Japanese – What’s the big deal?? (Part Two)
- GG
- May 1
- 4 min read
Updated: May 7
Post 4:
As we touched on last time, Japanese is considered very difficult to learn if you are an English native, but the reason isn’t simply because there are a lot of symbols to learn. Now I’d like to introduce and briefly discuss some of the main differences existing between English and Japanese which can make learning the language difficult (but also fascinating and rewarding).
(Please note that I don’t have any expertise in grammar studies or such things and this is purely my own impression – so go easy on me!)
Japanese is a heavily context-based language which has a lot more freedom grammatically to shorten or leave out words if the context is clear. (By contrast, English is generally considered to be on the low-context end of the language spectrum).
In English sentences the subject and object of verbs generally cannot be omitted, but in Japanese they can be if the context is clear. As a rule of thumb, if a verb is uttered absent a subject in Japanese, the subject is taken to be the speaker. This means it’s perfectly acceptable in Japanese to just say a single verb as a full sentence, e.g. 戻る (modoru) is the verb “to come back” or “to return”, but while I can just say “modoru” in Japanese, it would need to be translated into English as “I’ll come back” or “I’ll return”. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s famous “I’ll be back” for example, in Terminator 2 is dubbed into Japanese as 「すぐ戻る」 (sugu modoru) – “return shortly”.
Objects in sentences follow a similar logic and can just as easily be omitted when the context is clear. For example, if I gave you a present and wanted to ask later if you opened it, I might say “Did you open your present?” or “Did you open it?”. In Japanese however I could ask 「開けた？」(aketa?), which literally means “opened?”. The context would be enough to imply both subject and object and it wouldn’t sound unnatural.
A conversation in Japanese about what to eat for dinner might go something like:
A-san: “Eat sushi?”
B-san: “Eat”
At first glance this ability to converse in very short, simple sentences might be reminiscent of two cavemen speaking in grunts around a campfire, but when you dig into it further this flexibility in what can be omitted can give rise to interesting or beautiful types of expression not possible in English. This fundamental difference between the two languages makes it easier to appreciate the qualities and strengths of each.
Another major difference to note is that Japanese doesn’t have a future tense. At first glance this sounds like a big deal, and when first learning the language it can be quite confusing, but if we look at the present and future tenses in English, it becomes easier to see why it’s not that big of a problem.
A sentence using the most basic present tense in English – “I go to the cinema” – is the type of sentence that might be written in an English textbook for non-native speakers, but no native English-speaker has likely ever uttered a sentence like this in isolation. There’s always a qualifier of some sort. If I suddenly say to you “I go to the cinema” you would probably tilt your head and say “huh?”. But if I said “I often go to the cinema” or “I go to the cinema every Thursday” with some qualifiers, you can take it that I’m revealing a bit about my love of movies.
In other words, the pure present tense – “I go...”, “I do...”, “I eat...” – is something which has virtually no meaning/use in English without any qualifiers for context. Why is this important? Well, as I said before, Japanese doesn’t have a future tense, but it just so happens that this pure present tense, which is virtually never used in English, is actually used with the function of a future tense in Japanese. If I say “I go to the cinema” to a Japanese person, instead of “huh?” they would probably ask “what are you going to see?” or “when?”. This present tense usage implies a future intention – again with context being important.
Depending on your point of view you could say Japanese has no future tense, or equally that English has a largely redundant extra tense that it doesn’t need/use – it’s all in the eye of the beholder.
I think I’m beginning to ramble at this stage so I’ll wrap up this discussion here. Suffice it to say that although Japanese is very different from English and it can seem very difficult at the beginning because of these grammatical differences, with time and patience things make more sense. With a deepening knowledge of a new language comes a greater understanding and appreciation for your own native language too, and the experience can be both eye-opening and enriching.
by GG
