Vocabulary

• We will focus on the kanjis in the Kentei lv. 10.
• Sometimes a word does not have a kanji, e.g., ‘hai’ is always written in hiragana, as はい.
• We can reply ‘iie’ to someone that is thanking us for something, to mean ‘no (problem)’.
• We will often split the romaji according to the Kanjis in the word, e.g., 日本人 would be ni-hon-jin, meaning sun-origin-person, i.e., a Japanese person.

Sample sentences

Eng: I understand a little Japanese.

Lit: Me? Japanese! I understand it a little.

This sentence illustrates the main differences between formal and casual speech:

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Comments

The following comments explain some of the grammar in more detail.

Pronouns

I/you – watashi/anata

In Japanese, we can say ‘I’ and ‘you’ in many ways. ‘watashi’ is fairly safe to use for ‘I’. However, the respectful way to address someone else is not using ‘you’, directly, but addressing him or her indirectly, using the person’s last name and an honorific, e.g., ‘Tanaka san’; even ‘anata’, which is fairly formal, can be insulting in some cases. ‘anata’ is an example of how indirect the Japanese try to be; ‘anata’ literally means ‘that person over there’ even though we are using it to address the person right in front of us.

In pop culture, where casual speech reigns, ‘boku’ and ‘kimi’ are common and relatively polite, so we will use them here.

I, me

you

We can say ‘I’ and ‘you’ in many other ways; we comment about some of these in the introduction.

Particles

Japanese ‘particles’ play the role of prepositions and conjunctions in English; they are words like ‘to’, ‘for’, ‘at’, ‘with’, ‘but’, or ‘in’. In Japanese, these particles usually follow the noun, e.g.,

Most particles have more than one function, but we will only discuss the function used in the lesson. Lesson 1 introduces the particles ‘ka’, ‘wa’, and ‘ga’.

か、の

In lesson 1, か (ka) performs its most common function: literally, it’s the question mark ‘?’.

When writing in Japanese, with kanjis or kanas, we often omit the question mark ‘?’ if the question ends in ‘ka’ because ‘ka’ is already the question mark, so writing ‘か？’ is like writing ‘??’. However, we often write the question mark ‘?’ when the question doesn’t end in ‘ka’, e.g., when it ends in は, の, な, ね, or something else.

When we are being formal (e.g., talking to our boss) we use long sentences, and use the ‘-masu’ form of verbs (e.g., ‘wakari-masu’); when we are being casual (e.g., talking to a young sibling) we use short sentences, often drop (omit) particles, and use the short ‘dictionary’ form of verbs (e.g., ‘wakaru’):

Do you understand English?

Sometimes the question mark ‘?’ is denoted with の (no) instead of か (ka), specially by women and children. For example, the formal title of the Japanese version of Eric Carle’s

“Brown Bear Brown Bear What do you see?”

would be

“kuma san kuma san nani wo mite imasu ka?”,

but since it is a children’s book the actual title is

“kuma san kuma san nani miteru no?”,

i.e., the casual version drops the ‘wo’ particle; it uses ‘miteru’, an abbreviation of the casual form ‘mite iru’, instead of the formal ‘masu’ form ‘mite imasu’; and – what we actually are interested in – it uses ‘no’ instead of ‘ka’ for question mark ‘?’.

It is also common, particularly in casual conversation, to replace the spoken question mark, either the ‘ka’ or the ‘no’, with a ‘ne?’ or a ‘na?’, which would mean ‘right?’, or to even remove it completely and make clear that it is a question with the intonation:

wa – は

A long time ago, the particle ‘wa’ used to be pronounced ‘ha’ (は); later the pronunciation changed to ‘wa’ (わ), but the writing of the particle remained ‘は’. We will write this particle in romaji as it sounds, i.e., ‘wa’.

は is the ‘topic marker’; we use it to mark what comes before は as the topic of the conversation, and to emphasize what comes after は as the important part of the sentence, e.g.,

Above we have used ‘wa’ to mark ‘watashi’ as the topic of the sentence, and to say that what is important is that ‘watashi’ is American. The part that precedes は, i.e., the topic, is often known from the context and it is secondary to the point that we can often omit it:

Since は marks the topic, we can move it around and preserve the meaning of the sentence. If the topic is not identified, it defaults to ‘I’ or ‘me’:

The third and fourth of these constructions are common in casual speech. In the third one, we replace the particle は with a pause, and in the fourth one we start our sentence omitting the topic, and after we finish the sentence, we change our minds and decide to make the topic clear, so after a pause, we append it at the end, as a sort of afterthought.

‘wa’ is often translated as ‘Speaking of…’ or ‘As for…’, but we are going to translate it just as a question mark [Rubin], e.g.,

Translating は as ‘?’ feels natural and fits well even in cases where the sentence consists only of the topic:

ga – が

が (ga) has multiple functions. In lesson 1, we use it as the ‘subject’ marker, i.e., we mark what comes before が as the subject of the sentence and emphasize it, i.e., it’s the important part of the sentence. In the same way we can translate the topic marker は (wa) as ‘?’, we can translate the subject marker が (ga) as ‘!’ [Rubin]. For example, we might use either of these translations:

We cannot use context to identify the ‘subject’ that が marks because it is unknown, so we cannot remove it. Actually, Tae Kim goes as far as calling が the ‘identifier particle’ instead of the ‘subject marker’.

When using は, what is important follows the marker; when using が, what is important precedes the marker. We use は to make comparisons while we use が to introduce new information. In the following sentences, we mark ‘ei-go’ as both the topic of the first sentence, and the subject of the second one; we have underlined the part of the sentence that is important according to the particle used:

In the first case we are saying that among many possible languages, we understand English; what is important is that we understand it. In the second sentence we are saying that English is a language that we definitely understand; what is important is that it is English.

