Now that we have finally come to the end of this large part of forming a sentence in Japanese, we can finally tackle a whole new part : Japanese culture and politeness. So, of course, we have seen a lot of things about Japanese culture, but in this part, I intend to analyze with you a set of small things specific to the Japanese language and which do not exist or which are different in English.
From now on, everything that we are going to see in this new part is aimed at getting you to speak fluent Japanese. All the upcoming lessons will be nicer and easier to digest, but still very important.
Keep moving at your own pace !
To start, we need first to talk a little of the Japanese language. How is the Japanese language spoken ? What characterizes it ? It is important to know that the Japanese language especially like to go to the essentials. The Japanese like to do very simple sentences, wherever possible they will always prefer to say things in the simplest way possible and to do that, they will put the least possible words in their sentences. This is something that we find especially in Japanese poetry, in haiku. For those who do not know what it is, these are very small Japanese poems where we like to capture the essence of things, of nature, for example by putting as few syllables as possible, by trying to be as delicate as possible.
And delicacy is something very specific to the Japanese language. In English, it’s practically the opposite. Due to an extremely permissive grammatical structure that allows us to make very long sentences, we put lots of words to show our mastery of the English language. It’s kind of fun to see how it’s the reverse of Japanese on this point.
You know, the Japanese language is not as difficult as a lot of people think it is. As I have said many times, as long as you have a good learning method, very regular practice and discipline, you will master it. There is nothing complicated in constructing sentences in Japanese once you have a perfect grasp of your particles, knowing inside out the grammatical functions of each one. Japanese is a language that has evolved so that you can say a lot of things in a few words. Myself, moreover, once the particles were well mastered, the main difficulty remained memorizing the kanji. At the time, when I read manga, I stumbled over kanji because I didn’t know them (and I admit that it still happens to me !). Like what, if English has a simple writing system so that you can make long sentences, Japanese is based on five writing systems but you can say a lot in a few words.
Thus, the Japanese tend to remove everything superfluous in their sentences. If an information can be implied by the context and therefore it is not necessary to mention this information, we will not say it. I also explained to you that in Japanese, we can omit grammatical particles when they are implied, but here I am talking about complements. We can omit complements in our sentences in Japanese. I give you some examples in English which we will then compare with their equivalents in Japanese.
You will understand better.
Okay, I’ll start by giving you the following sentence :
This building is a pet store.
In Japanese :
あの建物はペットショップだ。
あのたてものペットショップだ。
Well, let’s quickly imagine a very simple context. I’m with my mate, we’re in the front of a pet store, we already know what we’re talking about. And if I already know what I’m talking about, I can just say :
It’s a pet store.
So, thanks to the context, we already know what we are talking about, there is no ambiguity. We use the « It ». In Japanese, I can imply exactly what we are talking about in the same way if it is already indicated by the context. And so, in Japanese I’m going to omit my theme altogether, it will give us :
ペットショップだ。
So, this is something that we already know how to do, it is what we did at the very beginning of the courses. In Japanese :
És una botiga de mascotes.
ペットショップだ。
I now give you another example, if I mean :
I’m the one eating the croque-monsieur.
私がクロックムッシュを食べる。
わたしがクロックムッシュをたべる。
Well if, in English, I mean the croque-monsieur by saying :
It’s me who eats it.
I again use the pronoun « it ». In Japanese, I can do the same and, again, if I want to imply クロックムッシュを, I will omit it from my sentence and it will simply give :
私が食べる。
わたしがたべる。
And so here, given that we have the context, given that we already know that we are eating the sandwich, well I take it out of the sentence altogether, I do not need to say it.
To remove complements in our Japanese sentences like that, and this is something that is done a lot in Japanese, of course we need a context. First case, we were facing the front of a pet store so we are necessarily talking about the pet store. In the second case, we assume that the croque monsieur is clearly in the context of the presentation and so, again, we know what we are talking about.
It will be extremely common to omit in a sentence all the complements that are implied by the context to make the sentences as simple as possible. This is something that is going to be done a lot in Japanese, and it will be all the more the case when we are going to answer questions. When a question is asked, we already have the elements, so there is no need to repeat them in the answer.
I quickly come back to the first example :
ペットショップだ。
In Japanese, it is going to be extremely common to imply the theme when we already know what we are talking about. Remember I said earlier that we would not repeat a topic that was the same in several sentences. We weren’t going to repeat it in the following sentences but here, from the first sentence, if we already know what we are going to talk about, what we are talking about, if it is induced by the context, we don’t need to say it because it won’t be necessary.
Then, in Japanese, we will even imply things that are not necessarily explained by the context but that we understand anyway. Take a look at the example below :
男だ。
おとこだ。
This is a man.
Here, if we don’t have any particular context that indicates what I’m talking about then it means that we are necessarily talking about ourselves 私 . わたし, and so « I am a man ». A sentence without context and without theme necessarily refers to 私 . わたし. This is for example the kind of sentence that we will use in a presentation context. We introduce ourselves then we say :
I am a man.
Another example, if I say :
女なの?
おんななの?
So here you see, this is a question, so we are addressing an interlocutor. If we have no particular context that indicates what the theme of the sentence is then it is necessarily the interlocutor. If we take the example above, it will necessarily be あなた :
あなたは女なの?
あなたはおんななの?
Are you a woman ?
When we address a person, that we ask him/her a question, we understand that it is with regard to him/her, that we would like to have elements of answer. This is how the あなた is understood. So, in sentences like that, we don’t necessarily need to specify 私は . わたしは since by elimination it can only be that. Understand that the Japanese will often want to make sentences as simple and short as possible to such an extent that they will even omit what is not necessarily contextualized but what is understandable by contextualization. And there you say to yourself : « Oh boy, it’s complicated ! ». No, don’t worry, it’s true that it all sounds complicated at first. In any case, I try to explain all this to you in the simplest possible way. The only solution is to find Japanese people to practice with so you get a good idea of this typical characteristic of the Japanese language and over time you will get used to it. One last example. When I say : フランス人だ . フランスジンだ without context, we will translate as « I am French ». Now you understand that 私は . わたしは which is the theme of my sentence is what is implied.
Now observe this sentence :
毎朝日本茶を飲む。
まいあさにほんちゃをのむ。
Without context, it is necessarily « I drink milk every morning ». Once again and as very often 私 . わたし is implied when, by elimination, it can only be that, the topic of my sentence. So be careful, I will take the example we saw a little above :
私が食べる。
わたしがたべる。
Here, it will be complicated to imply the 私 . わたし because the が brings a nuance. The が brings the nuance that « it’s me who » on the 私 . わたし So here, to imply the subject of the verb is also to imply the nuance. So, it’s going to be more difficult to do it though, again if the context indicates that we’re deciding who’s going to eat the croque-monsieur, then just saying 食べる . たべる could also imply the 私が . わたしが.
The Japanese can always go even further in the implication of contextualized things but in the example, I present to you here, 私が食べる . わたしがたべる is the most correct formulation.
It’s pretty hard at first to get used to all these topics and all of these implied complements. Sometimes we’ll have sentences where we only have one verb. For example, if I say :
行くぞ。
いくぞ。
Here we have the verb « to go » with the end-of-sentence particle ぞ for emphasis; in English we are going to translate it by « Here I go ! ». In fact, we don’t have a 私 . わたし because the 私 . わたし is implied so it necessarily relates to me. Then you see in English, where I’m going is implied by the « here » and so in Japanese, we will not say. The complete base sentence would be :
私はあそこに行くぞ。
わたしはあそこにいくぞ。
I’m going there !
But in this case, we imply the あそこ. We only have the verb with the end-of-sentence particle. So, what are we going to do ? We of course need the context in which these sentences are said to be able to translate correctly. Thus, we lack a lot of elements to be able to interpret well, to correctly translate into English where there, we need to put all the words. This will be all the more the case in writing when we do not necessarily have the context in which the sentences are dictated. There, if we don’t know, we can’t guess so that’s why it’s also going to be a little bit complicated sometimes. But I assure you, once you get used to it, it goes very well.
