With lessons 1-24 of the Pimsleur Japanese I course we should be able to understand most of the following clips from ‘Shigatsu wa kimi no uso” (Your lie in April).

o-negai shi-masu, -te kudasai/kure/choudai

The honorific ‘o-‘ turns ‘negai’ (request) into ‘o-negai’ (favor). Since ‘shi-masu’ is ‘to do’, then ‘o-negai shi-masu’ is a humble request for someone to do us a favor.

‘kureru’ and ‘kudasaru’ are the casual and polite ways of ‘give to me’ or ‘do for me’; their imperatives are ‘kure’ and ‘kudasai’; ‘choudai’ is a version of ‘kudasai’ that women sometimes use:

So… if both ‘o-negai-shimasu’ and kudasai mean ‘please’, what is the difference? Are they interchangable? Let’s see:

Indeed, sometimes they are interchangable, but in general, they are not:

• ‘kudasai’ is informal, while ‘o-negai shimasu’ is formal.
• ‘kudasai’ implies a reasonable request that should be granted, e.g., ‘give me water, please’.
  ‘o-negai shimasu’ implies a favor that we are hoping to be granted, e.g., ‘give me a kidney, please’.
  If we are in a casual situation but we are asking for an actual favor, we can make ‘o-negai shimasu’ casual shortening it to ‘o-negai’, or ‘o-negai ne’.
• ‘kudasai’, as in ‘give x to me, please’, is a transitive verb that demands an object, i.e., we need to specify ‘x’ to complete the sentence, e.g., ‘mizo wo kudasai’ (give water to me, please).
  ‘kudasai’, as in ‘do x for me, please’, again, requires us to specify what it is that we want done, i.e., we need to specify ‘x’ to complete the sentence, e.g., ‘kiite kudasai’ (listen, please).
  In constrast, ‘o-negai shimasu’ can stand on its own, because it is already a complete sentence, i.e., o-negai shimasu (‘do me the favor’). We may specify what we are asking for, e.g., ‘mizu o-negai shimasu’ (‘water… do me the favor)’, but we don’t need to if it is already clear from the context.

Let’s see these nuances in the clip below, from Ep. 3 of “Your lie in April”, in which Kawori is asking Kousei for help. It is a formal plea so she uses ‘o-negai shimasu’, by itself, as she bows; after this, she uses ‘kudasai’, which requires her to state the object: ‘do [be my piano accompanist] for me, please’:

Aside from these, there are a number of social situations in which normally we would have had the option of asking with either ‘kudasai’ or ‘o-negai shimasu’, but it has become the norm to use one or the other. For example, asking to wait always uses ‘kudasai’, e.g., “chotto matte kudasai” (wait a moment, please), while asking for someone on the phone always uses ‘o-negai shimasu’, e.g., ‘tanaka san o-negai shimasu’ (Mr. Tanaka, please).

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o-hayou, matte, kure Ep.3

 

• In this context, the formal text is out of place
• ‘kora’ means ‘hey!’

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-tachi, mon Ep.7

 

• ‘mon’ means ‘reason’, ‘excuse’, ‘the way things are’; we can translate it as ‘after all’, or ‘that’s why!’.

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hajime-mashite Ep.9

 

• ‘namae’ is ‘name’, but it’s casually shortened to ‘na’. For example, the original title of the movie ‘Your name’ is ‘kimi no na wa’ (君の名は).
• Unlike most western countries, in Japan (and many other asian countries) the family name (the surname) comes before the first name.

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otoko-no-ko, na-adjective Ep.18

 

• ‘zankoku-na’ (i.e., cruel) is a na-adjective. We append ‘-na’ to the adjective when we apply it to a noun, e.g., ‘zankoku-na otoko-no-ko’, but not when the adjective is alone, e.g., ‘zankoku desu’

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na-adjective Ep.19

 

• ‘iya’ means ‘disagreeable’, ‘despicable’, ‘detestable’, etc.
• ‘iya-na’ is a na-adjective. We append ‘-na’ to the adjective when we apply it to a noun, e.g., ‘iya-na onna’, but not when the adjective is alone, e.g., ‘iya desu’.

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hitori Ep.22

 

• ‘hitori’ means ‘one person’, but it also means ‘alone’ or ‘by him/her-self’.
• Although we wrote down a formal version of the sentence, it doesn’t make much sense in this context, because Kosei is talking to himself, and most people don’t talk to themselves formally. It would be correct if Kosei was talking to someone else, though.