To highlight the difference further, check out the following. Google translate translates them both as ‘Mr. Mori understands English’, which is correct, but the nuance is lost:

The topic of the first sentence is English, and guess what? Mr. Mori is the one that understands it!. The topic of the second sentence is Mr. Mori, and guess what? English is the language that he understands!

Another example: from behind, we cover the eyes of a friend that we are trying to surprise. How do we reveal ourselves saying ‘Its me!’? Do we use ‘watashi wa’, or ‘watashi ga’? Well… ‘watashi wa’ translates to ‘(Is it) me?’, while ‘watashi ga’ translates to ‘(It is) me!’ (surprise!), which is the correct response. Another way of seeing this is that with は we would be implying a comparison, while with が are are reveling new information, i.e., ‘It’s me!’. Every time that we are introducing new information, that in English we would write with an exclamation mark, we need to use が, e.g.,

In future lessons, が will sneak in here and there. In general, が plays the role of the object marker for verbs like ‘aru’, ‘iru’ and ‘wakaru’; for i-adjectives that act like verbs, like ‘haya-i’, ‘hoshi-i’, and ‘oishi-i’; and for na-adjectives like ‘jouzu’, ‘suki’ and ‘kirai’. In English, we use the auxiliary verb ‘can’ to indicate the potential of a verb, e.g., ‘I eat’ vs. ‘I can eat’; in Japanese there is no such auxiliary but instead the verb has a ‘potential form’; we also mark the object of the potential form of all verbs with ‘ga’. For example:

Verbs

desu/da – です・だ

Usually, we pronounce ‘desu’ as ‘des’, i.e., the ‘u’ is very faint, or omitted completely.

‘desu’ is the verb ‘to be’; it is often called the ‘copula’, which means that it ‘links two things’. For example, in English, we link ‘John’ and ‘American’ with the verb ‘to be’ – “John is American”, while is Japanese we link them with the verb ‘desu’: “John wa america-jin desu”.

Japanese verbs don’t have singulars and plurals, so ‘desu’ is any of the conjugations of the verb ‘to be’:

‘desu’ is used in formal speech; the casual version of ‘desu’ is ‘da’:

Although ‘desu’ is formal, it is actually the abbreviation of even more polite forms, all of which mean ‘to be’:

Some of these forms are archaic, so they often appear in samurai movies. Service personnel still use the last form to show extreme politeness to their patrons. Hence, it would not be unusual for the receptionist at a hotel or restaurant to introduce their place in the phone using it, e.g., instead of saying ‘toukyou hoteru desu’, they would say ‘touyou hoteru de goza-imasu’.

masu form

The ‘masu’ form is a formal verb form. Usually, we pronounce ‘masu’ as ‘mas’, not ‘masu’. In the ‘masu’ form, we attach the particle ‘-masu’ – or a variation of it – to the end of the verb; we attach ‘-masu’ for the positive conjugation, and ‘-masen’ for the negative one:

Japanese verbs only make distinctions between past and non-past actions. For example, the positive and negative non-past conjugations of the verb ‘to eat’ are:

That is, ‘tabe-masu’ means ‘X eat/s’, ‘X am/is/are going to eat’, and ‘X will eat’, with ‘X’ being I/you/he/she/it/we/they; the context indicates what we actually mean.

The ‘masu’ form is always formal. In the following examples, we modify the verbs ‘wakaru’ (to understand) and ‘sumu’ (to feel at ease) to use the ‘masu’ form.

dictionary form

The ‘dictionary’ form of a verb is the form in which the verb appears in a dictionary. This is the most used form in pop culture and casual conversations. In the same way that all non-past endings of the ‘masu’ form end in ‘-masu’ and ‘-masen’, all non-past endings of the dictionary form end in ‘-u’ and ‘-nai’:

Lesson 1 introduces two verbs in their non-past ‘masu’ forms: ‘wakari-masu’ (to understand), and ‘sumi-masu’ (to feel at ease). Their dictionary forms are ‘wakaru’ and ‘sumu’, so their non-past positive and negative dictionary forms are:

Both る (ru) and む (mu) are syllables that end in ‘u’ so we are not breaking the rule that all dictionary verbs end in ‘-u’.

Expressions

sumi-masen – すみません

The negative ‘masu’ form of ‘sumu’ (to feel at ease) is ‘sumi-masen’, which means ‘to not feel at ease’; we use it as a light formal apology, similar to ‘excuse me’; ‘sumi-masen’ is usually pronounced ‘sui-masen’, without the ‘m’. To make the apology more formal, we follow it with ‘desu’. The negative dictionary form of ‘sumu’ is ‘suma-nai’, which is the corresponding light casual apology; to make it more casual we shorten it to ‘suman’. If we want to apologize for something that is completely in the past, as opposed to some ongoing process, we can conjugate the verb in the past.

In the direction of being even more casual than ‘suman’, the adjective ‘warui’ (bad) is also used as a very casual apology; it means ‘my bad’.

We can use ‘sumi-masen’ as an apology, or to replace ‘thank you’, as in ‘I am sorry (that you bothered yourself in doing x for me, so I am grateful)”. Less formal than ‘sumi-masen’ is ‘gomen kudasai/nasai’, which can only be used as an apology, though. ‘gomen’ means ‘pardon me’, while both ‘kudasai’ and ‘nasai’ are imperatives that mean ‘do’; ‘kudasai’ is polite, i.e., ‘do …, please’, while ‘nasai’ isn’t, i.e., ‘do …’:

More formal than ‘sumimasen’ is ‘moushiwake’, which means ‘excuse’; we can use it to apologize to a superior; ‘moushiwake ari-masen’ means’ there is no excuse’, i.e., ‘it’s inexcusable’: