🇺🇸 In a previous post, I discussed how the perspective differs between Japanese and English languages. Today, I’d like to share two more examples that are areas where students often make mistakes.
Quiz time: how would you translate these two phrases into Japanese?
1) “My friend and I swam.”
Many students are tempted to do the following:
a) 私と友達は泳ぎました
Watashi to tomodachi wa oyogimashita.
Or: b) 友達と私は泳ぎました
Tomodachi to watashi wa oyogimashita.
These 2 phrases are not wrong grammatically, but are a bit strange in Japanese because I’m not telling a story about the friend and me. In the Japanese mind, it’s a story about: “ME, who swam with my friend”. So it is more natural to say:
友達と泳ぎました
Tomodachi to oyogimashita.
This means literally “I swam with a friend” (the “I” 私は is implied) and this is the way it is said most commonly in Japanese since the perspective is from “I.”
In the a) and b) phrases, it feels like we are talking about somebody else, because the viewpoint feels outside ourselves, almost as if we were outside our body and seeing a tale about somebody else.
2) そんな態度ではみんなに嫌われますよ。
Sonna taido dewa minnani kirawaremasuyo.
As I have seen in my lessons, some students were tempted to translate this as: “This kind of attitude will be disliked by everybody.” (嫌われる is the passive of 嫌う/to dislike) or “Everybody will dislike this kind of attitude.”
The correct translation is: “With this kind of attitude, you will be disliked.” (or “Everybody will dislike you with this kind of attitude.“)
The subject of the phrase is an implied “you,” because if no subject is mentioned, the viewpoint is automatically “I” or “you.” In this case, even without context I can tell that it is “you” because the particle at the end “yo” indicates that this person is talking to another person. The reason why it is tempting to take “taido” (=attitude) as the subject, is because there’s the particle “wa” after “taido,” which is a particle that often indicates the subject.
However, it is preceded by another particle “de,” so here the particle that indicates us the function of the word is “de,” not “wa” and “de” here is indicating a means/manner, “with this kind of attitude.” The “wa” is just adding a contrast or a nuance. I will write more about particles in later posts.