
「がる」 means ‘to show signs of’, ‘to look as if it’s the case’.
さくらがケーキをほしがる - Sakura is showing signs of wanting cake
Even if Sakura has actually told me she wants cake, we must still use 「がる」. All I know is what she’s said, I still don’t know her feelings absolutely.
Why do we use a verb for other people and an adjective for ourselves? I can’t describe someone-else’s feelings because I don’t know about them, I can only describe their actions, and their actions are a verb.
See also: そう (そう)
The potential helper verb has two forms, for godan verbs 「る」, and for ichidan verbs 「られる」.The potential helper-verb which attaches to the え-stem of a verb (*Verb stems):
| あ | い | う | え | お |
| か | き | く | け | こ |
| さ | し | す | せ | そ |
| た | ち | つ | て | と |
| な | に | ぬ | ね | の |
| ば | び | ぶ | べ | ぼ |
| ま | み | む | め | も |
| ら | り | る | れ | ろ |
There are only two exceptions, 「くる」 and 「する」.
くる -> こられる
する ー> できる
わたしは(optional)ほんがよめる - As for me, the book is readable
A common translation of this would be ‘I can read the book’, however again the が is on the book, not on I. If we wanted to say ‘I can read the book’, the book would need to be marked by を as it is the target of our reading, and ‘I’ would have to be marked by が as I is the actor.
わたしがほんをよめる - I can read the book
This is perfectly fine, but it’s not what is usually done. Remember, Japanese is not ego-centric.
As we’re using a helper-verb, the past, non-past, negative-past and negative-non-past conjugation rules are the same as regular verbs, for 「あるける」 (can walk):
- あるける - non-past - can walk
- あるけた - past - could walk
- あるけない - negative-non-past - can’t walk
- あるけなっかた - negative-past - couldn’t walk
The real name for the ‘passive conjugation’ is the Receptive helper verb. The receptive helper verb is 「れる」 for godan verbs and 「られる」 for ichidan verbs, and attaches to the あ-stem of another verb (*Verb stems).
| あ | い | う | え | お |
| か | き | く | け | こ |
| さ | し | す | せ | そ |
| た | ち | つ | て | と |
| な | に | ぬ | ね | の |
| ば | び | ぶ | べ | ぼ |
| ま | み | む | め | も |
| ら | り | る | れ | ろ |
Remember! う becomes わ, not あ.
The receptive helper verb means receive or get, we’re receiving/getting the action that the helper verb is attached to
さくらがしかられた - Sakura scolded-got - Sakura got scolded/Sakura received a scolding
Note, the receptive helper verb and the modified verb have different actors. The sentence is not Sakura scolds, someone else (we don’t know who) is scolding Sakura, but Sakura is the one in the act of receiving the scolding. This is not the same with all helper verbs.
The receiver is not always a person:
水がのまれた - Water got drunk
Even if we add a doer of the drinking, the water is still the actor of the sentence.
水がいぬにのまれた - Water got drunk by (a) dog
Why is the dog being marked by に? Let’s look at a larger sentence:
さくらは だれかに かばんが ぬす*ま* れた - As for Sakura, someone-by bag stolen-got - As for Sakura, (her) bag got stolen by someone
Who is the actor? It’s not Sakura, she’s marked by は. It’s not the ‘someone’ as they’re marked by に. The bag is the actor of the sentence, the bag did ‘got’.
What is に doing here? に marks the ultimate target of an action. So what is the target of getting stolen? To whom is the stolen item going? It is the ‘someone’ who stole it.
さくらが だれかに かばんを ぬすまれた
Here the core of the sentence is now ‘Sakura got’. What did she get? She got the unfortunate nuisance action of だれかに かばんを ぬすむ, someone stealing (her) bag. Sakura got her bag stolen by someone not Sakura’s bag got stolen by someone.
<<causative>> The causative helper verb indicates that we are causing someone to do the verb to which is is attached. The causative helper verb is 「せる」 for Godan verbs and attaches to the あ-stem of a verb (*Verb stems):
| わ | い | う | え | お |
| か | き | く | け | こ |
| さ | し | す | せ | そ |
| た | ち | つ | て | と |
| な | に | ぬ | ね | の |
| ば | び | ぶ | べ | ぼ |
| ま | み | む | め | も |
| ら | り | る | れ | ろ |
For ichidan verbs 「させる」.
∅が 犬を 食べ させた - I caused the dog to eat (causative)
- Core action: verb 「させる」 (cause), actor ∅ (I)
- Secondary action: verb 「たべる」 (eat), actor 「犬」 (dog)
- Implicit sub-clause: 「犬が 食べた」
「せる」/「させる」 can mean to compel/make/force, or it can mean to allow. But it can also mean neither of those. The best way to translate it is with the rather non-native sounding ‘cause’. ‘I caused the dog to eat’ doesn’t mean ‘I forced the dog to eat’, it just means that I did something that had the result of the dog eating, whether that be intentional, accidental, or forceful.
Sometimes the person or thing we are causing to do something can be marked by を and sometimes it can be marked by に. Remember the particles are always consistent. If we are forcing someone to do something, then we’re treating them like an object (を), if we’re treating them as a target, then this is more mutual and goes with allowing over compelling and so に.
That said the use of を and に is not the main indicator of if we mean allowing or compelling. There is no precise English analogy with the causative helper verb, so trying to determine if it means exactly cause or exactly allow is misguided, remember, it can mean neither. It’s sort of a sliding scale between the two, more subtle. Beyond that, when the action that is being compelled has itself an を marked object we can see that in the sub(ordinate) sentence the meat is the object of the dog’s action, and the dog is the thing that is being caused to do the action:
∅が犬に にくを 食べ させた - I caused the dog to eat meat
- Core action: verb 「させる」 (cause), actor ∅ (I)
- Secondary action: verb 「たべる」 (eat), actor 犬 (dog)
- Implicit sub-clause: 「犬が にくを 食べた」
に expresses relation to core clause. を expresses relation to sub clause.
In these types of sentences Japanese does not allow us to use the を particle twice. If we could use を twice then in some sentences we might end up with some doubt as to which を marks the object associated with 「食べる」 and which を marks the object associated with 「せる」/「させる」.
Causative-receptive (what most call the causative passive) means to get made to do. Remembering that helper verbs are ichidan verbs, to add the receptive helper verb to the causative helper verb we simple remove the る and add 「られる」:
- せる/させる - る + られる = せられる/させられる
We now have three verbs in a sentence:
わたしは ∅が ブロコリを 食べ(1) させ^2 られた^2 - I got^3 compelled^2 to eat^1 broccoli
- Core action: verb 「られる」 (get), actor ∅ (I)
- Secondary action: verb 「させる」 (compel), actor unspecified
- Tertiary action: verb 「食べる」 (eat), actor ∅ (I)
Note: The first and third actor are always the same. The second actor always different.
