Japanese language is constructed within layers of nuance. The speaker can convey feelings through grammatical choices such as the politeness levels, particles, pronouns, verb auxiliaries, and more. Grammar in this way acts like “body language” similar to how facial expression, gesture, and tone can reveal the person’s status or intentions. I will be going over these linguistics “special effects” individually, but today we will focus on the subject pronoun “I.”
In a previous post, we took a look at the different politeness markers and their role in displaying relationship statuses and hierarchies. “I” is similar in that there are many degrees of politeness, some of which are also gendered.
One important thing to note is that in Japanese grammar, it is not necessary to mention the subject. All the verbs have the same form with any subject. For example, in English “we eat” and “he eats” have different pronouns, and the verb form changes according to the subject. Similarly, in French, we say “nous mangeons” and “il mange.” However, in Japanese, “tabemasu” (食べます) means “I” or “you” or “he” or “she” or “it” or “we” or “they eat.”
So, how can we know who does the action? The context tells us, and if it is not clear, we then mention the subject. However, this is less necessary than one would think and why there is a tendency to avoid doing so. It is generally understood that the subject is “I” when there is no subject at all. For other subjects, the last mentioned subject is the understood subject. We specify once, and after that it is understood that it is the same subject if there’s no new subject introduced.
Since it is not necessary to continually mention the subject, if it is mentioned again, it serves as special emphasis. You can find parallels in Latin: “ego edo.” “Edo” on its own means “I eat,” and therefore adding the pronoun “ego” places more emphasis on the subject. It’s along the lines of saying, “as for me, I eat.” The same can be done in French, “moi, je mange” by adding the disjunctive pronoun “moi.” In French, it is often used to stress a fact and to mark a difference. For example, if I say “moi, j’y vais,” it implies “(maybe you are not going) but as for me, I’m going.” And so, in Japanese, mentioning the “I” pronoun when not necessary may sound a little bit like “me me me!” as it stresses the subject, so I recommend avoiding it.
In a next post, we will go over the list of “I” pronouns and their differences.