Japanese lessons

Hiroshi introduces his family while driving home.

Illustration by Makushiro. Click to see his work.

romaji - kana - kanji - translation

The NIN counter

Before going any further, many people must be wondering, "What the heck is a counter?". Let's start by clarifying this point. In the Japanese language, common nouns are classified according to some of their own attributes (the category of long and thin objects, the category of small-sized animals, etc.). In Japanese grammar, those "categories" are expressed using counters.

A counter is used when you want to count the kind of objects it represents: "one person, two people, three people, etc.". The syntactic construction is:

As you will notice, the QUANTITY and the COUNTER often stick together side by side, thus creating a morphological modification of QUANTITY. In the lesson, we have "YONIN KAZOKU" where YONIN is formed with YON (number four, the quantity), and NIN (counter for people). Notice that the N from YON disappears.

NIN is a very important counter because it’s very common, but it is also an irregular counter. Here is how to use it:

You will have to pay extra attention to HITORI and FUTARI, as others are not so difficult since they are regular.

Lesson after lesson, other counters will be presented. Don’t worry, Japanese people don’t master them all either. The important thing for now is to learn the most common ones first.

The polite form -MASU (ます)

As you know, Japanese verbs have:

For example, the verb to eat "TABERU" (dictionary form) is written TABEMASU in its polite form. This –MASU form indicates that the whole sentence is in the polite form, not only the verb by itself. This works differently than English where politeness is expressed using some formulas (please…) and auxiliaries (may I, could you…). Japanese verbs will be analyzed to a greater extent in later lessons. For the time being, it is more about getting familiar with these forms and becoming aware that the Japanese language works differently than English.

IRU, ARU verbs and DESU copula

The verb « to be » can be translated in different ways in Japanese. We learnt that DESU (です) could often be translated as « to be » even if that is not its real meaning. In addition to DESU, there are also IRU いる (polite form : IMASU) and ARU ある (ARIMASU), which are two verbs that are used a lot in Japanese, and that can be translated as "to be" or "there is". The difference between IRU and ARU is that IRU is used if the subject is an animate being, and ARU if it is an inanimate thing.

The NI (に) and GA (が) particles will be studied later.

You can see that ARIMASU can be translated as TO HAVE here, but it is better to think about the sentence as: "banana, is there any?". All that will become clearer after a few more lessons. For instance, the sentence "Banana ga arimasu" has been translated as "I’ve got a banana" here, but depending on the context, it could have been understood as "you’ve got a banana", "he has got a banana", "we’ve got bananas" (in a shop for example). The verb ARIMASU does not express so much the possession as the existence, so do not make the mistake of believing that IRU expresses the existence (TO BE) and ARU the possession (TO HAVE). Both express the existence.

One exception: even though plants are animate (living) things, the Japanese grammar consider them as inanimate objects, so the use of ARU is mandatory when discussing them.

DOU (どう)

Depending on the context and the meaning of the sentence, DOU (どう) can be translated as "how", "what" or "which way". There are no rules, it all depends on the context of the sentence. Observe the different meanings in the following examples:

At the end of the text, the sentence "Anata no kazoku wa dou desu ka" is translated as "How is your family?" but it literally means, "About your family, how?". Here, DOU means "how".

Family roles

Regarding the family, there are three distinct language levels, each one with its own vocabulary. In fact, there is a difference in the way you speak depending on whether you are talking about members of your own family to a third party (case A), about members from another person’s family (case B) or when speaking to members of your own family (case C). The following table shows the differences.

When speaking about your own family to somebody for example (case A), saying "Watashi no chichi" is redundant because the word "Chichi" is enough to indicate that you are talking about your own father and not about somebody else’s father.

As you can see, all the words used to talk about someone else’s family members have the suffix -SAN (except goshujin), which is, as you know, used as a mark of respect. Do not use it to talk about your own family to someone outside your family.

This suffix does not appear when talking to your own family except obaasan, ojiisan, oniisan, aneesan, otousan and okaasan, which express respect towards elders (for older brothers and sisters and parents and grand-parents too).

When a couple has kids, it is natural for Japanese to call each other by their role in the family. This means that the wife will call her husband "otousan/papa" and the husband will call his wife "okaasan/mama".