Thus, the Japanese make sentences as light as possible, unlike English. In English, we are used to being very precise, we prefer to have as few approximations as possible in our sentence by being extremely precise about what we are saying. We don’t like to repeat the same word more than once in a sentence, in a paragraph or in consecutive sentences. But let me reassure you right away. In Japanese, when we want to remove an ambiguity that could be related to the context, they will not mind saying the word clearly or even repeating the same word several times in a sentence or in several consecutive sentences. When it comes to being extremely specific about a word in question, they will repeat it several times in a sentence or in successive sentences. It will not bother them at all.
Now that all of this has been explained, let’s compare the order of the complements in English and Japanese sentences. You have understood that in English and in Japanese the order of the complements is reversed. You have already seen this in relation to the creation of sentences in Japanese. If I tell you :
I eat a banana split and cherries with a spoon in front of the living room TV every morning.
In Japanese, I will imply the 私は . わたしは :
毎朝リビングルームのテレビの前でスプーンで桜ん坊とバナナスプリットを食べる。
まいあさリビングルームのテレビのまえでスプーンでさくらんぼとバナナスプリットをたべる。
As we talked about at the very beginning of season two, the order of complements in a Japanese sentence is completely reversed. We have the verb, then the DOC; then we have the means with which we eat, we have the place in which we eat and then we have the complement of time. Now I want you to notice something interesting. Note that in French, we first give the most important element of the sentence, the verb and then we will expand by giving less and less important information while in Japanese, it is the reverse. We give the less important information, and the closer we get to the verb, the more important the information will become. And that changes the way of perceiving speech in Japanese a lot compared to the English language.
In English, when we speak, when we formulate sentences, we will first give the most important information and then, the longer the sentence will be, the more we will say things, the less important it will be. But in Japanese, starting with the less important elements and gradually giving the most important elements until you reach the center of the sentence, that is to say the key of the sentence which is the verb, we can, once we have the verb, have all the elements in mind so that we can understand everything in one go.
Since we are coming to this, I take this opportunity to make a little aside. It must be understood that a language is the reflection of the people who speak it. And it is the reflection of it through its vocabulary, its grammar, its writing... but also in the way of constructing its sentences. When a person speaks in his native language, he constructs his sentences thus reflecting how his ideas are organized in his mind. For you who read me and who are English speakers, you have a way specific to your language of constructing your sentences and therefore of organizing your ideas. And when you learn a new language with a model of sentence construction that is totally different from what you are used to, you have to manage to restructure the way you organize your ideas to better familiarize yourself with this model of foreign sentence construction. When you speak Japanese, you absolutely have to remember how to construct a sentence in Japanese. We have already seen a lot of things in the previous big part on Japanese sentence construction, but understand that the only way to improve yourself, besides revising your lessons, doing and redoing your exercises, is to practice by communicating with real Japanese people. We will learn a lot more in the third season which will focus more on verbs.
The fact that the order of complements is reversed from Japanese to English, it can sometimes cause translation problems. I use the same sentence :
I eat a banana split with a spoon in the dining room every morning.
Let’s imagine someone answers me :
Do you eat a banana split ?
So in Japanese I’m going to imply the あなたは :
バナナスプリットを食べるの？
バナナスプリットをたべるの？
So, for this sentence, there is no problem. But if ever my sentence, I want to say it while being interrupted, if ever I only want to say the beginning of my sentence, in English it will give :
You eat...
I am interrupted and in Japanese it will give :
バナナスプリットを...?
And I am interrupted. And there, if you look at my two interrupted sentences, you will notice that we do not have the same thing at all. In the English sentence we have the verb and in the Japanese sentence we only have the DOC again out of context. If we just have for example « You eat... » as soon as it has to be translated into Japanese and we don’t know enough, there is nothing we can do. We need the context to translate the sentence correctly and to be able to interrupt it like that, correctly in Japanese. This is something that is found a lot in manga where, each time we have translations, it is often difficult for the translator when he or she does not have the context. This often results in a little weird translation, a little curious because the translator, lacking the context, could not correctly transcribe the interrupted sentence in Japanese into English.