See です/ます form (Polite)
The volitional form is one of the few uses of the お-stem. The godan volitional helper is just う, attached to the お stem it simply lengths the お sound. The ichidan form is to as usual remove the る, and add よう.
The volitional form of 「ます」 and 「です」 are 「ましょう」 and 「でしょう」.
| あ | い | う | え | お |
| か | き | く | け | こ |
| さ | し | す | せ | そ |
| た | ち | つ | て | と |
| な | に | ぬ | ね | の |
| ば | び | ぶ | べ | ぼ |
| ま | み | む | め | も |
| ら | り | る | れ | ろ |
Volition means will, the volitional form expresses or invokes the will of the speaker. The most usual use of it is setting the will of a group of people in a particular direction.
いきましょう - Let’s go.
There are many uses of the volitional form in combination with various particles but they will be covered in due time. One of note for now is the volitional copula 「だろう」/「でしょう」 which when added to any ordinary sentence adds the extra meaning of probably, i.e. it adds doubt/conjecture.
赤いでしょう - Probably red
さくらがくるでしょう - Sakura’s probably coming.
As we know, almost all Japanese words divide into three kinds, nouns, verbs and adjectives, most ‘other types’ are structurally nouns. There is however another way of dividing words which is used in Japanese grammar, this is to divide them into static ‘body words’ (体言) and active ‘use-words’ (用言). Static words essentially boil down to nouns.
By active words, what is meant is those words that can transform, i.e. the final kana can morph or vanish. This applies to both adjectives and verbs. As we know, verbs and adjectives cannot end in a kanji, they must end in a kana. For Godan verbs the final kana is always an う-row kana, and can become the equivalent kana from one of the other 4 rows. For Ichidan verbs the る kana is dropped. For adjectives we can change the い to く、 か or け, or we can drop the い altogether and add something else.
Static words (nouns) on the other hand cannot be modified at all (grammatically), we just add logical particles or the copula to them. It is important to understand that when we join a logical particle and a noun together we must regard those two things as a single unit.
Once we have added the copula (だ) to a noun that unit is now an ‘active’ word, i.e. we can modify it, for instance, as we know, the copula has a て-form which is で, we have modified the final kana of the unit. This is also how we do the past tense of nouns.
This means that all three engines are 用言, active words/units.
<<Polite>>
「ます」 is a (helper) verb that attaches to the い-stem (*Verb stems) of another verb. It doesn’t change the meaning of the verb in anyway, it just makes it formal. 「ます」 is highly irregular:
- The past tense is normal, it ends just like any す verb - 「ました」
- The negative is not 「ませない」, it is 「ません」 - This is the only verb that does this in modern Japanese
- The negative past is 「ませんでした」
「です」 is the formal version of だ and works exactly the same aside from one quirk, unlike with だ which we do not attach to adjectives, we do attach 「です」 in formal speech. It doesn’t mean or do anything, but it’s done all the same.
A useful note, we can use ません and ないです interchangeably:
- 「さくらが話しません」
- 「さくらが話しないです」
穴の 中は たて穴 だった。 アリスは すぐ下に 落さた。- The inside of the hole was a vertical hole. Alice fell straight (directly) down the hole.
でも、 おどろいたことに ゆっくり ゆっくり 落さた。 - But, the surprising thing was that she slowly slowly fell/ But, surprisingly she fell slowly.
- おどろいたこと doesn’t mean ‘A surprised thing’, it means ‘the surprising thing’ (surprisingly). The に attached is again to turn it into an adverb. So: ‘She fell surprisingly’. Of course, it isn’t surprising that she fell, but it is surprising that she fell ゆっくり ゆっくり (slowly slowly).
- ゆっくり is slightly unusual in that it is fundamentally a noun, but we can use it as an adjective without adding に to it. We will see ゆっくり very often.
<<kosoado>> こ, そ, あ, ど words in their most basic sense simply mark physical locations, but expand to have more subtle and metaphorical uses. This is common because all languages use physical metaphors to express abstract concepts.
The most basic meaning:
| ここ | そこ | あそこ | どこ |
| Here (near me) | There (near you/a little way off) | Over there | Where? |
Often ここ means the speaker’s place and そこ means the listener’s place, and あそこ means away from both the speaker and the listener
The れ group act as nouns.
| これ | それ | あそれ | どれ |
| This | That | That (other there) | Which thing? |
These can get confused with the の-group as in English we use the same word for both of these types of words.
れ means a being, it refers to a thing.
これは [∅が] ペンだ - As for here-thing (it) pen-is - The thing here is a pen
The の group act as adjectives.
| この | その | あその | どの |
| This-something | That-something | That-something (other there) | |
| described as near me | described as near you | described as over there | how-described? |
の is used to make adjectivals and descriptors:
この ペンは [∅が] 赤い - Here’s pen as for (it) red-is - The pen that is here is red
The な-group act as real adjectives
| こな | そな | あそな | どな |
| Like this | Like that | Like that | Like what? |
The な used for adjectival nouns descriptive of a thing’s qualities. Distance is often conceptual, not physical i.e. How far the thing is from what we’re talking about or the present-circumstance.
こんあ食べ物 - Food like this
そんあことがひどい - A thing like that is cruel
These are essentially comparing-adjectives. Saying that something is like something either in physical space or in a conceptual way.
Lengthening the final sound of こ/そ/あ/ど is talking about the way something is/happens.
[∅が]そうです - It (the fact/situation) is that way = That’s right
そうせる - Do like that
こうせる - Do like this
どうせる - Do it like how?
どうすればいい - In what way if I act will be good?
Note: すれば is the conditional form of する (*Conditionals)
そういうこと - That way say matter (condition/thing) - Thus-described matter - That kind of thing
どういうこと - What way said matter (condition/thing) - What is going on here?
The 「いう」 here is not referring to the fact we’ve said anything. The いう refers to the description of the thing.
かもしれません - Perhaps
- か - Makes a question of whatever came before
- も - Even/As much as
- 知れ - Potential form of know
- ない/ません - Can’t know (don’t have the potential to know)
かもしれません - As to whether that is true or not I can can’t go as far as to know
(…)だから - From that (what you/I just said) - Therefore; as above.
<<そう>>
「そう」 is a helper noun that can mean either ‘likeness’, or ‘hearsay’.
「そう」 is the same 「そう」 as in the こう/そう/ああ/どう group we (kosoado). 「そう」 can be used with any of the three engines: verbs, adjectives or だ-marked nouns. Simply remove the final kana and add 「そう」 for ‘seems like’ meaning. In the case of だ the engine must be an adjectival noun (な-adjective) (な-adjectives). Remember that each of the three engines can be moved behind other cars to turn them into adjectives (*Adjectives).
Once そう has been attached to an engine, the engine becomes a new adjectival noun.
