Lesson 1


Hello, everyone.
My name is Cure Dolly and I am here to teach you Organic Japanese.
What is Organic Japanese?
It is Japanese pure and simple, with no harmful additives.
Japanese is the simplest, the most logical, the most easily understandable language
I have ever encountered – much easier than Western languages.
But you wouldn't know that if you try to learn it from Western textbooks or Japanese learning websites.
Why not?
Because they don't teach Japanese structure.
They teach English structure and then try to force Japanese into it.
And it doesn't fit, and it doesn't work very well.
That is the main reason, I think, why so many people give up Japanese.
The Western system makes it seem complicated, full of strange exceptions and odd rules that
you have to memorize.
And none of this is true if you learn the language the way it really is.
So, this course is not just for people beginning Japanese.
It's very good for those people – this is the best way to start.
But if you've been learning Japanese for a while and you find yourself getting confused by things,
it would be very good to watch this series and learn from the start the way
Japanese should have been explained in the first place.
All right, let's get started.
The most basic thing about Japanese is the Japanese core sentence.
Every Japanese sentence is fundamentally the same.
It has the same core.
What does it look like?
It looks like this.
We're going to picture it as a train.
Every Japanese sentence has these two elements: A and B. The main carriage and the engine.
The engine is what makes the sentence move, what makes it work.
The carriage has to be there because without the carriage there's nothing for the engine to move.
Those two things are the core of every Japanese sentence.
And if you can understand this, you can understand every sentence,
no matter how complicated it becomes.
Later on we'll have a lot more carriages.
We can say more about A; we can say more about B; we can combine logical sentences together
to make complex sentences.
But every Japanese sentence conforms to this basic type.
So, what are A and B?
Let's begin by reminding ourselves that in any language
whatever there are only two kinds of sentence.
And they are A is B sentences and A does B sentences.
So an A does B sentence is "Sakura walks".
An A is B sentence is "Sakura is Japanese".
And we can put these into the past tense; we can put them in the negative; we can turn
them into questions; we can say more about A; we can say more about B. But, ultimately,
every sentence boils down to one of these: an A is B or an A does B sentence.
So let's look at how we do this in Japanese.
In Japanese, if we want to say "Sakura walks" (A does B: Sakura walks), then A is Sakura,
the main carriage, and B is walks, the thing she does, the engine of the sentence.
Walk in Japanese is "aruku".
And we need one more thing to make the core Japanese sentence.
And that is the linchpin of every sentence, and it's が(ga).
Now I want you to make friends with ga, because this is the center of Japanese grammar.
Every Japanese sentence revolves around ga.
And the first part of the reason that Japanese gets so confusing the way it's taught in the textbooks
is that they don't properly explain this.
In some sentences we're not going to be able to see the ga, but it's always there, and
it's always doing the same job.
That may sound a little complicated, but it isn't.
It's very simple, and I'm going to explain that in the next lesson.
For now, let's just stick with the very simplest kind of sentence.
So here is ga.
It looks like a post with a big hook on it, doesn't it?
It links together A and B and turns them into a sentence.
So, our core A does B sentence is "Sakura ga aruku": "Sakura walks".
Now let's take an A is B sentence: "Sakura is Japanese",
or, as we say, "Sakura is a Japanese person".
So, A again is Sakura, B is Nihonjin, which means Japanese person, and once again we need
ga to link them together.
So we're going to picture the A car, the main carriage, with a ga on it, because the main
carriage, the subject of the sentence, aways carries a ga, to link it to the engine.
So, Sakura ga Nihonjin – and we need one more thing.
There's one other thing that I want you to make friends with, and that's だ (da).
"Sakura ga Nihonjin da": "Sakura is a Japanese person".
Now, you may have met this da in its fancy form, desu, but there are very good reasons
for learning the plain, simple form first.
So we're going to learn da.
Now if you look at da, it's like an equals sign boxed off to the left.
And this is a perfect mnemonic for what it does, because da tells us that A is B.
Why is it boxed off to the left?
Because it only works one way.
Think about this logically: Sakura ga Nihonjin da – Sakura = Japanese person.
But it doesn't work the other way: Japanese people are Sakura – they're not all Sakura.
Sakura is a Japanese person, but a Japanese person is not necessarily Sakura.
So now we have an A is B sentence and an A does B sentence.
There is one more form of the Japanese core sentence, for it has three forms.
The third form is when we have a describing word, an adjective.
In Japanese, describing words end with い(i), just as they often do in English: happy, sunny, cloudy, silly.
In Japanese it's just the same: happy – ureshii; sad – kanashii; blue – aoi.
Now, we don't have to learn all these, but we do need to know about Japanese adjectives
ending in i because they make the third kind of sentence.
So let's take an easy one: pen (that's a nice easy word because it means pen) –
"pen ga akaii" – "pen is red".
Now, you notice that we don't have a da on this sentence.
Why is that?
Because the i-adjective akaii (red) – it doesn't mean red, it means is-red.
The da function, the equals function, is built into those i-adjectives.
So those are the three forms of Japanese sentence.
They all start with the subject of the sentence, they're all connected with ga, and they can
end in three ways: with a verb, which will end in u, with the copula, da, or with an i
because the last word is an adjective.
And now you know the basics of Japanese.
And although this is very very basic, you already know some things that the textbooks
never teach you, and you have already overcome one of the problems that makes Japanese get
so very very complicated.
All right.
Now, if you are learning Japanese for the first time, I'd like you to do a little homework.
What I'd like you to do is to make some A does B and A is B sentences of your own.
If you don't know any Japanese vocabulary, I've got a link to a word list in the information
section below this video.
And at the moment, if you put your sentences in the comments below the video,
I will correct them and tell you if you have them right.
I'm expecting this channel to grow rather large, so I won't be able to go on doing this forever,
but at the moment if you put your test sentences into the comments below
I will correct them for you.
And if you'd like to start learning some basic Japanese kanji and start learning how Japanese
words fit together as well as how Japanese sentences fit together, may I recommend my
book, Alice in Kanji Land.
You'll find details of that in the information below.
If you have any questions or comments, please put them in the comments below.
Thank you for attending this lesson.
Kore kara mo yoroshiku onegai shimasu.
Class dismissed.


Lesson 2

Minasan, konnichiwa.
Last week, we learned how every Japanese sentence has the same core.
The main carriage and the engine.
A and B. The thing we are talking about and the thing we are saying about it.
And I told you that we can have a lot more carriages as sentences become more complex,
but they still always have the same core.
Now we are going to look at some of those extra carriages.
And the first one we're going to look at is a very mysterious carriage, but it's also
a very very very important one.
Part of the reason that so many people find Japanese confusing, vague and difficult is
because they are never properly taught about this carriage.
What does it look like?
Well, I told you before that while every sentence has the same two core elements,
you can't always see both of them.
You can always see the engine, but sometimes you can't see the main carriage.
Why not?
When you can't see it, it's because of this.
This is the invisible carriage.
And while you can't see it, it's always there.
And understanding that it's always there is the key to understanding Japanese.
So, what is the invisible carriage?
In English, the closest equivalent is "it".
So, let's begin by seeing what "it" does in English.
Let's take this sentence: "The ball rolled down the hill.
When the ball got to the bottom, the ball hit a sharp stone.
The ball was punctured and all the air came out of the ball."
Now, would anybody ever say that?
Of course they wouldn't, because once we have established what we are talking about,
we replace it with "it".
So we say, "The ball rolled down the hill.
When it got to the bottom, it hit a sharp stone.
It was punctured and all the air came out of it."
Now, let's suppose a small child tries to say this and says, "Ball rolled down hill,
got to bottom, hit sharp stone, got punctured, all the air came out."
Now, is that difficult to understand?
No, it isn't difficult at all, is it?
Because in fact we don't need to use this "it" marker every time, over and over again.
English grammar demands it, but there's no actual communicative need to do it.
And Japanese doesn't do it.
In place of "it" – which actually means nothing because it can mean anything.
If I say "it", I may be talking about a flower or about the sky.
I may be talking about a tree, or my finger, or the Eiffel Tower or the Andomeda galaxy.
"It" in itself doesn't mean anything: you know what "it" is from context.
So, if a small child, or even an adult, comes down to the kitchen at night and someone sees her,
she might say, "Got really hungry.
Came for something to eat."
Again, there's nothing confusing or difficult about this.
She means, "I got really hungry.
I came down for something to eat."
In English this isn't a proper sentence, but in Japanese it is.
All those little pronouns, like "it", "she", "he", "I", "they", in Japanese can be replaced
by the invisible carriage, the zero pronoun.
But the important thing to remember is that they are still there.
All right.
So let's look at this at work in Japanese.
I might say, "Dolly da", and that means "I am Dolly".
So the full sentence is, "zero-ga Dolly da".
So this looks as if it only has an engine and no main carriage,
but the main carriage is simply the invisible one.
And we can say that "I" is the default value of the zero pronoun, the invisible carriage.
However, the context can define it as anything.
For example, if we hear a rustling in the woods and look over in the direction of it,
and I say, "usagi da!" that means "zero ga usagi da!"
"It is a rabbit!"
It, that thing we just looked toward, rustling in the trees, that's a rabbit.
If I say, "doyoubi da" (doyoubi means Saturday), I'm saying "It is Saturday".
What's "it"?
Today ­– "Today is Saturday" ­– "It is Saturday".
All these sentences are full, complete Japanese sentences, with the ga-marked subject,
the A carriage, the main carriage, and the engine.
But in each of these cases, the main carriage is invisible ­­– but it's still there.
Now, it may seem a little bit like splitting hairs to insist that it isn't being left out,
it actually is there.
But it's important to understand this.
It's important at this stage, but it will become much more important as sentences become more complex.
Without this piece of information, they're going to start sounding extremely vague and hard to grasp.
So now, let's start looking step-by-step at how sentences can become more complex.
And then let's see how it all fits together at this stage.
I'm going to introduce you to one more kind of carriage and that is an を car.
This means a noun marked by the particle を.
It is sometimes said "wo" and more usually just "o".
And if you know the English grammatical term "object", which means the thing we're doing
something to, it's a good mnemonic to remember that "o" stands for "object".
So the を car looks like this, and as you see, it's white.
It's white because it's not part of the core train.
The core train always consists of just two elements, the engine and the main carriage.
When we see white cars, we know that they're telling us something more about the engine
or about the main carriage.
So let's take a sentence here: "watashi-ga keeki-wo taberu".
This means "I eat cake".
Now, the core sentence here is "I eat".
Those are the two black carriages.
The white carriage, "keeki-wo", is telling us more about the engine.
The core sentence is "I eat" and "keeki-wo" is telling us what it is that I eat.
Now, the interesting thing here is that we may often see this said like this: "keeki-wo taberu".
And I think you already know what's going on when this happens.
This is another case where we have the invisible A car.
We can't have a sentence without a が.
We can't have an action being done without a doer.
If we say "keeki-wo taberu", what we're really saying is "zero-ga keeki-wo taberu".
And the default value for "zero", for the invisible carriage, is "watashi".
So usually this is going to be "I eat cake", although if you were talking about someone
else at the time, it might mean that that person eats cake.
All right.
So this is quite a lot of information to process at one time, and once again,
if you'd like to make some sentences using を and using the invisible carriage
– and if you do that, I'd like you to write it in three forms, that's to say,
the Japanese would be "keeki-wo taberu";
the full form of the Japanese, including the zero pronoun, the invisible carriage, would be "zero-ga keeki-wo taberu",
and the English would be "I eat cake".
So, if you'd like to practice any of these sentences and write them in the comments below,
once again I will correct them while this channel remains small and I'm able to do so.
If you'd like to learn about the structure of Japanese words and kanji as well as Japanese sentences,
may I recommend my book "Alice in Kanji Land".
You'll find details of that in the information below.
If you have any questions or comments, please put them in the comments below.
Thank you for attending this lesson.
Kore kara mo yoroshiku onegai shimasu.
Class dismissed.

Lesson 3


Konnichiwa. Welcome to Lesson 3. Some of you who have done some Japanese already
may be wondering how I've managed to get through two entire lessons without using
or even mentioning the は (wa) particle.
I'm well aware that most courses start you on wa from the beginning.
"Watashi wa Amerikajin da." "Pen wa aoi."
And this is really a very very bad idea because it leaves you completely unclear
about what the particles really do and about the logical structure of sentences.
However, we're now ready to look at the wa particle and find out what it does and,
just as important, what it doesn't do.
The wa particle can never be a part of the core sentence.
It can never be one of the black carriages,
the main car A (the thing we are saying something about)
or the engine B (the thing we are saying about it).
It can't be a white car either, because white cars like the を (wo) car,
are part of the logical structure of the sentence.
And a wa-marked noun is never part of the logical structure of a sentence.
Wa is a non-logical particle.
So if wa is not a black car or a white car, what kind of a carriage is it?
Well, it's not a carriage at all. A wa-marked noun looks like this...
That's right, it's a flag.
Why do we depict it as a flag? Because that is what wa does.
It flags something as the topic of the sentence.
It doesn't say anything about it. That's what the logical sentence is there for.
Wa simply flags the topic. Now, some of the textbooks
will tell you that a sentence like "watashi wa Amerikajin da" literally
means "As for me, I am an American", and that is exactly correct.
If they would stick with that logic and carry it through, we wouldn't have the trouble we have.
So, "watashi wa" means "as for me". "Amerikajin da" means "=American" or "am American".
So as you see, with a sentence like this something is missing,
both from the Japanese and the English.
We can't say "as for me, am American". Neither can we have a sentence
without an A car, without a ga-marked doer. So if we put the A car in,
it makes sense in both English and Japanese.
"Watashi-wa zero-ga Amerikajin da" – "As for me, I am an American."
Now, some of you may be saying, "Isn't it over-complicated? Can't we just
pretend that 'watashi-wa' is the main car of the sentence?"
And the answer to that is "No".
Because although it works in this case and some other cases,
it doesn't work in every case and that is why we really mustn't do it.
Let's take an example. There's an old joke among Japanese learners and it's only possible
because of how badly Japanese is taught.
The joke is: A group of people are dining in a restaurant
and they're discussing what they're going to eat,
and somebody says, "Watashi wa unagi da".
Unagi means eel, so the joke is that this person has literally said, "I am an eel".
After all, if "watashi wa Amerikajin da" means "I am an American",
then "watashi wa unagi da" must mean "I am an eel".
That's absolutely perfect logic – except that "watashi wa Amerikajin da"
doesn't mean "I am an American". It means "As for me, I am an American".
As we know, the default value of the invisible car, the zero pronoun, is "watashi",
but that isn't its only value. Its value depends on context.
In "watashi wa Amerikajin da" ("as for me, I am an American")
the value of the zero pronoun is indeed "watashi".
But in "watashi wa unagi da", which is "watashi wa zero-ga unagi da",
zero is not "watashi". Zero is "it".
"It" is the thing we are talking about, the subject of the conversation: what we are eating for dinner.
And this is going to affect all kinds of sentences as we become more advanced in Japanese.
So what we are going to do now is take another one of the cars
and look at that and then see how it all works together with wa.
The car we're going to introduce today is a white car, and this is the に (ni) car.
It makes a kind of trio with が (ga) and を (wo).
In "A does B" sentences, ga tells us who does the doing, wo tells us what it is done to,
and ni tells us the ultimate target of that doing.
Now, we don't always have a wo; we don't always have a ni.
But let's take this wo sentence: "Watashi-ga booru-wo nageru."
Booru is ball and nageru means throw. So this is, "I throw a ball".
The core sentence is "I throw" – "watashi-ga nageru",
and the white car tells us what I threw: it was a ball.
Now, if we say, "watashi ga booru-wo sakura-ni nageru",
this means "I throw a ball at Sakura" (or "to Sakura").
Sakura is the destination, the target, of my throwing.
And it's very important to note here that it is the logical particles – ga, wo and ni –
that tell us what is happening.
The order of the words doesn't really matter the way it does in English.
What matters is the logical particle.
So if I say, "watashi-ni sakura-ga booru-wo nageru", I'm saying,
"Sakura throws the ball at me".
If I say, "booru-ga watashi-ni sakura-wo nageru", I'm saying,
"The ball throws Sakura at me". It doesn't make any sense, but
we might want to say it in a fantasy novel or something.
We can say whatever we like in Japanese
so long as we have the logic of the particles correct.
But now let's introduce wa into this sentence.
"Watashi-wa sakura-ni booru-wo nageru."
This is "watashi-wa zero-ga sakura-ni booru-wo nageru".
As we know, what it means is "As for me, I throw the ball at Sakura".
Now let's give the wa to the ball: "Booru-wa watashi-ga sakura-ni nageru."
What we are saying now is "As for the ball, I throw it at Sakura".
The important thing to notice here is that when we change a logical particle from
one noun to another we change what's actually happening in the sentence,
but when we change the non-logical particle wa from one noun to another –
I can change it from me to the ball –
it makes no difference to the logic of the sentence.
It makes a difference to the emphasis: I'm now talking about the ball, "as for the ball..."
What happens to the ball is that I throw it at Sakura, but who is doing what, and
what they are doing it with and what they are doing it to,
none of that changes when you change the wa particle
and that's the difference between a logical and a non-logical particle.
Now I would like to thank my patrons and supporters
on Patreon who are helping to make these videos possible.
In particular I would like to thank Pacifico Bon Magno, who is my first Gold Kokeshi producer-angel.
What does that mean?
Well, why not pop over to my Patreon and see for yourself.
Thank you, all of you, for helping to make this possible by supporting me on Patreon.
And to everybody, if you have any questions or comments
please put them in the Comments below and I will answer.
And if you'd like to try any sentences based on the principles in this lesson,
please put them in the Comments and I will correct them.
Thank you for attending this lesson.
Kore kara mo yoroshiku onegai shimasu.
Class dismissed.


Lesson 4


Konnichiwa.
Today we're going to talk about tenses.
Up to now, we've only been using one tense, and that is the one represented by
the plain dictionary form of verbs: taberu/eat; aruku/walk, and so forth.
To use natural-sounding Japanese, we need three tenses.
You might think they would be past, present and future, but in fact they're not.
The one we've been using up to now is not a present tense.
It's called the non-past tense, and a lot of people think this is confusing.
Why can't Japanese have a simple present tense like English
instead of something vague and mysterious like a non-past tense?
Well, actually it isn't confusing at all, and what makes it confusing is, for a change,
not the fact that Japanese is taught in a strange way,
but the fact that English is taught in a strange way.
The truth is that the Japanese non-past tense is very similar to the English non-past tense.
What is the English non-past tense?
Well, it is the plain dictionary form of English words: eat, walk, etc.
Why do I call it a non-past tense?
Well, let's take an example.
Suppose you get a message on your keitai saying,
"I walked to the cafe and now I eat cafe and drink coffee".
What would you know about the person who sent that message?
Well, you'd know that it was not a native English speaker, wouldn't you?
Because no native English speaker says "I eat cake and I drink coffee" when they mean
"I am eating cake and drinking coffee right now".
When so we say "I eat cake"?
Well, we might say it when we mean that we eat cake sometimes: "I eat cake.
I'm not one of these people who doesn't eat cake.
I do eat cake.
Whenever there's any cake around, I eat it.
But that doesn't mean I'm eating cake right at this moment."
When else do we use the English non-past plain form of verbs?
Well, sometimes we use them for future events: "Next week I fly to Tokyo."
"Next month I have an exam."
And sometimes we use them for something that's going on right now, but not mostly.
For example, in a literary description: "The sun sinks over the sea
and a small happy robot runs across the beach."
But that isn't the way we use it most of the time in everyday speech, is it?
So, the Japanese non-past tense is very similar in the way it functions to the English non-past tense.
If you understand one you can pretty much understand the other.
Most of the time, the Japanese non-past tense refers to future events.
"Inu-ga taberu" - "The dog will-eat"; "Sakura-ga aruku" - "Sakura will-walk."
The way we've been using it up to now - "Sakura walks" - is possible,
but it isn't the most natural way.
We've been using it that way because it was the only tense we knew.
If we want to say something more natural, like "Sakura is walking", what do we do?
Well, what do we do in English?
In English we say, don't we, "Sakura IS walking".
We use the word "to be".
You can "BE walking".
"Sakura IS walking"; "We ARE walking."
Fortunately, in Japanese we don't have all these different forms of the word "to be".
We use the same word every time, and the word is "iru".
"Iru" means "be" in relation to animals and people,
and to make this continuous present tense, we always use "iru".
So, "Sakura is walking" – "Sakura-ga aruite iru".
"Dog is eating" – "Inu-ga tabete iru."
Now, let's notice that in a sentence like "Inu-ga tabete iru,"
we have something we haven't yet seen, and that's a white engine.
A white engine is an element that could be an engine
but in this case it's not the engine of this sentence.
It's modifying, or telling us more about, one of the core elements of the sentence.
So, the core of this sentence is "inu-ga iru" - "the dog is".
But the dog isn't just existing – the dog is doing something.
And that white engine tells us what it is doing.
It is "eating".
And we're going to see this white engine structure over and over again as we go deeper into Japanese.
And just as in English we don't say "the dog is eat",
we use a special form of the verb that goes along with the verb of being.
So in English we say "is walking", "is eating".
In Japanese we say "tabete iru", "aruite iru".
Now, how do we form this "te"-form, which is the form we use for making the continuous present?
With a word like "taberu", it's very easy indeed.
All we have to do is take off the "ru" and put "te" in its place.
The bad news is that with other verbs, we do have slightly different ways of attaching the "te".
Apart from the plain ru-form, there are four other ways.
The textbooks will say five, but in fact two of them are so similar that we can treat them as four.
And I've made a video on exactly what these ways are.
And I think it makes it much simpler than most explanations.
So it's very important to watch that so that you can learn
how to form the continuous present tense.
The good news: it's perfectly regular.
Once you know the ending of a verb you also know how to put the "te" onto it.
The only one that's a bit tricky is ru-ending verbs, but the video will explain that.
So, how do we put things into the past tense?
Fortunately that's very easy indeed.
All we do is add "ta" – that's the whole thing.
So, "inu-ga taberu" – "dog will-eat" / "inu-ga tabeta" – "dog ate".
Now, there are different ways of attaching "ta" to different kinds of verb, verbs with different endings,
but the good news here is that they are exactly the same as the ways that you attach "te".
So once you've learned the ways that "te" attaches,
you've also learned the ways that "ta" attaches.
So if you watch that te-form video, you'll be able to do both the continuous present and the past.
Now, there's one more thing about time expressions that I think is useful to learn now.
If we want to make it clear, when we say "watashi-wa keeki-wo taberu", that we're talking about
a future event, we can say "ashita" (which means "tomorrow") "ashita keeki-wo taberu".
That's all we have to do.
We just say "tomorrow" before we say the rest of the sentence, just as we do in English.
"Tomorrow I'm going to eat cake" – "ashita keeki-wo taberu".
Now, "tomorrow" is what we call a "relative time expression" because it's relative to today.
Today is yesterday's tomorrow.
And with all relative time expressions like that: yesterday, last week, next year, and
so forth, times that are relative to the present time, we just do what we did then.
We put the time expression at the beginning of the sentence
and that puts that whole sentence into that time.
However, when we have an "absolute time expression", an expression that is not relative to the present,
such as Tuesday or six o'clock, then we have to use "ni".
Tuesday is "kayoubi" and we may may say "Kayoubi-ni keeki-wo taberu" – "On Tuesday I will eat cake."
The important thing here is that it can seem a bit complicated to have to work out,
"Is the time absolute or relative?"
And the good thing to know here is that it's not complicated at all,
because it works exactly the same as English.
In English, we say, "Tomorrow I eat cake", "Next week, I have an exam", and so forth,
but when we use an absolute time expression we say, "On Monday I will eat cake",
"At six o'clock I have an exam"; if we're talking about a month we say, "In July I'm going to Tokyo".
Now, Japanese works in exactly the same way except that we don't have to remember
when we're using "on", when we're using "at' and when we're using "in".
In Japanese we use "ni" every time.
But in English when we need one of those little words, on, in or at, then we need "ni" in Japanese.
And when we don't, then we don't need "ni" in Japanese.
English and Japanese are identical in that respect.
So rather than sitting down to work out "Is this relative, or is this absolute?",
just think whether you need an on, in or at in English, and if you do, you need "ni" in Japanese.
And if you don't, you don't need "ni" in Japanese.
It's really as simple as that.
Now, in these four lessons so far, we've covered an awful lot of Japanese
and now we're able to do quite a few things.
So I think we need some way of consolidating this work.
Therefore, I've made some worksheets.
So if you're learning Japanese for the first time, or if you want to refresh with some worksheets,
I'm going to tell you how to get them in the information section below.
So take a look there, at the end of this video, and I'll give you all the details.
Now, I'd like to thank my three producer-angel Gold Kokeshi patrons, Maria Dal Martello,
Electric Dragonfly and Pacifico Bon Magno.
Thank you for your support.
Thank you for helping to make this series and this work possible.
And thank you to all my patrons on Patreon,
and to everyone, if you have any questions or comments,
please put them in the Comments below and I will answer.
Thank you for attending this lesson.
Kore kara mo yoroshiku onegai shimasu.
Class dismissed.

Lesson 5
Konnichiwa.
Today we're going to talk about Japanese verb groups.
Japanese verbs fall into three groups, and these don't matter except when we're going
to make some change in the form of the verb.
But because we do that pretty often, it's important to understand the three groups.
The first group of Japanese verbs is called ichidan verbs or "one-level" verbs.
Some people call them "ru-verbs", which is a very silly name.
If you're going to call them anything like that, we should probably call them "iru/eru verbs".
They are the simplest and most basic kind of verb.
When we want to make any change, we always do it the same way.
All we do is take the -ru off the end and put on whatever we want to put on.
Ichidan verbs can only end with either -iru or -eru,
that's to say, with one of the kana from the i-row or one of the kana from the e-row plus -ru.
The second group of verbs is by far the largest and any ending that a verb can have,
verbs in this group can have.
Verbs always end with the u-sound, but not all u-kana can make the end of a verb,
but a lot of them can and all of them can make godan verbs.
They are called godan verbs, or "five-level" verbs, for reasons that we'll see shortly,
and as I say they can end in any u-sound, including -iru or -eru.
Unlike ichidan verbs, they can also end in -oru, -aru or -uru.
So the only time we have any ambiguity is when we have a verb ending in -iru or -eru.
Most of those verbs are ichidan verbs, but there is a substantial minority
of iru/eru-ending godan verbs.
It's not as difficult to differentiate them as you might think, and I've made a video on that,
although it's a little bit more advanced than this lesson.
The third group of verbs is irregular verbs,
and the good news here is that there are only two of them.
You know those pages and pages of irregular verbs in your Spanish or French textbook?
Well, Japanese has just two.
There are a couple of other verbs that are irregular in just one small respect, but very few.
The irregular verbs are kuru (come) and suru (do).
So now that we know the three groups, we're going to take a look at how you make them
into the te- and ta-form.
As I explained last week, we need those two forms for making the Japanese present and past tenses.
And they have a number of other uses too, which we'll learn as we go along with this course.
And as I demonstrated last week, ichidan verbs are always very easy.
You never do anything except take off the -ru and put on whatever you're going to put on,
in this case a te or a ta.
As for the godan verbs, they fall into five groups, as you would expect (go-dan, five-level, verbs)
and I made a video about this a while ago.
So what I'm going to do is run that video right now,
because I think it explains things pretty clearly.
All right, roll the video.
Godan verbs have five kinds of possible ending – that's why they're called godan verbs:
five-level verbs.
And although that seems a little bit difficult, it really isn't.
We can combine two of the levels anyway, because they are so close that we only need to learn them once.
And I'm going to go through the main groups.
The first group is what I call the UTSURU verbs.
Those are the verbs ending in -u, -tsu and -ru.
The word utsuru in Japanese – if you don't know it, now is a good time to learn it –
utsuru means to move from one thing to another, and that's exactly what we're doing here –
moving our verbs from one type to another.
So the verbs which end in -u, -tsu and -ru all transform in the same way to the te-form.
We take off the -u, the -tsu or the -ru, and we replace it with a small -tsu plus te
(or ta in the ta-form).
So warau, laugh, becomes waratte; motsu, hold, becomes motte, and toru, take, becomes totte.
Now, you'll notice that utsuru has tsu in the middle.
And the te-form of the utsuru verbs is formed by using a small tsu plus that te.
It's the only group that has tsu in it, and it's the only group that has a tsu in the te-form ending.
So it's really easy to remember.
The second group is what I call the NEW BOOM group.
In Japanese when something is really taking off, when it's becoming popular,
we call it a ブーム (BUUMU).
That's an English word, isn't it?
Buumu, a New Buumu!
So, this group I call the New Boom group
because there isn't a Japanese word that you can make out of nu, bu and mu that I know of,
and what I want you to notice about this group of verbs is that they all end
in what I would call a dull sound – nu, mu, bu.
It's not a sharp sound like su, tsu, ku, and it's not a neutral sound like ru or u.
It's a dull sound – nu, bu, mu.
And this is important because the ending is also a dull sound.
The te-form ending is -nde, the ta-form is -nda.
So shinu, the only -nu ending verb, becomes shinde / shinda; nomu, drink, becomes nonde / nonda;
asobu, play, becomes asonde / asonda.
So that's the New Boom group, the dull-ending verbs.
And because only a limited number of the possible kana can be used as a verb ending, they include
all the dull sounds except for gu.
We'll come to that right now.
I told you that two of the groups could be combined, and that is the ku and gu group.
To make the te form of a -ku ending verb, we cut off the -ku and add -ite,
or -ita in the ta form.
So aruku, walk, becomes aruite / aruita.
Now, if we have a ten-ten on that -ku, to make it into a -gu, it's exactly the same,
except that there is also a ten-ten on the te-ending.
So aruku becomes aruite, but oyogu, to swim, becomes oyoide.
But, as you see, the two are more or less identical.
It's just that if there's a ten-ten on the original verb, there's a ten-ten on the te-form too.
Aruku, aruite; oyogu, oyoide.
And now we just have one left, and that is su.
And verbs ending in -su drop the -su and add -shite.
As you will notice, if you have followed our last lesson, we are just doing that regular
thing of shifting the su kana to its i-row equivalent, shi.
So hanasu, talk, becomes hanashite;
the masu helper verb, which turns verbs into formal verbs, in the past tense becomes mashita.
So now we have all the go-dan verbs.
Didn't I look young in that old video?
Now, we are just going to look at the exceptions.
There are only three altogether: our two irregular verbs and one other small one.
And these are very simple.
Kuru (come) become kite; suru (do) becomes shite.
And iku – the verb iku (to go) – because it ends in -ku, you would expect it to become iite,
but it doesn't, it becomes itte.
And those are the only exceptions.
So if you go over the video a couple of times, I think you'll find it pretty easy to know
exactly how to make the te- and ta-forms in all cases.
If you have any questions or comments, please leave them in the Comments below.
And I'd like to thank my Gold Kokeshi patrons on Patreon, for helping to make this video possible.
And I'd like to thank all my patrons, who make this work in unlocking Japanese possible.
Kore kara mo yoroshiku onegai shimasu.
Class dismissed.

Lesson 6

Konnichiwa.
Today we are going to talk about adjectives.
Now, Japanese adjectives are not the same thing as English adjectives.
As we know, Japanese sentences come in three fundamental kinds,
depending on the kind of engine they have.
We have the U-Train, verb sentences; the DA-Train, noun sentences; and the
I-Train, which is the so-called adjectival sentences.
But the truth is that any one of the three kinds of engine can be used like an adjective.
So let's start off with the most obvious one, the one that's called "adjective" in English.
A simple I-Train sentence is "pen-ga akai". As you know,
"akai" doesn't mean "red", it means "is-red".
Now, we can turn this black engine white and put it behind the pen.
Now we have "akai pen-ga".
"Akai pen" means "is-red pen" or, as we say in English, "red pen".
As you see, this isn't a full sentence in itself anymore because a white engine doesn't
pull the train, it just tells us more about whatever it is sitting behind.
So "akai", once it becomes a white engine, is just telling us more about
the main car of the sentence, which is "pen".
And if we want to make it into a full sentence, we have to have a new engine.
So, let's take "chiisai", which means "is-small".
"Akai pen-ga chiisai" – "The red pen is small".
So that's simple enough.
Now let's look at verbs.
Now, if you're worrying about na-adjectives, as they are called, don't worry.
They are nouns, and we'll get to them in a minute.
Are they used only in nominal syntagmas?
Image
Any U-Engine, any verb, in any tense, can be used like an adjective.
So, we can say, "shoujo-ga utatta".
"Utatta" means "sang".
The word for sing is "utau", so the ta-form, as we know from our last lesson, is "utatta".
"Shoujo-ga utatta" – "The girl sang", and if we turn that engine white and put it behind the girl,
we have "utatta shoujo" – "the girl who sang".
And of course, once again this isn't a sentence.
But we can put in into any sentence we like, such as
"utatta shoujo-ga nete iru" – "the girl who sang is sleeping".
And this is terribly important because a lot of Japanese is structured this way.
We can use entire verb-sentences as adjectivals if we want to, and this happens very often.
For example, "inu-ga jisho-wo tabeta" – "the dog ate the dictionary".
We can turn this around to "jisho-wo tabeta inu" – "the dog who ate the dictionary".
Or we can say, "inu-ga tabeta jisho" – "the dictionary that was eaten by the dog".
And then this can build into the full sentence, "jisho-wo tabeta inu-ga yancha-da".
"Yancha" is a noun that means "naughty" or "bad", so, "the dog who ate the dictionary is bad".
This brings us to the noun-engine.
If we just say "inu-ga yancha-da", we have a simple noun sentence.
But we can turn this engine as well into a white engine and put it behind the dog.
But there is one change we have to make.
When we turn "da" or "desu" into a white engine, when we connect it to anything,
it changes its form from "da" to "na".
So we say "inu-ga yancha-da", but we say "yancha-na inu", which is the same as saying "yancha-da inu" –
"is-bad dog / the dog that is bad / the bad dog".
So we can say "yancha-na inu-ga nete iru" – "the bad dog is sleeping".
Now, the important thing to note here is that you can't do this with every noun.
There are only some nouns that are frequently used in an adjectival way, that you can use
in the way we showed here.
These are what the textbooks call "na-adjectives", and it's a slightly confusing term, because
as we see they are in fact nouns, but they are a certain class of noun.
Can we use other nouns as adjectives?
Yes, we can, but we use them in a somewhat different way and they aren't engines.
To explain this we have to introduce a new type of car for our train.
And this is the の car.
の [no] is a very simple particle because it works exactly like apostrophe-s ['s] in English.
So, "Sakura no doresu" means "Sakura's dress".
"Watashi no hana" means "my nose".
Luckily, we don't have to worry about things like "my" and "your" and "her" and "his" in Japanese;
we always just use "no".
Now, because "no" is the possessive particle, it can be used in another, slightly different way.
At the beginning of my older videos, I always used to say, "KawaJapa no Kyua Dorii desu"
– "I am KawaJapa's Cure Dolly".
In other words, KawaJapa is the group or party or website that I belong to.
And we can use this more widely for defining the group or class to which anything belongs.
So, "akai" means "red" because we can turn the noun "aka" into the adjectival form "akai".
But we can't do that with all colors.
For example, "pinku-iro".
"Iro" means "color", and we say "pinku-iro", that means "pink".
But that doesn't have an i-form.
And it doesn't count as an adjectival noun, a na-adjective, as they are called in English, either
So what we do with it is, we use "no".
"Pinku-iro-no doresu" – "pink dress".
And this means "dress belonging to the class of pink things".
If we want to say "Oscar the Rabbit", we say "usagi-no Osukaru", which literally means
"rabbit's Oscar", and what it means is "Oscar who belongs to the class 'rabbit' ".
"Zeruda-no densetsu" means "the legend of Zelda";
"densetsu-no senshi" means "legendary warrior / warrior who belongs to the class of legendary things".
So we have four ways of forming adjectivals: the three engines plus the の car.
And using this we can make all kinds of sentences and they can become very complex, especially
with verbal adjectives in which we can use whole complex sentences in an adjectival manner.
And I'm going to do some worksheets that will help us to get used to some of those more
complex sentences and I'll put them in the information section below this video lesson.
Now, one thing you may be thinking is, "Since some nouns are used as adjectives with 'na'
and some with 'no', do I have to start learning lists of which ones go with 'no'
and which ones go with 'na'?"
And my answer to that is, I don't see any good reason to do so unless you are having
to learn them for an exam.
Why not?
Well, look at it logically.
If you hear someone use them with either "no" or "na", you're going to know what they're saying.
If you use them yourself and you get it wrong, nobody is going to have any difficulty understanding
what you're saying, and it's a very small and typical foreigner's mistake, and frankly
I think it's the least of your worries at an early stage.
If you're writing, you can of course look them up very easily.
As you use Japanese more, hear more Japanese, read more Japanese, you will pick up which
ones are "no" and which ones are "na".
And if you're not going to use Japanese very much, well, why do you need to know?
To me, Japanese isn't a game of learning abstract information for no particular reason.
It's a language that for the most part we can learn in a natural manner,
and understanding its real structure helps us very greatly to do that.
If you have any comments or questions, please put them in the Comments below and I will answer
I'd like to thank my Gold Kokeshi patrons and all my patrons on Patreon for making these
lessons possible and helping us all to unlock Japanese.
Kore kara mo yoroshiku onegai shimasu.
Class dismissed.





Lesson 7


Today we're going to talk about negatives.
And in order to do that we're going to have to introduce one of the fundamental secrets of Japanese
that the schools and textbooks almost never tell you.
And it makes the whole of Japanese much much easier.
But before we get to that, let's look at the fundamental basis of Japanese negatives.
The fundamental basis of negatives is the adjective "nai".
This adjective means "non-exist / not-be".
The word for "exist" for any object, any inanimate thing, the sky, the sea, the universe,
a grain of rice, a flower, a tree, anything, is "aru".
So, if we want to say, "There is a pen / A pen exists", we say "pen-ga aru".
But if we want to say there isn't a pen, we say "pen-ga nai".
Now, why do we use a verb for being and an adjective for non-being?
Because this happens throughout Japanese.
Whenever we DO something we use a verb.
Whether we walk, or sing, or run, or anything – that's a verb.
But if we don't do it, then we attach "nai" to the verb and that becomes the engine of the sentence.
So when we say we're not doing something, we're not using a verb, we're using an adjective.
Why is that?
Because Japanese is very logical.
When we do something, an action is taking place.
That's a verb.
But when we don't do it, no action is taking place and we are describing a state of non-action.
So, that's an adjective.
All right.
So, if we want to say, "There is no pen", we say "pen-ga nai."
But what if we want to say, "This is not a pen"?
That's not quite the same thing, is it?
So, how do we say that?
If we want to say "There is a pen", as we know, we say
"kore-wa ("kore" – "this")... kore-wa pen-da".
"As for this, pen = / As for this, it's a pen."
But if we want to say, "This is not a pen", we say, "kore-wa, pen-de-wa nai".
So what does that mean?
Well, the "de" is the te-form of "da" or "desu".
So we still have "kore-wa pen-da" in the form of "kore-wa pen-de" and then we're attaching "nai".
So what we're saying is, "As for this, as for being a pen, it isn't / This is not a pen".
---------------------------------"kore-wa, pen-de-wa nai".
All right.
So now let's move on to the largest part of this question, which is verbs.
In order to put a verb into the negative, we have to attach "nai",
and we do this by attaching it to the a-stem.
What does that mean?
Well, let's look at the stem system.
The Japanese verb-stem system is the simplest, the most logical and the most beautiful
verb transformation system in this world.
It's almost absolutely regular.
Once you know how to do it, you can make any transformation (except for
the te- and ta-form, which you already know).
But the schools and textbooks don't tell you this.
Instead of telling you this, they present each "conjugation", as they call it
(and they aren't in fact conjugations)...
they present each one as a separate case
with separate rules which appear to be random.
And because they don't tell you the fundamental logic of the whole system, and because they
describe the changes that take place as if they were really written in the Roman alphabet
when they are written in kana, it really looks like that.
Students really think they have to treat each case as a separate case
and learn separate rules in every case.
And you don't have to.
You just have to know the stem system.
So let's look at it.
As we've already learned, every verb ends in one of the u-row kana.
And I'm turning the chart on its side here for reasons you'll see in a moment.
So these kana in the red box are the ones that can end a verb.
It's not every u-row kana, but it's most of them.
So we have verbs like "kau" (buy), "kiku" (hear), "hanasu" (speak), "motsu" (hold) etc.
Now, as you can see, there are four other possible ways in which a verb could end.
And each of those four ways is used, and they are called the verb-stems.
Today we are only going to look at the a-stem, because that's the one we need for the negative.
So, to form the a-stem, we simply shift the last kana of the verb from the u-row to the a-row.
So "kiku" (hear) becomes "kika", "hanasu" (speak) becomes "hanasa",
"motsu" (hold) becomes "mota", and so forth.
There's only one exception in this system – and when I say that I mean the whole system,
all the stems – there's only this one exception, which is that when a word ends in the u-kana
the stem doesn't change to "-a", it changes to "-wa".
So the negative of "kau" is not "kaanai", it's "kawanai".
And it's only in the a-stem that we have this exception, so that's the only exception in
the whole system, and I think you can see why it exists:
"kaanai" is not as easy to say as "kawanai", is it?
All the others are perfectly regular.
"Kiku" (hear) becomes "kikanai" (not-hear); "hanasu" (speak) becomes "hanasanai" (not-speak);
"motsu" (hold) becomes "motanai" (not hold), and so forth.
And as we already know, with ichidan verbs, they only ever drop that "-ru" and put on
whatever we want to put on, so "taberu" (eat) becomes "tabenai" (not-eat).
And that's it.
That's how we turn any verb negative.
It's very, very simple.
Now, what about adjectives?
How do we make adjectives negative?
Well, when we make a transformation to an adjective,
what we always do is we turn the "-i" on the end of it into "-ku":
"akai" (is-red) becomes "akaku"; "kawaii" (is-cute) becomes
"kawaiku"; kowai (is-scary) becomes "kowaku".
And this is the way we make the te-form of adjectives: "akaku" becomes "akakute".
And it's also the way we make the negative: "akai" becomes "akakunai" (not-red).
Now interestingly, this -ku is the opposite of what happens in the te-form, isn't it?
If a word ends in -ku, in the te-form we turn that -ku into -i.
But in an adjective we turn the -i into -ku.
If we want to put an adjective into the past tense, we take off the -i and use -katta.
So "kowai" (is-scary) becomes "kowakatta" (was-scary).
And because "nai" is also an i-adjective, when we put that into the past we also say "nakatta".
So, if we want to say "Sakura runs", we say "Sakura-ga hashiru"; if we want to say "Sakura
doesn't run", we say "Sakura-ga hashira nai"; if we want to say "Sakura ran (in the past)",
we say "Sakura-ga hashitta" – because it's a godan verb; and if we want to say "Sakura
didn't run (in the past)", we say "Sakura-ga hashira nakatta".
"Hashira nai", and then we put "nai" into the past: "hashira nakatta".
Now, as we all know.
"Sakura-ga hashiru" is rather unnatural Japanese, just as it's rather unnatural English.
We say "Sakura is running" in Englsh, and in Japanese we say "Sakura-ga hashitte iru".
So if we want to put all that in the past, what do we do?
Well, all we have to do is put that "iru" into the past.
So we say "Sakura-ga hashitte ita" – "Sakura was running".
And if we want to say "Sakura wasn't running", we say "Sakura-ga hashitte i-nakatta".
That "iru" is a simple ichidan verb, so we just drop the -ru and put on ta or nai and,
in the past, nakatta.
I always say that Japanese is like Lego.
Once you know the basic building blocks you can build anything.
And there are almost no exceptions in Japanese.
In the whole of what we've been talking about today there are really just two exceptions.
And I'm going to introduce those so that you know everything you need to know.
The only real exception to every verb being made negative by adding "nai" is the verb
"masu", which is a helper verb that makes words formal.
We add it to the i-stem of a verb, and we will look at the i-stem later, but I think
you can already guess what it is.
So, "hanasu" becomes "hanashimasu", "kiku" becomes "kikimasu" and so on.
When you put "masu" into the negative, it does not become "masanai", as you would expect
– it becomes "masen".
Because it's formal, it's a bit old-fashioned and it uses the old Japanese negative "sen"
instead of "nai".
The only other apparent exception is that "ii" , the adjective "ii", which means "is-good",
has an older form, "yoi", which is still used quite often.
And when we make any transformation to "ii", it turns back to "yoi", so in the past tense
we don't say "ikatta", we say "yokatta" – and if you've seen much anime you've probably
heard this quite often.
"Yokatta", literally "zero-ga yokatta" – "It was good / That turned out well / That's great".
And if you want to say something is not good, you don't say "ikunai", you say "yokunai".
And those are the only exceptions.
If you have any questions or comments, please put them in the Comments below and I will answer.
And if you'd like to join our learning community, please consider joining my Patreon,
where you'll get access to all the "behind-the-scenes" discussion and be able to play a part in shaping
this project of making Japanese as simple as it really is.
I'd like to thank my Gold Kokeshi patrons for making all this possible
and all my patrons on Patreon for helping this really exciting project to come to fruition.
And thank you for attending this lesson.
Kore kara mo yoroshiku onegai shimasu.
Class dismissed.

Lesson 8

Konnichiwa.
Today we are going to talk about the particle "ni",
and in doing so we are going to level up.
What do I mean by that?
In the past seven lessons we've learned quite a lot of basic Japanese structure.
We can say quite a lot of things now if we have the vocabulary.
But everything we can say is very, very concrete.
We can talk about doing things and being things, which of course is the core of every sentence.
But we also need to have some more sophisticated concepts at our disposal.
Things like purpose and intention and transformation.
So today we're going to look at uses of the ni-particle, some of which are very concrete still
and some of which begin to take us into those more sophisticated areas.
Now, we've already looked at the ni-particle, haven't we?
And we know that in a logical sentence it marks the ultimate target of an action.
So "Sakura-ni booru-wo nageta" means "I threw the ball at Sakura".
The ball is marked by -wo because it's the thing I actually threw.
I am marked by -ga whether you can see me or not,
because I am the one who did the action of throwing.
But Sakura is marked by -ni because she is the target
of that action, in this case very literally.
Now, the ni-particle nearly always marks a target of one kind or another.
So, if we are going somewhere or sending something somewhere or putting something somewhere,
we use -ni for that "somewhere".
So if A is going to B, then B is marked by -ni.
B is the destination, the target of that going.
So if I'm going to the park, I say "kouen-ni iku".
If I'm going to the shops, I say "omise-ni iku".
So the literal, physical destination or target of movement is marked by -ni.
However, we can also mark a subtler kind of target.
So we can say "omise-ni tamago-wo kai-ni iku".
This means "I go to the shops to buy eggs".
"Omise" is "shops" – "shop" is "mise" and we put the honorific "o" on it because we
give honor to the people who help us to have all the
lovely things that we are lucky enough to have.
"Tamago" are eggs – you might, if you're old enough, remember Tamagotchi,
the little egg-person that you raise.
And "kai" is the i-stem of "kau" – to buy.
The i-stem is a very special stem and it can do lots of things,
and it can also just be there on its own.
"Kai-ni iku" means "[go] in order to buy, for the purpose of buying".
Now, you may be saying, "I thought that logical particles like -ni and -ga and -wo can only mark nouns" –
and that's absolutely correct.
Because one of the things that the i-stem of a verb can do when it's on its own is turn
that verb into the equivalent noun.
(It can do something else as well, but I can talk about that another day.)
So "kai", the act of buying, is a noun.
Just as in English if we say "I like swimming",
"swimming" is a noun, swimming is a thing I like,
and if we say "I go to the shop for the purpose of buying eggs",
then that "buying" is also a noun, it's the thing we're going for.
And "kai" is just like that.
So "kai" is the thing we're going to do and it's a noun and it's marked by -ni.
So, you see that in this sentence we have two targets:
the shops – "omise" – is the actual physical target of our going, the place,
and buying eggs is the reason for our going,
so that's the emotional target, the volitional target, a more subtle kind of target
than the physical place we're going to, but still a target.
And it's possible to have two targets in the same sentence, both marked by -ni.
And that's exactly what we're doing here.
So -ni gives us the target of an action in the most literal sense and also the volitional
target, the actual aim of our action.
Now, to get back to more concrete things, -ni which marks the actual location target
of where we're going, of where we're putting something,
can also mark the place where a person or a thing IS.
So I can say, "omise-ni iku" – "I am going to the shops / I will go to the shops" – and
we can say, "omise-ni iru" – "I am at the shops".
"Kouen-ni iku" – "I'll go to the park"; "Kouen-ni iru" -"I'm at the park".
Now you see, this is also a target, because for a thing to be anywhere,
it must have gotten there at some point.
So "-ni" can mark not only a future target, a place where I will go to, it can also mark
a past target, a place where I went and where I still am.
And we also use this for inanimate objects: "hon wa teeburu-no ue-ni aru" –
"The book is on the table".
"Ue" is a noun, and in this case, it means the "on" of the table.
"Ue" can mean "up" or "over", in this case it means "on", and it's always a noun, so
in this case the "on of the table" is the place where  the book is:
the past target of the book, to which it went and at which it now remains.
So -ni can also mark the place where a thing is, its past target.
And the last aspect of "ni" that I want to look at is that
-ni can also mark the target of a transformation.
Just as if A is going to B, -ni marks B, the place where it's going, if A turns into B,
becomes B, then -ni also marks B, the thing it's becoming, the thing it turns into.
So if I say, "Sakura-wa kaeru-ni natta"... ("kaeru" is "frog"
and "naru" is a close cousin of "aru": "aru" means "be"; "naru" means "become").
So, "Sakura-wa kaeru-ni natta" – "Sakura became a frog / Sakura turned into a frog",
and -ni marks the thing she became, the thing she turned into.
Now, you may be thinking, "Mmm, how often do people turn into frogs these days?" –
and I'll grant that it isn't very often.
However, this is a very important thing to learn because
there are various more everyday things that turn into other things and also, we use this form of expression
much more in Japanese than we do in English.
For example, "kotoshi juuhassai-ni naru":
"kotoshi" is "this year", "juuhassai" is "18 years of age".
So we're saying,
"This year I become 18".
Now in English we'd say that a little differently:
we might say, "I turn 18" or "I'll be 18",
but in Japanese we say "I will become 18 years of age".
And if the day's going to get cloudy, we might say "atode kumori-ni naru" ("kumori" is "cloudy";
"kumo" is a cloud, "kumori" is the state of being cloudy, and both of them are nouns).
We say, "kumori-ni naru" which means "become cloudy".
In English we could say that.
We might be more likely to say "get cloudy" or something, but in Japanese
we use this "become " – "-ni naru" – form of speech a lot of the time.
So it's an important thing to learn.
And I should just add here than in the case of an adjective it works slightly differently.
So if we want to say "Sakura is beautiful", we say "Sakura-ga utsukushii"
("utsukushii" means "is-beautiful"),
but if we want to say "Sakura became beautiful",
we can't use -ni because "utsukushii" isn't a noun.
It isn't a carriage, it's an engine, isn't it?
So what do we do?
What we do is what we discussed last week: we turn that adjective into its stem.
So we take off the い (-i) and add く(-ku).
And that's all we need to do.
That's how we use it: "Sakura-ga utsukushi-ku natta" – "Sakura became beautiful".
"Natta" is the past of "naru" because "naru" is a godan verb (it has to be a godan verb
because it doesn't end in -iru or -eru, it ends in -aru).
So now we know some ways of expressing subtler concepts like intention, purpose, transformation
– and we have leveled up.
Before we finish, I'm just going to give you one more carriage that we haven't seen before,
and that's the he-car.
And this is very, very simple.
The particle "he" – as you see, this is the kana へ (he),
but when we use it as a particle we just pronounce it e.
And it's a very simple particle.
It's a one-trick pony.
And it duplicates one, and only one, of the uses of "ni".
So when we say where we're going - "A is going to B" – we mark B with -ni.
We can also mark it with -he.
And that's the only thing -he does.
As I say, it's a one-trick pony.
It can't even mark the place where something has gone to and still is.
It only ever marks the place a thing is going to.
"He" is very simple and it's good to have another particle,
another carriage, added to your arsenal, isn't it?
If you have any comments or questions please ask them in the Comments below
and as always I will answer.
It you'd like to join our learning community, please visit my Patreon.
There's always something going on there.
I'd like to thank my Gold Kokeshi patrons, my producer-angels, and I'd like to thank
all my patrons and supporters.
Thank you for making all this possible.
And thank you for attending this lesson.
Kore kara mo yoroshiku onegai shimasu.
Class dismissed.


Lesson 8b

Konnichiwa.
Today we're going to get the key to every Japanese sentence.
We're going to do a round-up of the logical particles – and the logical particles are the linchpins perno of Japanese.
With a full understanding of what they do you can understand every Japanese sentence.
Without it, you can't.
And that's why the Japanese taught by the textbook which doesn't explain the logical particles correctly
leaves most learners non-functional in Japanese even after they've passed exams.
So, I'm going to do a round-up of the logical particles we've learned so far and I'm going
to introduce the last major logical particle, which is the de-particle.
I'm going to do this with an analogy of detective work,
because the logical particles essentially
interrogate the nouns in the sentence and show how they relate to each other
and to the verb of the sentence, and they give the structure of the sentence.
And this is what a logical particle is.
People sometimes ask "What do you mean by a logical particle?"
We've already discussed the difference between a logical particle and a non-logical topic-marker.
A logical particle tells us how the sentence logically holds together.
It tells us who does what to whom, with what, where, when and so forth.
The wa-particle doesn't do this, it just tells us what is the topic we're speaking about.
There are other particles that I would call a-logical.
They're not non-logical topic markers, but they're not logical particles either.
For example, the particle -to adds two nouns together.
So if we say "Sakura-to Mearii-ga aruite ita", we're saying "Sakura and Mary were walking".
The ga-particle tells us who was doing the walking.
The to-particle simply ands those two together.
It doesn't tell us anything about what they were doing, where they were going, or anything else.
So, the logical particles are the ones that tell us what is actually happening in the sentence.
The other thing to remember about logical particles is that they always attach to a noun.
If you see a logical particle attaching to anything, you know that that word is in fact functionally a noun.
And we must always see the noun plus the particle attaching to it as an inseparable pair.
The two work together.
They are a question and an answer which form a fundamental unit of a Japanese sentence.
All right. So let's look at this.
The head of the Logical Particle Detective Agency is Detective Ga.
He is the Chief.
He has to be in every case.
There can't be a sentence without Ga, as we already know, although sometimes you can't see him
because he's in disguise, just like Sherlock Holmes is sometimes in disguise.
He also has powers that the other logical particles do not have.
He can work in A-is-B sentences, that is, descriptive sentences,
sentences that tell us what something is, what its qualities are.
The other particles can't do that.
They can only work in A-does-B sentences, that is, sentences with a verb engine.
To put it another way, while Detective Ga works in the office with descriptive work,
the other detectives only work on cases, on actual actions, on incidents, on verb-ending clauses.
So, let's look at them all at work on a verb-ending clause.
Each of them has its own specific questions.
Detective Ga asks the fundamental question: "Who did it?"
This is the fundamental question of any sentence,
and for that reason, only Detective Ga's carriage can be black.
Because the core of every sentence is "who did the action?"
So Ga asks, "Who was the actor? Who dunnit?" and that forms the core of the sentence.
The other logical particles ask other questions about the incident which give us
a complete picture of the event.
We won't usually see all of them in any one sentence.
Detective Wo asks "Who was it done to? Who was the receiver of the action?"
Detective Ni asks "Where did he go?" or "Where is the weapon?"
Ni asks where someone or something went to or where it is.
Detective He asks "In what direction did he go?"
Now, this is very close to Detective Ni's question, isn't it?
But we may not actually know where he went, so the answer to that question could be north,
south, east or west, and that's the kind of question that Ni can't ask.
Or it could be "He went in the direction of Sakura's house", and that's very close
to the question that Ni does ask.
So they overlap to quite a degree.
Now let's look at Detective De.
Detective De asks the question "Where was it done?"
and the question "With what was it done?
What was the weapon?"
If we say "Kouen-ni iru", we're saying "I am in the park".
But if we want to say,  "I am playing in the park", we have to say "kouen-de asonde iru",
because to express that we are doing something in a place rather than just being there, we have to use -de.
And we also use -de to express the means (in terms of a noun) by which we do something.
So if we say "kouen-ni iku", we're saying "I go to the park".
But if we say "basu-de kouen-ni iku", we're saying the means by which we go to the park,
in this case a bus.
If we say that we knocked in a hammer with a nail or ate food with chopsticks,
we use -de for the thing we did it with.
If we say "Nihongo-wo hanasu", we're saying "I speak Japanese", but if we say "Nihongo-de hanasu",
we're saying, "I speak with Japanese/Japanese is the means by which I speak".
So, this is equivalent in English to saying "I speak in Japanese", but as you can see,
the Japanese construction is more logical because that is what we're doing,
we're speaking by the means of Japanese.
The other question, of course, that Detective Ni can ask is "Who was the target of an action
done to something else?" but we've already discussed that in the -ni lesson.
So this covers all the basic functions of the main logical particles, and as you can see,
these are the particles that tell us what's going on in any Japanese sentence.
If we understand them, we can understand the sentence; if we don't understand them, we can't.
So, if we get confused by the logical particles, which we will if we take the textbooks seriously,
we'll have a lot of trouble understanding Japanese.
Don't confuse the particles and they won't confuse you.
If you have any questions or comments, please ask them in the Comments below and I will answer as usual.
I'd like to thank my Gold Kokeshi patrons, who make these videos possible,
and all my patrons and supporters on Patreon and everywhere.
And I'd like to thank you for attending this lesson.
Kore kara mo yoroshiku onegai shimasu.
Class dismissed.



Lesson 9

"Koneko" is a kitten: "ko" is child or small thing and "neko" is cat.
And "hoshii" is translated in English as "want".
Now, if you look at it, the first thing you can see is that it's not a verb.
It's an adjective.
It ends in "i", not in "u".
And the second thing you can see, which is the most important, is that the ga-marked
actor of this sentence is not me, who wants the cat.
It's the cat, who is wanted.
So, what does "hoshii" mean?
Well, quite simply, it means "is-wanted".
"In relation to me, the cat is wanted."
And again, if we seriously believe that this means "I want a cat", we're thinking that
the -ga can mark the object of a sentence, the object of the action, the thing we're
doing it to.
So again, we're being confused about the role -ga plays in a sentence, we're confused about
the role -wo plays in a sentence, because the cat should be marked by -wo if it meant
"I want a cat".
And we're confused between the verbs and adjectives.
So again, Japanese becomes a strange guessing game in which particles and kinds of word
can change their meaning at random.
Now, suppose we want to do something.
In Japanese we express wanting to do something differently from the way we express wanting
to have something.
And the way we do it is by using the i-stem again.
The i-stem, as I told you before, is a very important stem.
So, in order to say we want something we have to add the want-adjective, which is "tai".
So, we now have an adjective.
And what does this adjective mean?
It doesn't mean "want" in the English sense.
It can't, because "want" is a verb and "tai", ending in "i", is an adjective, isn't it?
So, let's take an example.
This is a slightly notorious example.
"Kureepu-ga tabetai".
Now, the standard English translation of this is "I want to eat crepes".
But, as you see, the pattern here is just the same as in the other cases we've been considering.
The ga-marked actor is not "watashi", it's not "me", it's the crepes.
The desirability of the crepes is not a verb, it's an adjective.
And we need to understand this because if we don't it's not just going to mess up this
kind of sentence – it's going to mess up our whole grasp of Japanese words, Japanese
particles and Japanese structure.
Now, there's no really good way of translating this into English.
We would have to say something like "In relation to me, crepes are desire-inducing".
And that's very awkward.
And sometimes people ask me, "Am I really supposed to use all these awkward literal
translations that you give, rather than using natural English?"
And the answer to that is "No".
You're not supposed to be thinking in terms of my awkward explanations or thinking in
terms of natural English.
You're supposed to be thinking of Japanese in terms of – guess what – Japanese.
I'm explaining it in English to give you a start toward doing that.
But these unnatural translations or explanations are there to help you grasp the structure
of Japanese, not to give you a way of translating Japanese.
Now, as I say, the pattern is the same in all these cases, and I don't think it's very
difficult to grasp.
It may take you a little while to adjust your mind to the more "animist" way of thinking,
and to do that you may want to watch this video two or three times more to get it fixed
in your head, but it isn't inherently difficult, I think you will agree.
But now we're going to look at something which could seems a little confusing, and I promise
you it isn't, if you just follow carefully what I'm going to say.
We have this sentence here: "Kureepu-ga tabetai" but what if we didn't have the crepes here?
What if we just said "Tabetai"?
Now there's no longer in this sentence what English wants to call the object of desire,
what is in fact the subject of desire, the desire-inducer, and obviously there must
be a ga-marked zero-car or, as you know, we don't have a sentence.
But what is that zero-car in this case?
Well, the ironic thing is that in this case the zero-car is what the English textbooks thought it was all along.
It's "I".
I really am the actor of the sentence this time, and that may be part of the reason for
a lot of the confusion that happens on this subject.
"Watashi-ga tabetai" means "I want to eat" – I don't want to eat crepes necessarily
or Sakura's obento necessarily, I just want to eat.
And because there is no eat-inducing subject here, the want-to-eat is attributed directly to me.
And you may be asking – you should be asking – "So, what is this -tai?
Is it an adjective describing the condition of something making you want to do something?
or is it an adjective describing my desire?"
And the answer is that it can be either.
Obviously when it is describing a cake it's also indirectly describing my feelings about the cake,
it's describing the feelings the cake induces in me.
And when there's no cake there, or no crepe here, or no Sakura's obento there,
we just describe my feelings directly.
And this is often the case in Japanese with adjectives of desire.
For example, "kowai", which means either "scared" or "scary".
If I say, "Obake-ga kowai", I'm saying, "Ghosts are scary", but if I say just "Kowai",
I'm saying, "I am scared".
Now, is this confusing?
It isn't confusing because we have a landmark that tells us what to do every time.
And that landmark is -ga.
In these sentences and in much much more complicated sentences, if we watch the -ga and watch the
other logical particles, we'll never go wrong, because the logical particles never ever ever
change their function.
So, we can use them as our compass.
And that's why it's so very destructive to induce people to believe they can change their
function as the textbooks do.
If you have a compass and I say to you, "Ah, well, most of the time the compass points
north, but sometimes points south and quite a lot of the time it also points east",
you might as well not have a compass.
I have destroyed the value of your compass for you.
And it's the same with the logical particles.
They are absolutely reliable.
They always point north.
They never change their function.
So, if -ga marks the crepes then we know that the subject of the sentence, the thing about
which the engine is telling us, is the crepes, nothing else.
But if we don't have the ga-marked subject there, we know that by default the zero-pronoun
is usually "I" unless there's a reason to think it's something else.
It's just the same as in the eel example that we gave in the lesson on -wa.
Now, I'm going to tell you one more thing, and I hope I'm not overloading you with information
in this lesson, but it will have the advantage of giving you even more confidence about what
the zero pronoun is in these cases.
And that is that you cannot use these adjectives of desire, of feeling, about anyone but yourself.
So, if I say "Tabetai" and there is nothing to tabetai in the sentence or the context
then I must be talking about me, I can't be talking about you and I can't be talking about
Sakura.
Why not?
Because Japanese doesn't permit us to do that.
You can't use "-tai" about someone else, or "kowai" or "hoshii" – we can't use any of
these things about someone else.
What if we want to say that someone else wants something?
Well, because Japanese is a very logical language, it does not allow us to make definite statements
about something we can't know for sure, so you see it's very different from Western languages.
One thing we can't know for sure is someone else's inner feelings.
So, I might think that Sakura wants to eat cake, but I don't know that.
All I know is how she's acting, I know what she says, I know what she does, I know how
she looks, but I don't know what her inner feelings are.
So, if I want to talk about her desire to eat cake, I can't use "-tai".
And I can't use "kowai" to describe her fear, and I can't use "hoshii" to describe a thing she might want.
So, what do I do?
I have to add to the adjective of desire a helper verb.
I take the "i" off the i-adjective and I add the helper verb "garu".
And "garu" means "to show signs of / to look as if it is the case".
So, if I say, "Sakura-ga keeki-wo hoshi-garu" then I'm saying Sakura is showing signs of wanting cake.
That's what I'm literally saying.
And even if she's told me she wants cake, that's still what I say, because I can't
feel her feelings.
I only know what she's doing and saying.
Now, why do we use a verb in the case of other people when it's an adjective in the case
of ourselves?
Again, this is very logical.
I can't describe someone else's feelings because I can't feel them.
I don't know about them.
I can only speak of their actions, and their actions obviously must be a verb.
So, this is a useful thing to know, but it also helps us to be very clear when we say
"tabetai" or anything else -tai, or anything "hoshii", that if there is not a cause of
that emotion, then the zero pronoun must be me, "watashi", because it can't be anybody else.
We can’t use it for anybody else.
So that's quite a lot of information in one
lesson, but understanding this is going to
short-cut you right through a huge area of confusion and misunderstanding that troubles
many Japanese learners for years.


Konnichiwa.
Today we're going to talk about the main helper-verbs and about the potential form.
When I say, "the main helper-verbs", I'm referring to what the standard
Western Japanese grammar descriptions call "conjugation".
And I only mention this word because I don't want you to get confused
if you see "conjugation" referred to somewhere else.
When they talk about "conjugation", this is what they mean.
But in fact, there is no such thing as conjugation in Japanese.
All we ever do is add helper-words to the four verb stems.
And there are a lot of helper-words and most of them are just a question of extra vocabulary
so long as you don't think of them as conjugation.
In some cases, they get called "conjugation", in other cases they don't,
and they're the same process every time.
The only difference is that some of them happen to accidentally, and only very vaguely, resemble
European conjugation and others don't.
All kinds of confusions arise from confusing Japanese helper-verbs and helper-adjectives
with conjugations, but because we're not going to use
them, we don't need to worry about that here.
All right.
So, the first main helper-verb we're going to look at is the potential verb.
Now, we've already looked, haven't we, at helper-words.
We've looked at the helper-adjectives "nai", which forms the negative, and "tai", which
is used for the desirability of an action.
We've also looked at the helper-verb "garu", which is attached to an adjective.
Now we're going to look at the potential helper-verb, and this attaches to the e-stem.
There aren't as many things we do with the e-stem
as we do with the a- and i-stems, but there are some.
And only one of them is a verb, so there's no room for confusion here.
The potential helper-verb has two forms, and they are "-ru" and "-rareru".
People can be a little disconcerted by the godan form of the helper-verb because it's
just one character, る(ru).
But that shouldn't worry you at all, and because it's only ever goes onto the e-stem, can't
be used on its own, it's very very easy to recognize.
"-Rareru" is the form of the potential helper-verb that goes onto ichidan verbs – and we discussed
godan and ichidan verbs before, didn't we?
So, "kau" (buy) becomes "kae-ru" (buy-able); "kiku" (hear) becomes "kike-ru" (hear-able);
"hanasu" (speak) becomes "hanase-ru" (speak-able); "motsu" (hold) becomes "mote-ru" (hold-able)
and so forth.
And with "taberu", which is an ichidan verb, we do what we always do, simply take off the
-ru and put on whatever we're going to put on.
So "taberu" (eat) becomes "tabe-rareru" (eat-able).
So, this is very simple, isn't it?
There are only two exceptions to this formation of the potential form and they are the two
Japanese irregular verbs, "kuru" and "suru".
"Kuru" become "ko-rareru", but "suru" surprisingly becomes "dekiru".
"Dekiru" is the potential form of "suru".
And this is an interesting word because it also means "come out" – literally it's made
up of the kanji "out" and "come" – "de-kiru".
And if we say "Nihongo-ga dekiru", we're not saying "I can do Japanese", we're saying "Japanese
is possible".
And if we say or imply "Watashi-wa Nihongo-ga dekiru", we're saying, "To me, Japanese is
possible".
And it's interesting if you see a small child perhaps trying to make something out of paper,
she may say, "I'm trying very hard, but it won't come out right" – and this is just
the way "dekiru" is used in Japanese, isn't it?
And there are some interesting ways in which "dekiru" is used which show how the idea of
something being possible and something coming out are closely linked in the Japanese language.
But we won't talk about that now – that's a little bit more advanced.
There's only one danger area with the potential form, and it's very very close to something
we dealt with last week.
So, if you've seen that lesson, this one should be very easy to you.
Let's look at a typical sentence: "Hon-ga yomeru."
Now, the standard texts usually translate this as "I can read the book".
But that isn't what it means, as you can clearly understand if you followed our previous lesson.
Look where the -ga is.
The -ga is marking what?
It's marking the book!
So, who is the actor of this sentence?
It's the book.
We are saying something about the book.
So, the book is the main car and "yomeru" is the engine.
We are saying the book is readable, it's possible to read the book.
If we add "watashi-wa", we are saying the book is readable "to me".
What we are literally saying is, "In relation to me, the book is readable".
But this does not and cannot mean, "I can read the book".
If we wanted to say, "I can read the book", the book would have to be marked by -wo, wouldn't
it?
And I would have to be marked by -ga.
And it is in fact possible to do this, but it's not what is usually done.
But also remember that if we want to put stress on the ego, the way English wants to, then
we must change the particles.
If we literally want to say, "I can read the book" – "Watashi-ga hon-wo yomeru".
A lot of people think this is bad Japanese.
Not our place to work out whether it is or isn't bad Japanese.
The point is that most of the time you will see "hon-ga yomeru", and "hon-ga yomeru" can't
literally mean "I can read the book".
It means "The book is readable".
So that's simple enough, and provided we remember that, we don't send all those particles into
crazy illogicality.
So really this is very much like the questions we discussed last week about -tai
and adjectives of desire.
If we just keep that -ga straight in our minds, everything else will fall into place.
And just as with the tai-form if we say, "keeki-ga tabetai", it's the cake that being want-inducing,
but if we just say "tabetai" we do mean "I want to eat", because when there's no particular
food there to do the being-wanted, then I do the wanting.
It's the same with the potential form.
So, we say, "hon-ga yomeru" – "to me the book is read-able", but if we just want to
say "I can read" – not "I can read the book, or I can read the newspaper, or I can read
Sakura's secret diary", but "I can read" – then we say "watashi-ga yomeru" or just "yomeru",



 “watashi ha nihongo ga yomeru”?
Can it be ‘de’, considering that “-ru -rareru” is a helper verb? (Not a helper Adjective)
nihongo dake de yomeru. I can only read in Japanese.
No, “it’s possible to read only in Japanese”
Nihongo dake de yomeru hon – a book that is possible to read only in Japanese
>>>>watashi-ga nihongo-wo yomeru
Image
Image



which means "zero-ga yomeru".
And we really have become the subject of the sentence.
And I am sure there are people who find this confusing, but if you followed the past lesson
this should be completely clear.
And let's remember that Japanese always fits together just like Lego, so the potential
helper-verb, even when it's just that single kana る(ru), is simply a regular ichidan
verb like most helper-verbs, and we can do exactly the same things with it that we can
do with other helper-verbs.
We'll always recognize it, because it's the only one that goes onto the e-stem, and we
can do everything with it that we do with any other ichidan verb.
So: "arukeru" – can walk; "arukenai" – can't walk; "aruketa" – could walk; "arukenakatta"
– couldn't walk.
And this regularity is the same even with the irregulars.
So: "dekiru" – possible; "dekinai" – not possible; "dekita" – was possible; "dekinakatta"
– wasn't possible.
And it's as easy as that.
And I'd like to thank my Gold Kokeshi patrons, my producer-angels, for helping to make these
video lessons possible.
I'd like to thank all my patrons and supporters, and I'd like to thank you, for attending this
lesson.
Kore kara mo yoroshiku onegai shimasu.
Class dismissed.






Konnichiwa.
We've now completed ten lessons and it's time for a change of pace.
We've learned enough now that we can start looking at some real narrative.
It'll be a little simplified at first, but we can use this to
bring together the things we've learned so far.
We'll also be learning new structural elements because even in the simplest story we're going
to encounter things that we need to learn.
But I think this may be a more interesting way of doing it.
So please let me know what you think in the comments below.
All right.
Now let's go into a story that I believe we all know.
"Aru hi Arisu-wa kawa-no soba-ni ita."
Now, this is a simple sentence.
The word "kawa" means "river", and "soba" means "beside" and it's a noun.
So "kawa-no soba" is "the beside of the river".
Just as we put something on the "on" of the table or the "under" of the table and we also
always mark it with -ni, so the "beside of the river" is where Alice was.
"Aru" means "a certain", so "aru hi" is like "one day" or "a certain day", and let's notice
that what's happening here is what we've seen before.
"Aru" is the verb that means "exist" or "be", and what we've done here is what we've seen
in the video lesson on so-called adjectives.
We can make any engine into an adjective.
So, "aru" is an "A does B" engine, a u-engine, so if we say "hon-ga aru" we are saying,
"There is a book / a book exists".
And if we move that "aru" engine to the other side of the book, we turn it white
and it becomes a descriptor, an adjectival.
So, we're saying "aru hon" – "an existing book / a certain book / a book that there is".
And it's the same: "aru hi" – "a certain day".
"Aru hi Arisu-wa kawa-no soba-ni ita."
Now, the next sentence is going to be a little bit more complex, but don't worry, it's always easy
when there's a fully functioning android to help you.
(Actually, I'm not quite fully-functioning, but for the purposes of showing you Japanese I am.)
"Oneechan-wa tsumaranai hon-wo yonde ite asonde kurenakatta."
Yonde iru
So, we've got quite a complex sentence here, and let's break it down.
"Oneechan" means "big sister": "nee" is "sister";
"-chan", I'm sure you know, is a cute, friendly honorific;
"o-" is also an honorific.
So, "oneechan" – "big sister".
"Tsumaranai" means "dull" or "boring".
"Hon", as we know, is "book".
"Yomu" means "read"; "yonde iru" – we put the "yomu" into the te-form and add "iru"
and it means "is reading"; and then we put the "iru" itself into the te-form.
So why are we doing all that?
Let's take a look.
"Oneechan-wa tsumaranai hon-wo yonde ite" – "Big sister is reading a boring book"
– but then that -te....
Te-form has a lot of different uses.
In this case it will complete a clause.
"Big sister is reading a boring book" – that's a complete clause, isn't it?
And if we turn that final u-engine into the te-form, what we're saying is that something
else is going to follow this clause.
We are indicating that we're making a complex sentence made up of more than one clause.
So, it's like saying,
"Big sister was reading a boring book and..."
And that something else comes: "asonde kurenakatta".
"Asobu" means to "play", and that also is in the te-form, isn't it?
"Asobu" --> asonde".
If you're in any doubt of how we make these te-forms, please go back to the video lesson
on the te-form and refresh your memory.
"Asonde kurenakatta."
Now this is another use of the te-form.
Te-form is terribly important, and it does various different things.
What's it doing here?
Well, "asobu", as we know, means "play".
"Kureru" means to "give", and it specifically means "give downwards".
And the reason we say "give downwards" in Japanese
is because we are always polite to people.
So, we always represent ourselves as being below other people
and other people as being above ourselves.
So, if I say "kureru" (give), I always mean that someone
is giving something to me or to someone close to me.
But what is Alice's big sister giving – or not giving – to Alice?
Well, it's not the book.
In fact, it's not any actual object.
She is giving the action to which "kureru" is connected by the te-form.
She is giving – or in this case, not giving – the act of playing to Alice.
What do we mean by that?
Well, we say "kureru" not only for giving a thing – a book, a present, a candy – we
also say it for giving an action, for doing something for our benefit.
This is very very often used in Japanese, so it's important to understand it.
If someone does something for our benefit, we turn
that action to te-form and we add "kureru".
If we do something for someone else's benefit, we turn that action into te-form and add "ageru",
which means to "give upward", in other words, to give to you, to give to another person.
"Kureru" and "ageru" – give down to me or my group / ["ageru"] give up to you or someone
else or your group or their group.
So, what is this second part of the sentence?
It's "asonde kurenakatta" – "she didn't play/ she didn't give Alice playing-with /
she didn't play for Alice's benefit".
It's rather different from anything we find in English, but I think it's also very expressive,
something we could do with having in English.
So now let's look at the whole sentence again.
"Oneechan-wa tsumaranai hon-wo yonde ite asonde kurenakatta" –
"Big sister was reading a boring book and did not play [with Alice]".
Notice that we have two complete clauses here: "Oneechan-wa tsumaranai hon-wo yonda" –
that's a complete clause in itself, isn't it?
"Oneechan-wa asonde kurenakatta" – "Oneechan did not play for Alice's benefit"
And we've connected the two together with the te-form.
A thing we should notice here is that "Oneechan-wa
tsumaranai hon-wo yonde" doesn't tell us the tense.
We don't know whether she's reading a boring book right now or in the future or in the past.
We don't know that until we get to the end of the sentence.
In English we put the tense marker on both halves of a complex sentence.
We would say, "Big sister WAS reading a boring book..."
so, we already know that it's in the past.
But in Japanese we put that tense marker, -ta or -katta, at the end
and we only need one tense marker per sentence.
"Yonde ite" could mean "is reading" or could mean "was reading",
but because the "asonde kurenakatta" is in the past and it is part of the same sentence
we have put everything into the past.







Konnichiwa.

Today we're going to continue with the narrative lessons that we started last week.
And this time I think we're going to be able to proceed a little faster.
So, let's refresh our minds on the story we've read so far.
"Aru hi Arisu-wa kawa-no soba-ni ita."
(One day Alice was by the river.)
"Oneechan-wa tsumaranai hon-wo yonde ite asonde kurenakatta."
(Big sister was reading a boring book and did not play with Alice.)
"「Omoshiroi koto-ga nai」-to Arisu-wa itta."
"Omoshiroi" means "interesting or amusing"; "koto" means "a thing".
And in Japanese we have two common words for “thing, and they are "mono" and "koto".
Now, a "mono" is a thing in the most usual sense: a physical thing – a hat, a book,
a pair of glasses, Mount Fuji.
"Koto" is a more abstract kind of "thing": an affair, a matter, a circumstance.
So, when we say, "Is there any thing in that box?" we mean "mono".
And when we say, "The thing is..." we usually mean "koto".
So, "omoshiroi koto-ga nai" means "There's nothing interesting going on here, no interesting
circumstance."
"Itta" : "iu" means "say" and you can see it's like a mouth with soundwaves coming out
of it.
But the important thing to notice here is that little particle "to".
There are two "to" particles: one means "and" and it's very simple; the other
one is what we call the "quotation particle", and that's what we're dealing with here.
When we quote someone as saying something or even as thinking something, we use this
particle -to.
It's kind of like a quotation mark that you can hear.
As you see, we use the square quotation marks in Japanese, which are the equivalent to English
quotation marks, but we also use the -to.
So, we don't just say, " 'Nothing interesting is happening,' Alice said".
We say, " 'Nothing interesting is happening,' -to Alice said".
Now, -to is a very interesting particle structurally and we're going to investigate that a little
more deeply in a few minutes.
"Sono toki, shiroi usagi-ga toori sugita."
Unagi / anguilla    usagi/coniglio
"Sono toki": "Sono" means "that" and "toki" means "time", so we're literally saying "that
time".
But this is a bit more like saying "just then / at that moment / at that time".
So, we use just the way we use other relative time expressions: we don't need to put -ni
or anything else with it, we just state the time and then continue with what was happening
at that time.
In this sentence, the point of "sono toki" is that just at that moment when
Alice had been saying that there was nothing interesting happening, just at that time,
this happened.
"Sono toki, shiroi usagi-ga toori sugita."
"Shiroi" means "white"; it's an i-adjective.
"Usagi" means "rabbit".
And "toori sugiru" is made up of two words, and it's doing something that we're going
to see over and over and over again in Japanese.
It's using the i-stem of one verb to attach another verb to give it extra meaning.
So, "tooru" means to "pass through" and "sugiru" means to "exceed or go beyond".
So "toori sugiru" connects those two words together: "tooru" (pass through); "sugiru"
(go beyond) and it means "passing by".
A white rabbit passed by.
"Sono toki, shiroi usagi (white rabbit) toori sugita (passed by)."
"Futsuu-no usagi-de-wa nakute..."
Now, "futsuu" means "ordinary", and the rest of this you already know.
"De-wa nai" means "it isn't / it wasn't" and we're putting into the te-form because this
is part of a complex sentence – and we looked at complex sentences last week, didn't we?
So, "futsuu-no usagi de-wa nakute" – "It was not an ordinary rabbit."
"...chokki-wo kite iru usagi datta."
"Chokki" means a vest; "kiru" means "wear", so "kite iru" means to "be wearing /be in
the act of wearing".
And "datta", of course, is the past tense of the copula.
So, this is: "It was not an ordinary rabbit, it was a wearing-a-vest rabbit /it was a rabbit
that was wearing a vest."
"Usagi-wa kaichuudokei-wo mite..."
"Kaichuudokei" is not a word we're going to encounter all that often because there aren't
many of them around these days, but it is an example of something we're going to see
an awful lot, which is that in Japanese, as you know, we can modify one noun with another
by marking the first one with -no (or -na, which is a form of da) but we can also, when
we're not just modifying one noun with another but forming a new noun, we can simply ram
them together.
We don't have to modify them in any way, the way we do with verbs – we turn them into
the i-stem, but you can't do that with nouns, nouns don't have any stems, they don't modify
in any way – so, when you're putting two nouns together to make a new noun, you simply
push them into each other.
This is the same as what we do in English, with words like seaweed or bookshelf.
We just push two nouns together to make a new noun.
So, the parts of this noun, "kaichuudokei": "kaichuu" is a slightly unusual noun – it
means "in one's pocket or the inside of one's pocket" and "tokei" is a very common word
– it means "clock or watch" (we have the same word for a clock in Japanese whether
it's a small one or a big one), so "kaichuudokei" is a pocket watch.
And the reason we say "-dokei" instead of "-tokei" is what Alice in "Alice in Kanji
Land" calls "ten-ten hooking", and this is that when you push two nouns together, in
the way that we are doing here, and the second one begins with a sharp sound like "t" or
"k", we turn it into its equivalent dull sound like "d" or "b".
And of course, in Japanese you do this by adding those two small marks to the kana, so "to"
becomes "do", "ta" becomes "da", "ku" becomes "gu", "sa" becomes "za" etc.
So, for example, "ao" is blue, as you know, "sora" is "sky" and when you put them together
you get not "aosora" but "aozora".
We put the ten-ten onto that sharp word, and Alice calls that "ten-ten hooking".
It's as if those two little points, those two little claws, hook into the word before
it to turn them into a single word.
It's a thing you're going to see very often.
And just as in English you can't do this with any two nouns, but there are a lot of nouns
that are made up of two nouns and so long as one of the nouns isn't a slightly unusual
one like "kaichuu", they're very easy to understand, just as they are in English.
And then we have "...「osoi! osoi!」-to itte".
Now, we're going to look at what this -to does, and as we get into more complex
sentences, three-level compound sentences like this one, we start to see how useful
it becomes.
What -to does structurally is that it takes whatever it marks – and that could
be two words like this or it could be a whole paragraph with all kinds of other grammar
going on in it – it takes whatever it marks as a quotation and turns it effectively into
a single noun.
So, a to-carriage is a white noun-carriage marked with -to.
And we're going to find as we go on that this is used not only to mark things people say
and things people think, but all kinds of other things.
And we'll have an example of that a little later in this lesson.
But this to-structure is essentially making a quasi-noun out of whatever is marked with
-to, and the -to then makes it function as a modifier to the verb that follows.
When it's a simple quotation like that, the verb is going to be "iu" (to say), but it
could also be "kangaeru" (to think) or "omou" (to think or feel), but it can be many other
things too, as you're going to see in a moment.
So, this is the structure of a to-marked statement of any kind.
"...「osoi! osoi!」-to itte, hashiri dashita."
"Osoi" means "late".
And in order to make it a sentence, obviously we have to have a zero-pronoun here.
So, the rabbit is either saying "It's late!" or "I'm late!"
In the Disney version, of course, it was "I'm late!"
"Osoi! osoi!"
– "I'm late!
I'm late!"
We don't need to say -to with usagi-wa itte this time because we've got usagi-wa at the
beginning of the sentence and this is a compound sentence.
So, the second part of the compound sentence has the same main carriage, the same subject
as the first half.
"...「osoi! osoi!」-to itte" – "The rabbit said, 'I'm late!
I'm late!'
"And that Itte" is another compound-itte, so this time we
have a three-deep compound sentence.
The rabbit looked at his watch, he said "Osoi! osoi!", and then... he did something else:
"hashiri dashita".
"Hashiru" means "run" and "dasu" literally means to "take out", but this is a combination
we're going to see very often in Japanese.
Once again, we're using that i-stem , which is the main connecting stem, to connect "hashiri"
to "dasu".
And what does it mean here?
Well, that "dasu" when it's connected to a verb means that the action of the verb "erupted".

So we can say that someone "naki dashita": "naku" is "cry", and we connect the i-stem
of "naku'" to "dasu", and "naki dasu" means "burst out crying".
We can say "warai dasu": "warau" is "laugh" and if we connect the i-stem of "warau" to
"dasu", we're saying "burst out laughing".
And in this case what happened?
The rabbit suddenly burst out running – it broke into a run.
"Usagi-wa kaichuudokei-wo mite, 「osoi! osoi!」-to itte, hashiri dashita."
"The rabbit looked at its pocket watch, it cried 'I'm late!
I'm late!' and it broke into running."
"「Chotto matte, kudasai!」-to Arisu-wa yonda."
"Chotto matte, kudasai" is a phrase you're going to hear a lot in Japanese.
Sometimes the "kudasai" will get left off.
What does it mean?
"Chotto" means "a little"; "matte" is the te-form of "matsu", which means to "wait";
and "kudasai" means "please".
It's connected with "kureru", which we talked about last time; which also refers
to giving down – it's "please give down to me / please lower down to my level", so
that's a polite way of saying "please give".
But it's not just giving a thing, just as with "kureru" and "ageru", it's not just giving
a thing, it can also be, if you connect it to the te-form of a verb, giving the action
of that verb.
So, you can see it's very related to that "kureru" and "ageru" that we learned last week.
"Chotto matte, kudasai!"
Now, because this is so common, very often when we put a verb into te-form and address
it to someone, it's kind of short for "-te kudasai".
"Chotto matte, kudasai!" means "Please wait a little".
So, she's asking the rabbit to stop; she wants to meet with the rabbit.
"「Chotto matte, kudasai!」-to Arisu-wa yonda."
So, we've got that to-particle again, the quotation particle, which we need when we quote anything,
and then "yonda".
"Yonda": what does that mean?
Well, we've come across "yonda" before I think, haven't we?
And it means "read", "read" in the past.
That is the ta-form - the da-form in this case - of "yomu".
But in this case, it's different.
It's the da-form of "yobu".
If you remember from our te- and ta-form lesson, the New Boom group of verbs, nu-, bu- and
mu-ending verbs, all form their te-form with -nde and their ta-form with -nda.
So, both "yomu" and "yobu" have the past form "yonda".
Fortunately, we're not very often likely to get reading and calling mixed up, are we?
This "yobu" means to "call", to "shout out".
It can mean "call" in any of the senses that "call" is used in English.
You can call someone a name, you can call an apple a lemon (but you'd be wrong) or you
can call out.
"「Chotto matte, kudasai!」-to Arisu-wa yonda."
– " 'Please wait a minute!' called Alice."
"Demo usagi-wa pyon-pyon-to hashiri tsudzuketa."
"Demo" means "but".
"Hashiru" means "run".
And we're going to leave out "pyon-pyon" for just a moment here.
"Tsudzukeru" means to "continue".
So again, we've got this form of taking the i-stem of a verb, "hashiru" becomes "hashiri"
and then we add onto it the verb "tsudzukeru" (to continue).
So "usagi-wa hashiri tsudzuketa" means "The rabbit continued running".
"Pyon-pyon" is something we're going to find very often in Japanese and that is, a doubled
word that is a sound effect.
There are lots and lots of these in Japanese, [e.g.] "shiku-shiku", which is the sound effect
for crying.
And some of them will be literal sounds and some of them describe states of various kinds.
So, we're going to be meeting a lot of these later.
"Pyon-pyon" is almost a literal sound effect.
It's the sound of a small thing jumping along, and you'll hear this an awful lot.
I do at any rate, but then, a lot of my friends are small things that jump along.
So "pyon-pyon" is the sound, or not quite a sound, it's... if it were an anime, you'd
probably hear the sound, wouldn't you, pyon-pyon-pyon-pyon-pyon – but in this case it's not necessarily
a sound you hear, but it's the feeling, the sound-like feeling of a small thing, a small
animal, jumping, jumping, little jumps.
So, because it's a rabbit, it didn't run the way you run, it runs in a little jumping,
bouncing fashion, the way rabbits do.
And the thing to note here is that we say "pyon-pyon-to".
So once again we're using that quotation particle.
In this case we're using it to show how the rabbit ran, and because this is kind of technically
a sound effect, we're "quoting" the sound the rabbit made in order to tell the manner
in which the rabbit ran.
It ran in a little-jumps kind of manner.
All right.
So next week we'll find out what happened.
What do you think Alice might have done?
No looking ahead!
So, as you see, we're getting better, aren't we?
It took us an awful long time to get through two sentences last week.
This week we got through a lot more a lot more quickly, and I think we've learned a
lot again.
If you have any questions or comments, please leave them in the Comments below and I will
answer.
I'd like to thank my Gold Kokeshi patrons, my producer-angels, who make these videos
possible, and all my patrons and supporters on Patreon.
And all my supporters everywhere.
And I'd like to thank you for attending this lesson.
Kore kara mo yoroshiku onegai shimasu.
Class dismissed.

Konnichiwa.
Today we're going to talk about the receptive helper verb.
In other places you will hear this referred to as the "passive conjugation".
Now, as we've already learned, there are no conjugations in Japanese,
so, it can't be a conjugation.
Also, it isn't passive.
So that's zero out of two for the textbooks.
And this matters because if we think of the receptive helper verb as a passive conjugation,
it completely disrupts our grasp of the structure and, once again,
it throws those poor particles all over the room.
And as we know the particles are the linchpins, the hinges on which Japanese turns.
So, if we mess up the particles we are in deep trouble.
And this is why so many people find Japanese hard to understand.
So, now I've mentioned "passive conjugation" just so you know what we're talking about
if you find it in other contexts, let's drop those words completely and call it what it is:
the receptive helper verb.
So, what is the receptive helper verb?
It's a verb that fits onto the a-stem of another verb,
and the a-stem, that's the same stem
that we use for attaching the -nai negative helper adjective, isn't it?
The receptive helper verb is "reru / rareru":
that's "reru" for godan verbs, "rareru" for ichidan verbs.
Now, a lot of people panic when they see that the "rareru" of the ichidan receptive helper
verb is the same as the "rareru" of the ichidan potential helper verb.
But there's no need to panic.
It's perfectly all right.
In English we have things like this as well.
For example, we have the words "to", "two" and "too".
And they're all pronounced the same and they're all very common words
that are used hundreds of times every day.
And how often do they get confused?
Not very often at all.
And it's the same with the potential and receptive helper verbs.
They're used in quite different situations and there's
very little chance of confusing them in real use.
And real use is what matters.
So, what does the receptive helper verb mean?
It means "receive" or "get".
Receive what?
Receive the action of the verb to which it is attached.
Now, most of the time I'm going to use the word "get" because this expresses very clearly
what the helper verb does.
Your old English teacher might say it's not the best way of expressing things,
but it's a perfectly good way of expressing things in English
and in Japanese it is exactly how we do express them.
All right?
So, let's take a simple example: "Sakura-ga shikara-reta."
"Shikaru" means "scold" or "tell off", and the a-stem is "shikara",
so, when we add to that "reru" and put it into the past tense we get "shikara-reta".
"Shikaru" is "scold", "shikara-reru" is "get scolded", "shikara-reta" is "got scolded",
so, "Sakura got scolded".
Now, there's an important thing to bear in mind here, and that is that we can sometimes,
with a helper verb attached to a verb, we can, as a sort of railroad shorthand, condense
those two parts into one verb.
So, we can say "hon-ga yomeru" and although "yomeru", which is the potential form of "yomu",
is strictly speaking "yome" plus "-ru", we can combine
them together and treat "yomeru" as one engine.
But we can't, and never should, do that with the receptive helper verb.
Why not?
Because when the receptive helper verb is attached to another verb, the action of the
first verb is always done by someone different from the action of the second verb "reru/rareru".
So, we always have in a receptive sentence the action that is done by someone else, whom
we may or may not know, plus the real action of the sentence which is "reru/rareru", the
receiving - the getting - of that action.
And this is the fundamental point to bear in mind.
It's because the textbooks don't keep this in mind and don't keep those two engines separate
that all the confusion and difficulty over the so-called "passive conjugation" arises.
The head verb of a reru/rareru receptive sentence is always "reru" or "rareru",
not the verb to which it is attached.
All right.
Now, let's also notice that the A-car, the actor of the sentence, is not necessarily a person.
So, if we say, "mizu-ga noma-reta" (nomu: drink; noma: a-stem of drink; reta: got),
we're saying, "The water got drunk".
And the actor of that sentence is the water.
Now, even if we add a doer of the action: "mizu-ga inu-ni noma-reta", the actor of the
sentence is still the water, not the dog, because it's the water that got drunk,
it's the water that did the getting.
The dog did the drinking, but the water did the getting.
And the dog drinking the water is all a white section which modifies that final head verb, "get".
"The water got drunk by the dog."
Now why do I mark the dog with -ni?
I'm going to come to that in just a moment.
Let's get a fuller sentence so we can see all the particles working together in a receptive sentence.
"Sakura-wa dareka-ni kaban-ga nusuma-reta"
   Topic          Target    Receiver                 pull-verb/receptive
                                   “it did ‘reru’ ”           (it receives the action from [ ]-ni  )
                                     Subject

(nusumu: steal; nusuma: a-stem of steal;
nusuma-reru: get stolen; nusuma-reta: got stolen).
"Dareka" means "someone" (dare: who + ka: question). Who was it?
We don't know, no one in particular, but someone.
"Dareka" - "someone".
So, what's going on here?

Who is the receiver of the action?
It's not Sakura, who's marked by -wa.
It's not someone, who's marked by -ni.
It's the person who's marked by -ga, and that's the bag.


The bag is what received that stealing, so the bag is the subject of the sentence.
The bag is the one who did "reru", who did "got".


And -ni... what's it doing here?
Well, let's remember that -ni marks the ultimate target of an action.
So, "Sakura-ni booru-wo nageta" -
                                       Push-verb (it projects the action onto [ ]-ni   )

the ga-marked actor is I, the object of the action is "booru",
and the target of that action is Sakura.
Now, this kind of -ni can only be used when we are projecting something, whether it's
throwing a ball, sending a letter, giving a present, lending a book.
We have to be projecting something toward the target.
Now, "reru" is not a projecting verb.
It's a receiving verb.
It's not a push-verb, it's a pull-verb.

Therefore, the target of that verb is not something toward which you are projecting;
it is the thing from which you are receiving. <<<<<<<<<<<<<<< Important Definition


The target [ ]-ni  is defined by the distinction between

Push-Verbs (Projecting Verbs)        and        Pull-Verbs  (Receptive)

  (All normal verbs I think)                               (rare is an example)

So -ni performs the same function in relation to a pull-verb that it performs in relation
to a push-verb, that is, the ultimate target of the push, the ultimate source of the pull.
So, you see, all the particles are doing exactly what they always do.
Nothing is changing here.
If you think of it as "passive conjugation", all the particles do a strange dance and seem
to be doing different things from what they usually do, but if you understand it as it
is - the receptive helper verb - there isn't any problem.
And it all makes sense, just the way Japanese always does if you know what it's really doing.
Now, there's one other area in which the receptive sometimes confuses people, and that is in
the so-called "suffering passive" or "adversity passive", which is called in Japanese
the "meiwaku ukemi", which means the "nuisance receptive".
And that's what it is.
It's the nuisance receptive.
"Sakura-wa dareka-ni kaban-ga nusuma-reta" means "Sakura's bag got stolen by someone"
or, literally, "In relation to Sakura, bag got stolen by someone".
But we can also say "Sakura-ga dareka-ni kaban-wo nusuma-reta".
What happens here?
This is the nuisance receptive.
So, what's happening here?
The ga-marked actor is now Sakura
She is the one who does the receiving.
So, what does this sentence mean in English?
Very simple: "Sakura got her bag stolen".
That's what we say in English; our old English teacher might not like it, but
we say it in English, it makes sense in English, and it's exactly what we say in Japanese.
"Sakura got her bag stolen by someone."






Konnichiwa.
Today we're going to go back to Alice's adventures.
If you remember, Alice had spotted a white rabbit running along.
The white rabbit looked at his watch and said,
"I'm late! I'm late!" and ran off.
Alice called to him to stop but, whether he heard or not, he didn't stop.
"Arisu-wa tobi agatte, usagi-no ato-wo otta."
"Tobi agaru" is another one of those words of the kind we looked at last week, where
a verb is joined to the i-stem of another verb to create a new verb.
The first verb here is "tobu", which means either "jump" or "fly".
In this case, it obviously means "jump", since Alice can't fly.
And "agaru" means "rise up".
So, when you put them together, "tobi agaru" means "jump up".
And we might notice that "agaru" here, it's the same kanji as "ue", which means "up",
and "agaru" is a verb meaning "rise up", and we can see that it's related to "ageru", which
we looked at recently, and that means to "give to someone upwards / (to) raise up toward someone else".
But "agaru" means for something to "raise itself up / rise up in itself".
So, we can see that the two are related.
They're both "upping" verbs.
"Usagi-no ato-wo otta."
"Ato" means "behind" or "after", and "ou" (which is spelled おう) means "follow ".
"Ato-wo ou" is a common expression and it means to "follow after / follow behind".
But, as we've seen before, these positional expressions are always nouns in Japanese.
We talk about the "on" of the table, the "under" of the table, the "beside" of the river.
And here we're talking about the "behind" or the "after" of the rabbit.
So, Alice followed the "rabbit's after" or the "rabbit's behind".
This is how we put it in Japanese.
"Arisu-wa tobi agatte, usagi-no ato-wo otta." –
"Alice jumped up and followed after the rabbit."
"Shaberu usagi-wo mita koto-ga nai."
"Shaberu" means "talk" or "chatter".
It's a bit like "jabber" in English, isn't it?
"Shaberu usagi" – in this case obviously "shaberu", the verb, is being used,
as any verb-engine can be used, as an adjective.
So "shaberu usagi" is a "talking rabbit" or a "talk-rabbit" literally.
"Mita koto-ga nai" is a usage we're going to find very often: "koto-ga nai", "koto-ga aru".
What does it mean?
Well, "koto", as we know, means a "thing" and it means a thing in an abstract sense,
a condition, not a concrete thing like a pen or a book.
So, "mita koto": "mita" is modifying the noun "koto", isn't it?
It's telling us what kind of "koto" it is, and in this case "miru" means "see",
"mita" is "see" in the past tense, so the "koto" is actually "seeing" in the past tense.
So "mita koto" means "the fact of having seen".
"Mita koto-ga nai" means "the fact of having seen does not exist".
So what this is saying is, "Alice had never seen a talking rabbit".
("The fact of having seen a talking rabbit does not exist")
"Shaberu usagi-wo mita koto-ga nai" – "Alice had never seen a talking rabbit."
And of course, in English we always want to make Alice the actor of this sentence, but
actually, the subject of this sentence, the A-car, is not Alice, it's "koto".
Even if we put Alice into the sentence, we would say, "Arisu-wa shaberu usagi-wo mita koto-ga nai".
She would still not be the actor of the sentence.
She would just be the topic about which the sentence was.
"Speaking of Alice, the fact of having seen a talking rabbit does not exist."
"Usagi-wa hayaku hashitte, kyuu-ni usagi-no ana-ni tobi konda."
Right, so this is quite a long sentence and there's quite a lot in it to unpack.
I'll tell you what it means to start with.
It means "The rabbit ran quickly and suddenly jumped into a rabbit-hole".
So, let's look at it bit by bit.
"Usagi-wa hayaku hashitte"
Now, "hashiru", as we know, is "run";
"hayai" is an adjective meaning "fast" or "early".
In this case, it obviously means "fast" – we know the rabbit wasn't early, don't we?
If we want to say, "the rabbit is fast", we would say "usagi-ga hayai".
If we want to say that its movement is fast, its action is fast, we need an adverb.
An adverb is an adjective that describes not an object, not a noun, but a verb.
Now, we can turn any adjective into an adverb in Japanese very easily.
All we do is we take the regular i-ending adjective and use its stem -ku.
So "hayai" becomes "hayaku".
"Hayai" is an adjective describing a thing; "hayaku" is an adverb describing an action.
So, "usagi-wa hayaku hashitte" – "The rabbit ran fast".
"Kyuu-ni usagi-no ana-ni tobi konda."
Now, "usagi-no ana": "ana" means "hole", so "usagi-no ana" means "rabbit-hole".
"Tobi komu" is another one of these compound verbs.
"Tobu", as we know, means "jump", and "komu" means to "go into" something.
It's not just like "enter"; it tends to be to "put into", to "force into", to do an action into something.
So we have a lot of verbs actually which are made up with "komu", which is "doing an action into" something.
So "tobi komu" means "jump into", quite simply "jump into".
So, the rabbit "jumped into a rabbit-hole."
But "kyuu-ni", what does that mean?
Well, "kyuu" is a noun and it means "sudden".
And when we put -ni onto the end of it we turn that into an adverb as well.
So here we have two kinds of adverbs.
We can form an adverb from an adjective by simply using its ku-stem.
And we form an adverb from a noun by adding -ni.
And this works with some regular nouns and pretty much all adjectival nouns.
So, "kyuu" means "sudden" or "abrupt"; "kyuu-ni" means "suddenly".
"The rabbit suddenly jumped into a rabbit-hole."
So, the entire sentence: "Usagi-wa hayaku hashitte, kyuu-ni usagi-no ana-ni tobi konda" –
"The rabbit ran fast and suddenly jumped into a rabbit-hole."
"Arisu-mo usagi-no ana-ni tobi konda." –
"Alice also jumped into the rabbit-hole."
Now here we're going to meet a new element that we haven't covered before, and that is the mo-flag.
"Mo" is a flag, just like -wa.
Why is that?
Well, we know that -wa is a non-logical topic-marking particle, don't we?
"Mo" is another non-logical topic-marking particle;
in fact, it's the only other non-logical topic-marking particle.
So -mo marks the topic of the sentence just the way -wa does.
What's the difference between them?
Well, -wa, as we know, declares the topic of the sentence, and obviously it can also
change the topic of the sentence.
If we're talking about one thing and we declare a new -wa topic, we have changed the topic of the sentence.
Now, -mo declares the topic of the sentence as well, but it always changes it.
You can't use -mo unless there is a topic already current in the conversation.
So, the topic of our conversation up to this point has been the rabbit: the rabbit jumped into the hole.
And now we're changing the topic to Alice.
"Arisu-mo usagi-no ana-ni tobi konda."
When we change the topic with -mo, we are saying that the comment about this topic is
the same as the comment on the previous topic, the topic we're changing from.
When we change the topic with -wa, we are doing the opposite of that:
we are drawing a distinction between the present topic and the previous topic.
So, if we had said, "Arisu-wa oneechan-no tokoro-ni modotta" – "tokoro" is "place" and "modoru" is "return",
so, this would have meant Alice went back to her sister,
to the place where her sister was, to her sister's place.
If we'd said this, that -wa would have been drawing a distinction between what the rabbit
did and what Alice did.
We would be saying, "The rabbit jumped into the rabbit-hole.
As for Alice, she returned to her sister".
And you see that in English too.
This has the implication that what Alice did was different from what the rabbit did.
"The rabbit jumped into the rabbit-hole.
As for Alice, she went back to her sister."
This is what -wa does.
If we'd used -ga: "Arisu-ga oneechan-no tokoro-ni modotta", we'd simply have been saying,
"The rabbit jumped into the rabbit-hole and Alice went back to her sister."
But with -wa, we are drawing that distinction; we are saying, "The rabbit jumped into the
rabbit-hole, but as for Alice, she went back to her sister."
Now, if we say -mo instead of -wa, then we are making the opposite point: we are saying
that the comment we made on the rabbit is the same as the comment we're making on Alice.
"The rabbit jumped into the rabbit-hole and Alice also jumped into the rabbit-hole."
So, there are various uses of "mo", which we'll look at later, but this is the most fundamental one.
It's the topic-marking particle that tells us that the comment on the new topic is the
same as the comment on the old topic.
"Ana-no naka-wa tateana datta.
Arisu-wa sugu shita-ni ochita."
"Naka" means "the inside", either the middle or the inside of something,
so "ana-no naka" is the inside of the hole.
"Tateana": the word "tate" means "vertical" or "upright"
(and you can see it's related to "tatsu" – to stand).
So, "ana-no naka-wa tateana datta" means "the inside of the hole was a vertical hole" – it went straight down.
"Arisu-wa sugu shita-ni ochita."
Now, "shita", as we know, is "down" or "below".
"Sugu" means "direct";
it can mean "soon" in the sense of English "It'll happen directly (it'll happen soon)",
or it can mean "straight / direct" in the other sense.
So "sugu shita" means "straight down / right down / directly down".
"Arisu-wa sugu shita-ni ochita."
"Demo odoroita koto-ni yukkuri yukkuri ochita."
And this means "But surprisingly she fell very very slowly".
"Odoroku" means "be surprised", and "odoroita koto" is an interesting expression because
it literally appears to mean, doesn't it, a "surprised thing".
But as we've seen with Japanese adjectives of emotion and desire, with things that describe
emotion and desire, in Japanese they shift very easily from the thing that experiences
the emotion to the thing that causes the emotion and back.
So "odoroita koto" here doesn't mean a "surprised thing", it means a "surprising thing".
And -ni ("koto-ni"), is once again that technique of putting a -ni, putting -ni, after a noun
to turn it into an adverb.
Image
Image
So, "odoroita koto-ni ochita."
(We'll come to "yukkuri" in just a moment.)
It means "surprisingly fell / she fell in a surprising manner".
And what kind of a surprising manner was this?
"Yukkuri yukkuri".
Now, "yukkuri" is a very common word that we'll encounter.
It's a slightly unusual kind of adverb – the third kind of
adverb we're going to encounter commonly in Japanese.
The first two kinds, as we see, are the ku-stem of an adjective or a noun with -ni.
"Yukkuri" is slightly unusual in that it is fundamentally a noun which can be applied
as an adverb but we don't need to use -ni with it.
It stands on its own.
"Yukkuri yukkuri ochita".
"Yukkuri" means "slowly / leisurely / at a gentle pace".
So, "odoroita koto-ni yukkuri yukkuri ochita" – "But surprisingly she fell very very slowly".










Konnichiwa.



Image


Today we're going to look at self-move and other-move words.
If you look in a standard Japanese textbook or dictionary, you usually see these defined
as "transitive" and "intransitive" verbs.
Now, this isn't as far off as some of the things you find in these books, such as conjugation,
which doesn't exist in Japanese; C (there is no passive in Japanese).
Transitivity and intransitivity do exist in Japanese and most of the time there is
a big overlap between that and self-move and other-move verbs.
However, it doesn't work all the time and it isn't exactly what is meant by self-move
and other-move in Japanese.
So, if you're familiar and comfortable with the Western terms "transitive" and "intransitive",
it doesn't hurt a lot if you use them, at least not most of the time.
But if you're not familiar with them, don't try to learn them just for the sake of Japanese,
because they're not really accurate.
So, what are self-move and other-move words?
In Japanese, a move-word, "doushi", is a verb, a word that denotes an action or a movement.
So, a self-move word is any verb that moves itself.
So, if I stand up, that's a self-move action.
I'm not moving something else; I'm moving myself.
If I throw a ball, that's an other-move action.
I'm not throwing myself, I'm throwing the ball.
And really it's as simple as that.
Now, Japanese has a lot of pairs of words – so we could say they're either two forms of the same word
or two very closely related words – where we have a self-move and an other-move version.
So, one very good example is "deru" and "dasu".
They both use the same kanji which means "come out".
The base form is "deru" and that means simply "come out" or "emerge", and that's the self-move version.
The other-move version is "dasu" and that means "take out" or "bring out": cause something to come out.
So in the first case whatever it is is moving itself; it's coming out; it's emerging.
In the second case, the actor of the sentence, the actor of the verb, is bringing something
else out or taking something else out.
Now, this is often very useful, because in many cases it gives us two distinct words
that are easy to understand because they're closely related.
For example, "makeru" means "lose" – it doesn't mean lose an object or lose money,
but lose a contest, lose a war, lose a battle, lose a game – be defeated, in other words.
Now, "makasu", which is the other-move version of "makeru", means "defeat" – in other words,
cause someone else to lose.
So where we have two words in English, "lose" and "defeat", in Japanese we have fundamentally
the same word in its self-move and its other-move versions.
So that's very useful – but not so useful if you don't understand how to form self-move
and other-move versions of a word.
If you look in the standard textbooks, most of the time they're going to tell you that
you just have to learn all the self-move and all the other-move words separately.
Sometimes they give you lists of self-move and other-move pairs – transitivity pairs, as they call them.
But this isn't true and it isn't necessary.
Most of the time we can tell which is a self-move word and which is an other-move word.
There are a few very simple rules that cover most of the move-word pairs.
And those rules are even easier if you understand the logic that underlies them.
And that's what we're going to learn right now.
The first thing to know is that there is, as it were, an Adam and Eve of self-move and
other-move words, the mother and father of them all.
And these are "aru" and "suru".
"Aru" is the mother of all self-move words.
It simply means "be".
So, it's a completely inward-directed verb.
You can't be or exist something else; you can only be and exist in yourself.
It's fundamentally and absolutely inward-directed,
self-directed.
"Suru", on the other hand, means "do".
So, they mean "be" and "do".
And "suru" in itself, just doing, can never exist on its own
you have to be doing something.
So, this is the father of all other-move verbs.
Now why do we need to know that, why is it important to know that?
Because when we know that, it unlocks most of the
move-word pairs that we're going to encounter.
How does it do that?
Well, there are what I call 3 laws of move-word pairs.
And the first of those laws is that if one of a pair ends in -su, that is going to be the other-move word, always.
Why?
Because that -su is related to "suru".
So, in the example we gave before, "deru/dasu",
"deru" means "come out" and "dasu", which ends in -su, is the other-move verb –
that's the one that means "take (something else) out".
In "makeru/makasu", we know that the other-move verb,
the verb that means "make (someone else) lose" is "makasu" because it ends in -su.
And an awful lot of those -su pairs actually make that particular transformation, -eru to -su.
But not always.
In some cases... we have, for example, "ochiru", which means "fall", and "otosu", which means "drop".
They have the same kanji; they are a pair, they don't have that regular -eru to -su ending,
but "otosu" still has -su on the end, so we still know that that is the other-move partner of the pair.
Now, the second rule is that where one of a pair ends in any of the a-stem + -ru, so
it ends in the sound -aru, that is going to be the self-move partner of the pair.
Why?
Because that -aru is related to "aru", the mother of all self-move verbs.
The usual pattern here is -eru to -aru.
We already looked at that in the last lesson,
where we have "agaru", which means "rise up/get up",
and "ageru", which means "raise (something) up".
It is very often used to mean to "give (something) upward (to another person)".
So, we have "agaru" and "ageru", and we know that
the self-move partner of the pair is "agaru" because it ends in -aru.
The usual form here is -eru to -aru, but again it doesn't have to be.
There are other cases, such as "kurumu", which means "wrap", and "kurumaru", which means
"be wrapped", but again it doesn't matter because we know that the one ending in -aru
is always going to be the self-move partner of the pair.
Now, the third law is that if we take any regular verb ending in -u sound (as they all
do) and change it to the e-row and add -ru, which means that it ends in -eru, that flips
a self-move word to an other-move word or an other-move word to a self-move word.
The problem is that we don't know in every case know from the structure which way the
word will be flipped.
However, this is not as difficult as it seems, because first of all this is not a large number
of verbs – the majority are covered by the first two rules – and of this group of -u
to -eru flips, the majority is -mu to -meru.
And -meru is – I would call this an honorary member of the su family.
Or you could say that -mu to -meru is the honorary fourth law.
Whichever way you put it, in -mu to -meru,
-meru is always the other-move partner of the pair.
And indeed as you get more experienced in Japanese, you will get to feel that meru-ending
verbs have a suru-like other-move feeling to them.
And this really is all you need to know if you're beginning with self-move/other-move
verbs, because this covers really the vast majority of all the pairs you're going to encounter.
So don't feel that you have to learn the rest of this lesson.
You can come back to it later whenever you want to.
But I'm going to just complete it, partly so that you have all the information you might
need for the future and partly because it's going to give us more insight into how self-move
and other-move really works.
So the next thing to know is that as well as -mu/-meru, which is the big one, there
are also other honorary members of the su family and these are: -bu to -beru – -beru
is always the other-move version (and -bu and -mu are very close in Japanese; you may
know "sabishii/samishii" and other words like that, where you can just use bu or mu in the
same word, so -meru and -beru naturally are both honorary members of the su family).
And also -tsu/-teru – the -teru is always the other-move pair.
So in the end we really have very few wild cards in this pack.
The only ones that we really can't tell which way they are going is -ku and -gu, to -keru
and -geru, -u to -eru, and those ru-ending verbs that don't fit either of the first two laws.
So, these are in fact the only exceptions where you really can't tell structurally which way they are going.
So, is there anything we can actually do about this last small minority of self-move/other-move flips?
And the answer to that is yes.
But it's a little bit subtler and it will become easier as you become more competent in Japanese.
So, you don't need to worry about this if you're at an early stage.
The rules I've given you cover most of the cases.
But when we take a verb that structurally you can't tell which way it's flipping,
a lot of the time we can tell semantically –
that's to say, that when I say that the e-row plus -ru flips transitivity,
I mean exactly that.
The -eru version is the flipped version; the -u version is the original, the one that's in the basic form of the verb.
So, to take an example, "uru" means "sell"; it's a very common word.
There's a less common version of it which is "ureru", and that's the flipped version.
Now, "selling" is obviously an other-move verb – I sell something.
You can't just sell in the abstract.
I sell something-or-other and so I'm moving that other thing – quite literally.
But "ureru" means "sell" in the other sense, as in "that game is selling like hot cakes".
So, in this case, they're talking about a book selling or a game selling, so the thing that
is doing the selling here is also the thing that is moving, so this is a self-move version, isn't it?
So, it's clear that "uru" is basically an other-move verb but when it's flipped it has a self-move version.
Now, if we take one that goes the other way, "shitagau" means "obey" or "follow", and it
has a flipped version, "shitagaeru", which means to "be followed by" or "be obeyed by".
Now, it's clear here that the basic idea is obeying or following and that the extended
idea is being obeyed or being followed.
So here it's clear that the other-move version is going to be the -eru version, because that's
the flipped version of the basic concept, to obey or follow.
And we can also note here for those of you who've been asking yourselves, "Why does she
say that transitive and intransitive aren't correct?" – this is an example.
The Japanese-English dictionaries tell us that "shitagau" is the intransitive version,
Image
but if you think about it "shitagau" means "obey" or "follow".
This is not an intransitive word.
You can't just obey or follow in the abstract.
You obey someone or you follow someone.
It's a transitive verb.
So why do the dictionaries call it intransitive?
Because they have made the commitment to translating self-move as intransitive, but while it's
a transitive verb – you obey someone, you follow someone – it is also a self-move verb.
In obeying someone or following someone, you are not moving that other person.
You are moving yourself.
In being obeyed or being followed, you are not moving yourself, you're moving that other person.
So this is one of the cases where self-move and other-move do not correspond to transitive and intransitive.
There aren't too many of those cases, so it doesn't matter if you want to use transitive
and intransitive, just be aware that the meaning is not exactly the same in any case, and in
some cases it doesn't fit at all.
Now, as I say, if you just want to remember the three rules and nothing else, that is
going to break the back of self-move and other-move verbs for you.
In most cases, you can understand them with nothing but that.
So the rest of what I've told you is very useful as you become more proficient at Japanese,
but if you just remember the concept of self-move and other-move and the three basic rules – the
-aru version is always self-move, the -su and -seru versions are always other-move and
if you also remember that the -meru version is always other-move, that's worth throwing
in because that covers a lot.
And with those, you really have the problem of self-move and other-move verbs mostly under control.
If you have any questions or comments, please ask them in the Comments below and I will answer.
And I'd like to thank my Gold Kokeshi patrons, my producer-angels, who make these videos possible,
and I'd like to thank all my patrons and supporters on Patreon and elsewhere.
My Red Kokeshi patrons are credited in the information section below.
And I'd like to thank you for attending this lesson.
Kore kara mo yoroshiku onegai shimasu.
Class dismissed.







Konnichiwa.




Today we're going back to Alice, and we're going to be using quite a lot of trains this time
because I want us to really grasp the structure of these sentences.
So, if you remember from last time, Alice had just entered the rabbit hole
and quite surprisingly she finds herself falling very slowly down a vertical hole.
"Ochiru aida-ni hima-ga tappuri atte mawari-wo yukkuri mimawaseta."
Now, I'm going to tell you what this means first and then we're going to break it down.
"Ochiru aida-ni"
"Ochiru", as we know, is "fall".
"Aida" is a period of time
and it's also the space between two things.
And obviously a period of time is always, metaphorically
speaking - and we can only really talk about time in spatial metaphors -
a period of time is always a space between two points, isn't it?
It has a beginning and it has an end.
So "ochiru aida-ni" means "while she was falling / during the period of time while she was falling".
"Hima" means "free time / open time".
It's a word you'll see quite often, and it can be used in
both a positive and a negative sense.
It can mean free time to do what you want to do,
or it can mean empty time, being bored, having time hanging on your hands.
Here it just means having plenty of time available to look around, because she's falling, she
can't do anything else, and she's falling rather slowly.
"Tappuri" means "in large quantities".
It's another one of these ri-ending adverbs that don't need -ni.
And it means "in large quantities / in plentiful amounts" - rather like pouring from a tap:
"tappuri", "in large quantities".
And here it's an adverb describing the fact that the "hima", the "free time", exists.
So, the free time exists in large quantities.
So that's our first logical clause: "Ochiru aida-ni..."
(which simply sets the scene, the time, for the action -
it's an absolute time expression because it's a particular
time, so it takes -ni)
"...hima-ga tappuri atta" ("there was a lot of free time").
Now, the next part - "mawari-wo yukkuri mimawaseta" - is interesting because this is another example
of what we were talking about last week:
self-move/other-move pairs.
"Mawaru" means to "go around/move around".
The rather childish name for a policeman is "omawari-san", which means
"someone who goes around / someone who does the rounds".
"Mawasu" means "make (something) go around/to send (something) around/to cause it to go around"
and of course, as we learned last week, we easily know which of the pair is
the self-move word (going around) and which is the other-move word (sending around) because
the sending-around one ends in -su.
Now, we don't actually have "mawaru" here; we have "mawari".
And as we've mentioned before,
when we take the i-stem of a verb and use it on its own
it usually becomes a noun.
There is another use which we're not going to enter into right now, but in this case
it is becoming a noun.
So, what does "mawari" mean?
"Mawari" can actually mean two things: it can be the noun-form of "mawaru", in which case
it's "going around", "doing the rounds", and that's what we have in "omawari-san", a policeman -
here's someone who does the act of doing the rounds,
"mawari" is "the act of doing the rounds",
but it can also mean "the surroundings",
and in this case, it actually takes a different kanji to
show that it's a slightly different meaning of the word.
It's still the noun-form of "around", but in this case
it's the surroundings, not the act of going around.
So, "mawari-wo yukkuri mimawaseta" means
"she could in a leisurely manner...
("yukkuri", that adverb we learned last week)
... she could in a leisurely manner 'mimawasu' "
What does "mimawasu" mean?
We know what "mawasu" means - it means to "make (something) go around".
"Mi-mawasu" is attaching "mawasu" to the i-stem of "miru".
We can't actually tell it's the i-stem, because this is an ichidan verb, and all ichidan stems
look the same, as we know, but we know that this is in fact the ren'youkei, the i-stem,
because that's the one that gets used for attaching verbs to other verbs.
So, "mimawasu" means literally "send your looking around / send your eye-beams around
the place / make your looking go around".
So, "mawari-wo mimawasu" is "look around the place / send your eye-beams,
send your looking around the place".
And "mimawaseru" is, as we've seen, the potential form of "mimawasu".
So what this is saying is "because a lot of time existed she was able to leisurely send
her looking around the surroundings".
"Mazu-wa, shita-wo mitemita kedo, kurasugite nanimo mienakatta."
"First of all, she tried looking down, but it was too dark
so, nothing was visible (nothing could be seen)."
"Mazu-wa" means "first of all".
"Mazu" is "from the start / from the beginning".
"Mazu-wa, shita-wo mitemita". Now,
"shita-wo miru" is "looking down / looking at the down".
We know that in Japanese "down" is always a noun, don't we?
So, you look "at the down" - "shita-wo miru".
But it doesn't say "miru" here; it says "mitemita".
And this is a form of speech that we're going to find a great deal.
When we add "miru" to the te-form of another verb, what we're doing is saying "try doing something";
literally we're saying, "do it and see".
So, "tabetemiru" means "eat it and see / have a taste of it".
"Do you like this?"
"I don't know."
"Tabetemite kudasai.
Try it, taste it, eat it and see."
We often say "yattemiru" - "I'll give it a try / I'll try and see what happens".
"Yaru" is a more casual form of "suru",
and you can say "shitemiru", especially in more formal
circumstances, but more often we say "yatte-miru":
"Give it a try / give it a go / do it and see."
So here we're actually using "miru" with "miru".
"Mite-miru" - "try having a look / take a look / have a look and see".
So, "shita-wo mitemita kedo, kurasugite".
"Kurai" is "dark" and "sugiru", as we've talked about before, means "going by, going beyond".
So, in this case "sugiru" means "too much / going in excess of".
In other words, it was too dark.
It was excessively dark; it was too dark.
"Kurasugite nanimo mienakatta".
"Nanimo" means "even as much as (something)" - "nanimo".
And I've done a video on these uses of -mo which you might want to watch.
"Nanimo mienakatta" - now, "miru" is "see"; "mieru" is "be able to see".
And if we look at the trains here,
we've got to have a ga-marked subject in this second clause:
"nanimo zero-ga mienakatta".
What is the zero in this case?
If we're looking at it in English terms, we might think it's
Alice - "Alice couldn't see anything".
But in Japanese it will usually in fact be "nani", which is "a thing / something".
"Nothing was able to be seen, nothing could be seen",
because usually with expressions like "mieru/mienai",
"kikoeru/kikoenai", "be able to hear" "be able to see" -
we apply it not to the person who's able to see,
but to the thing that's able to be seen.
And of course, we've covered this, haven't we, in our lesson on the potential.
"Sono ato": "ato", as we know, means "after" - we've had it in following after someone,
but it also means "after" in the other sense, "after that".
"Sono" means "that"; "sono ato" means "after that".
So again, this is just a time-expression, setting it in time.
And this time it's a relative time-expression, "after that / after a particular thing",
so, it doesn't need -ni.
"Sono ato ana-no mawari-wo mite" So now she's not looking down.
This means "the surroundings", again, "mawari", of the hole "-wo mite" -
"after that, she looked at the surroundings of the hole".
"Me-ni tomaru-no-wa gisshiri naranda todana ya hondana datta."
Right, so this is quite complex.
The first clause is simple enough.
"Sono ato ana-no mawari-wo mite" - "After that, she looked at the surroundings of the hole".
The second clause has quite a lot for us to consider.
"me-ni tomaru-no-wa" means literally "the thing that stopped in her eye".
Now this is a similar expression to, in English, "the thing that caught her eye", isn't it?
Various things passed through her eye, passed through her vision, and the thing that stopped
there was what we are going to talk about.
But we also need to look at this use of -no.
As we've seen before, -no is like apostrophe-s ('s) in English.
So, if we say "Sakura-no doresu", we're saying, "Sakura's dress".
Now also, just as in English, if you say, "Which dress do you like best?"
Suppose that Sakura and Mary are both wearing dresses and you say, "Which dress do you like best?"
In English you might say, "Sakura's. I like Sakura's best".
You could say, "Sakura's dress"
but you don't have to, you can just say, "Sakura's".
And it's the same in Japanese.
You can say, "Sakura-no" - Sakura's, the one that belongs to Sakura.
But this can be taken much further in Japanese, and
I've done a whole video about this particular use of -no,
which you can look at if you want to go deeper.
But in this case the way it's taken further is "me-ni tomaru-no" –
Me-ni tomaru-no-koto -wa
this is "the thing, the one that stopped in her eye".
"Which dress do you like best? Sakura's,
Sakura's one, Sakura's thing, Sakura's dress."
"Me-ni tomaru-no" - "the thing, the one that stopped in her eye".
So, "ana-no mawari-wo mite me-ni tomaru-no-wa" -"looking at the surroundings of the hole,
the thing that stopped in her eye was...'"
And what it was, was "gisshiri naranda todana ya hondana datta".
"Gisshiri" is yet another one of these ri-ending adverbs that don't need -ni.
"Gisshiri" means "tightly packed".
"Naranda" is the past tense of "narabu" which means "lined-up", so "gisshiri naranda" means
"tightly lined-up / packed together / lined-up and packed together".
"Gisshiri naranda todana ya hondana datta".
All right. Well, we'll get to the "ya" in just a moment, but
"todana ya hondana".
The word for a shelf in Japanese is "tana", and when we add something before it to tell
us what kind of a shelf it is, we use that "ten-ten hooking" that we've talked about before.
So, the "ta" becomes "da": "Todana" - that "to" means "door", so literally, "todana" is a "door-shelf"
and that is the Japanese word for a cupboard.
And it's quite a good word, I think. That's what a cupboard really is, isn't it?
Shelves, with a door.
It's a better way of saying cupboard than the English
way which says it's a board on which you put cups,
which isn't quite what a cupboard is.
"Hondana" is even easier:
it's quite literally a book-shelf, bookshelves.
Now, this "ya" is something we need to cover.
When you want to say "and" - something "and" something else - how do you say it in Japanese?
We know that when you're putting two clauses together, we use the te-form, or sometimes
we use other things, like "demo".
In English we use "and" in all cases: we say "bread and butter", "pencil and paper".
We also say "I went into the baker's and bought some bread."
But in Japanese we don't use the same "and" in the two cases.
We already know some of the ways we can "and" two clauses together, but when we're "anding"
two things together, there are two ways to do it.
And one is to use the to-particle.
We know that the to-particle is the quotation particle, but it's also the and-particle.
So, if you want to say "pen and book", we say "pen to hon".
But we can also use the ya-particle,
so, we can say "to" or "ya"
when we want to "and" together two or more objects.
What's the difference?
Well, as a matter of fact it's a very useful difference,
and one that we could do with in English.
"To" is an exclusive "and".
If I say, "What's in that box?" and you answer "pen to enpitsu" - "pens and pencils" -
you are telling me that there are pens and pencils and nothing else in that box.
If you say "pen ya enpitsu", you're saying there are pens and pencils and there might
also be something else - and very often you're implying that there is something else because
you're avoiding using the exclusive "and".
So, what "stopped in her eye" was the fact that
cupboards and bookshelves (among other things)
were tightly lined around the walls.
"Tana-no hitotsu-kara bin-wo tori oroshita."
"Tana-no hitotsu": "hitotsu" means "one";
"kara" is a particle meaning "from".
Now, here she's using "tana" on its own - "shelves" - and
because it's not joined to anything, it's "tana" not "dana".
And so, she is saying "from one of the shelves"
- "tana-no hitotsu-kara", "from one of the shelves" -
notice here than "tana-no hitotsu" is really just the same
as English "one of the shelves" - "tana-no hitotsu".
"Tana-no hitotsu-kara bin-wo tori oroshita."
Now, "toru" means "take", and "orosu" - the kanji, as you can see, is the kanji for "down",
and again, this is part of a move-pair, self-move/other-move pair, which is why I introduced them early.
Most courses would regard that as an intermediate thing, self-move and other-move, but I think
it makes it much easier to recognize what words are doing if you're aware of this.
"Oriru" means "come down / step down" - come down the stairs, come off a bus.
"Orosu" means "bring down".
And once again, we know which is the other-move one - you "bring (something else) down"
- that's the one that ends in -su: "orosu".
So "tori orosu" means "take and bring down". "Tana-no hitotsu-kara bin-wo tori oroshita."
"From one of the shelves she took down..." "bin" usually gets translated as "bottle";
in fact in this case I think it was more of a "jar".
What was in it?
Well, we'll have to wait till next time to find out.
Now, before we go, there's something I want to ask you because I want your input on the
direction of this course.
You may have noticed a few changes this time.
The most obvious of them is that I am not using romaji for Japanese words any more.
I've been asked to do this, and also, it's what I think I should be doing because it's
structurally very important to start thinking of Japanese in kana terms not in romaji terms.
And if we're in training for reading real Japanese, which we are, it's important to
start reading it in kana - and kanji as far as possible.
I will continue to use furigana prominently for all the kanji, but if I use romaji it
interferes with the process of your recognizing and ingesting Japanese, because your mind
will jump to the thing it finds most comfortable and easily recognizable -
that's the way it works, we can't stop that happening.
So if this is helpful to you, please let me know in the comments below.
If it's unhelpful to you, if it's making it harder for you to follow the explanations,
then let me know that too, because I need to know that.
But remember that if you need to pause at any point, you should be pausing the video.
If you need to take a minute to take things in, to read the extra information on the screen,
to work out the kana if you're still a little bit slow on that, please use the pause button.
I do take things quite fast.
There is a lot of information in these videos, and I do that on the assumption that you're
able to pause the video whenever you need to.
Nothing wrong in doing that.
Don't think you're being slow - the videos are made with that assumption in mind.
Thank you.
I'd like to thank my Gold Kokeshi patrons, my producer-angels, who make these videos possible,
and I'd like to thank all my patrons and supporters on Patreon and everywhere.
And I'd like to thank you for attending this lesson.
Kore kara mo yoroshiku onegai shimasu.
Class dismissed.

Konnichiwa.
Today we're going to talk about formal Japanese: desu/masu.
Some people may be surprised that we've gone for sixteen lessons without using this at
all, when most courses use it from the very first lesson.
Now, there are good reasons why we haven't.
One reason is that desu/masu form is actually quite eccentric.
It does various things that most of the rest of Japanese doesn't do.
So, if we learn this as the standard way to speak, we get all sorts of strange ideas about
the way Japanese works.
We could have started learning it a little earlier, but frankly I think that there are
more important priorities and that it's a good idea to get real, standard Japanese firmly
fixed in our minds before we enter the rather troubled area of desu/m asu.
It isn't difficult once you have very firmly established standard Japanese structures in
your mind, and we've done that now.
If you haven't done it yet, if you haven't followed this course, please go back to the first lesson right now.
Off you go.
Right.
Now for the rest of you, let's start with "masu".
"Masu" is a verb.
It's not part of a verb, it's a verb in itself.
It's a helper verb like lots of other helper verbs that we've looked at up to this point.
It attaches to our old friend the i-stem, and it doesn't change the meaning of the word
it attaches to in any way.
It simply makes it formal.
So "aruku" becomes "arukimasu"; "hanasu" becomes "hanashimasu", and so forth.
And they're simply the formal way of saying "speak", "walk", etc.
Now, another reason I didn't teach this earlier is because people say there are only two irregular
verbs in Japanese – I've said this myself – but the truth is that there is another one, and it's "masu".
And "masu" isn't irregular in the way that "kuru" and "suru" are irregular.
It's much worse.
It does something that is done nowhere else in modern Japanese.
Now the good news is that the past tense is completely regular and normal.
It works the same way as any other su-ending verb: it's "mashita".
But the negative is not "masanai"; it's "masen".
And what kind of a word is "masen"?
It's really nothing that exists in modern Japanese at all.
The textbooks tell us that it's the negative form of the verb,
but then they tell us that the verb is whatever "masu" is attached to,
and they also tell us that "nai" is the negative form of a verb when it's nothing of the sort.
It's a helper adjective.
We don't need to go into what "masen" actually is, structurally, because it doesn't happen
anywhere else in modern Japanese, so we just learn it as a fact.
The negative of "masu" is "masen".
And that's another reason I didn't teach it earlier, because there isn't much of this in Japanese:
things that you just have to learn "as a fact".
If you know the principles behind things, generally speaking you can understand how
everything works without a lot of memorization.
So, when you start off learning that you just have to learn that the negative
of "masu-verbs", as they're called – in other words, the masu-helper verb –
is "masen", you start off with the idea that Japanese just does
various random things like a European language.
Now, the negative past gets even stranger.
There isn't any past of -sen, the way -nai becomes -nakatta, so what do we do?
We just throw the past tense of "desu" on to the end of "masen" and say "masen deshita".
"Arukimasen deshita" – "I didn't walk".
A lot of Japanese people who study Japanese grammar really dislike this, and I can't blame them.
But it has, for better or worse, become standard Japanese grammar, so we just have to remember it.
It's really only a couple of irregularities and they're not really difficult to remember
just so long as we don't learn them at the beginning,
where they confuse our whole understanding of Japanese.
If we learn "masu" as a so-called "conjugation" and we believe that that is the base-form
of the verb, then to make other forms of verbs we find ourselves taking off the -masu and
then changing the i-stem for a different kind of stem in order to do something else.
Which would be complicated enough if we knew about stems but the textbooks don't tell us
that either, so we've just got a lot of completely random European-style rules and regulations
that make no sense at all.
So, let's move on to "desu".
"Desu", as you know, is the formal version of "da".
It's the copula.
It works exactly like "da", so if you know "da", you know "desu" already.
Except that this also has a strange quirk, which is that if we take an adjective like
"akai" meaning "is red", we put "desu" on to the end of it in formal speech.
It doesn't do anything; it just decorates the sentence and makes it formal.
Again, this is something you just have to learn and it's not very difficult to learn,
but if you learn it at the beginning you get the impression that you need the copula with
an adjective like "akai" just as you need the copula with an adjectival noun like "kirei".
And of course, the fact that they call adjectival nouns "na-adjectives" just makes it even more confusing.
You think that adjectives take the copula and they don't.
Real adjectives, i-adjectives, do not take the copula except that in the rather strange
desu/masu form, we pop "desu" on the end just for decoration.


Adjectival nouns, on the other hand, of course do take the copula because they're nouns – and
all nouns take the copula.
So, we say "akai" – "is red" / "kirei da" – "is pretty"; "akai desu" – "is red" with a decoration;
"kirei desu" – "is pretty" with the proper copula that it needs in the formal form.
So, as you see, formal Japanese is not really all that difficult.
We must learn a few rather strange facts, and it's not like most of the rest of Japanese
which is terribly Lego-like and logical.
It's got little quirky bits and pieces to it, but not many and so long as you've got
real Japanese fixed firmly in your mind, adding on desu/masu form is not particularly difficult.
A couple of other things worth knowing: one of the things is that as well as saying "masen",
we can also say "nai desu".
So, we can say "Sakura-ga hanashimasen" – "Sakura doesn't talk", or we can say "Sakura-ga hanasanai desu".
And that of course is perfectly logical and sensible, if any of it is, because since we
put "desu" on to the end of adjectives in formal speech, we can also put it on to the
end of the nai-helper adjective, which is really just another adjective.
We don't make many changes to "masu" because it really is a sentence-ender; we put it right
at the end of whatever else we're doing in order to add formality to the sentence.
However, we can use both "desu" and "masu" with the volitional helper verb.
And once again "masu" behaves eccentrically,
because its o-stem is not, as you would expect, "maso" but "masho".
So, the volitional form is "mashou".
Fortunately, this is only slightly eccentric and not diffcult to manage.
And also, fortunately, "desu" forms a matching pair with "masu" in the volitional form and becomes "deshou".
And since we're raising the subject of the volitional, let's cover that too.
Its formation is very simple, and it's one of the few things that we do with the o-stem of verbs.
The godan volitional helper, like the potential helper –
potential helper is just a single kana, る(-ru), and the volitional helper is just the single kanaう(-u),
and we put it on to the end of the o-stem and it lengthens the o-sound.
So, "hanasu" becomes " hanasou", "aruku" becomes "arukou" and so forth.
What does it mean?
Well, the name really tells you what it means.
"Volition" means "will", so the volitional expresses or invokes the will.
The most usual use of it is setting the will of a group of people in a particular direction.
So, we say, "Ikimashou", "Let's go".
And some people call the tai-helper adjective volitional as well, which is confusing because
they aren't the same thing.
And the thing here to remember is that -tai expresses desire, want, wanting to do something.
The volitional form expresses will.
And will and desire aren't the same thing.
For example, you may have a will to do your homework.
It doesn't mean that you want to do your homework.
What you actually want is to play "Captain Toad", but you set your will to doing your homework.
And when we say things like "ikou", "let's go", for things that we might all want to do,
"let's all have a picnic", "let's have a party", but also "let's tidy the room", "let's do our homework."
It's expressing will, not want.
You'll very often see on Japanese signs things like, "gomi-wo mochikaeri-mashou" –
"let's pick up our trash and take it home" – which always seems to me like quite a nice kind of exhortation,
rather different from the Western signs that say, "Pick up your rubbish or we'll confiscate
your car and dye your children purple".
Now, there are several uses of the volitional along with particles like -ka and -to, but
we're not going to go into them here, because I don't think that learning lists of usages
is a good way to learn.
We'll tackle these as we come to them, perhaps in the course of Alice's adventures.
But one use of this form that is worth knowing because you'll see it pretty often is that
we use the volitional form of the copula, "da" or "desu" –
"da", which isn't really a verb in the usual sense, the volitional is "darou" ­–
and if we add that to any other sentence it gives the meaning of "probably".
Deshou is the formal way to say darou
"Sore-wa akai deshou" – "That's probably red/I think it's red"; "Sakura-ga kuru deshou"
– "I think Sakura's coming/ Sakura's probably coming".
So now we know how to use the volitional and how to use formal Japanese.
So, "ikimashou" – Let's go.






Konnichiwa.
Today we're going to talk about "trying to do something" and from there we're going to
broaden out into the wider meanings of the "to" quotation particle because this is a
very central part of Japanese that's used all the time.
So, we need to get a firm understanding of what it is and how it works.
Now, last week we learned the volitional
helper うand よう which makes a word end with
the sound "ou" or "you" and expresses will.
If we're "trying" to do something we use the volitional for this.
So, if we say, "yama-ni noborou to suru", this means "try to climb mountain".
Why does it mean that?
What's this construction actually doing?
Well, "noborou" expresses the will to climb.
If we say "yama-ni noborou", we're saying, "Let's climb the mountain".
Literally, set our will toward climbing the mountain.
"Noborou-to suru" means doing the act implied by setting our will to climb the mountain.
If we just wanted to say, "climb the mountain", we'd just say, "yama-ni noboru".
But we're not saying, "climb the mountain", we're saying "try to climb the mountain".
Therefore, do the action implied in setting our will / enact our will to climb the mountain,
whether we succeed in actually climbing it or not.
Some people find the distinction between "try climbing" and "try to climb" confusing.
And that's really only because of the way it's expressed in English.
In Japanese, as we learned recently, if we want to say, "try climbing the mountain",
we say, "yama-ni nobotte miru."
The difference is that "try climbing / try eating / try swimming" doesn't imply any doubt
about the fact that we can actually do it.
It implies doubt about what would be the result when we've done it.
"Try eating" - we know we can eat, but don't know if we'll like it.
"Try eating" - "tabete miru" - means "eat and see".
Eat it and then see what the result is, see if you like it, see if you don't like it.
"yama-ni nobotte miru" means "climb the mountain and see".
See whether it was hard, see what the view's like from the top.
"Keeki-wo tabeyou-to suru" - "try to eat the cake" - implies that we don't know whether
you can in fact eat the cake or not, but try it anyway.
Maybe it's a huge cake and it would be very hard to eat it all.
So "shite miru" - "do and see" - implies that there's no doubt about the fact that we can do it,
but there is some doubt about what the result of having done it is going to be.
Are we going to like it?
Is the building going to fall down?
We don't know what will happen when we've done it, but we know we can do it.
"Shiyou-to suru" implies that we don't know whether we can do it or not,
but we are going to try to do it.
So, an important thing here is to see what the to-particle is doing.
-To is encapsulating the sentence that came before it: "yama-ni noborou" - will to climb the mountain.
It isn't quoting it.
It's not something we've said; it's not something we've thought, exactly.
The point is that it's taking the essence, the meaning, the import of that "yama-ni noborou"
and putting it into action.
And we're going to find that in other cases.
For example, we may read that someone "ho'-to shita" . Now, what does that mean?
"Ho' " is in fact a sound effect.
It's the sound effect of breathing a sigh of relief: "ho' ".
But "ho'-to suru" actually does not mean "breathe a sigh of relief".
What it means is, "feel relief / be relieved".
So what we're doing here is enacting the idea, the feeling, expressed in "ho' ", the sigh of relief.
Just as in "yama-ni noborou-to suru" we're enacting the feeling, the import of setting
our will toward climbing the mountain, that is, trying to climb it.
Now, similarly, if we say "Sakura-wo nihonjin-to suru", it means regarding Sakura as a Japanese person.
Now, we might also say, "Sakura-wo nihonjin-ni suru", but that means something quite different.
It means "turn Sakura into a Japanese person".
-Ni is the target of an action.
A little while ago we had a lesson in which we talked about "Sakura-ga kaeru-ni naru"
- "Sakura becomes a frog".
Now, we've also talked about the way that "aru" and "suru" are the Eve and Adam of Japanese verbs,
"aru" being the primary self-move verb and "suru" the primary other-move verb.
"Naru" is very closely related to "aru" - "aru" is "be", "naru" is "become".
And so, if we say "-ni naru" it means to become something.
If we say "-ni suru" that's the other-move version of "-ni naru".
It means to "turn something into something".
So, if we say, "majo-ga Sakura-wo kaeru-ni shita" - "the witch turned Sakura into a frog".
"Sakura-wo nihonjin-ni suru" - turning Sakura into a Japanese person;
but "Sakura-wo nihonjin-to suru" - regarding Sakura as a Japanese person / taking Sakura as a Japanese person.
"Kaban-wo makura-to suru."
"Kaban" is "bag", "makura" is "pillow" and this means "using your bag as a pillow".
You're not turning your bag into a pillow, it's not becoming a pillow,
but you're regarding it as one and using it as one.
So here we have some of the uses of "-to suru".
Generally speaking, it relates to how we regard something.
Now, if we say "-to shite", this isn't so much the act of regarding something as something,
but seeing something in the light of being something.
So, in English it would usually be translated simply as "as".
So, "kojin-to shite no iken" means "my opinion as a private person", as opposed to, say,
my opinion as president of the Frog Jockey Society.
Or we could say, "Amerikajin-to shite chiisai" - "She's small for an American / As an American, she's small.
So, we can see that the quotation function of -to is used not only to quote ideas and thoughts,
but also, to take the feeling of something and bundle it up and then say something about it.
Of course, the most basic thing that can follow -to is "iu", in which case it's a literal quotation,
-to iu (it's usually pronounced not so much "-to iu" as "-to yu").
And this again can be used not just in a literal quotation but also saying
how something is said or what it's called.
So, "Fushigi-no kuni-no Arisu-to iu hon", means "book called Fushigi-no kuni-no Arisu".
And the -to in "-to iu" can be reduced simply to -tte.
So, we can say "-tte iu" - "Fushigi-no kuni-no Arisu-tte iu hon", or it can be reduced down to just -tte.
"Fushigi-no kuni-no Arisu-tte hon" still means "The book called Alice in Wonderland".
So, people sometimes get a little confused when they just see this -tte.
It means -to or -to iu, but the thing that really confuses people sometimes is that it
can also be used in place of the wa-particle.
Now, this seems particularly strange, until you realize what it's actually doing.
If we remember what the wa-particle is, the wa-particle is the topic-marking particle.
So, when we say "Sakura-wa nihonjin da", we can put that into English as
"Speaking of Sakura, she is Japanese person".
Now, does that start to make things a little clearer?
"Sakura-tte nihonjin da" - "Sakura-say, she Japanese-person is" -
"Sakura-speaking of, she Japanese-person is" - "Sakura (topic), she Japanese-person is".
Now, we can't say -to or -to iu in place of the wa-particle.
It's a very casual use.
We just use -tte.
But you can see that it's really, even though it's very colloquial,
it's not just some random and inexplicable thing.
It's setting up Sakura as the thing we're talking about, just as -wa is.
Now, there are other extended uses of -to.
We'll cover those as we come to them.



Konnichiwa.


Today we are going to talk about the causative helper verb.
In the standard grammars this is called "causative" and it's a perfectly good name because it
indicates that we are causing someone to do the verb to which it is attached.
In the standard grammars it's often taught along with the receptive (which they like
to call the "passive") and there's a very very good reason for doing this although the
real reason is never actually explained in the regular textbooks.
So, I'll be telling you that shortly.
But first of all let's look at what the causative helper verb is.
It's a helper verb which, like the receptive, goes onto the end of the a-stem of another verb
and while the receptive helper is "reru/rareru", the causative helper is "seru/saseru".
If they sound rather close to each other, there's a good reason for that.
As we have noted earlier, the Eve and Adam of Japanese verbs are "aru" and "suru" – "be" and "do".
"Aru" is the mother of all self-move verbs; "suru" is the father of all other-move verbs.
Now, the receptive "reru/rareru" is closely related to "aru";
the causative "seru/saseru" is closely related to "suru".
And while it's not exact to say that they are the self-move and other-move versions
of each other, we can see that they are very closely related conceptually to that.
"Reru/rareru" indicates receiving the action to which it is attached.
"Seru/saseru" means causing that action to be performed by somebody else.
And this leads on to the most fundamental similarity between the two pairs of helper verbs –
the similarity that the textbooks never explain and that is most fundamental to understanding how they work.
Why don't the textbooks explain it?
Well, the fundamental reason is that they call the causative and the receptive helper verbs "conjugations".
And the real structure of how they work is completely destroyed and obscured by calling them "conjugations".
A conjugated verb is by definition a single verb.
But a verb plus the receptive or the causative helper is never a single verb.
It's two verbs.
Not only is it two verbs, but the two verbs always have two separate subjects.
So, in a sentence like "mizu-ga inu-ni noma-reta" – "the water got drunk by the dog" – we have
two verbs, two actions, and two different actors doing the two different verbs.
The main verb of the sentence, the core verb, is "reru" – "get" – and that's being done by the water:
the water is getting drunk by the dog.
The secondary verb is "drink" and that's being done by the dog.
This becomes clearer in a slightly longer sentence:
"Sakura-ga dareka-ni kaban-wo nusuma-reta" –
"Sakura got her bag stolen by someone".
Again, there are two actions going on, and always in a receptive sentence the main action,
the core action of the sentence, is "reru" – "receive": "Sakura received".
But there is a nested action within this done by the secondary verb, "nusumu" – "steal".
And that's done by "someone".
Now, it's exactly the same with the causative.
We always have two actors performing the two different verbs.
So, if we say, " 0-ga inu-wo tabesaseta", which means "I caused the dog to eat",
there are two actions going on.
There the action of eating, which is being done by the dog, and then there is the main action,
the core action of the sentence, the action of causing, which is done by me.
So, as you see, we cannot possibly talk about a conjugated verb in the case of either the
receptive or the causative helper.
In each case, there are two separate verbs.
Even though they're joined together, they not only remain separate in function but they
refer to two different actors.
Now let's also take a moment to understand what "seru/saseru" actually means.
We're told that in English it can mean either "make" someone do something or
"allow" someone to do something.
And that's correct: it can have either of those meanings.
But the important thing to understand is that it can have either of those meanings but
it can also have neither of those meanings.
The best way to translate it is with the very un-English sounding "cause" someone to do something.
Why?
Because we can mean that we're forcing them to do something, we can mean that are allowing
them to do something, but we can also mean something that isn't covered by either of
those English translations.
An example?
Well, you've already had one: "inu-wo tabesaseta."
It doesn't mean "I forced the dog to eat", does it?
But it also doesn't mean "I allowed the dog to eat".
It doesn't mean that I gave the dog permission to eat or I took it off its chain so it could reach the food.
That's not what it means.
It means that I set up the conditions under which it was able to eat; I gave it food; I caused it to eat.
So "seru/saseru" means "cause" a person or a thing to perform an action by whatever means,
whether that causing is allowing, whether it's compelling or whether it's setting up
the conditions to make it happen.
Now, the only thing that can appear to be a little confusing about the causative is
that sometimes the person or thing that we are causing to do something can be marked
by -wo and sometimes by -ni.
Now, I've told you before that Japanese particles do not change their function at random, as
the textbooks strongly imply and sometimes openly state that they do – and
as we have to believe if we think that "koohii ga suki da" literally means "I like coffee".
(per quanto mi riguarda) Il caffè è piacevole
Image

And if you don't know what I'm talking about here, please watch the relevant video, because
this is absolutely crucial to understanding Japanese correctly.
So how is it that two different logical particles can apply to the thing or person we are causing to do something?
That is to say, the noun associated with "seru/saseru".
First of all, we have to understand that this thing can be seen as either the object or
the target of the action ("seru/saseru") of the person or thing that is doing the causing.
If we take that object or target to be human, it becomes a little clearer.
If we treat the person as the object, we are assuming that they have no personal will in the matter;
we are treating them literally as an object.
So, this is more appropriate when we are compelling someone to do something; if we treat them
as a target, the implication is more mutual, we are treating them more as an equal and
this goes more naturally with allowing rather than compelling.
And I've talked about these degrees of mutuality between the particles -wo, -ni and -to when
dealing with people in a video which you may want to watch.
However, the choice between -ni and -wo is not the main, or an exact, indicator of whether
we mean allowing or compelling when we use "seru/saseru".
Why not?
There are two reasons for this.
The first, as we've already mentioned, is that saying that "seru/saseu" either means
"compel" or "allow" is warping the meaning of the causative by trying to find exact English
analogies, and there is no precise English analogy.
On many occasions, as I demonstrated, it may mean neither "compel" nor "allow".
It's a sliding scale between the two; it's subtler and more graduated than that.
Secondly, when the action that is being compelled itself has a wo-marked object – for example,
"inu-ni niku-wo tabe-saseta" – "I caused the dog to eat meat".
You can see the implied, subordinate sentence here is "inu-ga niku-wo tabeta".
The meat is the object of the dog's action, and the dog is the thing I am causing to do that action.
Now, in these kinds of sentences, Japanese does not allow us to use the wo-particle twice.
( helper verbs cannot take an object? Or rather the object of helper verbs is the entire sentence caused, like a “syntagmatic object”? I caused > The dog to eat meat)
Since there is a wo-particle attached to the meat which is being eaten by the dog –
in other words, that's the object of the inner, subordinate sentence – we can't also use
it on the dog itself who is the object or target of the causing.
Why is that?
Well, really this is partly stylistic, but largely a pragmatic strategy on the part of Japanese grammar.
Not only does it sound awkward if you have two -wos in the sentence, it could, in some
sentences, become ambiguous.
We might end up with some doubt as to which -wo marked the object associated with "taberu"
(or whatever the verb is) and which -wo is associated with "seru/saseru", the causing of the action.
As it is, we always know that in a "seru/saseru" sentence, a causative sentence, which also
has an object of the action itself, that object will always be marked by -wo, and the target
or object of the causation, the thing be made to do something or allowed to do something
or facilitated in doing something, will be marked by -ni.
Well, that I think is the most complicated aspect of the whole thing,
and it's not really very difficult, is it?
Now, the other thing that people do find particularly difficult is the causative receptive (what is called
the "causative passive" and, when taught with the standard grammatical model,
causes people to receive a great deal of confusion).
Now, as a matter of fact, once we have understood what the causative and the receptive really
are and really do, I don't think there's anything special about the causative receptive at all.
We know that helper verbs are simply verbs.
They attach to other verbs, but they are verbs in their own right.
If we don't understand this, everything becomes very difficult.
Now also, the main structural helper verbs, like the causative, the potential and the
receptive, are ichidan verbs.
So, if we need to attach anything else to them, we simply do what we do with every other ichidan
verb – we take off the -ru and attach whatever it is we're going to attach.
So, if we want to attach the receptive to the causative, we simply take the -ru off the
causative, "seru" or "saseru", and attach "rareru", which is the ichidan helper form
of the receptive.
And it's as simple as that.
Nothing complicated about it at all.
But somebody's going to say, quite rightly, "But don't we have three verbs in the sentence
now?" and that's exactly right.
We have three verbs in a causative receptive sentence.
For example, "watashi-wa burokori-wo tabesaserareta" – "I got made to eat broccoli".
Two agents, 3 verbs
So, we have three verbs: "taberu" – "eat"; "saseru" – "compel" (in this case it will
be "compel"); "rareru" – "receive": "I received being compelled to eat broccoli".
So, if we have three verbs, do we have three subjects?
No, we have two subjects.
There are always two subjects.
And is it difficult to understand what the two subjects are going to be?
No, it isn't, because the person receiving, and the person eating are always going to
be the same.
"I received being made to eat..."
– I was the one that received being made to eat, and therefore, I must have been also
the one that ate.
So, the first verb in the sentence, the verb to which the other two are attached, is always
going to be performed by the same person as the last verb, the receiving.
And the compelling of the person to do something is always done by someone else.
So, we have three verbs, two of which are attached to the person who received the compulsion
and who did the action because she received the compulsion.
And the middle one belongs to the person who did the compulsion.



Konnichiwa.



Today we're going to talk about the Japanese system of directional words which use ko-, so-, a-, do-.
This is commonly called the ko-so-a-do system and initially it simply marks physical locations,
but it then expands out to more subtle and metaphorical uses.
This is common because all languages use physical metaphors to express abstract concepts.
And fortunately these means of expression are often similar across languages because
the conceptual world maps to the physical world in certain quite predictable ways.
So let's take the most basic meaning and use of
ko-so-a-do, and that is actual physical locations.
The most basic location use is "koko", "soko", "asoko", "doko".
"Koko" means "here".
If you know the Japanese word "kokoro" - "heart" -
it's here, right where I am, right where my heart is.
That's not the etymology of the word, but it's a mnemonic.
"Soko" means "there".
Now, often "koko" means the speaker's place and "soko" means the place of the listener.
"Asoko" means "over there" and it often means distant from both the speaker and the listener.
So the a-word means over there, somewhat in the distance, so it's a bit far away,
you have to aaaah - shout - to be heard over there.
"Doko" means "where", so that's a question word.
So, ko-words mean here, possibly near to me,
the so-words mean there, often near to you,
the a-words mean over there,
and the do-words form a question.
So, in anime or manga you'll often see someone saying,
"koko wa doko?" - "Where is this?"
Literally, "Speaking of this place, where is it?"
And that seems to be the most usual way for a Japanese person to ask that question finding
herself suddenly in an unknown location.
The English way of asking it is more likely to be ---- "Where am I?"
but the Japanese way is "Where is this place?"
"Koko wa doko?" - "As for this place, where?"
Now, that's quite simple, I think.
And now we're going to look at something that does occasionally confuse people, and that's
because when we come to the re- and the no-group, in English we express both with the same word.
But we do have the distinction, so let's look at those.
The re-group is "kore", "sore", "are", "dore".
And the thing here is that the -re means "a thing".
Ko- means a place, a location, and it can actually be written with the kanji for "tokoro" - "place".
-Re is related to "aru".
It's one of these things that's related to the fundamental "aru", the mother of verbs.
And "aru" means to "be"; this -re means "a being".
When we say "a being" in English we usually mean a sentient being, an animal or a person
or something, but this means any kind of a being, anything that exists.
So, "kore" means "this thing/this being"; "sore" means "that thing/that being";
"are" means "that thing over there/that being over there",
and "dore" means "which being/what thing?"
Now, what these can get confused with is the no-group: "kono", "sono", "ano", "dono".
Now, -re means a being and refers to a thing.
-No, as we know, is used to make adjectivals or descriptors.
So, if we say, "Sakura-no doresu", we're saying, "Sakura's dress".
If we say, "densetsu-no senshi", we're saying, "legendary warrior/warrior that belongs to the class of legend".
Now, this is the same -no that we see in "kono/sono/ano/dono".
So if we take a very basic textbook phrase like "kore-wa pen da", we're saying,
"this - this being - is a pen."
But if we say, "kono pen-wa akai" - "This pen is red".
"Ko-no pen" - the here pen, the pen that belongs to the class of things that are here.
"Sore-wa pen da" - "That thing over there or the thing you're holding is a pen".
"Sono pen-wa akai" - "That pen, the pen that belongs to the class of things over there, is red".
Now, in English we can say "this" or "this pen" and there's no distinction between the words.
We're using "this" in both cases.
So, once we've got used to how they work, I think those are very straightforward too.
Now, the next group is "konna","sonna", "anna", "donna".
Now, in this case we are using -na.
And -na, as we know, is the form of the copula that turns an adjectival noun into an adjective
that you can place before something else.
And this is exactly what's happening here.
So, "konna" means "like this/this kind of"; "sonna" means "that kind of",
"anna" means "that kind of over there/the further-away kind of".
And I'm not going to go into the details of this, but whether we use "sonna" or "anna"
is going to depend on... sometimes the literal position of something but very often on how
far these things are from what we are talking about, from the present circumstance, from
something we associate with ourselves.
So, we could say, "Konna tabemono-ga suki desu" - "I like food like this".
"Sonna koto-ga hidoi" - "That kind of thing's unkind".
And in fact you'll often find in anime or manga that someone just says, "Sonna!"
And when it's said in that kind of a complaining or accusing kind of way, it's short for saying
"that kind of thing."
You're saying, "that kind of thing", and it would mean something like "that kind of thing is unkind/
that kind of thing is mean/ that kind of thing is something I don't like."
"Sonna!" - "That you said such a thing!"
So "sonna" is essentially a comparing adjectival: we're describing what something is like by
comparing it to something else that we're referring to, something that's here, something that's over there
or something that's way over there, either in physical space or conceptually.
"Donna" is asking what kind of a thing something is.
Literally, what would we compare it to?
Now, when we use ko-so-a-do on their own and lengthen them with -u
(or in the case of a-, with an extra -a)
so they become "kou", "sou", "aa", "dou", then we are talking about the way something is or happens.
So when we say "sou desu ne?" we're saying, "That's right, isn't it?"
So what we are really saying is "sou da/sou desu" - "It is like that".
If we say, "sou suru" we mean "do like that"; if we say "kou suru" we mean "do like this":
do in that way/do in this way.
If we say "dou suru", we say "do like how?" and we often say "dou sureba ii?"
Now, "sureba" is the conditional form of "suru".
Saying "do sureba ii?"
means "how if I do will be good?"
And we often find these combined with "iu" meaning "say".
It's another example of the wider application of the concept of quotation in Japanese, which
we discussed recently.
And this is often used in relation to things that are not physical, concrete things -
in other words, the kind of things which we call "koto" rather than "mono".
And we're going to hear an awful lot "sou iu koto", "kou iu koto" and "dou iu koto".
We also hear "aa iu koto".
It's less commonly used than the others, but it is used.
So what do we mean when we say "sou iu koto" - "a thing of that kind"; "kou iu koto" - "a thing of this kind";
"dou iu koto" - "what kind of a thing"?
Why do we mean "what kind of a thing"?
This kind of a thing/that kind of thing, what kind of a thing?
What we're actually saying is "how-said thing/ how-said circumstance/ how-said condition".
In other words, in what way do we describe this condition/ what kind of a description
does this circumstance or condition have?
And we often hear as a kind of exclamation, "dou iu koto!?" and it means "what's going on here?/
what is this? / what description of thing is this that's happening?"
And it can also mean "what are you talking about/what are you getting at/ what are you saying here?"
"Do iu koto!?"
And the thing to understand here is that the "iu" there is not referring to the fact that the person has just said it.
"Do iu koto" meaning "What do you mean/ what are you driving at/ what are you talking about here?"
The "iu" is not refer to the fact that you're saying it.
The "iu" refers to the description of the thing.
So "dou iu koto" is in this case short for "dou iu koto wo iu?" - "how-described thing are you saying?"
So we see the ko-so-a-do system works both in terms of literal location and in terms of metaphorical location.
If you have any questions, please ask them in the Comments below.
If you have any comments to make, please make them there too and I will answer as always.
I'd like to thank my Gold Kokeshi patrons, who make these videos possible,
and all my patrons and supporters on Patreon and everywhere.
And I'd like to thank you for attending this lesson.
Kore kara mo yoroshiku onegai shimasu.
Class dismissed.










Konnichiwa.
Today, we're going to go back to Alice's adventures, and we're going to use them as an opportunity
to look into some of the deeper and more subtle uses of the te-form.
These are covered in the regular textbooks and Japanese learning websites, but as usual
they don't explain the logic behind them, which makes them more difficult to grasp.
And in some cases where there isn't a straightforward English equivalent, they really don't tell
you what's actually going on, because they only talk in terms of English equivalents,
which leaves you guessing quite a bit of the time.
So, if you remember, Alice was falling very slowly down the rabbit hole and she had taken
a jar off one of the shelves as she fell.
"sono bin-ni-wa raberu-ga hatte atte 'orenji maamareedo'-to kaite atta"
So, we have three te-formed verbs in this sentence.
Let's look at what they're doing.
"Sono bin-ni-wa raberu-ga hatte atte." "Bin" is the word being used for a "jar" here.
It can mean "bottle" – it's often translated as "bottle" – but it can also mean a "jar"
and that's what it means here.
"Raberu" means "label".
It's "raberu" and not "reberu", I believe, because it comes
from another European language other than English.
We can also say "reberu", but that's less common than "raberu".
"Haru" means "stick" or "paste" something onto something else, so this means
that a label was pasted onto the bottle.
Literally, speaking of that bottle as the target of
something, a label was pasted onto it.
Now this use, "hatte aru", we haven't covered in this course up to now.
We've talked about te-form of a verb plus "iru", and we know that "iru" means "be" and
te-form of a verb plus "iru" means to be-doing that verb or to be-in-a-state of that verb.
What about "-te aru"?
"Aru" also means "be", so the meaning is in fact very similar.
It also means to be-in-a-state of that verb.
However, there is a difference, and I'm going to explain that difference with another example.
Let's take the sentence "mado-ga aite iru" and the sentence "mado-ga akete aru".
Both of them mean "The window is open".
"Aite iru" simply means that the window is open, and we can translate that directly into
English, and it's really the same thing.
But "mado-ga akete aru" doesn't have have any English equivalent because it still means
the window is open, but it carries another implication.
First of all, we are using the other-move version of "aku", which is "akeru".
"Mado-ga aite iru" – that's the self-move version of "aku" and it simply means to be
open, to exist in a state of openness.
The other-move verb, "akeru", which is the regular ku/keru u-ending verb to e-stem plus -ru
of the third law of self-move/other-move verbs that we've looked at already.
So "aku" means be open yourself, whatever you a­re, a box or whatever;
"akeru" means open the box, open the door etc.
So what "mado-ga akete aru" means is that the window was open, but
it was open because somebody else opened it.
We're signalling that in the first place by using the other-move version of the verb and
in the second place by using "aru" instead of "iru".
So what's the reasoning behind that?
Well, when we say "mado-ga aite iru", although it is an inanimate object, we're using the
version of "be" which we use for animate beings, people and animals and such.
That in fact is the part that needs explaining, isn't it?
Why are we using the animate version of "be" for an inanimate object like a window?
And we do this all the time.
We're always saying "-te iru" for inanimate objects of all kinds.
The reason is that in this expression we're simply saying the window was open –
we're not implying that anybody opened the window.
So, in a way, we can say that we're treating the window as an honorary animate being.
The window was open, as it were, of its own volition.
We're not saying it's open because of anybody's will other than its own.
So in a certain sense we are treating the window as an honorary animate being:
"mado-ga aite iru".
But if we say "mado-ga akete aru", we are saying that somebody opened the window.
The window was the mere object of having been opened by somebody else.
So it loses its status as an honorary animate being.
It is treated as a mere object, an inanimate thing – "akete aru".
And the thing to understand here is that even though it's lost its status as an animate being,
even though we're using the other-move version of the verb,
the ga-marked actor of this sentence is the window:
"mado-ga akete aru".
The window is doing the action, which is "aru": the window is existing in a state of having
been opened by somebody else.
And that is the same thing that's happening in our sentence from Alice.
"sono bin-ni-wa raberu-ga hatte atte" –
"The jar existed in a state of having had a label pasted onto it."
Now, as you see, there is really nothing equivalent to this in English, so we just need to get
it into our minds so that we can look at the Japanese as Japanese.
This is fundamental to what I'm teaching here.
I'm teaching the real structure of Japanese, not simply throwing some Japanese at you and
throwing some English at you and saying, "Well, this kind of means that."
We need to get rid of English translation as far as possible and look at the Japanese
as it really works in itself as Japanese.
And that's why my "translations" under the trains get weirder and weirder.
Because I'm not trying to translate this for you into natural English.
I'm trying to tell you what the Japanese is really doing.
So the second half of the sentence...
The second te-form, of course, is simply joining the first logical clause in this compound sentence
to the second logical clause.
And the second logical clause is
"'orenji maamareedo'-to kaite atta".
And here we have again this "-te aru" form.
And whenever we talk about something being written on something, we tend to use this form.
We don't say "The label said 'Orange Marmalade''', which is what we say in English,
as if the label could speak. We say
"'orenji maamareedo'-to kaite atta".
-To is our quotation particle, of course, that's quoting exactly what was written on the label,
and then "kaite aru" means that it was in a state of
having had those words written on it by somebody else.
Now, I'm going to do something a tiny bit unusual here. I hope you won't mind.
I'm going to skip ahead just a little bit in the story, because the next part contains
a very interesting point that really needs a lesson of its own, and the part immediately
after that includes something that really rounds out what we're doing today.
It introduces "-te oku", which really belongs together with "-te iru" and "-te aru".
This relationship is something the textbooks don't explain and because they don't it leaves
"-te oku" rather undefined in people's minds.
Many quite advanced students don't really understand why "-te oku" is used in some cases.
So, we'll go ahead with that now and I'll just fill you in on the story in between.
It's only a little bit.
Alice realizes that the marmalade jar is in fact empty, and what's she going to do with it?
She doesn't want to drop it because it'll fall all the way
down the hole and very likely kill someone.
And, if you read the newspapers, you're probably aware that there are far too many
empty marmalade jar incidents in Wonderland already.
So, now you know the background, let's carry on.
"Umaku todana-no hitotsu-he toorisugari-ni oite oita."
"Umaku" means "skilfully"; "todana" as we know is a "cupboard"; "todana-no hitotsu",
as we talked about in the last lesson, is "one of the cupboards".
So she skilfully in passing put it into one of the cupboards.
And what's this "oite oita"?
Now, they're both the same "oku", "oku" meaning to "put".
The first one is simple enough: she "put" it into the cupboard, but why do we have the
second "oku" on the end of it – "oite oita"?
Now, this is another very common and very important te-form usage and it's one that
the textbooks and English-language websites tend not to explain very well,
because it's something we really don't have in English.
However, we already halfway know it, because it is in a certain sense the other half of "-te aru".
"-Te oku" means to put the action in place.
Now in this particular use, it's quite easy to see because she's putting the jar literally
into place and she's putting that action into place.
What the textbooks and websites tell you is that it means doing something in advance,
doing something for the purpose of something else.
And this is true in many cases.
It's probably the nearest you can get in English.
But what it actually means is putting the action in place.
And to understand this let's go back to our example "mado-ga akete aru" –
"the window is open because somebody opened it".
Now, the somebody who opened it, if we say it instead of from the point of view of the window,
from the point of view of the person doing the action, "akete oku" is the other side of this.
The person put the opening of the window into place so that thereafter the window would be open.
So you see we have the two halves of the same coin.
"Mado-ga akete aru" – the window stands open because somebody put it there.
"Mado-wo akete oku" – open a window so that it will stand open for the future, so that
it will then be open, put into place the action of op  \	ening the window.
And this is what "oku" means – "oku" means "place".
So you're "placing" the action, you're putting it into place, you're setting it up.
And that's why it tends to have the secondary meaning of "do in advance" or "do for another purpose",
because you are setting up that action and the implication is that you want
the effect of that action to "remain in place" for whatever future purposes it may have.
In this case, Alice does not have a future purpose.
So in fact, te-form plus "oku" has a much wider range of meaning than the "do in advance"
or "do for a purpose" kind of English translation that it gets in the textbooks.
In the case of Alice in this story, she isn't really doing anything in advance or for a purpose;
she's simply trying to solve the problem of what to do with the empty marmalade jar
without risking injuring the people below.
And there are many cases when this usage falls even further from the English-language definitions.
For example, people say, "It's cruel to lock a small child in her room", and for this we use "tojikomite oku".
"Tojikomeru" is "shut someone up/lock someone away" and the "-te oku" here doesn't mean
do it for a purpose, it doesn't mean do it in advance.
It means do the action and leave its results in place/put the action in place and leave it in effect
Similarly, people say, "It's all right to leave a baby to cry sometimes" – "nakasete oku".
"Naku" is "cry"; "nakaseru" is the causative of cry: "allow to cry" in this case.
And the "-te oku" doesn't mean do it in advance or do it for some special purpose.
It simply means do the action and leave its effects in place/put the action in place.
If you have any questions or comments, please put them in the Comments below
and I will answer as always.
I'd like to thank my Gold Kokeshi patrons, who make these videos possible, and all my
patrons and supporters on Patreon and everywhere.
And I'd like to thank you for attending this lesson.
Kore kara mo yoroshiku onegai shimasu.
Class dismissed.

Konnichiwa.
Today, we're going to go back and cover that little bit of Alice that we skipped last week
and that's going to give us the opportunity to look at
the te-form plus -wa and the te-form plus -mo and some other things too.
So we're going to return to the point where Alice had just taken the marmalade jar off the shelf.
"Demo, bin-wa karappo datta" – "But the jar was empty".
"Kara" means "empty", and you can see it has the kanji for "sky",
which I guess is the biggest empty space in this world.
"Kara" – "empty" – is the "kara" in "karate", which is the art of fighting with empty hand, without any weapon.
"Karappo" is a kind of strengthening of "empty", meaning
there was nothing in it, it was completely empty.
And "karappo" works as a noun, and generally speaking if you don't know what kind of word
a word is in Japanese, it's most likely to be a noun.
Japanese is quite a noun-centered language,
because all the words that come in from other
languages like Chinese, of which there are a huge amount, and English,
and other languages too come in as nouns.
You can turn them into verbs by putting "suru" after them;
you can turn them into adjectives with -no and -na.
But fundamentally they're nouns.
So it's always a good guess when you don't know what a word is, that it's quite likely to be a noun.
"Karappo" is a noun, "empty".
"Demo, bin-wa karappo datta" – "However, the jar was empty".
"Arisu-wa karappo-no bin demo shita-he otoshite-wa warui-to omotta."
Here again, we're going to see some other uses of the te-form.
First of all, "Arisu-wa karappo-no bin demo".
Now -de here is the te-form of "da" , and -mo, as we
know, is the additive, inclusive sister of -wa:
the additive, inclusive non-logical topic-marking particle.
So, "karappo-no bin demo".
"De", te-form of "desu", is "it was (an empty jar)" – and
"demo" means "even though it was (an empty jar)".
-Mo can be used to mean "as much as" –
"ichiman en-mo kakatta" – "it took as much as 10,000 yen / cost as much as 10,000 yen") –
"Demo" means something like "as much as it was (an empty jar)/
even though it was (an empty jar)".
And I've done a video on these uses of -mo that you may want to watch.
And we also use this "-te-mo" form when asking for permission, don't we?
"Keeki-wo tabete-mo ii?"
– "Is it all right if I eat the cake?/May I eat the cake?"
Literally, "If I go as far as to eat the cake, will that be all right?"
"Karappo-no bin demo shita-he otoshite-wa warui-to omotta".
"Otosu" means to "drop".
It's another one of our self-move/other-move pairs.
"Ochiru" means to "fall" – that's self-move: a thing falls, by itself.
"Otosu", which ends in -su, according to the first law of self-move/other-move verbs, so
it means "drop": we don't drop ourselves, we drop something else.
"Shita-he" : now, -he, as we know, is the other targeting particle.
It's very similar to -ni, but the difference is that -he tends to refer more to the direction
something is moving than to its actual target.
So in this particular case, "shita-ni otosu" wouldn't be right.
We're not saying that we're dropping it to a particular target, like "teeburu-no shita"
– the under of the table/under the table.
We're just dropping it downwards, dropping it in a downward direction.
We don't even know what's down there.
She did try looking and she couldn't see much.
So dropping it in the direction of down – "shita-he otosu".
Now, "shita-he otoshite-wa warui".
Now here you see, we've just had te-form plus -mo; now we have te-form plus -wa.
And we know that -mo and -wa are the opposite twins.
While -mo is the additive, including particle, -wa is the subtractive, excluding particle.
So, while -te-mo means "as much as", -te-wa means "as little as".
Now, we tend to use -te-mo in positive contexts –
"If I do as much as this, will it be all right?"
But we use -te-wa in negative, forbidding contexts – "don't even do as little as that".
So we often say, "-te-wa dame" – "do that is no good/do that is bad".
In this case, it's very similar: "otoshite-wa warui" –
"even as little as dropping it would be bad".
The point isn't really that dropping it is a small thing, or that eating the cake is a big thing.
The point is that we can go as far as eating the cake, that's fine, but don't even think
about dropping it: "otoshite-wa warui" – doing that is right out of the question.
Very often this forbidding -te-wa is just contracted to -cha.
Now this pattern continues into other uses of -te-wa.
For example, we can use -te-wa as a connector between two clauses and it implies that the
second clause is unwanted or negative.
So we can say, "ame-ga futte-wa kouen-ni ikenai" – "It's raining and we can't go to the park".
Now, as we know, -te can connect two sentences and if we just said, "ame-ga futte kouen-ni ikenai"
we're saying – "It's raining and we can't go to the park".
There's an implication that we can't go to the park because it's raining but there's
no suggestion of whether we're happy or unhappy with the result.
"Ame-ga futte-wa kouen-ni ikenai" is indicating that the result is unpleasant or unwanted.
And you can see that this does have its root in the restrictive quality of -wa.
For example, in English we might say, "Just because it's raining, we can't go to the park"
and this is exactly what -wa means, doesn't it?
If we say "pan-wo tabeta", we're saying "I ate bread", but
if we say, "pan-wa tabeta" that often implies I ate bread but I didn't eat something else.
Conversely, if we say, "pan-wo tabenakatta", we're saying "I didn't eat bread";
if we say "pan-wa tabenakatta", we're often implying I didn't eat bread, but I did eat something else.
"Ame-ga futte-wa kouen-ni ikenai" originally could imply something like "Just because it's
raining, we can't go to the park", but now its implication is more "Unfortunately, because
it's raining, we can't go to the park".
"Imouoto-to kenka shite-wa haha-ni shikara-reta"
– "Because I quarrelled with my sister, I got scolded..."
And again, the -wa in there indicates that this is a negative result.
So it links two complete clauses with the indication that the second one follows as
an unfortunate result from the first one.
So this is a continuation of the negative implication of -te-wa.
-Te-mo, on the other hand, when it links two sentences, doesn't indicate a negative result
or a positive result.
It indicates an unexpected or contrasting result to the first.
So if we said, "ame-ga futte-mo, kouen-ni iku", we're saying "Even though it is raining,
we're going to the park".
And you can see that this is essentially the same function as "demo", which gets translated
as "but", quite correctly.
"Demo" folds up whatever went before it into that "de", which is the te-form of "da".
So we're saying "that all happened" and the -mo then adds to it the "but" element,
the "even though", "as much as" element.
So we could also say, "ame-ga furu demo kouen-ni iku", which means almost exactly the same
as "ame-ga futte-mo, kouen-ni iku".
The difference structurally is that in "ame-ga futte-mo", the -te-mo only attaches to "furu",
whereas in "ame-ga furu demo" the -de is wrapping up the whole of the last sentence.
In practice that gives us pretty much the same meaning.
So let's just go back to that sentence in Alice and see how it's structured.
It's a little more complex than it looks at first, but it's very easy to understand.
And if we can understand it it gives us the key to analyzing much more complex sentences
which could give us trouble in the future.
The core of the sentence is at the beginning and the end.
The whole sentence is just telling us what Alice thought.
So the core is "(Arisu-wa) zero-ga omotta".
The inside of the sentence consists of two topic-comment structures.
The first topic is "even though it's an empty bottle" (topic) and the comment on that is
itself another topic-comment structure: "as for dropping it, that would be bad".
And then the whole of this double topic-comment structure is bundled up into that -to, which
really means we can treat the whole thing as a kind of quasi-noun – just bundle up
into that -to and attribute it to Alice as her thought.
Now, of course, as we're actually reading or looking at Japanese we don't think of
"as for" or "speaking of" every time we see a topic-comment statement, because "as for"
in English is much weightier, much more cumbersome than the simple -wa and -mo in Japanese.
So what do we do?
Once again, as always, we don't translate it into English
except when we absolutely need to, to explain it or understand it.
We take the Japanese as it is in itself, and that's how we learn Japanese
as opposed to just learning about Japanese.
If you have any questions or comments, please leave
them in the Comments below and I will answer as usual.
I'd like to thank my Gold Kokeshi patrons, who make these videos possible, and all my
patrons and supporters on YouTube and everywhere.
Kore kara mo yoroshiku onegai shimasu.
Class dismissed.

Konnichiwa.
Today we're going to talk about "datte" and some of the issues that raises about the use of "da" and "desu".
One of my commenters spoke about being confused by the "word" "datte" and I'm not surprised,
because if you look at the Japanese-English dictionaries they tell you that "datte" means
"because" and "but" and "even" and also "somebody said", which is quite a confusing pile of
meanings for one so-called word.
And I say "so-called" word because "datte" isn't really even a word.
And the thing that never seems to get explained in dictionaries or anywhere else is what it
really is, what it actually means, and therefore why it carries the range of meanings that it does.
So, let's start off with the most basic meaning, which is the last one on the list, "somebody said".
"Datte" is actually simply made up of the copula "da" plus -tte, which is not the te-form of anything,
it's the -tte which is a contraction, as we've talked about before, of the quotation particle -to plus "iu".
So -tte means "-to iu", in other words, "says" a particular thing.
The -to bundles up something into a quotation and the "iu" says that somebody says it.
So it's really as simple as that.
"Ashita-wa hare datte" is simply "ashita-ga hare..."
"Hare" means "sunny" or "clear skies" – and as with most words where there's some doubt
of what kind of word they are, they usually turn out to be nouns, "hare" is a noun.
So, "Ashita-wa hare da" simply means "Tomorrow will be sunny".
And when we add -tte, we're saying, "It's said that tomorrow will be fine".
We might be saying that someone in particular says
it or we may just be saying "it's said" in general –
"I hear tomorrow will be fine", we might say in English.
"They say tomorrow will be fine."
So that's very simple, and that's what "datte" is: it's "da" plus -tte, the "-to iu" contraction.
And that's what it is in all the other cases too, so let's see how it works.
How does it come to mean "but"?
Well, to begin with let's understand that when it's used on its own – and it means
"but" when it's used on its own, not as the ending of a sentence as in the example we
just looked at – it has a slightly childish and usually somewhat negative or argumentative feeling.
So if somebody says, "Sakura ga kirei da ne" – "Sakura's pretty, isn't it?"
And you say "Datte atama-ga yowai".
Now "atama-ga yowai" means literally "head is weak" – "She is not very smart".
So it would be like saying, "But she's not very smart".
But what you're actually doing here is taking the statement that the last person said and
adding the copula "da" to it.
And in order to understand that let's look for a moment at something else.
Very often, when we're agreeing with something someone says, we might say "desu ne".
And literally that just means "is, isn't it?"
And how can it mean that, because really "da or "desu" on its own doesn't mean anything.
It has to join two other things together, and neither of them are stated here.
But what "desu" is by implication attached to is the thing the person just said.
And what it's joining it to is, by implication, something like "hontou" or "sou" – "sou desu ne".
So we're actually saying "That's true, isn't it?" or "That's the case, isn't it?" or
"That's how it is, isn't it?"
We also do this when we say "da kara" or "desu kara", which really means "because".
Now, we know that "kara" means "because"; it means
literally "from" and therefore also means "because".
From A, B. From Fact A we can derive Fact B. From Fact A, Fact B emerges.
So, "kara" – "because".
We may be tempted sometimes to say "sore kara", which is a literal translation of the English
"because of that".
But in fact "sore kara" doesn't get used to mean "because of that".
"Sore" means "that" and "kara" can mean 'because", but "sore kara" usually means "after that"
– "kara" in the more literal sense, "kara" meaning "from",
and in this case "from" in point of time rather than space.
"From that forward/from that forward in time/after that"; "sore kara" – "after that".
To say "because of that", we say "desu kara" or "da kara", and this is really short for
"sore wa sou desu kara" or "sore wa hontou desu kara".
We're saying "because that is the case", and if you think
of it, this is more logical than what we say in English.
We're saying "because that is the case".
"Because of that" really means literally in English "because that is the case" but we
just cut it down to "because of that", and in Japanese we just cut it down to "desu kara".
Now, when we understand this, we can understand "datte" in the sense of meaning "but".
"Da" refers back to whatever it was the last person said,
and -tte simply states that they said it.
So, if someone says, "Sakura-ga kirei da ne" – Sakura's pretty, isn't it, isn't she?"
And you reply, "Datte atama-ga yowai".
Now, the "but" here is your saying "You said that...".
And "datte" is a rather childish and argumentative-sounding way of saying it, so the implication is that
what comes next is going to be negating what was said.
And this works in just the same way as English "but".
If you think about it, "but" is not saying that what came before it is untrue.
In fact it is accepting that what came before it is true, but it's then adding some information
that is contrary to the impression given by that statement.
So "Sakura-ga kirei da ne" – "Sakura is pretty" –
"Datte..."– "You said that and I'm not disputing that that is the case, BUT – she's not very smart".
So, how does it come to mean "because", which in some ways seems almost opposed to "but",
almost an opposite kind of meaning?
Well, let's notice that one thing that "but" and "because"
have in common is that they accept the first statement.
"But" goes on to say something which contrasts with that statement, while still accepting it.
"Because" says something that goes on to explain that statement.
And this can be a harmonious explanation which simply gives us more information about it,
but it can also be a contradictory explanation.
So, for example, if someone says, "You haven't done much of your homework" and you reply,
"Because you keep talking to me!"
This could be expressed by "datte" in Japanese.
Again, what it's really saying is "You say that and I don't dispute it, but here's something
we can add to it which undermines the narrative that you are trying to put forward."
So you see, it doesn't literally mean either "but" or "because".
What it means is, "I accept your statement and now I'm going to add something a bit argumentative".
In English it could be translated as either "but" or "because" depending on the circumstances.
So, how can it come to have the meaning of "even"?
Well, let's understand that this is a slightly different use.
When we use it to mean "even", we're not using the "da" in the way we're using it when we
say "da kara" or "datte" in the senses we've just talked about.
In other words, we are not simply using it to refer back to the last statement.
We're usually attaching it to something in particular within the statement we're making.
So, if you say, "Sakura-wa dekiru" – "Sakura can do that" and I say "Watashi datte dekiru",
which is generally translated as "Even I can do that",
what we're actually saying is "Say it's me",
which means in both Japanese and English "Take the hypothesis that it's me"
or "Take the case of me in this circumstance" and we're saying "Watashi datte dekiru"
"Say it's me, I can do that".
Now, this has a different implication from "Watashi-mo dekiru", which just means neutrally
"I can do that too".
"Watashi datte", because it's very colloquial and becase it's associated with this slightly
negative or contradictory implication, it means "Even I can do that".
And it doesn't have to be negative in the sense of contradicting anything.
Outside the context of Sakura, we might just say, "Watashi datte hottokeeki-ga tsukurareru"
– "Even I can make hotcakes".
And in this case, we're not saying it negatively, but that "watashi datte" still has the implication of "even me".
It still has its slightly disparaging or negative ring, because what you're saying is here "Even
someone like me, even me, who can't usually make very much, can make hotcakes".
So I hope this makes "datte" clearer and also the ways in which "da/desu" can be used to
accept and affirm previous statements made by oneself or by someone else and add something to it.
If you have any questions or comments, please put them in the Comments below
and I will answer as usual.
And I'd like to thank my Gold Kokeshi patrons, who make these videos possible, and all my
patrons and supporters on Patreon and everywhere.
And I'd like to thank you for attending this lesson.
Kore kara mo yoroshiku onegai shimasu.
Class dismissed.

Konnichiwa.
Today we're going to talk about the helper noun "sou", which can mean either likeness or hearsay,
either that something seems like something
or that we are stating not our own view or opinion but something we've heard.
Differentiating the two can seem difficult, especially when the textbooks give you a list of connections
to nouns and verbs and various different things.
It's much less complicated when you understand the underlying principle, what's actually going on with "sou".
So you don't have to memorize a lot of different things.
So, first of all, what is "sou"?
It's the same "sou" that we learned about recently that comes in "kou-sou-aa-dou".
So "sou" means "like that", which makes it of course
a very good candidate for describing something seeming like something.
When it's used in that way, we use it by attaching it to any one of the three engines.
And remember, as we've learned before, that each of the three engines can be moved behind
other cars to turn them into adjectives.
Now, once -sou has been attached to an engine the engine becomes a new adjectival noun.
How do we attach them?
We do the same thing in every case.
We take the last kana from the engine.
That is the kana that makes it what it is, its active part.
So we take the "da" from the da-engine - the "da" or the "na" from the da/na-engine.
We take the "i" from the i-engine.
And from the verb engine, we take that last u-row kana.
And we just put -sou onto them, so it's a very simple connection.
And the important thing to remember here is in the case of nouns we can't do it with an ordinary, regular noun.
We can only do it with an adjectival noun.
In other words, if an adjectival noun is an adjectival noun to start with,
we can turn it into a different adjectival noun with -sou.
If it wasn't an adjectival noun to start with, it can't be turned into an adjectival noun.
So if we take adjectival nouns like "genki" ("lively" or "healthy") and "shizuka" (which is "quiet") -
if we say "shizuka da" we mean "is quiet" - if we say "genki da" we mean "is lively or healthy".
If we say "genki-na gakusei", we're saying "a lively or healthy student".
Now if we take off that "da" or "na" and put on -sou - and we say "genki-sou-na gakusei",
we're saying "a lively looking student/ a lively seeming student".
Similarly, if we say "shizuka-na onnanoko", we're saying "a quiet girl".
If we take off that -na or da and put on -sou and say "shizuka-sou-na onnanoko", we're saying
"a quiet-seeming girl/ a quiet-looking girl".
So that's really very simple, isn't it?
With adjectives that end in "i", we simply take off that -i and put -sou onto it.
So, if we take "omoshiroi" ("interesting" or "amusing"), "oishii" ("delicious"),
we just cut off the -i and add -sou.
So, "omoshiroi" means "interesting" or "amusing", "omoshirosou" means "seems interesting/seems amusing".
"Oishii" means "delicious/tasty", "oishisou" means it "looks delicious", it "looks tasty".
And this is an important one to remember because, as we've mentioned before, Japanese is a lot stricter than
English in restricting us to saying only things that we can actually know for ourselves.
So unless you've tasted something, you can't say it's "oishii".
Unless you've done something, you can't say it's "omoshiroi" - interesting or amusing.
Logically this perhaps ought to be so in English, but Japanese is a lot stricter about it.
So, it's important to know things like "omoshirosou", "oishisou" if we haven't actually
tasted the food, done the activity or whatever.
Now, with a verb we cut off the u-row kana.
Obviously, as always, in the case of ichidan verbs that's all we do.
And in the case of godan verbs we use the i-stem.
And the i-stem is what you might call the pure stem of a verb.
In Japanese it's called "ren'youkei", which means "connective-use form".
And that might sound strange because we know that all four stems actually connect things,
but while the other three have particular uses,
the "ren'youkei", the i-stem, as well as its particular uses,
can be used to connect almost anything.
It can connect verbs to nouns to make new nouns;
it can link verbs to verbs to make new verbs; and so on.
So, we connect -sou to the "ren'youkei", the i-stem, the general-purpose connecting stem of verbs.
What do they mean?
Well, generally speaking, they mean that something appears to be about to happen.
So, "ame-ga furi-sou da" means "it looks as if it's about to rain".
"Kodomo-ga naki-sou" means "The child looks as if
she's about to cry/seems as if she's about to cry."
And if you see that's quite similar to what we might say
in English: "It looks like rain/
it seems as if it's about to rain."
So these usages are really quite straightforward.
Now what do we do when we're using "sou" to mean hearsay, to mean "I heard something - I'm not
reporting my own observation or feeling, I'm reporting what I got at second-hand from somebody else"?
Some people would say that this is also a suffix and we have to observe different rules for applying it,
but the truth is that it is not a suffix.
The -sou we've just discussed is a suffix.
We join it to other words in order to form a new word.
Whatever the word was to start with, once -sou is attached it becomes an adjectival noun.
This is not what happens when we're talking about hearsay.
When we're talking about hearsay, we use "sou da" or "sou desu" after the entire, complete sentence.
So the complete sentence becomes the A-car of the sentence and the "sou da" becomes the B-engine.
And the content of the sentence is now subordinate.
So let's take an example: "Sakura-ga nihonjin da sou da".
What we're saying here is "I've heard that Sakura is a Japanese person".
So, "Sakura is a Japanese person" is all taken together as Car A, the subject of the sentence, and
then what we're saying about it is that we've heard it.
Why do we use "sou da/ sou desu" to mean "I've heard"?
Well, if you think about it, it's similar to what we might say in English.
Suppose we say "Why isn't that car in the street any more?" and you say
"It seems some masked people came and drove it away".
Now, when you say that, what that means is that somebody told you that, doesn't it?
If you'd seen it yourself you'd have said "Some masked people came and drove it away",
but when you say "It seems some masked people came and drove it away", what you're saying is
"Well, that's the story I've heard".
And it's the same in Japanese only a little more systematically.
"Sou da/sou desu" when added as the B-engine to an entire, completed sentence is always
saying that this is what we've heard, this is the information we have, for what it's worth.
If you have any questions or comments, please put them in the Comments below and I will answer.
I'd like to thank my Gold Kokeshi patrons, who make these videos possible, and all my
patrons and supporters on Patreon and everywhere.
And I'd like to thank you for attending this lesson.
Kore kara mo yoroshiku onegai shimasu.
Class dismissed.

Konnichiwa.
Last week we talked about the helper adjectival noun "sou" and how we use it to express
what something might be like, our impression of something, and hearsay.
Today we're going to talk about other ways of expressing a similar range of ideas,
how they work, how they are similar, and how they are different.
So, we're going to look at "rashii", which is a helper adjective.
And this is an adjective ending in -shii, which is what we can call a subclass of adjectives.
All real adjectives, as you know, end in -i.
So-called adjectives that don't end in -i are in fact adjectival nouns.
But a group of those i-ending adjectives ends with -shii.
As you see, it's still ending in -i but it also has -shi, so it's -shii.
And the characteristic of this group of adjectives is that on the whole they express subjectivities.
That is to say, not exact measurable qualities but things which are to some extent dependent
upon human or other sentient beings' impression of them.
So, for example, "kanashii" is "sad"; "ureshii" is "happy".
"Muzukashii" means "difficult" and while this seems somewhat more objective than "ureshii"
and "kanashii", it's still in some way a subjectivity because difficulty is relative to particular individuals.
Whether you find a thing difficult or easy depends to a large extent on
who you are and what your abilities are.
So this, as we'll see, gives us an indication of what kind of a word this is and how it differs from "sou".
Its use is very simple.
Like "sou" it can be attached either to an individual word or to a complete logical clause or sentence.
And the attachment is absolutely simple, because we never do anything at all except
just put "rashii" after the word or after the completed logical clause.
We don't change anything, we don't do anything, so it really couldn't be easier.
Now, as with "sou", if we put it after a single word
we are talking about our impressions of that particular object.
If we put it after a completed clause, we are saying "it seems to be that way".
However, there is a difference.
If we put "sou da" after a completed clause, as you know, we complete the clause, if necessary
with another "da", and that usage means that we've heard that that sentence is the case.
So if we say, "ano doubutsu-wa usagi da sou da", we're saying "I've heard that that animal is a rabbit".
Now, if we say, "ano doubutsu-wa usagi da rashii", we're saying "It seems that animal is a rabbit".
Now, that can mean the same thing as "usagi da sou da".
It can mean "I've heard that it's a rabbit", and sometimes the textbooks get quite convoluted
and confusing about whether "rashii" actually means "I've heard" or whether it means "it seems",
but it's very simple if you understand exactly what it's doing.
What it's doing is actually saying "it appears" or "it seems", and this has exactly the same
ambiguity and lack of ambiguity as that has in English.
So let's take the case of this mysterious animal.
Suppose I'm looking at it with a group of people and afterwards you come up to me and
say, "What is that animal?" and I say, "Usagi da rashii".
Now, I've given a complete sentence with "rashii" on the end, and the natural meaning here would be
"I heard from those people that it was a rabbit."
Now, you see this is just the same as if in English I say, "It appears that it's a rabbit."
Now, you would take me, in English and in Japanese, to be saying,
"From what I heard (from those people), it's a rabbit".
Now, take a different scenario.
The rabbit's gone and I'm examining its footprints and you come up to me and say,
"What was that animal?" and I say, "Usagi datta rashii".
Again, "It appears that it was a rabbit", or "It seems that it was a rabbit."
In this case, you would probably conclude from what I'm doing that by saying
"It appears it was a rabbit", I'm saying,
"From the evidence I'm looking at here, the appearances are that it's a rabbit."
So you see, there's nothing particularly grammatical or complicated about this.
It's just the same as in English if you said "It appears that it's a rabbit" or "It seems that it's a rabbit",
it depends on context whether that implies that that's the information you've heard
or that that's the conclusion you're drawing from your observations.
If you want to be completely unambiguous that you're talking about hearsay,
that you're talking about something you heard from other people, then you say, "usagi datta sou da".
That is unambiguous. That can only mean "I heard it from somebody".
Now, when we apply "rashii" to an individual word, the most immediate difference between
"rashii" and "sou da" is that we can't apply "sou da" to a regular noun.
We can only apply it to an adjectival noun, and there's a good reason for that. We'll get to it in a moment.
"Rashii" you can apply to any kind of noun, whether it's an adjectival noun or whether it's a regular noun.
But it really comes into its own when it's being applied to regular nouns.
As you would expect from the fact that it is a -shii adjective – that's to say, that we would expect it
to be expressing a greater degree of subjectivity – it has the ability to liken one thing to another.
So we can say "ano doubutsu-wa usagi rashii" – "That animal is rabbit-like/that animal's like a rabbit."
Now, the difference between this and "sou", apart from the fact that
you can only apply "sou" to adjectival nouns – and this is why you can only apply "sou" to adjectival nouns –
is that when we say "ano doubutsu-wa usagi rashii" we are not necessarily conjecturing that it is in fact a rabbit.
We may be completely aware that it isn't a rabbit and we're simply saying
that it's like a rabbit, it's a rabbit-like animal.
And of course, we can turn it around into that kind of an adjective too:
"usagi rashii doubutsu" – "a rabbit-like animal".
And again, it's just the same as in English.
If we say, "That animal looks like a rabbit", we could mean "I'm guessing that it is a rabbit"
or we could mean "It's probably not a rabbit, but it certainly looks like one."
Now, this widens out into even greater areas of subjectivity.
For example, we can say that something has the qualities of something.
For example, "otoko rashii otoko" is a "manly man", a man who possesses the qualities of a man.
If we talk about someone who's not a teacher and we say "sensei rashii" – "That person's like a teacher."
We might or might not be conjecturing that she is in fact a teacher.
But if we know that she's a teacher and we say, "Sakura sensei-wa sensei rashii",
we mean that she behaves like a teacher.
She is a teacher and she has the right qualities and manner for being a teacher.
Conversely, we could say, "Sakura sensei-wa, sensei rashikunai" and in that case,
we're saying, "Well, we know she's a teacher, but she doesn't behave like one, she doesn't act like a teacher."
So you see, with "rashii" we are getting into much more subjective areas.
We're not simply guessing whether something is in fact delicious or interesting,
which we can confirm by experience.
We're talking about our impressions and beliefs and subjectivities surrounding the phenomenon.
Now, we can also say things like, for example, if Sakura says something unpleasant and usually
she's a very sweet girl, we might say, "sore-wa Sakura rashikunai" – "That wasn't like you, Sakura."
So we're talking about the qualities, the subjectively perceived qualities of a thing.
So, in some areas it overlaps with "sou da",
but in other areas it moves forward into more subtle and subjective areas.
Now, we're also going to quickly look at -ppoi, which is a small tsu followed by -poi, so we have a little break
between that and what we're saying.
So if we want to say "childish", we might say "kodomo-ppoi".
It works very much like "rashii". It's also a helper adjective.
It's much more casual than "rashii" and we usually hear it in exactly that form – "kodomo-ppoi", "usagi-ppoi".
You can't use -ppoi on the end of a completed clause.
You can only attach it to a word.
And apart from its colloquial nature, a difference in tendency from "rashii" is that
"rashii" will tend to imply that the quality is what something ought to have.
-Ppoi often tends to imply the opposite.
There's no hard-and-fast rule here, but there tends to be a positive inclination in "rashii"
and a negative one in -ppoi, although you will certainly hear them used the other way round
on some occasions.
So "kodomo rashii" is more likely to imply the child's behaving in a way proper to a child,
whereas "kodomo-ppoi" tends to mean "childish".
In fact, in English we could say "kodomo rashii" means "child-like" and "kodomo-ppoi" means "childish",
although it's not as hard and fast as that is in English.
It could be used the other way round without breaking any actual laws.
When I first appeared in this particular shell, this body that I'm wearing now
– I am of course the ghost in the shell –
I was talking in English, introducing it, but I made a little
aside in Japanese because I really don't know quite how to say this in English.
I said, "What do you think of me when I look like this?
Ningen-ppoi ne?"
"Ningen-ppoi ne" – "It's very human-looking, isn't it?"
And while it wasn't exactly disparaging, the sense of what I was saying was "Good heavens, in this shell
I look really more human than I actually am, don't I?"
Which I think is why some people call me "creepy", because I'm probably just a little bit too
human-looking for someone who isn't human.
If you have any questions or comments, please put them in the Comments below and I will answer as usual.
And I'd like to thank my Gold Kokeshi patrons, who make these videos possible,
and all my patrons and supporters on Patreon and everywhere.
And I'd like to thank you for attending this lesson.
Kore kara mo yoroshiku onegai shimasu.
Class dismissed.

Konnichiwa.
Today we're going to talk about "you da" and give a little mention to her cousin "mitai".
We're going to discover that "you da" constitutes the other end of a sliding scale with the
expressions of conjecture and likeness that we discussed in the last two lessons.
At one end we have "sou da", at the other end we have "you da", and in the middle we have "rashii".
All of these expressions can be placed at the end of a completed logical sentence in
order to express that that sentence is either what we've heard or what we conjecture from
the information we have or from what we can see.
But when we attach them to individual words, then we have this sliding scale of meaning.
With "sou da", as we know, we use this to conjecture what the quality of something is.
We can say "oishisou da" - "It looks delicious /I haven't tried it, but I think if I did, I would find it delicious."
With "rashii" we have a much greater degree of subjectivity.
"Rashii" overlaps with "sou da" in many respects, but it can also do things that "sou da" cannot do.
It can compare things to other things, to things that we know they aren't.
We can say that an animal is "usagi rashii" - "rabbit-like" - even though we know it isn't a rabbit.
We can say that a person is "kodomo rashii" - "child-like" - whether she is in fact a child or not.
We are not necessarily conjecturing that the animal is a rabbit or the person is a child.
We are just making that comparison.
Now, "you da" can go much further.
It can make an actual metaphor or simile.
So with "you da" we can say such things as "a sumo wrestler is like a mountain" or
"a person runs like the wind".
Now these are, if you like, literary style or poetic similes or metaphors.
We're not saying that the wrestler's anything like a mountain except in the sense that he's big and solid.
We're not saying that a person is in any way like the wind except that she's fast.
And one of the ways we know when "you ni" is acting in this way is that we can use the word "marude" with it.
So we can say "marude kaze no you ni hashitta" - "ran just like the wind".
Literally, "marude" means "roundly".
"Maru" means a "circle" or a "round", so when we say "marude" we mean "roundly/wholly/completely".
And this is a hyperbole, which is common to many languages, certainly including English.
We might say, in English, "That wrestler is exactly like a mountain."
We might even say "I literally froze to death."
Now, that's the opposite of what we really mean: we don't mean that we "literally" froze to death,
we mean that we figuratively froze to death.
In literal reality we appear still to be alive.
We don't mean that the wrestler is "exactly" like a mountain.
There isn't any snow on top of him!
But the reason we say things like "exactly" and "literally" is to give emphasis to a poetic simile.
And in Japanese the usual collocation here is "marude".
And this also demonstrates the difference between "you da/you na/you ni"
and the other likeness-making expressions.
You can't use "marude" with "sou da" or "sou desu".
You shouldn't use "marude" with "rashii".
It's out of place with those expressions.
We use "marude" when we're going on a kind of poetic flight of fancy.
It's a hyperbolic expression that signals the coming of a simile or a metaphor.
When we say that a person is "kodomo rashii" or an animal is "usagi rashii", we are extending reality a bit;
we are comparing it to something that it could be but isn't.
Now, if we look at the usage of these expressions, we can see that as usual in Japanese they're very logical.
The textbooks will sometimes give you lists of connections and ways of using them.
But actually they all make sense.
We don't need a list to tell us that "you da" can also be used as the adverb "you ni"
or that it can be placed before something as the adjective "you na" - because these
connections are simply the same connections that you can make with any adjectival noun.
The only thing we have to know is that, just like "rashii" and unlike "sou da", we can
use it with any kind of a noun, not just adjectival nouns.
And that also makes sense because with both "rashii" and "you da" we can compare things
to other things, whereas with "sou da" we can only conjecture at the quality of a thing,
something that can be expressed by an adjective or an adjectival noun.
And when we attach it to a verb, as we've seen, it has a slightly different meaning.
However, "you da" has a special connection that the others don't have.
As you know, we can simply pop it onto an entire sentence, as we can the other two,
with the meaning of "(that sentence) is what appears to be the case".
But we can also put it onto an entire, complete sentence with a different meaning.
We can do it in order to turn the whole sentence into our simile.
So, for example, we can say "marude yuurei-wo mita ka no you na kao-wo shita" -
"She had a face (or made a face) exactly as if she had seen a ghost."
Now, as we see, "she had seen a ghost" is an entire logical clause.
In Japanese we have the zero-particle for "she", but it's a complete logical clause:
"she saw a ghost" - "yuurei-wo mita" - "zero-ga yuurei-wo mita".
Now, then we put "ka" onto the end of it. What is this "ka"?
We haven't talked an awful lot about the ka-particle
because in desu/masu Japanese you use it to mark a question.
You can use it to mark a question in informal Japanese, which is what we usually use here,
but mostly we don't because paradoxically it doesn't seem polite to put "ka" on the end
of an informal question - it tends to seem a little bit blunt or curt.
However, the question-marker "ka" has another important function.
And that is that it can bundle a statement into a kind of question, and that's what's happening here.
We start off with "marude" to signal that we are going to use a simile.
Then we make our completed statement - "yuurei-wo mita" - "zero-ga yuurei-wo mita" - "she saw a ghost".
And then we add "ka" and that turns it into a question.
It gives us our "if" - "as if she had seen a ghost".
And that "ka" gives us our questioning "if".
In fact, she hadn't seen a ghost, so this isn't really a statement; it's a possibility, a potentiality, an if.
What she actually did perhaps was saw the fees that PayPal charged her for an international money transfer.
We're not suggesting that she really saw a ghost.
We are suggesting that the face she manifested - "kao-wo shita" - was similar to the face
that she would have manifested if - "ka" - she had seen a ghost.
Now, the other thing that we need to understand about this "ka" is that it in effect nominalizes
the logical clause that it marks.
So what it's doing is turning this complete logical clause into a question, a hypothesis, an if,
that then functions structurally as a noun.
So it can be marked by -no, which can only happen to a noun.
And so this new noun, this object that we've created from an entire logical clause, can
now be connected to another noun by the particle -no.
"You" is a "form" or a "likeness" - "yama no you" is the form of a mountain,
"kaze no you" is the form or likeness of the wind, and in this case, "yuurei-wo mita ka no you"
is the likeness of this object that we've created from the hypothesis of having seen a ghost.
Now, again, this is not something we can do with any of the others.
We can't even do it with "mitai", which works in most respects pretty much exactly the same as "no you".
"Mitai" is the less formal cousin of "you" and broadly means the same thing
and broadly can be used in the same ways.
It's an adjectival noun just like that "you", can be used with "ni" to make it an adverb
or with "na" to make it a before-the-noun adjective just as any adjectival noun can be.
The main things to remember about it is simply that it's less formal, so you don't use it in an essay.
On the other hand, you might prefer to choose it when you're talking to a friend over "you da" in many cases,
just because it sounds a bit less formal and a bit more friendly.
But you can't use it with a completed sentence.
You can use it with a complete sentence in order to conjecture that that statement is
the case, but you can't use it with "ka" to use a complete sentence as a simile.
You have to use "ka no you da/ka no you ni" for that.
The other thing to note is that sometimes, probably because it is very casual,
the "da" or "desu" gets left off from "mitai".
You might say "marude hitsuji mitai" - "just like a sheep".
This isn't correct grammar - you ought to say "mitai da" - but it's very common to leave it off.
It's not common to leave it off of "you da".
If you have any questions or comments, please put them in the Comments below
and I will answer as usual.
I'd like to thank my Gold Kokeshi patrons, who make these videos possible, and all my
patrons and supporters on Patreon and everywhere.
And I'd like to thank you for attending this lesson.
Kore kara mo yoroshiku onegai shimasu.
Class dismissed.

Konnichiwa.
Today we're going to talk about "bakari", which is one of those Japanese expressions
that the textbooks can be very confusing about.
They will tell you that it has a number of different, seemingly random meanings which
attach with different grammar structures that you have to memorize.
It's another of these laundry lists that the textbooks love to give you.
Fortunately, as is often the case, we can cut through all this simply by looking at
what the word really means and how it logically works in different situations.
This will give us a key both to the meanings and to the structure in its different uses.
"Bakari" is essentially a noun.
You'll hear it described as other things, but in practice it works as a noun.
We use "da" after it, which we can only do with a noun, although sometimes we will find
the "da" or "desu" left off in casual speech, just as with "mitai", which we discussed last week.
I notice that a lot of the times when a "da" or "desu" is left off, the word does end in -i,
so I think that might be a slight influence from adjectives, although it is not an adjective.
It is a noun.
So what does it mean?
Its meaning is very simple.
It means "just" or "nothing but".
And one of the commonest uses is simply to place it after a past tense statement to say
that that has "just" taken place.
It works exactly the same as in English.
If we say "kita bakari" - "I just came" - that's exactly what we also say in English:
"I just came" or even "I only just came".
It means that something has happened a very short time ago.
Why do we use, both in English and Japanese, a word meaning "nothing but" in this case?
Well, like many words, it is a hyperbole.
We discussed hyperboles in the case of "marude" in the last lesson, didn't we?
When we say "I just came/kita bakari", we are saying that nothing has happened except that I came.
I came such a short time ago that there hasn't been time for anything else:
"I just came/I only just came/kita bakari".
Now, this is very often very much a hyperbole.
Suppose, for example, that we meet a friend in the street and the friend says "Let's go
for coffee and cakes" and we say "tabeta bakari" - "I just ate".
Now, what we're literally saying here is that I ate such a short time ago - milliseconds ago -
that nothing else has happened in between eating and now.
Now, obviously that's not literally true.
One must have left the place where one did the eating and walked down the street at least.
But hyperbolically we're saying that we ate and nothing else happened between then and now.
The textbooks will tell you that this use of "bakari" is attached to the plain past of a verb.
Now, that's true, but it's also confusing for two reasons.
First of all, saying "plain past" implies this whole world where we are taught that
the "real" forms of verbs are the "masu" forms, so we have to deconstruct them every time
we do anything with them.
We don't need to say "plain past", because everything we do with a verb inside of a sentence
we are doing to the plain form of the verb even if we are using formal Japanese by putting
''desu'' and ''masu'' on the end.
"Desu" and "masu" are nothing more than decorative appendages that we put at the very end of a sentence.
The other thing that makes this explanation confusing is that while it's true that we
do put it after the past form of a verb, we are not really attaching it to the past form of the verb.
This is not logically what's happening.
And it's one of those things that makes it sound like a random rule when it isn't.
What we are attaching "bakari" to is a completed action.
And what we are saying is how long ago it happened.
We're saying it happened a very very short time ago.
So we have to have a completed action and of course it has to be in the past, because
that's what we're saying about it.
If it were in the non-past it wouldn't make any sense, would it?
So we can say it attaches to the plain past of the verb or we can say it attaches exactly
where it logically has to attach and where it would make no sense if it didn't.
Now, the next use of "bakari" is one that people sometimes find confusing because it
expresses that there is a great deal of something.
Now, "bakari" obviously is a limiting word, so why is it used to express that there is
a great deal of something?
Now, once again, this is perfectly logical and natural and we use it in English as well.
If we say "There are nothing but cakes in that shop!" - now, we may mean it literally,
but very often we mean there are other things, but there are an awful lot of cakes.
When I was staying in the countryside in Japan and I was moving to Tokyo for a while, somebody
I knew there thought it was a bad idea for me to move to Tokyo and said, "Tokyo wa gaijin bakari da" -
"In Tokyo there's nothing but foreigners."
Now of course this person did not mean that there was nothing but foreigners in Tokyo;
he meant that there are a lot of foreigners in Tokyo - and he knows that I don't want
to be associating with foreigners who are going to start talking English at me.
(It's all right - I avoided that.)
So this is just a very obvious, natural use of "bakari".
Now, we can extend this further by saying that someone is doing something a lot or is doing it continuously.
Again, the textbooks give you these two meanings and make it sound a little complicated, but
there's nothing complicated about it.
It's very easy to understand from context.
The way we do it is that we put "bakari" after the te-form of the verb.
So, if you've ever heard "Inu no Omawari-san", which is a charming children's song about
a lost kitten: "maigo no maigo no koneko-chan" -
I'll put a link below so you can listen to it if you would like to.
Now, when the dog policeman ("inu no omawari-san") asks the kitten what her name is and where
she lives, the song says "naite bakari iru koneko-chan".
Now, "naite bakari" means "doing nothing but cry".
That's what it literally means, and in this case it means it quite literally.
She did nothing but cry.
She went on crying and she didn't answer, she didn't say what her name was or where she lived.
And that's where we get the idea of continuing to do something.
You don't stop doing it, you don't do anything else, you go on doing it: "shite bakari".
It can also be used figuratively.
You can say that somebody does nothing but play golf.
Now, in this case it's a hyperbole, isn't it?
Nobody does nothing but play golf.
Everybody sometimes eats, sometimes sleeps, and occasionally plays "Captain Toad", because
everybody plays "Captain Toad" sometimes.
So we have a hyperbole.
We're not saying that someone continues doing something and doesn't do anything else.
We're saying that they do it an awful lot.
It's a simple enough hyperbole and exactly the same hyperbole that we would have in English:
"She does nothing but play Nintendo".
Now, "bakari" can also be used to make two conjunctions.
Conjunctions, as we know, are things that connect together two complete logical clauses
in a compound sentence.
So we can say "utatta bakari ka, odotta" - "she didn't just sing, she also danced".
Now, the only thing you really have to understand here is the use of "ka".
"Ka", as we know, is the question marker and, as we discussed last week, it can turn a statement
into a hypothesis, a question for discussion.
But it can also do another thing and that is it can, especially in colloquial usage,
throw things into the negative.
And we have the same in English, don't we?
When we ask a question in order to show a negative.
We can say "Do you think I'm going to do that?"
meaning "I'm not going to do that."
And it's the same with "ka" in Japanese: in some cases we put "ka" after something to say it isn't the case.
So if we say "bakari" we're saying "only that is the case" and if we say "bakari ka" we're
saying "not only that is the case".
The other common conjunction we make with "bakari" is "bakari ni".
"Ni" can sometimes be added to something in order to make a conjunction.
We've seen this with "no ni" and I made a video about this a while ago which you may want to watch.
"Bakari ni" is an explanatory conjunction.
We're saying that something happened and then we're putting a "because" on the end of it
and saying it was because something else happened.
The most usual explanatory conjunctions are "kara" or "no de", but "bakari ni" has a special implication.
It's not just saying that something happened because of something, it's saying that it
happened JUST because of something.
Again we can liken "bakari" to English "just".
"Mimi-ga ookii bakari ni, daremo asonde kurenai" - "Just because my ears are big, no one will play with me."
The textbooks will perhaps caution you here that "bakari ni" doesn't necessarily mean
this conjunction, and that's true.
But understanding it from context is simple because we all know that a conjunction can
only sit at the end of a complete logical clause that's followed by another logical clause.
If "bakari ni" is not on the end of a logical clause then it's not the conjunction, and
if it's in the middle of a sentence, which it normally will be, it must make sense to put a comma after it.
Because all conjunctions must logically be able to take a comma after them.
if you have any questions or comments please put them in the comments below and I will answer as usualo]
I'd like to thank my Gold Kokeshi patrons, who make these videos possible, and all my
patrons and supporters on Patreon and everywhere.
And I'd like to thank you for attending this lesson.
Kore kara mo yoroshiku onegai shimasu.
Class dismissed.

Konnichiwa.
Today we're going to talk about "you-ni naru", "you-ni suru", "koto-ni naru", and "koto-ni suru".
Now, all the elements of these expressions we've already learned, so what we need to do now is
to see how they fit together in these cases, what they mean, and why they mean what they mean.
So let's just do a quick recap of "ni naru" and "ni suru".
As we know, the two primordial Japanese verbs are "aru" and "suru".
"Aru" is the mother of all self-move verbs and "suru" is the father of all other-move verbs.
"Naru" is closely related to "aru" -- "aru" means "be"; "naru" means "become" -- so we
can say that "aru" and "naru" are the static and dynamic versions of the same verb.
That is, the same verb being still and moving in time.
Now, we know that when we use a noun followed by "ni naru", we mean that something turns into that noun.
"Ni" marks the target of the transformation and "naru" is the transformation itself, the becoming.
So, when we say "you-ni naru"...
Well, we looked at "you" last week, didn't we, and we saw that when we're comparing things
or likening things "you" means a "form" or a "likeness".
Its basic meaning is a form or a state of being.
When we say "rikishi-wa yama-no you da" -- "sumo wrestler is like a mountain" --
we're not saying that the sumo wrestler "is" a mountain, we're extracting the form or the state of
being of the mountain and applying it to the sumo wrestler.
We're not saying that the sumo wrestler is the mountain, we're saying that the wrestler is the mountain's "you",
the mountain's form or state of being.
So in English we say the wrestler is "like" the mountain; in Japanese we say the wrestler
is the form or the state of being of the mountain -- we might say, the "likeness" of the mountain.
Now, when we use "you" in the expressions we're talking about today, we don't add them
to a noun like "yama", we add them to a complete logical clause.
The textbooks sometimes say we're adding them to a verb, but what we're really doing is
adding them to a logical clause with a verb-engine.
And "you", as we know, is a noun; the logical clause becomes the adjectival, the descriptor,
for that noun, so we know that any verb-engine together with the logical clause it heads
can become an adjectival so we're not saying "no you", we're not saying the likeness of something else here.
So when we have a logical clause plus "you-ni naru", we're saying that something became
or entered the state of being or the form of that logical clause.
So, for example, if we say "kare-wo shinjiru you-ni natta", we're saying "I came to believe him."
"Kare-wo shinjiru" (or "zero-ga kare-wo shinjiru") --"I believe him" -- is a logical clause,
and we're saying that I moved into the state, I became the state of that logical clause:
"I came to believe him."
This is often used with a potential helper verb.
For example, we might say, "Nihongo-no manga-ga yomeru you-ni natta" --
"Japanese manga became readable (to me)".
As you see, in both cases something is changing its state.
I change my state from not believing him to believing him; the manga changes its state
from being non-readable to being readable.
In all cases we are talking about a change of state, a change of the existing state in
someone or something from one condition to another.
And if you're wondering why we most often in Japanese speak of the manga changing state
from being non-readable to readable rather than speaking, as in English we usually
do, of the person changing state from not being able to read the manga to being able to read the manga,
please watch the video lesson on the potential helper verb where I explain how this works.
Now, when we say "you-ni suru" we know that the "ni suru" construction is the other-move
version of the "ni naru" construction.
If we say "majo-ga Sakura-wo kaeru-ni shita", we're saying "the witch turned Sakura into a frog".
So "you-ni suru" is to make something enter a state.
It doesn't enter it by itself; somebody's making it enter the state.
So if we say "yoku mieru you-ni suru" -- "yoku mieru" means to "look good", so "yoku mieru you-ni suru"
is to make someone or something look good.
Now, "you-ni suru" has an extended sense, and that is when we say something essentially
equivalent to "please make sure that you do something".
So, we can say "doa-ni kagi-wo kakeru you-ni shite kudasai"
and that means "please make it so that you lock the door".
And I think you can see the difference here between simply saying "doa-ni kagi-wo kakete kudasai",
which is just "please lock the door".
In one case you're kind of assuming that the person will simply lock it as a matter of course;
in the second case you're making a very special point of it: "Please make it so that you lock the door
(this is important, so please make it be that way)".
"It" in this case is just the same as it would be in English -- the "situation", the "circumstance" --
"Please turn the circumstance from one in which you don't lock the door into one
in which you do lock the door."
So this makes a very special point of this instruction or advice.
Now, related to this is when you may say something about yourself, usually related to something
you do regularly, such as saying "mainichi aruku you-ni suru".
And that means literally, "I make it so that I walk every day".
But when you put it this way, rather than just saying "mainichi aruku", which is simply
saying "I walk every day", the implication is that you try to do so.
You might not necessarily always succeed.
And, you see, as with the other usage, there's some doubt as to whether you will do it.
You don't say "Please make it so that you lock the door" unless there is in your mind
a certain doubt as to whether this is going to happen and you're trying to make it so that it does.
When you say it about yourself -- "mainichi aruku you-ni suru" -- there is also another
factor in play in that when it's yourself you could also use "koto-ni suru", and that
expresses a firm decision which we'll talk about next week in the second half of this lesson.
So if you choose "you-ni suru" over "koto-ni suru" you're inherently leaving a little room for doubt.
Now, "you-ni" can also be used with a clause behind it and a clause in front of it,
in order to say "do one thing in order that another thing may happen".
The textbooks treat this as if it were a different piece of grammar, a different grammar point,
but in fact it isn't, it's the same as plain "you-ni suru", and the only reason it seems
a bit different is because we put it a little differently in English.
But we shouldn't be thinking about English; we should be thinking about Japanese.
So let's take a look at how this works.
Let's take a sentence that we've already had: "yoku mieru you-ni suru" --
"make something (or someone) look better".
Now, let's change that to "yoku mieru you-ni kuchibeni-wo tsukeru" -- "in order that
she will look better (or I will look better, or someone will look better), apply lipstick".
Now, as you see, in English the ways of putting those two ideas are different, and that's why the textbooks
and the conventional explanations talk as if we had two separate, unrelated grammar points.
But if you look at what's going on, you can see that they're actually the same thing.
In one case we're saying "make someone or something look better" without specifying the means.
We're just using the neutral, catch-all verb "suru", which is the fundamental other-move verb.
When we say "yoku mieru you-ni kuchibeni-wo tsukeru", "kuchibeni-wo tsukeru" is simply replacing the "suru".
Instead of unspecifically saying simply "make someone look better", it's saying
"do a specific thing in order to make someone look better".
Now, "suru" is also an action; it's just an unspecified action.
It's just "do/act/make something happen".
"Kuchibeni-wo tsukeru" specifies what that "suru" might be in a particular case.
So you see, we have exactly the same construction here, not two separate "grammar points", as
they like to call them.
And one final note is that you will sometimes hear "you-ni" on the end of a sentence,
usually a masu-ending sentence.
This is used primarily for prayers and petitions.
So you might say "nihon-ni ikemasu you-ni".
And you might say that at a shrine or when you're wishing on a falling star or perhaps
just when you're expressing a wish that a friend might be able to go to Japan.
Why do we use this?
Well, obviously it's a kind of shortening of "you-ni suru".
If you're talking to a deity or a fairy, it might be short for "you-ni shite kudasai".
So, next week we move on to "koto-ni naru" and "koto-ni suru".
If you have any questions or comments, please put them in the Comments below and I will answer as usual.
And I'd like to thank my Gold Kokeshi patrons, who make these videos possible, and all my patrons
and supporters on Patreon and everywhere.
I value you all so much.
And I'd like to thank you for attending this lesson.
Kore kara mo yoroshiku onegai shimasu.
Class dismissed.

Konnichiwa.
Today we're going to discuss "koto-ni suru" and "koto-ni naru".
Last week we looked at "you-ni suru" and "you-ni naru" and we briefly recapitulated
the fact that when we say "(something)-ni naru" we mean that the thing we're speaking about
turned into whatever is marked by -ni.
So if we say "Sakura-wa kaeru-ni natta", we're saying Sakura turned into a frog.
If we say "-ni suru", we're saying that someone deliberately turned what we're talking about
into the ni-marked noun.
So, if we say "Majo-ga Sakura-wo kaeru-ni shita", we're saying the witch turned Sakura into a frog.
So, what about "koto-ni suru" and "koto-ni naru"?
We know that "koto" means a "thing", not a concrete thing like a book or pencil but an
abstract thing, a situation, or a circumstance.
So, if we say "Kekkon suru koto-ni shita", we're saying
literally: It became the thing of getting married.
Obviously we have to have a zero-pronoun here,
because something has to become something.
So, what's "it"?
Well, "it" is what it might be in English: "the situation / the circumstance".
"The circumstance turned into one in which we're getting married/in which getting married is the thing."
We have to use "koto" here because, as you know, we can't attach the logical particle -ni,
or any other logical particle, to anything but a noun.
So, we use "kekkon suru" as the modifier for "koto" in order to give us a noun of the situation
or circumstance of getting married.
So what does it mean?
"We turned the situation into the thing of getting married" means "We decided to get married" /
"We brought about a situation in which getting married was the thing".
And so the textbooks will tell you that "koto-ni suru" means "decide (something)",
and it's not quite as simple as that, as we'll see in a moment.
However, if we say "Furansu-de ryuugaku suru koto-ni natta", we're saying "It became the
thing of studying in France", which really means "It came about that I am going to study in France".
The situation turned from one in which I'm not going to study in France
to one in which I am going to study in France.
Now because "koto-ni suru" is a deliberate act done by whoever is making the decision,
"koto-ni naru" is taken to imply in many cases a deliberate decision.
So we can translate this most of the time as "They're sending me to France to study" /
"It's been decided that I'm going to France to study."
The thing to notice here, though, is that there's no actual mention of a decision by anyone,
and in this case it doesn't matter if we assume that that's what it means, because it probably does.
Some people will say "Kekkon suru koto-ni natta", which kind of means "It's been decided
that we're getting married" or, more literally, "It's come about that we're getting married".
And the reason for saying this is that, even though in this day and age, the people who
decide that they're getting married are almost always the people who are actually getting married,
it sounds a little less forceful, a little less ego-centred,
not to say "we've decided..." but just
to say "It's been decided..." or "It's come about..."
And I have to say that sounds a little bit more pleasant to me as well,
but I'm just an android, so what do I know?
However, we may also say "taihen-na koto-ni natta", and what that means is
"It became -- the situation became -- a terrible thing".
And this does not carry any implication that anybody decided it ought to be a terrible thing.
It does not imply a decision, and there's no reason it would, because there's no mention
of decision anywhere in "koto-ni suru" or "koto-ni naru".
In many cases a decision is implied, but in cases like this -- and there are many times when you'll see
"koto-ni naru" working in this way -- all it's telling us is that the situation came about,
not that anybody decided that the situation should come about.
So this is why it's important to learn structure in Japanese, because if we just get a handful
of Japanese and a handful of English thrown at us -- "koto-ni naru" means "it is decided"
-- well, sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't.
The important thing to know is what's actually going on in the sentence.
Then we can make a sensible assessment ourselves of what's being said when we see it in
an anime or a book or in conversation.
If you have any questions or comments, please put them in the Comments below and I will answer as usual.
I'd like to thank my Gold Kokeshi patrons, who make these videos possible, and all my
patrons and supporters on Patreon and everywhere.
And I'd like to thank you for attending this lesson.
Kore kara mo yoroshiku onegai shimasu.
Class dismissed.

Konnichiwa.
Today we're going to start talking about Japanese conditionals.
Conditionals are when you say something like "If..." or "When..."
And in Japanese there are a number of different conditionals,
and this can cause some confusion to learners.
Which one do we use, and when, and why?
As usual, we tend to get a list of these things from the text-books with complicated instructions,
and as usual it helps a great deal if we can understand the underlying logic.
So, this lesson we're going to start with the conditional -to.
Now, we've already met this -to.
It is the "exclusive and" particle.
I'm not talking about Boolean logic here.
I'm talking about the fact that Japanese has two words for "and" which are used to connect two nouns.
One is -ya, and -ya is the same as English "and".
It means one thing "and" another "and" possibly other things too.
If we say "hat and coat", we may well have on shoes and skirt and pants and other things too,
but we just say "hat and coat".
In Japanese, if we say "pen ya hon" – "pen and book" – we're saying, just like English "and",
"a pen and a book and maybe some other things and maybe not".
But if we say "pen to hon", that is exclusive.
We're saying "pen and book and nothing else".
Now, this is important to understand because this is exactly the same -to that we use as a conditional.
The textbooks tend to introduce this -to as if it were something different from the "and" -to,
but it's not – it's the same.
There is another -to and that is the quotation particle which we've covered at some length
in more than one lesson.
That is separate from the "and" -to.
But the conditional -to is not: it's the same -to.
And when we understand that, it becomes much easier to see what's going on with this particular conditional.
Now, one more thing we need to know is that this -to is a particle, but it's not a logical particle.
And it's not a non-logical particle either.
What do I mean by this?
Well, a logical particle is a particle that marks the case of a noun.
Now, you don't need to know what that means – it's not important to get that theoretical knowledge.
What it means is, in plain English, that it tells us what the noun is doing in the sentence
in relation to other nouns and in relation to the verb.
The ga-particle tells us that the noun is being or doing something; the wo-particle tells us
that it is having something done to it; the ni-particle tells us that it is a target.
So what logical particles do is tell us who is doing what to whom and where and when.
Non-logical particles -wa and -mo mark the topic, which is not a logical construction.
They tell us what noun we're talking about but they don't tell us what part it plays in the sentence.
Now the point about logical particles is that they must attach to nouns.
They can't do anything other than attach to a noun.
And this is obvious, because that's their function – to tell us what role a noun plays in a sentence.
-To is not a logical particle and therefore, while it can attach to nouns,
it can also attach to a logical clause and that's what allows it to be a conditional.
All right. So now we know enough to go ahead.
If I say, "fuyu-ni naru-to samuku naru" – "When it becomes winter (or, if it becomes winter) it gets cold."
So why is this connected with the "exclusive and" function of -to?
It is connected with it because what we are saying is that only one possibility exists,
only one result can follow from what we're talking about.
If winter comes, it will get cold – there's no other possibility.
If rain falls, the ground will get wet – there's no other possibility.
It can also be used in a hyperbolic fashion.
We've talked about hyperboles before, haven't we?
This is where you say something that exceeds the truth.
And human language does this all the time.
So, someone might say "sore-wo taberu-to byouki-ni naru" – "If you eat that, you will get sick."
Now, this is not like winter coming and it getting cold or the rain falling and the ground getting wet.
It's possible that you might eat it and not get sick, but this is a hyperbole.
What you are trying to say to someone is "If you eat that, you will get sick".
"If you keep playing those games, you'll fail the exam."
Now again, it's possible that the person might keep playing the games and still get through the exam,
but the hyperbole is "Do A and B will happen".
"Keep playing those games and you'll fail the exam."
"Eat that and you'll get sick."
We are putting something forward as an inevitable result, an exclusive result,
a result to which no other alternative exists.
Now, we can also use this -to to mean that something is necessary.
We can say "ikanai-to dame" – "If I don't go, it will be bad."
"Benkyou shinai-to ikenai" – literally, "If I don't study, it can't go"
but what that means is "If I don't study, it won't be good"
("...it won't do", as we might say in English).
And what it actually means is "I must study / I've got to study".
And very often you'll hear this just on its own.
For example, "nigenai-to!" And that just means, literally "We don't run and..."
That's to say, "If we don't run..."
And the implication here is that if we don't run, something bad will happen.
So if in an anime somebody says, "nigenai-to!" they're really just saying "Run! / We must run."
And in this sense, -to, because it is so absolute, because it is so exclusive,
is stronger and a little more colloquial than similar uses like ba/reba.
And we'll talk about the ba/reba construction next time.
If you have any questions or comments, please put them in the Comments below
and I will answer as usual.
And I'd like to thank my Gold Kokeshi patrons, who make these videos possible,
and all my patrons and supporters on Patreon and everywhere.
And I'd like to thank you for attending this lesson.
Kore kara mo yoroshiku onegai shimasu.
Class dismissed.

Konnichiwa. Today we're going to talk about the conditional -ba/-reba.
Last week we looked at the -to conditional and we saw that its particular characteristic
was its exclusiveness, its implication that only one outcome is possible.
In many cases we can use any or most of the conditionals without changing the meaning
to any great extent, but each conditional has its own particular qualities.
So today we're going to look at the special quality of
-ba/-reba and some of the things it does and why it does them.
First of all, what is -ba/-reba?
-Ba/-reba is a helper which we put on to the e-stem of a verb.
The e-stem is one of the lesser used stems but -ba /-reba is one of the things that uses it.
So, for godan verbs we put it on to the e-stem and for ichidan verbs, as always, we simply
put it on to .... we simply take off the -ru and add the ichidan form, -reba.
For the two irregular verbs, in this case they work exactly like regular ichidan verbs.
So "kuru" becomes "ku-reba" and "suru" becomes "su-reba".
Actually, "kuru" and "suru", I would say, are in fact ichidan verbs, but they're strong ichidan verbs.
A strong verb is a verb that can change its vowel sound.
In English we have "come" and "came", "eat and "ate".
And "kuru" and "suru" in some cases change their vowel sound.
"Kuru" in the negative becomes "konai", "suru" becomes "shinai".
But in this case they don't change their vowel sound at all, so that's very simple --
they just work like the ichidan verbs that they fundamentally are.
For adjectives, we take off the -i and use the helper -kereba.
You might notice that when we do anything with an adjective other than simply
take off the -i and add whatever we're going to add, the specific adjectival modifications
all come from the ka-ki-ku-ke-ko row.
So, the negative of an adjective is -kunai ("omoshiroi" --> "omoshiro-kunai");
the past is -katta ("omoshiroi" --> "omoshiro-katta");
and the -ba conditional is -kereba ("omoshiroi" --> "omoshiro-kereba").
So in a way we could say that if adjectives had an e-stem, it would be -ke.
And that's what we use in that case.
So what's the special characteristic of -ba/-reba?
-To, as we know, its special characteristic is its exclusiveness.
The special characteristic of -ba/-reba is that it is used for hypotheticals. So it must always mean "if".
It can't ever mean "when", because we never know for sure if the condition will take place
and consequently if we use it about something that happened in the past it has to be something
that didn't happen because if it did happen we wouldn't be dealing with a hypothesis,
we'd be dealing with a fact.
Now this hypothetical nature of -ba/-reba allows it to be used in many common
and very important Japanese expressions.
For example, "dou su-reba ii".
What this literally means is "how, if I act, will be good".
And I'll just note here that while "suru" is generally translated as "do", in many cases
the best way to render it into English is as "act".
So, for example, if we say "shizuka-ni suru", we're not saying "do quietly", we're saying "act quietly".
So, "do su-reba ii" -- "how, if I act, will be good".
And in English what we'd normally say is "What should I do?"
But in Japanese we don't say that.
As we'll see, this is partly because the concept of "should" isn't quite the same in Japanese,
and -ba/-reba is often used to solve the problem.
We'll come back to that in a moment.
Another common use of -ba/-reba is in "su-reba yokatta".
For example, "kasa-wo motteku-reba yokatta".
In English we would say "I should have brought an umbrella".
What we're actually saying here is "If I had brought an umbrella, it would have been good".
"Mottekuru", as I've explained elsewhere, we join the word "carry" and the word "come"
to mean "bring" ("carry-to-here") and we notice that "yokatta" throws it into the past tense.
As you know, in Japanese, we mark the past tense at the end of a logical clause.
So even though it may be true that if it's raining right now, if I had brought an umbrella
it would have been good and it still would be good,
we throw the whole thing into the past tense with that final "yokatta".
"Kasa-wo motteku-reba yokatta" --
"I should have brought an umbrella / I wish I had brought an umbrella."
Now notice that in both these cases, "do su-reba ii" / "kasa-wo motteku-reba yokatta",
we are using this "if it were done, it would be good" to mean "should".
And this happens again in an even commoner Japanese construction.
"Benkyou shina-kereba ikemasen" -- "If I don't study, it won't go / it won't do."
Now what we are actually saying here is "I must study".
There actually isn't a word for "must" in Japanese, so we always construct it this way.
We say "If I don't... (whatever it is)"
and then we can say "it won't be good / it will be bad / it'll be a disaster..."
Whatever we say, some negative construction then follows this, and what we're saying is
"I must go / I've got to go / I've got to do this / I've got to do that", and this is because
we don't have that construction "got to" and we don't have "must" in Japanese.
It always has this rather lengthy "If I don't do, it won't be good / if I don't do, it won't do /
If I don't do, it's bad" -- "na-kereba dame".
And because it is indeed a very long-winded way of saying something common like "must" or "got to",
it often gets cut down in casual speech to just "shina-kereba" or even "shina-kya",
which is short for "shina-kereba",
without adding the negative ending, because that's just implied.
However, even in very casual speech it's often said in full,
and I think this is to emphasize the nature of the "must".
"Naze ikana-kereba ikenai?" -- "Why have I got to come?"
In cases like that, where we're putting stress on it as opposed to cases where
we're just saying casually "ikana-kya" -- "I've got to go".
So this is the special characteristic of -ba/-reba, that it's dealing with hypotheticals.
If you have any questions or comments, please put them in the Comments below and I will answer as usual.
I'd like to thank my Gold Kokeshi patrons, who make these videos possible,
and all my patrons and supporters on Patreon and everywhere.
And I'd like to thank you for attending this lesson.
Kore kara mo yoroshiku onegai shimasu.
Class dismissed.

Konnichiwa.
Today we are going to complete our mini-series on conditionals with the conditionals -tara and -nara.
The -tara conditional is particularly easy to form because all we do is
form a verb or an adjective into its -ta/-da past form, and we know how to do that.
Once we've done that, all we do is add -ra and we have the conditional ready-made.
It's no coincidence that -tara and -dara are formed on the past,
because this is the only conditional that can be used about past events.
Now, of course, when we are using it about past events it's not really a conditional,
because we are no longer saying "if...", we are saying "when..."
We know that the condition was fulfilled because it's already happened.
But what it does is shows that the event that happened in the past was unexpected or surprising,
and this is because rather than using one of the more regular means of showing that one event followed another,
such as the -te form or -kara, we are using an if-type conditional.
So we are stressing the fact that what did happen might well not have happened and indeed
it might have been more in line with expectation if it hadn't happened.
So, if we say "ie-ni kaettara Sakura-ga ita," we're saying "When I returned to the house, Sakura was there,"
and obviously we're very surprised to find that Sakura is there.
She didn't even have a key; she must have gotten in through the window.
Sakura does that sort of thing sometimes, you know.
Now, of course, we can also use it as a true conditional about future events,
and when we do that, it tends to throw stress on what will happen if the condition is fulfilled,
as opposed to -reba, which throws more stress on the question of whether or not the condition
will be fulfilled or even the fact that it wasn't fulfilled.
And this is perhaps natural, because just as in its past form -tara can mean more-or-less
"when" something takes place as much as "if" it takes place,
it certainly can be used for things that we don't know whether they will be fulfilled or not.
Most of the conditionals are interchangeable in many cases, but if we're talking about
a condition which we're fully expecting to be fulfilled, we're really saying more "when" than "if",
we're most likely to use -tara.
Another note on the -tara and -ba/-reba is that we sometimes use the forms
-ttara and -tteba with a small tsu before them to indicate exasperation.
So we might say "Sakara-ttara" or "Sakura-tteba".
And what this literally means is the construction of "Sakura-to ittara" or "Sakura-to ieba",
in other words "When you speak of Sakura..."
And this is a bit like saying, "Oh, you" or "When you speak of Sakura, it's always something like this, isn't it?"
It's not flattering, it is critical, but it's not very strongly so, especially in the case of -ttara.
It can be quite humorous or joking or a kind of friendly exasperation.
In my experience, -tteba is more likely to express real exasperation,
and it can be put on to the end of other things than just a person's name.
For example, we might say "mou itta-tteba", which is "I've already said that, haven't I?"
Now, -nara is really the easiest of all conditionals to form, because all we ever do is put -nara
after what we say and that turns it into a conditional.
We can put it after nouns and we can put it after complete logical clauses.
It's very comfortable after nouns and we don't need to use a copula, probably because
the -na of -nara has its roots in the copula itself.
There are ways of grafting the other conditionals onto nouns, but I haven't mentioned those,
because I think it would just be unnecessary complication at this stage.
Generally speaking, all other things being equal, we're most likely to use -nara with nouns.
Now, a characteristic of -nara is that more than the others it can be used of
present and future conditions that really aren't in doubt at all.
So, for example, if Sakura is worried that something may not be possible to her, we might say
"Sakura-nara, dekiru" and that means "If it's Sakura, it will be possible".
Now, of course, we know it's Sakura, we're talking to Sakura, so what we're really saying is
"Since it's Sakura, it will be possible" and we're using it to reassure Sakura that we have confidence in her.
You might ask the way to the station; you might say, "Eki-wa doku desu ka?" and someone
might reply, "Eki-nara, asoku desu" and that's saying "If it's the station you're asking for, it's over there."
Now, of course, there isn't any real doubt that it is the station you're asking for,
so it's more like "Since it's the station you're asking for, it's over there."
In both these cases there's no doubt.
In the case of Sakura, we're expressing confidence in her as a person -- if it was someone else,
it might not be possible, but if it's Sakura, since it's Sakura, it will be possible.
And with the station, we're really just confirming that it's the station we're talking about.
And, as I say, the conditionals are very often interchangeable, but knowing the special characteristics
of each one helps us to understand exactly what's going on and which one we might choose ourselves.
If you have any questions or comments, please put them in the Comments below and I will answer as usual.
I'd like to thank my Gold Kokeshi patrons, who make these videos possible,
and all my patrons and supporters on Patreon and everywhere.
And I'd like to thank you for attending this lesson.
Kore kara mo yoroshiku onegai shimasu.
Class dismissed.

Konnichiwa.
Today we're going to talk about terms of limitation:
"dake", "shika", "bakari" (we're already covered
"bakari" in a video of its own, but we're going to look at how it fits in here) and "nomi".
"Nomi" is very easy and you won't need to use it anyway,
but it is important to understand it when you see it.
A lot of people find these terms confusing, but that's only because they're taught in a confusing way.
Once you see how they really work, they're not difficult at all.
So, let's start with the most basic word, "dake".
"Dake" means "limit".
We're sometimes told that it means "only", and in its most basic form of expression "only"
is what we would say in English.
However, it's important in some of its other uses to realize that what it actually means is "limit".
So, if I say "sen'en dake motte iru", what I'm saying is "I have a thousand yen limit
/ A thousand yen is the limit of what I have".
"Dake" is a noun, and when we put "sen'en" behind it, we're using "sen'en" as the modifier
to the noun "dake".
So we're saying I have a limit of a thousand yen, a thousand yen is all I have.
So that's simple enough.
We'll come back to "dake" in a moment.
Now let's look at "shika".
Now, "shika" does confuse people and that's because they're given the impression that
it means the same thing, more or less, as "dake".
And what it in fact means is the opposite of "dake".
"Shika" means "more than".
And if we understand that, we'll never get confused about "shika" because it's very simple.
The point is that it's only ever used in negative sentences.
So, we always have a "nai" or an "arimasen" when we use "shika",
so it ends up saying "not more than".
And this is what makes it very similar to "dake".
But if we don't realize that it actually means "more than", we get very confused about how
it fits into a sentence structurally.
So, if we say "Sen'en dake motte iru", we're saying a thousand yen is the limit of what I have.
If we say "Sen'en shika motte inai", we're saying I don't have any more than a thousand yen.
And as you can see this is a negative sentence and the stress is on the negative.
It's very similar to what we might say in English: we might say "I only have a thousand yen"
or we might say "I don't have any more than a thousand yen".
And you can see the difference between those two, and the difference is exactly the same in Japanese.
"Dake" doesn't imply that a thousand yen is a lot or a little; it doesn't imply anything
about it, it's just saying that that's what I have and that's all I have.
"I don't have any more than a thousand yen" is putting emphasis on the fact that this
might be too little, or that if you were wanting any more you're not going to get it, or whatever.
It has this negative emphasis because we're putting all the emphasis on what I don't have,
not what I do have.
And that, in this context, is the difference between "dake" and "shika... nai".
And "shika... nai" can also be used in circumstances such as "nigeru shika nai".
"Nigeru" is to "run away" or "escape"; if we say "nigeru shika nai" we're saying
"There's nothing for it but to run / There's no other course of action but to run."
So just as "sen'en shika nai" means I have nothing more than a thousand yen,
"nigeru shika nai" means there's nothing we can do other than -- or more than -- run.
So now let's go back to some of the other uses of "dake".
One of the commonest is "dekiru dake", which means "as much as possible" or "if at all possible".
Now, you see, at this point, if we're thinking of "dake" as meaning "only" we can start to get confused.
Is this a completely different kind of "dake"?
No, it's exactly the same.
"Dekiru dake" means "to the limit of possibility".
"Dekiru dake benkyou shimasu" -- "I will study if I can" or "I will study as much as I can"
/ "to the limit of the possibility I will study."
Another use which you'll certainly see quite often is "dake atte".
Now this "atte" is "aru" -- to "be".
And we're often told that it means something like "not for nothing".
So "ryuugaku shita dake atte eigo wa umai".
And this literally means "Because of the limit of the fact that she studied abroad..."
(and the "because" here is that te-form, which often implies the cause of the following effect)
"... her English is excellent."
Now the translation we're given is "Not for nothing did she study abroad, her English is excellent."
But what is actually being said here is "Precisely because and only because she studied abroad,
her English is excellent."
Now, you might think I'm splitting hairs here and being a bit too geeky about the exact meaning.
But let's take another example.
"Yasui dake atte sugu ni kowarechatta."
Now, this means "Because of the limit of its being cheap, it quickly broke."
Now, it wouldn't make any sense here to say, would it, "Not for nothing was it cheap, it broke quickly."
What we're actually saying is "Precisely because it was cheap, it broke quickly."
That "dake" is using the limiting function to limit something down to something precise.
If we want to bring in the "only" aspect of it, the way it works is that what we're saying is
"Only by studying abroad would you get that good at English"
"Only something really cheap would break that quickly."
So that's how the limitation, the "only", function of "dake" is actually working here.
We're using it to give precision to the statement: "Precisely and only because of this the result
followed"; "Dake atte" -- "It exists because of and limited to this fact."
Now let's bring in "bakari".
"Bakari", as we know, also expresses the same kind of limits.
It means "just such-and-such a thing".
So let's compare it with the other two.
If we say "ano omise wa pan dake uru", we're saying "That shop only sells bread".
If we say "Ano omise wa pan shika uranai", we're saying "That shop doesn't sell anything but bread".
If we say "Ano omise wa pan bakari uru", we're again saying "That shop only sells bread"
but as we know from the "bakari" lesson, what we're likely to mean by that is
"That shop sells an awful lot of bread".
It may not even be true that it only sells bread, because "bakari" can be used hyperbolically.
We can say "Toukyou wa gaijin bakari da" -- "In Tokyo there's nothing but foreigners" which
doesn't mean, any more than it would in English, that there really aren't any Japanese people in Tokyo.
It means there are an awful lot of foreigners in Tokyo.
So, we can put these three on a sliding scale.
"Pan shika uranai" is implying that only selling bread is very little, it's insufficient.
Maybe we want something other than bread but we can't get it.
"Pan dake uru" doesn't have any implication.
It's neutral.
It could mean that the shop specializes in bread and therefore it's very good.
It could mean, indeed, we can't get anything if we're wanting something other than bread.
It doesn't have any particular implication.
It's just neutrally saying that the shop only sells bread.
"Pan bakari uru" implies that there's an awful lot of bread there.
The fact that it's limited to bread is essentially making the point that bread is there in abundance
to the extent that we might hyperbolically say that nothing else but bread is there even
though with "bakari" in fact it could be.
And before we end, I'm just going to cover "nomi".
"Nomi" is very easy because all it means is "dake" in its simplest sense.
So we say "pan dake uru / pan nomi uru".
They both mean the same thing.
They mean "only sells bread" without any special implication.
"Nomi" is used in formal contexts, it's mostly used in writing, and unless you're trying
to use very formal Japanese you won't really need to use it.
The reason it's important to know is that, for example, if you were going to go into
a place and the sign was telling you that only members are admitted it could save a
lot of embarrassment if you knew that that "nomi" means the same thing as "dake".
And that kind of sign is precisely where they would use "nomi", because it tends to get
used in these formal, official kinds of context.
If you have any questions or comments, please put them in the Comments below and I will
and I will answer as usual.
I'd like to thank my Gold Kokeshi patrons, who make these videos possible,
and all my patrons and supporters on Patreon and everywhere.
And I'd like to thank you for attending this lesson.
Kore kara mo yoroshiku onegai shimasu.
Class dismissed.

Konnichiwa.
Today we are going to discuss the most fundamental thing in Japanese.
And, if we understand this, we can understand any Japanese sentence.
If we don't, we can't.
It's really as fundamental as that.
And I introduced this in our very first lesson, because if we don't have this, we're going nowhere.
What we are going to do today is start talking about how we can apply this to any Japanese
sentence that we find in the wild.
Now, the fundamental core of Japanese, as you know, is the core Japanese sentence.
It's what I call the A-car and the B-engine.
Both of those elements have to be there in every sentence.
We can always see the B-engine.
We can't always see the A-car, but it's always there.
In English these are called the subject and the predicate and in Japanese they are called the shugo and jutsugo,
but we are going to continue calling them the A-car and the B-engine
because this way we can visualize exactly what's going on in a sentence by using trains.
Now this lesson begins with a question asked by my Gold Kokeshi patron Pantelis Chrysafis-sama
(and I hope I'm pronouncing your name right).
It was a very simple question, but a very good one, a very fundamental one.
It was simply, "How do we know where a logical clause ends?"
And that's really the same as the question "How do we identify a logical clause?"
We need to know where it ends and we need to know where it begins.
The factors complicating this are that there can be more than one logical clause in a compound sentence
(but as I'm going to demonstrate, that isn't really as difficult as it seems)
and also the fact that we can't always see the A-car.
The other complicating factor is the fact that we will see the elements of logical clauses
and even complete logical clauses that are not part of the sentence core.
And if they're not part of the sentence core, what they are doing is modifying or
telling us more about either the A-car or the B-engine.
That's the only thing they can ever be doing, because the sentence is its core
and everything else in the sentence is related to and telling us more about that core.
Now, sentences where there is more than one logical clause have to be connected
by some kind of conjunction.
And this is very important, because this gives us the key to seeing whether or not there
is more than one core and if there is, where they are and how they're working.
In our recent series on conditionals, we were in fact dealing with conjunctions.
There are various kinds of conjunction: and, but, when, if, etc.
And the two other kinds of conjunctions that we need to look out for are the te-form, which
can join two clauses together into a compound sentence, as we looked at in our first lesson
on compound sentences, and the i-stem of a verb.
You've seen how the i-stem is the main conjunctive stem out of the four stems of verbs.
It can connect nouns to verbs; it can connect other verbs to verbs; it can connect various
helpers to verbs; and it can also connect one logical clause to another.
This is slightly more literary, slightly more sophisticated, perhaps, than the te-form,
but it's the one other thing you need to look out for when you're investigating whether
there is more than one logical clause in a sentence.
We'll talk about this more in a later lesson.
Now, let's talk about the complications that can arise and how we can see through them,
how we can use our detective powers to see what's really going on.
I'm going to take a simple conditional sentence that we used before.
"Kasa wo motte kureba yokatta" which means "I should have taken an umbrella /
I wish I'd taken an umbrella".
What it literally means is "If I had taken an umbrella, it would have been good."
Now, we can see the first logical clause easily, can't we?
That is "kasa wo motte kureba", which is simply "kasa wo motte kuru" -- "bring an umbrella"
-- turned into its conditional form -- "if I bring an umbrella" -- and that's going to
be thrown into the past tense by the final engine in the sentence, which is the way Japanese works.
So, we have clause one, which is "kasa wo motte kureba".
We know that it's a complete clause and we know it's going to be followed by a second clause
because we have a conjunction there in the form of a conditional.
But what follows it is simply "yokatta" which is the past tense of "ii" and it means "good".
Is this a core sentence?
Yes, it is.
The first sentence is "kasa wo motte kureba" ; the second sentence is "(zero-ga) yokatta".
We know this because "yokatta" is an engine.
It's an adjective, it's a describing word and it has to be describing something.
Wherever you've got an adjective, the adjective must be describing something.
Wherever you've got a B-engine, there must be an A-car to correspond to it.
So what is the A-car here?
What is "yokatta" describing?
What is it telling us "would have been good"?
This is a very important point.
If we translate it into very literal English, what we're saying is "If I had brought an umbrella,
it would have been good."
And this is exactly what the Japanese means.
"It" would have been good. The A-car is "it".
So what is "it"?
This is the important point: "It", or the zero-car, does not have to be clearly definable,
either in English or in Japanese.
What "it" means here is "the circumstance / things in general (would have been good)".
And we do this in Japanese all the time.
And we do it in English all the time.
So, for example, if we say in English "It's sunny, isn't it!"
In Japanese we might say "Hare da, ne!"
They mean the same thing.
In English we have to say "It is sunny" -- we could say "Sunny, isn't it?" but that's only
because we're leaving out the "it".
And we've still got it at the end, because we don't ever say "Sunny, isn't!"
We say "Sunny, isn't it!" which must be short for "It is sunny, isn't it!"
In Japanese we say "Hare..." (which means "sunny" or "clear" in the sense of clear skies):
"Hare da, ne!"
Now, "da" is the copula.
It's got to be connecting that "hare" to something else, which is our zero-particle.
What is it connecting it to?
Well, in this case we don't know.
It could be the day -- "The day is sunny".
It could be the weather -- "The weather is sunny".
It could be the sky -- "The sky is clear" -- because "hare" can mean "clear" as well in that sky sense.
It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter in Japanese and it doesn't matter in English what we mean by "it" when
we say "If I'd brought an umbrella, it would have been good" or "It is sunny".
But we can't do without it.
We can't do without it in Japanese and we can't do without it in English.
Because in both Japanese and English we have to have an A-car and a B-engine.
A subject and a predicate. A shugo and a jutsugo.
In English we always have to be able to see both of them.
In Japanese we don't need to see the first one.
We do need to see the second one.
But the first one is always there, and if we don't understand that we're going to have
great difficulty picking out the core sentence, especially as things get more complex.
So, to get directly to the question, how do we find the end of a logical clause?
Now, the main logical clause, the head clause of the sentence, is always the last one,
and we can find the end very easily because the end of the logical clause is the end of the sentence.
In Japanese, a sentence has to end with an engine, that is to say, an adjective, a copula
("da" or "desu") or a verb.
So the last engine in the sentence will be the end of the head clause of the sentence,
the main final clause of the sentence, always.
It will be the last thing in the sentence apart, perhaps, from one or two sentence-ender
particles like "yo" or "ne" or "yo ne".
We call them sentence-ender particles, but in a way it might be more accurate to call them
particles that come after the end of the sentence.
The final engine is the end of the logical sentence and the ender particles are just
a little add-on that we put on right after the end of the sentence.
So it's very easy to find the end of the last logical clause in a sentence or the end of
the entire logical clause if there is only one logical clause in the sentence.
The more difficult question -- but it's not really all that difficult, but the question
that can cause problems is the question of how do we find or how do we eliminate the
possibility of a compound sentence?
How do we know there are no other logical clauses in the sentence or, if there are,
how do we find them?
And the answer to that is again very simple and straightforward.
A logical clause will always end with an engine: a verb, a noun followed by a copula ("da"
-- it won't be followed by "na", because if the copula "da" has become "na" then
it must be a modifier, it can't be a logical clause in itself) -- a noun with the copula "da",
or an adjective.
And if it is a clause before the final clause in a compound sentence, it's going to end
with a connector.
It has to, because it has to connect to the next logical clause.
So, now what we're going to do is look at the sort of complex sentence that can confuse
people and we're going to look at how we tackle that sentence.
So the sentence is "Watashi-ga Sakura-ni hanashita nihongo-ga dekiru ryuugakusei-wa
gorin kin medaru-wo kakutoku shita josei-to kekkon shita."
Now, as you can see, that looks pretty complicated.
How do we go about it, how do we go about analyzing it?
Jay Rubin-sensei, for whom I have great respect, suggests that if we're really stuck we should
work backwards through a Japanese sentence.
And there's some sense in that, because Japanese sentences do in a certain way and up to a
certain point run in reverse order from an English sentence.
However, we can only do that with written sentences.
We can't do it with spoken sentences because people won't speak backwards for us most of the time.
However, one thing I do think is useful if you're feeling particularly stuck with a sentence
is to make sure you've got the head verb or the head copula or the head adjective,
whatever is the head of the sentence, in your mind.
So if we just take a peek at that first so we know where we're going to.
And the head of this sentence is very straightforward, isn't it?
It's "kekkon shita".
The head verb is simply "shita" -- "did" -- but that's making a suru-verb with "kekkon"; so, "kekkon shita".
What the sentence is telling us is that somebody got married.
All right.
But now let's do what I think we should do so long as we can, and most of the time we really can --
Start from the beginning. All right.
So, the first part of the sentence, the first clause: "Watashi-ga Sakura-ni hanashita"
Now, that could be a complete logical sentence in itself, couldn't it?
"I spoke to Sakura."
Or it could be "I told Sakura" in which case it couldn't be complete in itself, could it?
Because I would have to tell her something.
Now, which is it in this case?
Well, we know that's it's not a complete logical clause, "I spoke to Sakura." Why not?
Because it's not ending in any kind of conjunction, is it?
It's followed directly by a noun, "nihongo".
There's no conjunctive word, there's no te-form and it's not the i-stem of "hanasu".
So we know that this is in fact a modifier for something else.
So, what have we got next?
"nihongo-ga dekiru" -- now, that means "Japanese is possible".
"nihongo-ga dekiru" could be a complete sentence in itself, couldn't it?
"To me, Japanese is possible."
The "to me" would be implicit, but that's fine, we do that all the time.
But we know it isn't because it doesn't end in any kind of conjunction.
So this also can't be a complete logical clause within a compound sentence.
It must be a modifier for something.
And what we expect it to be a modifier for would be a person: a person to whom Japanese is possible.
And that's exactly what we get next: "ryuugakusei".
"Ryuugakusei" is an exchange student, usually from a foreign country.
So, "nihongo-ga dekiru" modifies " ryuugakusei" -- "an exchange student to whom Japanese is possible /
a Japanese-speaking exchange student."
And "watashi-ga Sakura-ni hanashita" is modifying all that.
"The Japanese-speaking exchange student who I told Sakura about"
And then that's followed by -wa.
Now, "ryuugakusei-wa" indicates it's very likely, isn't it, that this is going to be
the topic of the sentence and that the topic of the sentence is going to be the doer,
the A-car of the sentence.
But let's continue the sentence and see if that seems to be the case.
We now have "gorin kin medaru" and that means an Olympic gold medal.
"Gorin" means "five circles".
"Gorin kin" -- which is gold -- "medaru" -- an Olympic gold medal -- "-wo kakutoku shita".
Now that is not, that can't be a logical sentence because it's not a logical sentence, is it?
It's not a logical sentence without a doer, and there's no doer implied here.
But we have the doer right afterwards, don't we?
So we know that we have here a modifier for another noun, not a logical sentence in itself:
"gorin kin medaru-wo kakutoku shita josei".
So now we have another modified noun: "A woman who won an Olympic gold medal".
And now we've come to the head-verb of the sentence: "-to kekkon shita".
So we were right.
We have the A-car, which is the exchange student who can speak Japanese that I told Sakura
about married a woman who won an Olympic gold medal.
And as you see, we've got various actions going on in this sentence; we've got various
things that could, under different circumstances, form logical clauses of their own, but
none of them actually can.
We now know that this is not a compound sentence.
This is one rather complex sentence with a single A-car and a single B-engine.
Where a logical clause ends is either at the end of the sentence or before a conjunction.
And if you can do that, you can analyze just about any Japanese sentence, however complicated
it looks, and see what's going on in the sentence.
If you have any questions or comments, please put them in the Comments below
and I will answer as usual.
I'd like to thank my Gold Kokeshi patrons, who make these videos possible, and
all my patrons and supporters on Patreon and everywhere.
And I'd like to thank you for attending this lesson.
Kore kara mo yoroshiku onegai shimasu.
Class dismissed.

Konnichiwa.
Today we're going to talk about "yori" and "hou".
Now, "yori" and "hou" are often introduced together in sentences like:
"Meari yori Sakura-no hou-ga kirei da."
And that is a slightly verbose way of saying "Sakura is prettier than Mary".
I think this is an unfortunate way of introducing the two terms because it can easily give rise to confusion.
It can be difficult to understand what term is doing what and how they relate to the rest of the sentence.
It's much easier if we look at these two separate and independent terms,
both important in its own right, separately, and then we can put them together.
So let's start by looking at "yori".
Yori is a particle.
It's not one of our logical particles, so it does not have to be attached to a noun.
It can go after just about anything: a complete logical sentence, a noun, an adjective, a verb --
whatever we want.
Its basic physical meaning is "from".
When we send a letter, we may say "Sakura yori" -- "from Sakura".
And abstract words all have their base in physical metaphors, even if we sometimes forget
the physical metaphor, and with words like this, it's useful to begin by understanding
the original literal meaning and then seeing how the metaphor works.
So "yori" means "from", and we already have another word meaning "from", don't we?
And that's "kara".
Now, there is a difference between the two, which is particularly pronounced as we start
to apply them metaphorically.
"Kara" marks the "A" in "A from B" in such a way that it is treating "A" as the starting point or point of origin.
So, if I say "Nihon kara kimashita", I'm saying "I came (or come) from Japan / Japan is my point of origin."
And this in a way is midway between the literal, physical meaning and the metaphorical meaning,
because it can mean literally I just came on a plane from Japan or it can imply that
I'm Japanese or that I was raised in Japan or something like that.
When we move to its purely metaphorical meaning, it usually means "because".
In other words, "A" is the point of origin of "B".
"Samui kara ko-to wo kiru" -- "Because it's cold, I wear a coat" /
"From the fact that it's cold, I'm wearing a coat."
Now, "yori" means "from" in a very different sense.
The directional metaphor is concentrating not on the origin of A from B, but in the
distance or difference of A from B. So, if we say "Sakura-wa Meari yori kirei da"
we're saying that "from Mary" Sakura is pretty.
What we mean by this is that distinguished from Mary, Sakura is pretty.
Now, it does have something in common with "kara" because we're still using Mary as the base point,
the point of comparison.
And because of this, because it has a comparative meaning, we're not saying Sakura is pretty
but Mary isn't.
We're saying that, taking Mary as the point of comparison, Sakura is pretty --
therefore, more pretty, prettier.
In comparison to Mary, going "from" Mary, Sakura is pretty.
And you notice here that we said just what that first sentence, "Meari yori Sakura-no hou-ga kirei da,"
was saying and we didn't need "hou".
It works perfectly well to say exactly the same thing without that "hou".
And we use "yori" in other contexts.
For example, we may say "Kotoshi-no fuyu-wa itsumo yori samui," which literally means
"Comparing from always, this year's winter is cold" or "This year's winter is colder than always."
And what that actually means is "This year's winter is colder than usual, colder than most other years."
So that "always" is a kind of hyperbole, in a way.
Similarly, we can say "Sakura-wa hito yori kashikoi" -- "Sakura is clever compared to people."
And what that means, again, is "Sakura is clever compared to most people / Sakura is
clever compared to people in general" -- in other words, is cleverer "than" the average person.
All right, so now let's look at "hou".
"Hou" is quite different.
It's not a particle, it's a noun.
That's why we have "no hou".
And its literal meaning is a "direction" or a "side".
And when we say "side", we mean "side" in the sense of "direction", not in the sense of "edge".
So, for example, if we talk about two sides of a field with "hou", we're not meaning the
two edges of the field, we're meaning that we divide it approximately in half
and we talk about "the left side" and "the right side" of the field.
Now, as we see from this analogy, one side always implies the other side.
And that's the important thing about "hou" in its metaphorical uses.
In its literal use, when I'm cycling in Japan, I might say to a stranger,
pointing in the direction I'm going in, "Sore-wa Honmachi-no hou kou desu ka?"
And that's saying "Is that the direction of Honmachi?"
I'm not asking for street directions, which I can't understand in English, or Japanese,
or any other language.
I'm asking for the literal direction: "Is Honmachi that way, or am I going in the opposite direction?" --
which I often am, because I am "hou kou onchi", which means I have no sense of direction.
So when we apply it metaphorically, we mean one thing or circumstance or whatever as opposed to another.
We can put it after a noun with -no, as we do with Sakura: "Sakura-no hou", or we can
put it after a verb or an adjective, in which case that verb or adjective is describing
the "hou", telling us what kind of a "hou" it is, which "side" it is.
So, if you say to me "Meari ga kirei da to omou?"
-- "Do you think Mary is pretty?" -- and I reply "Sakura no hou-ga kirei da", I'm saying
"The side of Sakura is pretty" -- in other words, I think Sakura is prettier.
Once again, it's a comparative construction, so I'm not saying Sakura is pretty and Mary isn't,
but I am saying that the side of Sakura is prettier than the other side, which is Mary.
And, once again, let's notice that we don't need "yori" here.
"Sakura no hou ga kirei da" works perfectly happily on its own to mean exactly the same thing.
And a lot of the time you're going to see either "yori" or "no hou" on their own.
We do sometimes use the two together and when we're doing that we're either speaking fairly formally
or we're really trying to underline the point of the difference and comparison between the two.
Another case in which we see "hou" is in the expression "ippou", which means "one side".
And we can see this often used in narrative, sometimes right at the beginning of a sentence
-- not just a sentence, but a paragraph, and indeed a whole section of the story.
And what it's doing when we do this is it's saying essentially what we mean in English
when we say "meanwhile".
But we shouldn't say that "ippou" means "meanwhile", because it doesn't.
"Meanwhile" is a time expression. It's saying "at the same time".
"Ippou", while performing the same function, does it quite differently.
What we say when we say "ippou" before going into something else, is really referring back
to what we were talking about before, whatever that was.
And we're saying "All that was the one side; and now we're going to look at the other side."
It's like "demo", which wraps up whatever it was went before with "de" which is the te-form of "desu" --
"all that was, all that existed" -- "mo" gives us the contrasting conjunction: "demo" -- "but".
And we've talked about that in a different video lesson, haven't we?
"Ippou" should probably, strictly speaking, be "ippou de"; however, because it's a common expression,
as is often the case with common expressions, we are allowed to drop that copula.
So, if we say that King Koopa (that's Bowser) was completing his preparations for the wedding ceremony
with Princess Peach, and then we say "ippou" Mario's jumping up blocks on his way to rescue the princess.
So on the one side, that's what's happening with Bowser in Bowser Castle;
on the other side, this is what's happening with Mario in the Mushroom Kingdom.
We can also use "ippou" as a conjunction.
And essentially this is working just the same way as the "ippou" which means "meanwhile".
It's taking one side, and then the other side, so it's a contrastive conjunction.
So we might say "kono atari-wa shizuka na ippou de fuben da" -- "It's quiet around here, but
it's inconvenient / on the one hand, it's quiet around here, but it's inconvenient."
Literally that "kono atari-wa shizuka na" (which of course is "shizuka da" in its connective form)
.. "this area is quiet" -- and all that is a descriptor for "ippou": "shizuka na ippou".
"One side is that around here is quiet."
So, we're describing the one side, the "ippou de" and then "de", that's the copula --
"One side is that it's quiet, and the other side is..." (but we don't actually say "but the
other side is", that's already implied) -- "One side is that it's quiet, it's inconvenient."
And that "ippou de" acts as the conjunction.
And we can, once again, leave off the copula here.
One other use of "ippou" that we should mention is that it can also be used after a complete
verbal clause to show that something that is happening is continuing in one direction.
For example, we might say "kono mura-no jinkou-ga heru ippou da" -- "This village's population
is just declining and declining / ... just goes on declining."
"Kono mura-no jinkou-ga heru" means "This village's population is declining"
and the "ippou" is telling us that it just continues on in that one direction: it never grows,
it never stays still, it just declines and declines.
If you have any questions or comments, please put them in the Comments below and I will answer as usual.
I'd like to thank my Gold Kokeshi patrons, who make these videos possible,
and all my patrons and supporters on Patreon and everywhere.
And I'd like to thank you for attending this lesson.
Kore kara mo yoroshiku onegai shimasu.
Class dismissed.

Konnichiwa.
Today we're going to talk about the concept of "place" in everyday Japanese, because this
is something that often confuses people, and I've seen even quite good amateur translators getting it wrong.
The word for "place" in Japanese is, of course, "tokoro", and we learn this from quite early on.
It means a literal place and it quickly takes on slightly metaphorical uses.
For example, we can say "watashi-no tokoro", which means "my apartment or house /
the place where I live".
"Come and hang out at my place."
In English, that doesn't mean "hang out" as in "hang out of the window". It means...
oh, forget it, English is too complicated.
However, in Japanese, the figurative sense of "place" goes a lot further than it goes in English.
For example, if I say "Sakura-no doko-ga suki nano?"
I'm asking, literally "Sakura's where do you like?" or "What place of Sakura do you like?"
Now, if I ask this, I'm not expecting an answer like "I like her left ear."
An appropriate answer might be something like "Yasashii da" -- "She's gentle /
What I like about her is that she's gentle / The place I like about her is that she's gentle."
And we might say "This is, in my opinion, Sakura's ii tokoro'" -- "Sakura's good place
or one of Sakura's good places".
So "place" here doesn't mean anything remotely like a physical location.
It means an aspect of something, even a really abstract something like a person's personality.
If I listen to a complicated lecture, someone might say to me "Wakarimashita ka?"
-- "Did you understand it?" -- and I might reply "Wakaru tokoro-ga atta ga wakaranai tokoro-mo arimashita" --
"There were places I understood and places I didn't understand."
And here, as you see, this is closer to a usage we might have in English:
"I mostly understood it, but there were places that I didn't understand."
This could lead to a subtle misunderstanding in that what I'm most likely to be saying
in Japanese is not that there were times during the lecture when I didn't understand, but
there were aspects or subtleties that I wasn't quite grasping.
So, especially if you're more advanced, it's good to be aware of this metaphorical depth of the concept of "place".
Now, "place" is also often used to mean a place not in space but in time.
And if we understand this analogy, we can understand certain usages that are often explained
without explaining the structural underpinning for them, which ends up by just giving you
a list of things to memorize and as usual say "well, this goes with this and happens
to mean that and we don't particularly know why."
So, for example, we can use "tokoro" -- "place" -- with "A does B" sentences in all three tenses,
that's to say, the past, the present, and the future.
So, for example, if we say, using the plain dictionary form of the word "taberu" -- "eat"
(which, as we know, from our lesson on tenses is not present by default; it's future by default).
If we say "hirugohan-wo taberu tokoro da", what we're saying is "I'm just about to eat lunch."
What's the structure of this?
Well, it ends with "da", so we know that what we have is an "A is B" sentence, even though
the original sentence sandwiched into it is an "A does B" sentence.
So we're saying that "(something) is place".
The zero-car here is "it", as it would be in English, and what it means is the present time,
exactly as it does in English when we say "It's time to leave" -- "the present time is time to leave".
The "it" is "the present time" in both Japanese and English in these constructions.
So, we're saying "It (the present time) is I-will-eat-lunch time", so what it means is
"I'm just about to eat lunch".
So how putting "tokoro da" onto this sentence changes it from what it would mean if we just
said "hirugohan-wo taberu" is that it's telling us that we are right now at that place where
I'm going to eat lunch, therefore I'm just about to eat lunch.
Not I'm going to eat lunch possibly in half-an-hour.
I'm just about to eat lunch right now.
This is the place where I'm just about to eat lunch.
"Hirugohan-wo taberu tokoro da."
Now, if we use it with the actual present, the continuous present, which is what we use
when we're actually saying we're doing something right at this moment, so we say
"hirugohan-wo tabete iru tokoro da", what we're saying is "I'm eating lunch right now."
And just as with the previous example, what that "tokoro da" is doing is making it immediate.
It's the difference in English between saying "I'm eating lunch" and "I'm eating lunch right now."
Now, in the past, if we say "hirugohan-wo tabeta tokoro da", what we're saying is "I just ate lunch."
The "tokoro da" is adding to that past tense the immediateness: "The place in time that
we're at now is the place where I ate lunch / I just ate lunch."
Now, in this case we could say "hirugohan-wo tabeta bakari" - "I just ate lunch."
The two mean pretty much the same thing.
And I've seen textbooks giving us this set of rules : "You can use bakari with a noun.
You can say "Kono omise-wa pan bakari uru" -- "This shop sells nothing but bread" -- or
we can say "hirogohan-wo tabeta bakari da" -- "I just ate lunch."
But you have to remember that the rules say that "tokoro" can't be used with a noun."
Now, this is true, but it's a strangely abstract way of putting it.
It's putting it as if these are just some random rules that somebody made up, perhaps
in the Heian era because they had nothing better to do with their time.
In fact, if we understand the logic of it, we don't even need to be told this, because it's obvious.
I can say either "I just ate lunch" or I can say "I'm at the place where I've eaten lunch".
We can say "This shop just sells bread", but "this shop bread place sells" doesn't make
any sense at all, does it?
And this is why I think it's so important to learn structure.
People sometimes say to me "Am I supposed to be working out all this structure you teach
in every sentence I speak or read?"
And of course the answer to that is "No".
What you're supposed to be doing is getting used to Japanese by reading, listening, and
preferably speaking too.
If you're not doing that, you'll never get used to the grammar however many textbooks you study.
But if you understand the structure you won't be confused by things like whether you can
use "tokoro" with a noun or not, and why can't you use "tokoro" with a noun when you can
use "bakari" with a noun, and you have to think all that out.
You don't have to do that because you understand how it's actually working.
This is what the textbooks could usefully be teaching, but they don't.
Now, having learned the structure, it's also important to be aware of the times when bits
of the structure can get left off.
As with many regular set expressions, the copula "da" can be left off, and
more than this, even the end of "tokoro" can be left off.
The "ro" can be left off and we can just say "toko".
This is the case in all languages, that there are places where, colloquially, we can leave bits out.
And so long as we know what the structure is, it's not very difficult to understand the omissions too.
So, we might say "Nagoya-ni chakurikushita toko" -- "I just landed at Nagoya."
And we often use these abbreviations like "toko" -- leaving off the "ro" and the "da"
from "tokoro da" -- when we are trying to express a sense of immediacy.
But people do it on various occasions, just as they do the equivalent thing in English.
So, we see that "tokoro" can be literal, a "place in space".
It can express very abstract concepts like an "aspect of someone's personality", and
it can very often mean a "place in time".
And it can be used in various ways as a place in time;
for example, if someone says "ii tokoro-ni kita, ne?"
That is most likely to mean "You came at a good time, didn't you?"
not "You came to a good place, didn't you?"
although in fact it can mean either.
Remember than in Japanese, context is king.
If you have any questions or comments, please put them in the Comments below and I will answer as usual.
And I'd like to thank my Gold Kokeshi patrons, who make these videos possible
and all my patrons and supporters who make all of this possible.
And I'd like to thank you for attending this lesson.
Kore kara mo yoroshiku onegai shimasu.
Class dismissed.

Konnichiwa.
Today we're going to go a little deeper into Japanese structure.
But perhaps unexpectedly, that's going to make things even simpler than we might have thought they were.
And it's going to make it much easier to look at a page of Japanese and, even when it looks very complicated,
have a much clearer idea of what the elements are and how they're likely to fit together.
You may have noticed that I map sentences very often using trains,
and you may have noticed also that we have a relatively small number of carriage types.
We have the three engines: the verb engine, the adjective engine, and the noun-plus-copula engine.
And we have the various cars, all of which represent nouns with their various attached logical particles,
which tell us what the nouns are doing in the sentence.
Now, this relatively small number of cars actually boils down to only three types of word.
We have the i-engine, which is adjectives, we have the u-engine, which is verbs, and everything else is a noun.
We have the noun-plus-copula engine and we have the various noun carriages with their different particles.
And we may notice that I haven't introduced an adverb car, and that's because most adverbs
-- not all but most -- are in fact variants on an adjective or variants on a noun.
There are a few genuine other kinds of word, but most of what you see in Japanese is going to boil down
to one of these three, despite what the dictionaries will sometimes tell you.
And if it's not a verb or an adjective, then it's likely to be a noun.
What the dictionaries call na-adjectives are nouns, what they call no-adjectives are nouns,
what they call suru verbs are nouns.
And most of the things that they put into other categories -- not all but most -- turn out to be nouns.
Japanese is a very noun-centric language.
We could be tempted to attribute this fact to the fact that there are a lot of foreign
words in Japanese and all of them are nouns.
A great part of the Japanese vocabulary comes from Chinese.
There are also words from English and German and other languages, but they pale into insignificance
compared to the older Chinese vocabulary in Japanese, which is similar to the large amount
of the English vocabulary which is Latin, either directly from Latin or indirectly via French.
The difference is that, as I've said, in Japanese everything that comes from any language other
than native Japanese comes in as a noun.
And I said that we might be tempted to attribute to that the noun-centric nature of Japanese,
but in fact, I would say it's the other way around.
It's because Japanese is so fundamentally noun-centric that it seems natural to import
anything into the language as a noun.
Once it comes in as a noun, if we want to use it in the manner of a verb or in the manner
of an adjective, there are ways of doing this.
And we're somewhat familiar with those ways, aren't we?
When a noun comes in from Chinese, if we want to use it as a verb,
we turn it into what the dictionaries call a "suru verb".
And in this one case I have no quarrel with the dictionaries.
"Suru verb" is a real thing, but this is an exception because in nearly all other cases
where a noun comes in, it stays a noun even when it's used for a different purpose.
So, let's start by looking at suru verbs.
They're very simple.
If we take the word "benkyou" from Chinese, which comes in as the noun meaning "the act of studying",
we can say "benkyou-wo suru", which means to "do the act of studying", but
we can also glue the words directly together and say "benkyou suru", which means "study".
We have, in effect, by welding "suru" onto the noun turned the combination into a true verb.
So, in this particular case, we can say that a noun came in from Chinese and really became
naturalized as a suru verb.
However, if we want to use a noun as an adjective, let's say the noun "kirei",
which means "prettiness" or "cleanness", it never stops being a noun.
The dictionaries and textbooks tell us about "na-adjectives", but the word is really nonsense.
There is no such thing as a na-adjective.
There is an adjectival noun which continues to act in almost every respect like any other noun.
The only difference between an adjectival noun and any other noun is that we can use "na" with it.
And "na", as we know, is simply the connective form of "da".
So, we can say "onnanoko-wa kirei da" -- "the child is pretty" --
or we can say "kirei-na onnanoko", which means "pretty child".
"Kirei da" means "is pretty" and "kirei-na" also means "is pretty",
so we're saying "child is pretty" or "is-pretty child".
"Na" and "da" are the same copula.
Now, the reason these are called adjectival nouns is that we can't do this exact thing with other nouns.
But we can do something very close, and we'll come to that very shortly.
But I'll just note before passing on that we can say that there are essentially
two types of adjectival noun, and that is, the ones like "kirei", which really are not used as ordinary nouns
at all; they're almost entirely dedicated to being adjectival: we don't talk about a person's "kirei".
And then there are the ones which continue to work as independent nouns, like "genki".
So we can say "kodomo-ga genki da" -- "the child is lively";
we can say "genki-na kodomo" -- "lively child".
But we can also say things like "genki-wo dashite", which loosely translated means "cheer up",
but literally translated means "get out your genki".
"Genki" is a thing here: it's marked by the wo-particle, and you can't put a logical particle
onto anything but a noun.
So, "genki", even though it's primarily adjectival and is classed as an adjectival noun,
works as both an adjectival and a noun.
Now, if a noun is not classed as an adjectival noun we can still use it adjectivally.
So, the word "mahou", which means "magic", can be used as a noun just as it can in English.
We can talk about magic as a thing.
But we can also say "mahou-no boushi" -- "magic hat".
It's not an adjectival noun, but as you see, we can achieve pretty much the same effect
just by using "no" instead of "na".
There are also some words that can be either no- or na-adjectivals.
A good example of this is "fushigi", which means a "mystery" or a "wonder".
It tends to get used very often as an adjective as in "fushigi-na yashiki" -- "mysterious mansion" --
but it's also used quite often as a noun.
We can talk about the school "nana fushigi" -- which means literally the ''seven wonders''
or "seven mysteries" of the school, and what it usually refers to is in fact ghost stories connected to the school,
such as "Toire-no Hanako-san", who you may have heard of -- the girl who haunts the lavatory.
Now, "fushigi", if we're using it adjectivally, it can be what the dictionaries call either
a "na-adjective" or a "no-adjective", that is to say,
we can use either "na" or "no" when we're using it adjectivally.
Is there a difference betwen the two?
I would say yes, there is a subtle difference.
"Alice in Wonderland" in Japanese is called "Fushigi-no kuni-no Arisu".
Now, it could have been called "Fushigi-na kuni-no Arisu", but I think "Fushigi-no kuni-no Arisu"
is a much more appropriate title and a much better translation of the original title, "Alice in Wonderland".
"Fushigi-na kuni-no Arisu" would mean "Alice of the mysterious country", to say literally
"Alice of the mysterious-is country".
"Fushigi-no kuni-no Arisu" implies more "Alice of the country of wonders".
We're leaving "fushigi" more as a noun in itself and attributing it to the country.
It's a subtle difference, but it's one that's worth bearing in mind,
especially where there is a choice between the two.
But the most important thing to bear in mind is that whether a noun is an adjectival noun
or an ordinary noun being used as an adjective with "no", it's always going to function as a noun.
Now, the dictionaries also like to mix things up by telling us that there are other kinds of adjective too;
they're less common, but there are "naru-adjectives" and "taru-adjectives",
and what on earth do these mean and what's the story about them?
Well, the truth is that they again are simply nouns.
So, if we take a book that my little sister likes... it's called "Arisu to Pengin: karei-naru tantei",
which means "Alice and Penguin: The Magnificent Detectives".
Actually, "karei" is an adjectival noun, so we can use it with "na", but in this case
the author has chosen to use "naru" instead.
What does "naru" mean here?
Is it the "naru" that means "become"? No, it isn't.
It's a contraction of "no aru".
And as I have explained in another video, "no" can be used in place of "ga" in adjectival phrases.
And I've explained why that is in the other video.
So "karei-naru tantei" means "kirei-no aru tantei" which means "kirei-ga aru tantei"
which means "detectives possessing 'karei'".
What is "karei"? Well, it's "splendor" or "magnificence".
The author actually supplies an English translation, although the book is entirely in Japanese,
of the title: "Alice and Penguin: The Excellent Detectives".
But I would say this is not a very good translation into English.
"Karei" means something more than "excellent", but even more than that,
the choice of "naru" rather than "na" -- what does that mean?
Does that have an implication, like the one in "Fushigi-no Kuni-no Arisu"?
I would say it could have done, in the past, up to a certain point, but with a modern text,
making the choice to use "naru" has a different meaning.
It's being chosen because it sounds a bit more old-fashioned, a bit more literary,
a bit more somehow portentous.
Therefore, in English I would choose the rather overblown term "magnificent",
because "karei" is in fact quite an overblown word to use in the first place
and choosing to use "naru" with it blows it up even further.
"Taru", which is also sometimes used, is a contraction of "to aru", so that "aru" is
actually being attributed to the thing being described rather than to the thing that's describing it.
It's saying that the thing being described exists in the way implied by the noun that
it's using as a descriptor.
In practice, the difference isn't huge, but it's worth bearing that in mind just to see
what the subtler implications might be.
But the point here is that we're playing with a very small number of elements.
We have verbs and we have adjectives and most of what is not one of those is simply going to be a noun.
Even if it works as an adverb, it's going to be fundamentally either a noun or an adjective.
And an important thing to bear in mind, because every word that's imported from Chinese is a noun,
if we see a word that is made up of kanji without any okurigana, without any attached hiragana,
we know that that word is almost certain to be a noun.
So, understanding the noun-centric structure of Japanese makes it easier for us to see
what's going on when we look at a page of Japanese.
One thing that can be confusing, however, is the fact that we will sometimes see groups of kanji
sitting together with no kana in between them.
What's going on on these occasions?
We know that free-standing kanji are going to be nouns,
so when we see a lot of them together, what's happening?
Well, what's happening is that one noun is modifying another.
We've seen the ways in which nouns modify each other with "na" or "no" or even "naru" or "taru",
but they can also modify each other with nothing, and we're already familiar with
that where two words glue together to make another word, such as "nihongo".
"Nihon" is "Japan", "go" is "language", and if you put the two together you have "nihongo" -- "Japanese language".
Now, we see that in many, many cases, some of which we've already covered.
And this works exactly the same way as in English.
For example, in English we have words like "bookshelf" and "seaweed".
In Japanese we can do exactly the same thing.
So we have "hondana" -- "hon" is "book", "dana" is "shelf": "hondana" is "bookshelf".
"Kaisou" -- "kai" is the on-reading of "umi", "sea"; "sou" is the on-reading of "kusa", "grass",
and together they make "kaisou" -- "seaweed", because "grass" can mean any kind of plant-life,
which is why we have Grass Pokemon.
And this also happens in the case of combinations that don't exist in English, such as "yubiwa".
"Yubi" is "finger", "wa" is a "ring", so "yubiwa" is a finger ring.
However, we can see larger combinations too, for things that would be phrases rather than words
in English. And again this is done in exactly the same way as it happens in English,
so it should really be no cause for alarm.
For example, we have "daigaku kyouiku" -- "daigaku" means "university";
"kyouiku" means "education" or "training".
So "daigaku kyouiku" is "university education".
And, as you see, again it works exactly the same way as in English.
We don't need, in English, to say "education at a university" every time; we can say "university education".
And in Japanese we can say "daigaku kyouiku", and we don't need any "na" or "no" or anything else to join them.
They create a commonly used phrase on their own.
We can't do this every time. It's like adjectival nouns.
There are certain expressions where this is known and accepted
and certain kinds of construction where this is frequently done.
Now, we may see longer blocks of kanji which can look very daunting until you understand
what they are, how they work and what they're likely to be.
It's often done in the case of institutions and things like that.
For example, "Nihongo nouryoku shiken". Now, that looks quite a daunting block of kanji perhaps,
when you're not familiar with the idea.
But what this actually is is the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, which you've probably
heard of and of which I'm not a great advocate.
And we can see that exactly the same thing is happening in Japanese as in the English equivalent:
"Nihongo" -- "Japanese language"; "nouryoku" -- "proficiency" or "ability"; "shiken" -- "examination".
And exactly as in English we can use one noun to modify another noun
and then the two of them together to modify the third noun -- and so on.
So, "nihon" modifies "go" (what kind of a language? Japanese language).
"Nihongo" modifies "nouryoku" (what kind of proficiency? Japanese language proficiency).
And then all of it modifies "shiken" (what kind of exam? A Japanese language proficiency exam).
So even when you see kanji piled up in this way, there's no need to panic.
Just take a breath and see what it's all made up of.
If you have any questions or comments, please put them in the Comments below and I will answer as usual.
I'd like to thank my Gold Kokeshi patrons, who make these videos possible,
and all my patrons and supporters on Patreon and everywhere.
And I'd like to thank you for attending this lesson.
Kore kara mo yoroshiku onegai shimasu.
Class dismissed.

Konnichiwa.
Today we're going to talk about something that puzzles many learners of Japanese, especially
once they've learned a little Japanese and they start reading Japanese or listening to anime etc.
And this is the fact that Japanese people often make what appear to be negative statements
when they may mean in fact a positive statement.
For example, someone may say "Sakura janai", which would appear to mean "That isn't Sakura."
But its actual meaning is "That is Sakura, isn't it?" or even simply "That is Sakura".
Now, how does this work, how do we recognize it, and how do we understand it?
For a start, "janai" is the contraction of "de-wa nai" which, of course, is the negative of the copula,
as we learned right back in our lesson on Japanese negatives.
So, "A,B da" or "A,B desu" means "A is B".
"A,B de-wa nai (or de-wa arimasen)" means "A is not B".
So there is no question here that we are in fact hearing what is, grammatically, a negative statement.
So how do we interpret this?
Well, to begin with, let's remind ourselves of the fact that negative questions are used
in most languages, including English, to elicit a positive response.
So if we say "It's a nice day, isn't it?" we mean that it is a nice day and we expect our hearer to agree.
If we say "Are you Sakura?" this is a neutral question.
We're not suggesting that we either think it is or it isn't.
We're simply asking the question.
But if we say "Aren't you Sakura?" then we are in fact indicating that we think you are Sakura.
And a negative question asking for a positive response like "It's a nice day, isn't it?"
is common certainly to all the languages I know.
In French we have "n'est-ce pas", in German we have "nicht wahr", and of course in Japanese
we have "ne", which is originally a negative question.
So if we say "Sakura janai desu ka?" we're saying exactly the same thing as in English
"Isn't that Sakura?" meaning we think it is.
The first problem that arises here is that, while we say in formal speech "Sakura janai desu ka"
because in formal speech the "ka" acts as a verbal question mark, turning any statement
into a question, we don't usually use "ka" as a question-making sentence-ender
in ordinary, non-formal Japanese.
So what would be "Sakura janai desu ka" in formal Japanese becomes "Sakura janai" in regular Japanese.
"Sakura janai" has fundamentally three potential meanings.
We can say "Sakura janai" -- that means "That isn't Sakura".
We can say "Sakura janai" and that means "That's Sakura, isn't it?"
But we can also say, perhaps meeting Sakura after quite a long time, "Sakura janai",
and that certainly doesn't mean it isn't Sakura and it's not a question either.
We've actually recognized her and what we're saying is something that could perhaps
best be rendered into English as "If it isn't Sakura!" meaning it is Sakura.
Now there's nothing particularly mystical and Japanese about this.
We do the same sort of thing in English.
For example, if we said "She came on Saturday", that's simply conveying a piece of information.
If we say "She came on Saturday?" we're asking whether she came on Saturday or not.
And if we say "She came on Saturday?!" we've just received the information that
she came on Saturday and we are expressing surprise about it.
We know how to interpret this in English and it's easy to learn how to interpret "janai"
in Japanese once we understand the range of meaning it possesses.
"Janai" gets used with other meanings too.
Particularly, it gets used as a negative question tag-ending very much like "ne".
For example, we might say "atsui janai" which means pretty much the same thing as "atsui ne".
It's something like a tag-question, expecting our listener to agree with us.
And we can note here that there's no ambiguity at all in this, because "atsui janai" is not the negative of "atsui" --
that's "atsukunai".
And it can also be put after verbs.
For example, "mou itta janai", which means "I already said that, didn't I?"
We should also note that "janai" is often reduced to just "jan" in very colloquial speech,
and it's often used in that way when it's affirming something or asking for confirmation.
Now, it's clear that these expressions are very colloquial and in fact so colloquial
that when we use them with a verb or an adjective they're not in fact grammatical.
And the reason for this, as I've already alluded to, is that, for example,
"atsui janai" is not the negative of "atsui" because that's "atsukunai".
Why can't we use "janai" with verbs or adjectives?
Well, that's because, as we learned right back in the first lesson,
"janai" is in fact "de-wa nai", which is the negative of the copula.
So if we say "kore-wa pen da" we're saying "This is a pen"; if we say "kore-wa pen de-wa nai",
we're saying "This is not a pen", and you can't properly use "de-wa nai" with anything but two nouns.
I don't actually think that these colloquial statements are fundamentally ungrammatical.
It's just that being colloquial may leave a few steps out of the process.
There are in fact much more formal ways of using "de-wa nai" as a positive statement,
but these of course tidy up the grammar.
So, for example, if we say "sono riron-ga machigatte iru no de-wa nai deshou ka",
we're saying "Might that theory not be in error?"
And we see we have essentially the same construction that we've been dealing with before:
"sono riron-ga machigatte iru.. de-wa nai", but that "no" turns it into a grammatical statement.
Why?
Because "sono riron-ga machigatte iru" means literally "that theory exists in a state of mistaking".
That's a verbal clause complete in itself.
However, when we add "no", that "no", as we've seen in other lessons, plays the role
of a pronoun like "thing" or "one" which is being modified by "machigatte iru".
So now we have "that theory exists in a state of error one".
So we have two nouns and we now need the copula to join them together.
So "sono riron-ga machigatte iru no de-wa nai" means "that theory existing-in-error-one is not".
The "deshou ka" doesn't add anything grammatically to the statement.
As we know, adjectives like "nai" stand on their own.
They don't require a "da", even though they get a "desu" as a mere decoration, a non-grammatical
decoration, in formal speech, so what "deshou ka" is doing here is it's simply a flag put at
the end of the complete grammatical statement: "sono riron-ga machigatte iru no de-wa nai".
"Deshou ka" turns it explicitly into a question and into a suggestion rather than a statement.
So we're saying "Might that theory not be a mistaken one"?
Now, this can mean what it seems to say.
It can mean that we're in some doubt and we're actually asking whether that might not be the case.
But a lot of the time this is used not just as an assertion but as a quite strong assertion.
We might use this to sum up our argument when we have definitively disproved the theory in question.
An American writer or speaker might sum up such an argument with "It is now clear
to anyone with an intelligence greater than that of a Roomba that this theory holds about as much water
as a topless thimble in the Sahara Desert."
However, that kind of definite assertion in Japanese is not considered either polite or very persuasive.
It sounds as if you're trying to make up for a weak argument by a strong assertion.
So the equivalent Japanese speaker may sum up the same completely persuasive argument
with "desu kara sono riron-wa machigatte iru no de-wa nai deshou ka".
And that means exactly the same thing, allowing for cultural differences.
If you have any questions or comments, please put them in the Comments below and I will answer as usual.
I'd like to thank my Gold Kokeshi patrons, my producer angels, who make these videos possible,
and all my patrons and supporters on Patreon and everywhere.
And I'd like to thank you for attending this lesson.
Kore kara mo yoroshiku onegai shimasu.
Class dismissed.

Konnichiwa.
Today we're going to talk about questions that aren't questions.
They come up all the time in Japanese, so it's important to understand what they are
and how they work.
So, what we're going to talk about is the particle -ka.
Now, we probably know the particle -ka as a kind of verbal question mark
that goes at the end of desu/masu sentences to turn them into questions.
However, we don't use -ka, as we explained last week,
at the end of sentences to mark them as questions in regular, non-formal Japanese.
Why not?
Because putting -ka at the end of a non-formal sentence sounds kind of blunt and rough.
It's not ungrammatical, and it's sometimes used by male speakers who want to sound blunt or rough.
But generally speaking, we don't use it.
We indicate questions by intonation in regular speech.
But we do use the -ka marker all the time, just not at the end of sentences.
What do we use it for?
Well, we use it to mark questions, but not quite what we normally think of when we say "question".
So let's start right off with an example.
Suppose we say, "Sakura-ga kuru-ka wakaranai."
What we're saying is "I don't know if Sakura will come."
And what's literally happening here is that we're turning the logical sentence, the proposition,
"Sakura-ga kuru", which means "Sakura will come", into a question, and then we're saying "wakaranai."
So we're essentially saying "Sakura come (question), not clear / The question of whether Sakura
will come is not clear to me."
In English, "I don't know if Sakura's coming."
Now, we can use this as part of an actual question.
We might say "Sakura-ga kuru-ka shitte imasu-ka."
Now, if we ask that in desu/masu form, as I just did, we use a second -ka at the end
to mark the actual question.
So we're saying "The question of whether Sakura will come, do you know?"
And we should notice here that what's happening is, first of all, the -ka is turning the proposition,
the question, into something noun-like which we can then use as the basis of a new sentence.
So that's the first thing we need to notice, and the second thing we need to notice is
that -ka displaces logical particles most of the time.
So, normally when we say "wakaranai", we say "(nani-nani)-ga wakaranai";
if we say "shitteru", we say "(nani-nani)-wo shitteru"; but in this case
the -ka particle displaces the normal logical particle.
So we say "Sakura-ga kuru-ka wakaranai" not "Sakura-ga kuru-ka-ga wakaranai."
So "Sakura-ga kuru-ka" is a noun-like entity which, because it ends in -ka, doesn't need
to take the usual logical particle.
Now, it also gets used in the common expression "ka dou ka".
And although we can learn this as a glued-together expression meaning "whether or not",
so "Sakura-ga kuru-ka dou-ka wakaranai" means "I don't know whether Sakura's coming or not,"
(in English that's how we'd say it, as opposed to "Sakura-ga kuru-ka wakaranai" --
in English we'd say "I don't know if Sakura's coming"; "Sakura-ga kuru-ka dou-ka wakaranai" --
we'd say in English "I don't know whether Sakura's coming or not.")
what we're literally saying here is "Sakura coming (question) how (question) wakaranai."
So what we're saying is something like "I don't know if Sakura's coming or how it will be."
And from this we can see how we get the use of -ka to mean "or" between nouns.
So we can say "ocha-ka koohii dochira-ga ii?"
-- "Tea or coffee, which would you like?"
Now, how is this working?
Well, essentially this is an abbreviation of "ocha-ka koohii-ka dochira-ga ii?"
So, we're putting two propositions side by side, "whether coffee or whether tea," and
then asking "dochira-ga ii?"
And once again although this seems like a different use, -ka is doing the same thing
-- it's bundling something up as a proposition.
But remember than when we use "or" in English it's always got to be a question.
It's never a certainty.
If we say "A or B" we're saying it might be A and it might be B.
If we say "A and B", we know what we're talking about.
We know that both A and B exist or do whatever it is that we're saying.
But if we say "A or B", we don't know whether it's A or whether it's B.
We know it's one of them.
So, again this -ka, this questioning-whether particle, is continuing to use that function
of marking a possibility, a question, something that might happen or might not happen,
might be there or might not be there.
Now, we see this at work, for example, in "kamoshirenai".
Now, this is taught as if it were a word or expression that means "maybe".
And it is, but teaching it as a lump like that, as I've explained in another video, is misleading.
The point of that misleadingness that I would like to talk about here is that
it confuses us about what that -ka is actually doing.
That -ka is attached to the proposition that we are talking about.
So, if we say "Sakura-ga kuru-ka-mo-shire-nai" -- "Perhaps Sakura will come" --
what we're saying is "Sakura-ga kuru-ka", that's the question or proposition
that we're talking about, and then "-mo-shire-nai."
The -mo is giving us the meaning of "even" or "as much as", as I've explained that it very often does,
and "shire-nai" is "shiru" -- "know" / "shireru"-- "ability to know or be known"
and the helper adjective "-nai".
So the whole thing actually means "Sakura-ga kuru-ka" -- "the question of whether Sakura comes" --
"mo-shire-nai" -- "I can't go so far as to know / Maybe Sakura will come, maybe she won't."
Similarly with "ka-na", which is sometimes presented as a particle meaning "I wonder",
you see how this actually works.
"Ka" is taking the proposition, so if we say "Sakura-ga kuru-ka-na", we're saying
"Sakura-ga kuru-ka" -- "the question of whether Sakura will come" -- "na".
Now, "na", as we've discussed in another video, is a marker that indicates addressing something to yourself.
So, you're saying "Will Sakura come?" addressing that to yourself.
The way we would say that in English is "I wonder if Sakura will come / I am pondering
the question of whether Sakura will come."
And while it's all right to learn things like "ka-na" and "ka-mo-shire-nai" as if they were
what the textbooks say they are, lumps of grammar that you just have to memorize,
it helps not only with those but with structure as a whole to understand what they're really doing.
They're bundling something into a question, so a proposition becomes a question which
is a noun-like entity which we can then add something like "do you know / I don't know /
I can't be sure" or "I wonder (I'm addressing this question to myself)."
Now, from this proposition-making quality and questioning quality of -ka, we get expressions
such as one which we discussed in a previous video, "marude yuurei-wo mita-ka-no you na kao."
Now, that means "a face as if one had seen a ghost."
So what's the -ka doing here?
It's doing the same thing as before.
It's marking "yuurei-wo mita" as a question, a proposition, a thing that's not certain,
in fact in this particular case, a thing that hasn't happened: we're not saying that
the person HAS seen a ghost, we're only saying that she had a face AS IF she had seen a ghost.
So we're marking the proposition that she'd seen a ghost as a question and then continuing
to comment on it, and in this case we actually are attaching a logical particle,
the logical particle -no, to the ka-marked noun-like entity that we have made of the proposition that
she is seeing a ghost.
So with a no-particle, unlike the ga- and wo-particle, we can attach this to a ka-marked entity.
Now, there is another use of -ka, which is a little different but still closely related
to its question-making quality.
And that is in certain expressions where it negativizes what we're talking about.
An example of this that you've probably come across
if you've been watching anime or reading manga is "mon-ka".
And that's short for "mono-ka", and it can be used in more formal speech,
in which case we say "mono desu-ka".
So, if I were to say "sochira-he iku mono desu-ka," I'm saying "I won't go there / I'm not going there."
If I say "Sakura-ga kuru mono desu-ka," I'm saying "Sakura is not coming / She won't come /
There's no likelihood of her coming."
What does "mono desu-ka" mean?
It means literally "Is that a thing?"
So, it's a question, but it's the kind of negativizing question that we also get in English
when we say things like "Do you think I'm going to do that?" or "Would I do that?" or "How likely is that?"
In all those cases, by turning something into a question we're denying its likelihood.
Now, when we say "mono-ka" it's the same thing, and it often gets reduced right down to "mon-ka".
So someone might say "Sore-wo taberu mon-ka" -- "I'm not eating that."
And you notice here that we are in fact using the -ka marker after a regular non-formal sentence,
and that's because "mon-ka" or "mono-ka" is in fact rather a rough way of talking.
You're denying something very forcefully and often in opposition to somebody.
Another place where we often see -ka as a negativizing question marker is in "dokoro-ka".
Now, "dokoro" is a form of "tokoro", which we talked about in a recent lesson, didn't we?
"Tokoro" can mean not just "place" in the literal sense, but a time or a circumstance or condition.
When it's said as "dokoro" it's usually negative, so when we say "dokoro-ka", we're negativizing
what came before it and usually putting an even stronger negative after it.
So if we say, for example, "kanji-ga yomeru dokoro-ka hiragana-mo yomenai" --
"Not only can't I read kanji, I can't even read hiragana."
What's "dokoro-ka" doing here?
Well, of course it's negativizing, just as we've already seen that it can, but it's also
using the concept of place / "tokoro", that's to say, conceptual space rather than literal place.
We're saying "Not only can't I go as far as reading kanji, I can't even get to the point of reading hiragana."
That's the metaphor that's being used here: not only has the situation not reached this far place,
it hasn't even reached a nearer place than that.
So we see that while -ka has a variety of meanings, all of them are closely connected
to its ability to make a question and turn the question into a proposition,
but never a proposition that exists in actuality, always a hypothetical condition.
If you have any questions or comments, please put them in the Comments below and I will answer as usual.
I'd like to thank my Gold Kokeshi patrons, my producer angels, who make these videos possible,
and there's also a list of my Red Kokeshi, my assistant producer angels, in the information section below.
And I'd like to thank all my patrons and supporters on Patreon and everywhere.
And I'd like to thank you for attending this lesson.
Kore kara mo yoroshiku onegai shimasu.
Class dismissed.