You already know that in Japanese the grammatical particle gives its grammatical function to the word. This is something that will be useful to us when we are going to want to give a word by itself, specifying what it is in the context of a sentence, in a speech. This is particularly something that we will use when we need to create titles.
For example, if I say 野兎 . のうさぎ, « the hare ». Okay, let’s say I want to do my title. In Japanese I can clarify what the hare can be as part of a sentence by saying for example 野兎が . のうさぎが, therefore by indicating that the hare, in a supposed sentence, would be subject of the verb. And that, we are unable to translate it into English, it will always give « the hare » or if I want to imply that the hare will not be the subject of an action but rather DOC of an action, that the hare will rather undergo the actions, in this case I will put 野兎を . のうさぎを and again, that gives us « the hare » in English. So, by putting particles like that I can, in my title, give a certain nuance by indicating that we are simply going to talk about a hare and why not we are going to talk about a hare that is going to be the subject of actions. It can be any action: maybe he will run, jump, dance, we don’t know but he will do actions or, rather with the particle を, specify that the hare is DOC. Will it be tracked down, will it be eaten, cooked with beans, offered to children who will make it their pet... Understand, it’s not just « the hare », it’s « the hare with a nuance ». So, the title remains open to interpretation. We don’t necessarily know what the hare will do or undergo. But with this nuance, we can create titles oriented in Japanese and that is very interesting. And this is something that we absolutely cannot do in English.
So this is something that can be found in other languages, in particular languages that use cases, so the nominative for the subject of the verb and the accusative for the DOC of the verb (all those -if names that language teachers, linguists and linguists enthusiasts love !). Personally, I have never learned a Western language using cases but I will try to give you a few examples for comparison.
For example, in German one would say Der Hase, for the hare as subject of the verb or Den Hase for the hare as DOC of the verb. But in English, cases don’t exist then for those who have studied languages with cases like German or Latin, Japanese grammatical particles work exactly the same as cases. It is indicated on a word by putting after the word what is its grammatical function in the sentence therefore its case. It is exactly the same. Well, if I want to create another title with the hare, I can of course put other particles like に, まで or ヘ but OK. There, these are things that can be translated into English with the words « hare’s », « to the hare », « towards the hare »... so this is possible but when we do not have a preposition as is the case with the subject of the verb or the DOC, we cannot have the same nuance as that which can be given in Japanese.
To give you another example, most of you may be familiar with the Japanese animated film. « Your name », in Japanese 君の名は, so it means the same thing, « Your name ». You will notice that in the title in Japanese we have the particle は. It’s not the DOC, it’s not the subject, it’s the theme. That’s something we’re going to talk about and in fact, throughout the movie, it’s about the names of the characters, of both of the heroes. We don’t know more but with these little particles we can embellish by giving nuances in our titles, it is something very recurrent in Japanese.
Having said that, we assume that, of course, translators, when translating the title of a film, a series, a song, they saw the entire film or series, in its original version and translated it in its entirety before ending with the title. Sometimes the title is what gets translated last.
Now let’s take another example, a Japanese song originally, that has been translated into English : 光 . ひかり from the Kingdom Heart video game saga and whose title was translated « Simple and Clean ». So, how do you think things went ?
The song was originally in Japanese and the word 光 . ひかり is present in the chorus, the latter was first translated into English. And when it comes to translating a song from Japanese to English, it is necessary to keep the overall meaning of the song while creating rhymes that work well with the instrumental version. Clearly, all this requires for the translator a perfect mastery of the original language but also the language into which he or she translates the song, and finally a good dose of imagination in order to create rhymes that work while respecting the number of syllables. Song translation may require cooperative work with music professionals. And this is how 光 . ひかり became « Simple and Clean ».