元気だ -> 元気そう - Is healthy -> Seems healthy
元気な学生 -> 元気そう学生 - Healthy student -> Healthy looking student
おもしろい -> おもしろそうだ - Is interesting -> Seems interesting
Note: Logically だ must always be used with 「そう」, but colloquially it is often left off.
Remember, in Japanese we can only say things that we actually know for ourselves (がる), so unless we have read/tasted/experienced/whatever that thing which the other person is describing, we must say 「そう」 as we cannot know that is is the way that they say.
<<い-stem + そう>> For verbs, in the case of ichidan we just remove る as usual, and in the case of godan we use the い-stem (*Verb stems) of the verb.
泣きそうだ - Seems about to cry
Note: Again; logically だ must always be used with そう, but colloquially it is often left off.
The 「そう」 used for likeness is a suffix, it is joined to other words in order to form a new word. Whatever the word was to start with, once 「そう」 is attached, it becomes an adjectival noun. This is not what happens with hearsay.
When talking about hearsay we use 「そうだ」/「そうです」 after the entire, complete sentence. Back to the train metaphor, the entire logical sentence becomes the main car at the core of a new sentence being pulled by a だ-engine.
さくらが日本人だ -> さくらが日本人だそうだ - Sakura is Japanese -> Sakura is Japanese I hear
So simply put 「そうだ」 at the end of any full statement.
「ようだ」 forms the far end of a sliding scale of ‘likeness’ expressions:
| Objectivity | Subjectivity | |
| そうだ | らしい (らしい) | ようだ + みたい |
| Hearsay/conjecture | Observation/quality comparison | Pure simile |
Each of these expressions can be placed at the end of a complete logical sentence to express that the sentence is either something we’ve heard or some conjecture from the information available:
- そうだ - Conjecture of what the quality of something is: 「おいしいそうだ」 - It looks delicious
- らしい - Has a much greater degree of subjectivity. 「らしい」 overlaps with 「そうだ」 in many respects but it can also do things that 「そうだ」 cannot. 「らしい」 can compare things to other things that we know they aren’t: 「ウサギらしい」 - Rabbit-like (even though we know it isn’t a rabbit). 「こどもらしい」 - Childlike (whether they are a child or not)
- ようだ - 「ようだ」 can be much more subjective still, going as far as a metaphor or simile
<<ようだ>>
山のようだ - Like a mountain
風のように走る - Runs like the wind
Often when 「ようだ」 is being used as a metaphor/simile it is used alongside 「まるで」 meaning ‘roundly’ or ‘wholly’
まるで風のように走た - Wholly like the wind ran
Note that this is hyperbole. Hyperbole in this fashion is common in many languages. In English: ‘I literally froze to death’. We really mean: ‘I figuratively froze to death’; The hyperbole is to give emphasis.
We cannot use 「まるで」 with 「そうだ」 and we shouldn’t use it with 「らしい」.
- のよう*だ* - Clause-end adjectival
- のよう*な* - Pre-noun adjectival
- のよう*に* - Adverb (*Adverbs)
「ようだ」 has a special usage that the other likening phrases don’t have. As with the other two we can attach it to the end of a sentence with the meaning of ‘seems/appears’. We can also attach it to a complete sentence for another purpose. We can use 「ようだ」 to turn an entire sentence into a simile:
まるで1ゆうれいを見た2か3のような4顔をした5 - Did (had) a face5 exactly1 as4 if3 (she) saw a ghost2 - She made a face exactly as if she’d seen a ghost
Note that [2] is an entire sentence being used as a simile for (her) face. We start with 「まるで」 indicating that we are going to use a simile. Then we make our completed statement. か turns our statement into a question, it gives us our ‘if’, she hasn’t actually seen a ghost, it’s a potentiality, so it’s an ‘if’. 「のように」 takes this and turns it into a simile ‘as’ i.e. ‘as strong as…’, ‘as if…’. Finally we are describing her face we use the な connective form.
Using か in this way is something we can’t do this with any of the other likening phrases. Even 「みたい」 which can do most of the things that 「のよう」 can do, can’t do this.
「みたい」 is the less formal cousin of 「よう」 and means ‘looks like…’, ‘looks’ not necessarily referring to solely literal vision:
山みたいだ - Like a mount
山みたいな人 - A mountain-like person
風みたいに走る - Runs like the wind
「みたい」 can also make true similes using 「まるで」 just like 「ように」. The main things to remember about 「みたい」 vs. 「ようだ」 is that 「みたい」 is less formal, and that we can’t use it with a completed sentence. We can use it with a complete sentence for conjecture, but not to create a simile.
Because 「みたい」 is so casual, often the だ or 「です」 gets left off the sentence.
<<ようになる>> When we use a noun followed by 「になる」 we mean that something turns into that noun:
さくらは∅がかえるになった - Sakura became a from
「よう」 indicates a likeness to something (ようだ):
山のようだ - Like a mountain
When we use 「ようになる」 and the other phrases we don’t add them to a noun, but to a complete logical clause:
(∅が)[かれを信じる]ようになった - (I) came to [believe him] - I became the state of believing him
This is often used with the potential helper verb:
日本語のマンガが読*める*ようになった - Japanese manga became readable to me
In both cases the state of something is changing. (My) state of not believing became a state of believing, the manga’s state of being unreadable became a state of being readable.
<<ようにする>> 「ようにする」 is the /other-move/(other-move) version of the 「なる」 construction, to make something enter a state:
まじょがさくらをかえるにした - Witch sakura frog-into did - Witch turned Sakura into a frog
よく見えるようにする - Make (someone/something) look good
「ようにする」 also has an extended use meaning ‘make sure’:
ドアにかぎをかけるようにしてください - Please make it so that (you) lock the door
Related to this is saying something about something that oneself does regularly:
毎日歩くようにする - (I) try to make it so that (I) walk every day
Unlike 「ことにする」 (ことにする) 「ようにする」 leaves a little wiggle-room or doubt. It’s not something guaranteed, but it is the intent, hence ‘try to’.
「ように」 can also be used as a conjunction to show cause-and-effect. This isn’t a separate grammatical usage, it only seems that way from the English translation:
よく見えるように口べにをつける - Look better, in order that, apply lipstick - Apply lipstick in order to look better
In 「よく見えるようにする」 we’re saying to make someone look better without specifying the means, we’re just using the catch-all verb 「する」. In the conjunction example, the second clause is simply replacing the catch-all 「する」 with the actual means by which the first clause was accomplished.
One final note is that sometimes ように can be seen on the end of a sentence:
日本に行けますように - I wish (someone) could go to Japan
This is most typically seen with 「ます」 sentences, and particularly in prayers or petitions. This is a shortening of 「ようにする」 or 「ようにしてください」.
<<ことになる>> As we know 「こと」 refers to an abstract thing i.e. a situation or circumstance.
(∅が)(∅を)けっこんすることにした - (It) became the thing of getting married
What is ‘it’? It is the same thing it might be in English, the situation/circumstance in which getting married is the thing.
We have to use 「こと」 here because we cannot attach the logical particle に (or any logical particle) to anything but a noun. So we use 「けっこんする」 as a modifier for 「こと」 in order to give a noun for the situation/circumstance of getting married.
What does this really mean?
(∅が)(∅を)けっこんすることにした - We decided to get married - We brought about the situation of getting married - We brought about the situation in which getting married was the thing
<<ことにする>>
(∅が)フランスで留学する(∅が)ことになった - (I) France study (it) thing-in turned into - It became the thing of studying in France - It came about that I studied in France
Because 「ことにする」 is a deliberate act, it is taken in many cases to imply a deliberate decision. Notice however there is no actual decision being made by anyone. 「ことになる」 on the other hand implies that something came about without our control:
(∅が)(∅を)けっこんすることになた - (It) came about that we’re getting married
(∅が)たいへんあことになった - (It) became a terrible thing
This time 「ことに」 is not being used on a logical clause, just a single word and so does not carry the implication of a decision being made anywhere, as there is no action to be decided on.
「だけ」 means ‘limit’. Often this is translated as ‘only’ and in it’s most basic form ‘only’ is what we’d say in English, however it’s important to realise that in order to understand some of its other uses, it really means ‘limit’.
1000 円だけ持っている - (I) hold limit-of 1000 yen - I have only 1000 yen
Note: Implication neutral. 「だけ」 functions essentially as a noun. In the set uses given here its particle (in this case を) can be dropped. In many other uses it takes a particle like any other noun.
できるだけ勉強します - To the limit of the possibility I will study - I will study if I can/as much as I can
At this point if we think of 「だけ」 as ‘only’ we will begin to get confused. 「できろだけ」 means ‘to the limit of possibility’.
留学しただけあって英語はうまい - Because of the limit of the fact (I) studied abroad, (my) English is excellent.
This 「あって」 is the connective (て-form) form of 「ある」. The because in the sentence being the て form which remember often implies the cause of the following effect. A common translation of 「だけあって」 is ‘not for nothing’ but what’s actually being said here is ‘precisely because and only because (I) studied abroad (my) English is excellent’.
安いだけあってすぐに壊れちゃった - Because of the limit of it being cheap it quickly broke - Precisely because it was cheap, it broke quickly
「だけ」 is being used for its ability to limit something down to something precise. Out of all the possible reasons that it could’ve broken, it is the reason that it is cheap. We have limited the possibilities down to just one. Again, ‘only’.
留学しただけあって英語はうまい - Only by studying abroad did I get that good at English
留学しただけあって英語はうまい - Only something really cheap would break that quickly
「しか」 is often confusing because people are given the impression that it means more or less the same thing as 「だけ」.
1000 円だけ持っいない - (I) don’t hold more than 1000 ten
「しか」 means ‘more than’, so long as we understand this it is very simple. 「しか」 is only ever used in negative sentences, there is always a 「ない」 or an 「ありません」 when we use 「しか」, so it ends up saying ‘not more than’.
「だけ」 doesn’t imply that 1000 yen is a lot or a little, it only says that that is what we have and nothing else. 「しか」 implies that the 1000 yen we hold is not enough. ‘I don’t have any more than 1000 yen’ places emphasis on the 1000 yen and it being too little or that if someone wants more they aren’t going to get it.
にげるしかない - There’s noting more (we can do) than run - There’s nothing for it but to run - There’s no other action but to run
「ばかり」 and 「だけ」 have the same literal meaning (only/just) but as we learned in the lesson on ばかり, it’s a hyperbole, we don’t literally mean it only sells bread. Just that it sells bread far more than anything else.
「ばかり」 is essentially a noun, it is used with だ and as we know we can only use だ with nouns, although we will find that sometimes the だ/です is left off in casual speech.
「ばかり」 simply means ‘just’ or ‘nothing but’. One of the most common uses is to place it after a past-tense statement to say that something has ‘just’ taken place. This is just the same as in English.
来たばかり(だ) - I just came
Why do we use the word ‘just’ in this way (in English and in Japanese)? It’s another case of hyperbole, just like in the last lesson. When we say ‘just’ we mean ‘nothing else can have happened in so short a time’, obviously this isn’t literally true.
We can only attach 「ばかり」 to past-tense actions because in order for something to have ‘just’ happened it must have well, happened.
The next use of 「ばかり」 expresses that there is a great deal of something. Is this ‘opposite’ use just random? Once again we do the same thing in English.
We can say that someone or something does ‘nothing but’ an action by adding 「ばかり」 to the て-form of the word.
泣い1て2ばかり3 - do2 nothing but3 cry1
This example could be literal. It could also be exclusively figurative:
ゴルフをしてばかり - Only plays golf - Just plays golf (In reality they play an awful lot but not only)
「ばかり」 can also function as a conjunction:
∅がうたったばかりかおどった - (∅) not only [Sentence 1] but also [Sentence 2]
There is a sense of unexpected or impressive positive or negative cumulation here.
The only only extra thing to understand here is the use of the か-particle. Sometimes we put か after something to say that it isn’t the case (か).
∅がうたったばかりかおどった - (They) sing just don’t, (also) dance. - They don’t just sing (but also) dance. - Not only do they sing, they also dance.
<<Because>> The other common conjunction made with 「ばかり」 is 「ばかりに」. に itself can something be added to form a conjunction, like with 「のに」. 「ばかりに」 is an explanatory conjunction. It says ‘something happened because…’. The most common explanatory conjunctions are 「から」 and 「ので」 but 「ばかりに」 has a special implication, it’s not simply saying that one thing happened because of something, it’s saying that something happened just because of something.
みみか大きいばかりに誰もあそんでくれない - Just because my ears are big no one will play with me
「のみ」 is just 「だけ」 in its simplest sense i.e. ‘only’.
あのお店はパンのみうる - The shop only sells bread
「のみ」 is typically used in polite or formal contexts, otherwise 「だけ」 is used.
「のに」 and 「なのに」 are often used as a sentence ending as well as a conjunction.
「のに」 is a conjunction, something that joins two clauses, each of which could be a complete sentence in of themselves, to form one compound sentence. 「のに」 is an opposing conjunction, the main opposing conjunction in English is ‘but’. We use an opposing conjunction when the second clause stands in opposition to the first clause. The other opposing conjunctions in Japanese are 「けど」 and 「が」.
お店に行った*が/けど*パンがなかった - I went to the shops but there was no bread.
「のに」 is a bit different to these two as it tends to (but doesn’t always) imply that the second clause is unsatisfactory, and personally disappointing to the speaker.
パンがおいしいのにお客さんが來ない - Even though the bread is delicious, the customers don’t come.
How does this conjunction become a sentence ender? Grammatically speaking it doesn’t. 「のに」 is still always a conjunction, but sometimes the second clause isn’t given. These are called trailing statements, statements that leave the conclusion unstated (but implied). These are very common in casual speech. Similarly we may often see sentences end with the て-form, grammatically this is wrong as the て-form is also a conjunction, but it’s often done nonetheless.
赤ちゃんがうるさくて - The baby is/was noisy and so…
What this means exactly depends on context, it may mean that we couldn’t sleep, or it was embarrassing.
さくらが約束したのに - Even though Sakura promised… (she hasn’t done something)
What about 「なのに」? The reason sentences end in 「なのに」is that when we use の we have to use the conjunctive form of だ or 「です」. So when that first clause ends in だ, we have to change it to な in order to put a の after it.
∅が晴れた日曜日*だ* - It is a sunny Sunday (lit: it is a sunday that became sunny)
∅が晴れた日曜日*な*のに - It is a sunny Sunday but… (I can’t go outside etc.) - Even though it is a sunny Sunday (I need to finish my homework etc.)
See と-conditional (と conditional).
<<ば conditional>> The と conditional’s particular characteristic was its exclusiveness, in many cases we can use the conditionals interchangeably without much changing in terms of meaning, but each conditional does still have its own unique qualities.
The special characteristic of ば/れば (ば conditional) is that is used for hypotheticals. They always mean ‘if’ and can’t ever mean ‘when’, because we never know for sure if the condition will take place. Consequently, if we use it about something that happened in the past it has to be something that didn’t happen, because if it had happened we wouldn’t be dealing with a hypothetical.
The ば/れば conditional is a helper that attached to the え-stem of a verb (Verb stems):
| あ | い | う | え | お |
| か | き | く | け | こ |
| さ | し | す | せ | そ |
| た | ち | つ | て | と |
| な | に | ぬ | ね | の |
| ば | び | ぶ | べ | ぼ |
| ま | み | む | め | も |
| ら | り | る | れ | ろ |
For adjectives remove the い and add the helper 「ければ」. 「ない」 -> 「なければ」.
This hypothetical nature allows ば/れば to be used in many common Japanese expressions:
どうすればいい？ - How if I act will be good? How act if good? <-> Good if act how?
- Note: the most apt translation of する most of the time is really ‘act’, not ‘do’:
しずかにする - Act quietly
かさを持ってくればよかった - If I had brought an umbrella, that would’ve been good - I should have brought an umbrella
勉強しなければいけない - If I don’t study it won’t go/it won’t do - I must/should study
- Note: There isn’t actually a word for ‘must’ in Japanese, so we always use this ‘If I don’t do x it will be bad’ construction.
Because this is a long winded way of saying something it often gets cut down:
。。。しなければ
。。。しなけば
Even in very casual speech it is still often said in full to emphasise the ‘must’:
なぜいかなければいけない - Why must I come?
The 「たら/だら」 conditional is particularly easy to form, all we do is form a verb or an adjective into its 「た/だ」 past form and add ら. 「たら/だら」 is the only conditional that can be used about past events. Of course, if we are referring to something in the past it’s not really a conditional. We aren’t saying ‘if’ here, we’re saying ‘when’. We know that the condition has been fulfilled because it’s already happened. What 「たら」 does is show that the event that happened in the past was unexpected or surprising. This is because, rather than using one of the more regular means of showing that one event followed another such as using the て-form or 「から」, we’re using an if-type conditional. We’re stressing the fact that what did happen might well not have happened, and that the thing not having happened might’ve been more inline with what we’d have expected.
家に帰ったらさくらがいた - When I returned to the house, Sakura was there (surprisingly). (She doesn’t even have a key, she must’ve climbed in through the window. Sakura does that kind of thing from time to time y’know)
We can also use 「たら」 on future events. Doing so tends to add stress on what will happen if the condition is fulfilled, as opposed to 「れば」 which poses more stress onto whether or not the condition will be fulfilled, or even the fact that it wasn’t fulfilled. Again, 「たら」 is more ‘when’ than ‘if’.
Sometimes the forms 「ったら」 and 「ってば」 to indicate exasperation.
さくらったら
さくらってば
What this literally means is a contraction of 「といたら」 or 「といえば」, in other words: ‘When you speak of Sakura’ i.e. ‘Oh you Sakura…’, ‘When it’s Sakura it’s always like this…’. It’s not flattering, it is critical, but it’s not very strongly so. It can be quite humorous or joking. 「ってば」 is more likely to express real exasperation and can be put onto more things than just a person’s name.
もう言ったってば - I’ve already said that haven’t I?…
「なら」 is an easy to use particle like helper. All we do is put なら after what we say, which turns it into a conditional. We can put it after nouns and complete logical clauses. If used after a noun we don’t need to use the copula (だ) probably because the な of 「なら」 has its roots in the copula itself.
「なら」 can be used on present and future conditionals that aren’t in any real doubt at all. For example, if Sakura is worried that something may not be possible to her, we might say:
さくらなら、できる - If it’s Sakura, it will be possible
Of course we know it’s Sakura, we’re talking to Sakura. So what we’re really saying is ‘Since it’s Sakura, it will be possible’.
Q. 駅はどこですか - Where is the station A. 駅なら、 あそくです - If it’s the station you’re asking for, it’s over there
Of course there isn’t any real doubt that it’s the station that we’re asking for, so again, ‘since’.
<<と conditional>> A conditional is a statement like ‘if’ or ‘when’. In Japanese there are many conditionals. We’ve already covered と as the exclusive-and particle (と and). This is exactly the same と as is used for conditionals. It’s not the same と as the quotation-particle, but knowing that it is the same と as the exclusive-and particle makes understanding the conditional grammar much clearer.
と is a particle, but it’s not a logical particle. It’s also not a non-logical particle. Remember that it is an a-logical particle, meaning that it carries the meaning of the logical particle attached to the second of the two nouns it connects. In the case of conditionals however, と doesn’t attach to a noun, but to a logical clause.
冬になる*と*寒くなる - When it becomes winter it becomes cold
Why is this connected by と? We’re saying that when/if something happens, there is only one result.
と can also be used in a hyperbolic fashion.
(∅が)それを食べる*と*病気になる - Eat that and (you’ll) get sick
It is possible that someone might not get sick, but this is a hyperbole, we’re trying to say to someone that ‘if you eat that you will get sick’. ‘If you keep playing those games you will fail the exam’.
We can also use this と to indicate that something is necessary:
行かない*と*ダメ - If I don’t go it will be bad
勉強しないといけない - If I don’t study it won’t go - If I don’t study it won’t do - I must study
We may even here the ‘if’ on it’s own without the ‘then’:
逃げないと! - If we don’t run… (something bad will happen) - We must run! - Run!
Because と is exclusive, it’s a bit more absolute and also a bit more colloquial than other conditionals like ば (ば conditional).