Remember, we saw the kanji of 光 . ひかり in the first season (it’s been a while already !) and you know that 光 . ひかり veut dire « la lumière », en anglais « the light ». Rien à voir donc avec « Simple and Clean », but the translation of the song remains excellent and the overall meaning of the lyrics (which, roughly speaking is a love story with various metaphors and several figures of speech) has been respected. The title of the Japanese song 光 . ひかり makes perfect sense if we consider all the lyrics of the song as a whole and the same goes for the English version, « Simple and Clean ». Like what, never forget that an excellent translation is NEVER a word-for-word translation.
Want more examples? OK, so we continue with « My Neighbor Totoro ». In Japanese, the title is となりのトトロ. The personal pronoun is not present, the title could have been translated as « Your neighbor Totoro », « His neighbor Totoro », « Our neighbor Totoro »… but the translators opted for « My neighbor Totoro » in order to give a more familiar, more attractive side to the film which is intended for the whole family and above all perfect for toddlers. Totoro is thus introduced as the neighbor, the friend that everyone – all children especially – would like to have.
Then the film « When Marnie Was There ». In Japanese, the title is 思い出のマーニー. This time, the title was not translated as « My Memories of Marnie » or anything else, for a very specific reason. And to explain everything to you, I must reveal the synopsis of the film so, if you have not seen it yet, I advise you to move on to the next paragraph. The film tells the story of Anna, a lonely and shy young girl, who lost her family at a very young age and lives with her adoptive parents. To treat his asthma, his adoptive mother sends him to the countryside for the summer. There, she will meet Marnie, a young girl of the same age and it is later revealed that she is an imaginary friend based on her grandmother of the same name, and that all of Anna's dreams and memories came from the stories Marnie told her when she was a baby. That is all for the synopsis. You therefore understand that, to preserve the final revelation, the translators opted for a sufficiently ambiguous title.
Next, the movie « Spirited Away ». In Japanese, the title is 千と千尋の神隠し. The Japanese title is based on a play on words – or rather a play on kanji – on the name of the main character. A little context will help you better understand: Chihiro, a ten-year-old girl, finds herself in the spirit world. After her parents are transformed into pigs by the witch Yubaba, Chihiro takes a job at the witch’s bathhouse to reunite with her parents and return to the human world. For this, Chihiro signed an employment contract with her name (like everyone else!), and because there is magic in the spirit world and to make this whole adventure more epic, she has her name stolen by the witch who removes the kanji 尋. All that remains is 千 which is pronounced セン and means « thousand ». Chihiro then literally becomes a number, a worker among others and forgets her real name. The film addresses many themes such as the world of work, patriarchy, alienating capitalism, the forgetting of traditions... It is impossible for me to do a complete analysis of the film but to stay focused on the title 千と千尋の神隠し, it literally translates to « The Mysterious Disappearance of Sen and Chihiro ». Sen and Chihiro are one and the same person and there is also the idea of double and duality in many of the key characters and objects in the film. Clearly, all the subtleties of the title are untranslatable into Western languages. The English translators therefore opted for a more neutral title.
This course is now over. Well, it was quite long but essential I think, before continuing on.
It only remains for me to give you your exercises. You will have theme phrases. I give you sentences with pronouns in English which you must imply in Japanese by removing the complements and in which you can also imply the « I » or the « you » when they are in theme to get you used to this way of proceeding in Japanese. Then you will have some version. I give you little sentences in which a lot of words have been implied. So, there are plenty of complements that are not written, in particular 私は . わたしは, あなたは as a topic and it’s up to you to try to translate them into English by trying to understand the context of the sentence. A bit like we did earlier with, for example 行くぞ . いくぞ. So, it’s not easy, but these are things that you will have to learn when you are going to face Japanese, that you are going to have to understand it, interpret it and then, why not, translate it into English.
This exercise will get you used to more natural sentences in Japanese. I’m going to give small everyday sentences for you, very short sentences where lots of complements are implied. This will be a big leap forward for you in Japanese, it will bring you closer to everyday Japanese, more than in the sentences where we put all the complements. Until now, we’ve been doing this to be comfortable with strict, theoretical sentence construction, but now that we know how Japanese sentence formation works, we’re going to be able to remove a lot of complements.
Keep up the good work !
Introduction