Sentences where there is more than one logical clause must be contain some kind of conjunction. There are many kinds of conjunction, many we have covered already:
- If/When ~ たら、 なら、 ば
- And/but ~ そして、 けど
- Because ~ から、 ので
We also need to look out for the verb/adjective clause conjunctions:
- て-form
- い-stem
Remember the い-stem of a verb is the main conjunctive stem out of the four verb stems. It can connect nouns to verbs, other verbs to verbs, and various helpers to verbs. It can also connect one logical clause to another.
In Japanese a sentence has to end with an engine:
- う (A verb)
- い (an adjective)
- だ (the copula, can’t be な because then it’s modifying a noun, not powering a sentence)
The sentence will always end with an engine except for if there are one or two sentence ender particles (They are not part of the logical sentence).
How do we find, or how do we eliminate the possibility of a compound sentence? Just as before, a logical clause must end with an engine, and if the sentence is compound it must end also with a connector.
As we know the が particle is in every japanese sentence, whether we can see it or not.
There is a second が, which functions as a (usually contrastive) clause connector:
お店に行った*が*パンがなかった - I went to the shops but there wasn’t any bread.
It isn’t possible to confuse these two が s because the particle が can only ever mark a noun, and the clause connector が can only mark a complete clause (which cannot end in a noun).
が doesn’t have to be contrastive, most of the time it is, but it can be used just as a regular, non-contrastive conjunction.
Also: sometimes this が will be used at the end of a sentence to soften a request.
コーヒーがほしいが - I’d like some coffee - I’d like some coffee but (if it’s any trouble it’s not necessary)
に is the targeting particle. There is also another に that functions the same as と (and). This に is more prevalent in older Japanese texts.
It is further used in certain expressions like 「それに」 (furthermore) leveraging the ‘and’ quality of に to be a clause connector.
「ほう」 is quite different from 「より」 (より) and 「から」. It’s not a particle, it is a noun, hence 「のほう」. It’s literal meaning is ‘direction’ or ‘side’. When it means ‘side’ it means ‘side’ in the sense of direction, not in the sense of ‘edge’.
The idea of ‘side’ isn’t limited to physical spaces, but concepts as well. Also, by nature of there being ‘a’ side it is implied that there is another side to contrast with. Two sides of a coin and all that.
「ほう」 can follow a noun as in 「さくらのほう」 or we can put it after a verb or adjective, in which case the verb/adjective is describing 「ほう」.
Q. メアリがきれいだと思う？ - Do you think Mary is pretty A. さくらの*ほう*がきれいだ。- The side of Sakura is pretty - I think Sakura is prettier
Once again this is a comparative structure, we’re not saying that Sakura is pretty and Mary isn’t, only that ‘the side of’ Sakura is prettier than ‘the side of’ Mary.
Notice again how we don’t need 「より」 here, just as before we didn’t need 「ほう」 to express the same thing.
A lot of the time 「より」 and 「ほう」 will be used individually. When they’re being used together it’s usually either formal or adding emphasis.
Another use of 「ほう」 is in the expression 「いっぽう」 which means ‘one side’ or ‘one direction’. Often we see this in narrative, sometimes at the very start of a sentence, or even the start of a paragraph or entire chapter.
What 「いっぽう」 is doing is essentially the same as the English ‘meanwhile’. 「いっぽう」 does not mean ‘meanwhile’ because it doesn’t. ‘Meanwhile’ is a time-expression meaning ‘at the same time’. 「いっぽう」 while performing the same function does it quite differently. It’s really saying, ‘All that (the previous sentence/paragraph/chapter) was one side, now we’re going to look at the other side’.
Just like 「でも」 it wraps up whatever came before it with で which is the て-form of 「です」 (all that was existing), with the contrastive function of も to give ‘but’. 「いっぽう」 often drops the copula で however.
この辺りは静かな一方で不便だ - It’s quiet around here, but it’s inconvenient - On one hand it’s quiet, but on the other it’s inconvenient
- Note: Remember な is the connective form of だ.
Another use of 「いっぽう」 is that it can also be used after a complete verbal clause to show that something that is happening is continuing in one direction.
この村の人口が減る一方 - This village’s population is declining (and declining and declining) - This village’s population just keeps on declining
See: Comparisons
<<より>> 「より」 is a non-logical particle (it doesn’t have to be attached to a noun). It can go after just about anything, a complete logical clause, a noun, an adjective, whatever. It’s most basic meaning is ‘from’:
さくらより - From Sakura
「より」 means ‘from’, we already have another word meaning ‘from’, 「から」. The difference between the two is that 「から」 marks the ‘A’ in ‘A from B’ in such a way that it is treating ‘A’ as the starting point, or point of origin:
日本からきました - I came/come from Japan - Japan is my point of origin
This often gains the metaphorical meaning of ‘because’, as ‘some event’ is the point of origin for ‘some other event’:
さむいからコートをきる - Because it’s cold I wear a coat
「より」 means ‘from’ in a very different sense. The directional metaphor is concentrating not on the origin of ‘A from B’ but in the distance/difference of ‘A from B’.
さくらはメアリよりきれいだ - From Mary, Sakura is pretty - Distinguished from Mary, Sakura is pretty
We are still using 「メアリ」 as the ‘base point’, the point of comparison, and because of this comparative nature we’re not saying that ‘Sakura is pretty while Mary isn’t’, we’re saying that ‘taking Mary as the point of comparison, Sakura is pretty (therefore more pretty i.e. prettier)’. Notice how this has the same meaning as the original sentence 「マアリ*より*さくら*のほう*がきれいだ」 without needing to use 「ほう」.
We can also use 「より」 in other contexts:
今年の冬はいつもより寒い - Comparing from always, this year’s winter is cold - This year’s winter is colder than usual.
- Note: ‘always’ is a kind of hyperbole in a way
さくらは人より傾い - Sakura is clever compared to people - Sakura is clever compared to (most) people - Sakura is smarter than most
「ところ」 means ‘place’. It means a literal place and also takes on slightly metaphorical uses like: 「わたしのところ」 - my place - my apartment (etc.).
In japanese the figurative sense of place goes a lot further than it does in english. for example
さくらのどこが好きなの？ - lit: Sakura’s where do (you) like - what place of sakura do (you) like?
An appropriate answer to this might be 「やさしだ」 - ‘she’s gentle’ i.e. ‘the place that i like about her is that she’s gentle’, ‘(one of) sakura’s good places is that she’s gentle’. ‘Place’ here doesn’t mean anything at all like a physical location, it means an aspect of something, even if that aspect is very abstract.
Q. わかりましたか？ - did you understand it? A. 分かるところがあったが分からないところもありました - there were places i understood and places i didn’t understand
Notice that this is closer to a usage of ‘place’ we have in english. Don’t get mixed up however, we aren’t saying ‘there were times i didn’t understand’, we’re saying ‘there were aspects/subtleties i didn’t understand’.
Place is also often used to mean a place not in space but in time. We can use 「ところ」 with ‘a does b’ sentences in all three tenses.
昼ごはんを食べるところだ - i’m just about to eat lunch - (it (the present time) is) (i’m) just about to eat lunch place.
Note: this is an ‘a is b’ sentence with a だ-engine, but the original sentence the construction comes from is an ‘a does b’ sentence 「∅が昼ごはんを食べる」
昼ごはんを食べているところだ - I’m eating lunch right now
昼ごはんを食べたところだ - I just ate lunch
Note: in all of these examples the 「ところだ」 is adding an immediateness to the place in time something is/will/was happening. I just ate, I’m eating right now, i’m just about to eat.
We could easily also say:
昼ごはんを食べたばかりだ - i just ate lunch
Sometimes a few corners of this structure are cut. As with many regular set expressions 「だ」 can be cut off. 「ところ」 can also be shortened to just 「とこ」.
なごやに着陸したとこ - i just landed at nagoya
Remember: even though we’ve been covering examples of time, 「ところ」 does still mean place.
いいところに来たね! - you came to a good place didn’t you!
But it can mean either:
いいところに来たね! - you came at a good time didn’t you!
Japanese often contains what appears to be negative statements, when what is meant are really positive statements. For example:
さくらじゃない - That isn’t Sakura
Really this means:
さくらじゃない - That’s Sakura isn’t it? - That is Sakura
What is 「じゃない」? 「じゃない」 is a contraction of 「ではない」 which is the negative of the copula (だ).
これは(∅が)ペンではない - As for this, as for being a pen (ペンだ), isn’t
So, grammatically 「さくらじゃない」 is in fact a negative statement. Negative questions are used in most languages:
Nice day, isn’t it?
A question like ‘Are you Sakura’, is neutral, there is no suggestion of whether we expect them to or not to be Sakura. ‘You’re Sakura aren’t you?’ however shows that we expect the person to be in fact Sakura.
The confusing part is that only in formal speech would we explicitly mark the question i.e:
さくらじゃないですか
か is not used as a sentence-ending question marker in this way in non-formal Japanese.
「さくらじゃない」therefore has three possible meanings, a statement, a question, or a third meaning, each indicated by tone.
さくらじゃない - Not Sakura
さくらじゃない - Sakura isn’t it?
さくらじゃない - If it isn’t Sakura!
This use of tone (./?/!) is just the same in English.
「じゃない」 can also be used as a negative-question sentence-ender in a similar sense as ね:
暑いじゃない - It’s hot isn’t it (expecting agreement)
暑いね - It’s hot isn’t it (expecting agreement)
- Note: 「暑いじゃない」 is not the negative of 「暑い」 which is 「暑くない」
「じゃない」 can also be used after verbs:
もう言ったじゃない - I already said that didn’t I?
「じゃない」 itself is often reduced to just 「じゃん」
寒いじゃん - It’s cold isn’t it
All of these expressions are very colloquial and aren’t in fact grammatically correct. Remember, 「じゃない」 = 「ではない」 which is the negative form of the copula だ, and だ can only be used with nouns.
There are of course more formal ways of using 「ではない」 as a positive statement but these of course tidy up the grammar
その理論が間違っている*の*ではないでしょうか - Might that theory not be in error?
- Note: This may be used as an assertion. Once we have definitively proven something, we may finish with this as a short of challenge.
か is used to mark questions, but not what we might usually think of as a question. For example
さくらが来るかわからない - I don’t know if Sakura will come - Sakura will come? I don’t know
さくらが来るか知っていますか - Do you know if Sakura is coming?
か displaces logical particles much of the time: Normal structure:
- XX が分からない
- XX を知っています
Logical particles displaced by か:
- XX か分からない
- XX か知っています
か is also used in the common expression 「かどうか」 which means ‘whether or not’:
さくらが来るかどうか分からない - I don’t know whether Sakura’s coming or not
Precisely 「かどうか」 means ‘…? how? …’ i.e. 「さくらが来るかどうか分からない」 - I don’t know if Sakura’s coming or how it will be.
From this usage we can see how we can use か to mean ‘or’:
お茶かコーヒーどちらがいい？ - Which is good, tea or coffee?
- XX か - The question/proposition XX
- も - As much as
- しれ - え-stem of 知る (know) indicating potential (lesson 10)
- ない - Negative helper adjective
- The question of XX, I cannot go so far as to know = Maybe XX
<<かな>>
さくらが来るかな - I wonder if Sakura will come
- か bundles the question
- な address the question to oneself
まるで[ゆうれいを見た]*かの*ような顔をした - A face as if one had seen a ghost
Notice how か has turned 「ゆうれいを見た」 into a quasi-noun that can take の.
In certain expressions か calls into question (denies) a proposition
格好に行くもんか - I’m not going to school
「ものですか」 and 「もんか」 literally mean ‘Is that a thing’, this is the same kind of negativising question we have in English i.e. ‘Do you think I’m going to do that?’
Note how this is one of the few uses of か as a sentence ending question marker in non-formal speech. This is because of it’s purposefully rough nature.
Another place we often see か as a negativising question marker is in 「どころか」. Remember 「どころ」is a form of 「ところ」 and means place/time/circumstance/condition. When said as 「どころ」it’s usually negative.
漢字が読めるどころかひらがなも読めない - Far from kanji being possible (for me) to read, even hiragana isn’t read-possible - Not only can’t I read kanji, I can’t even read hiragana
What is 「どころ」 doing here? It’s dealing with the concept of reading kanji and negativising it. ‘The circumstances in which I could read kanji aren’t’, ‘Not only has the situation not reached this far place, it hasn’t even read this near place’.
「まま」 is a noun. What ‘thing’ is it? It’s an unchanged condition:
自然のままの森 - Nature’s unchanged-condition’s forest - A forest in its natural state
そのままで食べられるの？ - That unchanged state-being, eat-able-does? - Can you eat them just as they are?
Note: This で is the copula (だ)
そのまま食べられるの？ - That unchanged state-being, eat-able-does? - Can you eat them just as they are?
Note: we can drop the で see the previous lesson
「まま」 being an unchanged state, in cases where the state could change (like uncooked food becoming cooked) we’re essentially using as a time period. Therefore we can ignore the copula like a time expression:
そのまま食べられるの？ - While they’re uncooked, can they be eaten?
パジャマのまま朝ごはんを食べる - Pyjama’s unchanged state eat breakfast - Eat breakfast while still in pyjamas
いつまでも若いままでいたい - Forever young unchanged-state-be exist-desire - I’d like to stay young forever
Notice how the adjective 「わかい」 is modifying 「まま」 (because it’s a noun).
「思いのまま」 and 「心のまま」 are common uses of 「まま」. What this means is ‘The unchanged condition that’s in our thoughts/heart’. This phrase is always applied to something outside of our thoughts/heart (i.e. not imaginary), and expresses that that thing is the same as how we ‘think/feel’. What this means therefore is making the outside world conform to our thoughts/desires.
思いのままに動けない - In unchanged state of my thoughts, move-possible-not - I cannot move in the way I think I should
Remember: Sometimes 「思い」 does imply desire:
片思い - One-sided-thought (unrequited love)
「ちゃう」 and 「ちゃった」 are contractions of the verb 「しまう」 meaning to finish/complete: 。。。てしまう -> ちゃう 。。。 てしまった -> ちゃった
「しまう」 can be formed into the い-stem 「しまい」 making it a noun, meaning ‘the finish’‘the ending’. This past tense of this is 「しまった」 which can be used all on its own as an expression meaning ‘something’s gone very wrong’‘this is not at all satisfactory’.
We can use this expression as a helper verb that we can attach to the て-form of another verb. This て + 「しまった」 gets contracted to ちゃった. If the て-form is で instead of て then 「ちゃった」 becomes 「じゃった」 just as 「では」 becomes 「じゃ」.
This can be used for a much wider range of things than just regret. To help understand all the varies uses of this expression, think of the English word ‘totally.
We also use this about future things, with a similar feeling as ‘done’ is used for the past.
As sentences become more and more complex, understanding word order becomes more necessary to understand what is going on.
English is a Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) language. ‘Susan hit Mary’ does not have the same meaning as ‘Mary hit Susan’. In Japanese the question of who did what to whom is answered by the logical particles, not by the order of the words in the sentence.
As we have learned however there are still rules about what order words must come in Japanese sentences. This order is according to two simple rules:
- The ‘engine’ always goes at the end of the sentence a. any engine that does not come at the end of a sentence must be modifying a noun
- Anything that modifies any thing (noun or head-verb) always comes before it
Point 2 is similar to English in simple cases. ‘Warm day’, ‘nice dress’, but in complex cases the modifier comes after the noun: ‘(the) dress I bought on Saturday’. In Japanese the modifiers always come before the noun.
Point 1a:
いちばで(∅が)青いドレスを買った - I bought a blue dress at the market
We know this is a complete logical clause because of rule 1.
いちばで(∅が)買ったドレス - The dress that I bought at the market…
Not a logical clause, but a modified noun
(∅が)ドレスを買ったいちばで - The market at which I bought the dress…
Again, not a logical clause but a modified noun
If the が marked A isn’t visible, then there is nothing modifying it (sounds obvious but this hadn’t clicked until it had been said).
The structure of every sentence, in order goes:
- Modifiers of the A car (optional (if there is a visible A car))
- The A car (may not be visible)
- Modifiers of the B engine (optional)
- The B engine
Remember: the 4 logical particles aside from が (に、 で、 を、 へ) all modify the B engine, if we see them before the A car, then they must be part of a clause modifying the A car.
Remember: modifiers can be entire clauses in their own right.
「もらう」 means to ‘download’. When used with a noun it does not imply a giver of the thing we are receiving, unlike kureru and ageru which are bound to a particular giver and receiver. When used with a verb, kureru implies that the giver took the initiative, whereas morau implies that the receiver took the initiative.
Even though no giver is implied, when a giver is mentioned, the giver is marked by に, this is the same as the receptive helper verb れる/られる, もらう like the receptive helper verb are ‘pull’ actions rather than ‘pull’ actions, in a push sentence the に marks the indirect object, the ultimate receiver of the action, whereas in a pull sentence the に marks the source of the action.
∅がメイリーにボールを投げた - I threw the ball at Mary
Note: に marks the target of が-marked subject’s action.
∅がメイリーにボールを投げられた - I throw-received the ball from Mary
Note: に marks the source of が-marked subject’s action.
∅がお医者さんに見てもらう - (I) will have a doctor see me
The Doctor does seeing and the が-marked actor does receiving.
散髪をしてもらう - Receive a haircut
No implication of from whom.
The person もらう-ing does not have to be the speaker:
散髪をしてもらったほうがいい - (You) should get your haircut
Kureru cannot be used for someone other than oneself/one’s group, but もらう can.
The polite form of もらう is いただく (or as this is polite speech is usually used with ます so) いただきます. We are used to this phrase before eating, but what it really means is something like ‘I humbly receive’.
See also: causative helper verb (causative)
聞か-せて-もら-え-ます-か - hear-cause-receive-possible-formal-question - Is it possible to receive (your) causing (me) to hear, kind sir? (Can you tell me?)
学生でも下宿させてもらえませんか - Student even-if, caused-to-lodge receive-possible is not, good madam? Even if one is a student, is it not possible to receive being caused to lodge here? (Do you take students?)
∅がメガネを合わせてもらった - (I) glasses caused-to-fit received (I was fitted for glasses)
Sometimes this can mean ‘allow’:
帰らせてもらいます - (I) will receive (your) allowing (me) to go home
When first introduced もの and こと where explained as being for tangible, and abstract things separately. This is a good explanation for an early learner, but is not the whole picture:
愛はすばらしいいものだ - Love is a wonderful thing
Obviously love is abstract, so why are we using もの? もの is used for nouns. A noun representing a physical thing or a noun representing an abstract thing.
日本に行ったことがある - (I) have been to Japan
Notice how this is a very different statement to ‘I went to Japan’. ‘I went’ speaks of one particular instance, whereas ‘I have’ could mean once, or many times. It is the general fact of having been. ‘(As for me) the thing (the activity/the fact) of ‘went to Japan’ exists’.
日本に行くことがある - The fact of my going to Japan exists - I sometimes go to Japan
どんな人にも失敗することがある - Everybody sometimes makes mistakes - Whatever kind of person it may be, the fact of making mistakes exists.
Sometimes もの is used in a way that looks like a sentence-ender. The first way is when ものだ is added to a complete logical clause. What this means, is that, the logical clause that we’re speaking about, as a generalisation, is reality (is a thing).
冬は寒いものだ - Winter is cold, and that’s just a thing (fact)
子供のころには、よくこちらに来たものだ - When I was a child, coming here was a thing.
Note that such a statement has a nostalgic ring to it, and a sense of personalness. As well as an implicit statement that we no longer come.
What is the difference between:
日本に行ったことがある - (I) have been to Japan
日本に行ったものだ - (I) used to go to Japan
Note the latter is far more emotional.
こと is used as a sentence ender for lists of rules. Even a single statement, if followed by こと shows that that thing is a rule/regulation. こと shows that the statement is a decision that has been made. Refer to lessons 28 and 29.
<<ほしい>>
(わたしは)こねこがほしい - (As for me) a kitten is wanted
「ほしい」 is often translated in English as ‘want’, but again, it is not a verb, it is an adjective. Again, I is not the actor of the sentence, it is the cat, and it is the cat that is wanted, not ‘I want a cat’.
Remember: 「ほしい」 can only be used with respect to ourselves (がる)