(Please read) Unlocking Japanese, may have discovered something

Japanese
#61

That is true, heisig did have that intention. But he also tried to point out the inherent meaning within radicals and how to use them to guess the meanings of new kanji. Even radicals that aren’t radicals. For example 漫 the right half of this kanji is not a radical, but heisig teaches it as a ‘heisig radical’, something that can be used to create mnemonics.

However, it should be taught as a radical, because as far as Japanese is concerned, it IS a radical, and it carries a very strong meaning. It means ‘to be billowing/fluid’
漫 - move with billowing form (cartoon, unrestrained)
蔓 - plant with billowing form (a vine)
慢 - mind with billowing form (laziness- the emphasis here is on the inability to focus/still your mind)
鏝 - metal with billowing form (soldering iron)
幔 - fabric with billowing form (curtain)
鰻 - fish with billowing form (eel)

This is just one example. But my point is that there is no point making stories, when understanding the true meaning of Japanese (as its own language, not just as an appendage of Chinese) makes learning kanji so much easier.

As for stretching the theory, this was a long time ago when I understood a lot less about Japanese. I still actually fully believe in this, I just wasn’t able to explain it well at that time because it was still new for me and I hadn’t fully come to any conclusion about my own ideas. To be honest I need to make a video with graphics, because it is hard to explain with words, but simple as heck once you see it.

As for this it is a simple omission, the same as any language does in high levels.
Did you know my name is Asher? (Gramatically wrong)
Did you know that my name is Asher? (Gramatically correct but sounds a bit weird to say out loud)
English omits many words, just like Japanese. です is usually omitted because it cannot NOT be there. Everyone knows its there.

#62

Wait wait wait. That can’t be right. だ／です is the copula, similar in meaning to the word “to be” (not the same I know).

If I say 人間だ or 人間です I’m saying “am/is/are human” (だ or です being the am/is/are). だ／です is necessary in this sentence because every sentence needs a verb/verb-like word.

Is there’s already another verb, you don’t need です. In fact, it makes so sense to use it, unless I’m missing something big.

If I wanna say “I run on the weekend” I’ll just say 週末は走ります or 週末は走る. Saying "週末は走りますです (on the weekend I am run) makes no sense as there are now two verbs.

The only exception to that rule, as far as I’m aware, is using です as a formalizer after い adjectives, as there’s no other way to make them formal/polite.
For example: いい and いいです are both grammatically correct and have the same meaning, but the latter is polite and the です plays no grammatical role whatsoever, it’s only a formalizer.

Am I wrong?

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#63

You are both right and wrong here. All sentences need it, but not all sentences need to clarify it. I’ll answer this tonight properly when I am at my PC. I type like a 5yr old on my phone.

#64

Careful. Neither sentence is grammatically incorrect. (Not trying to take away from your point.)
As in the site below, sometimes “that” is optional and sometimes it’s mandatory.
www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/when-to-delete-that

#65

image
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From http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar/stateofbeing

There are even quite a few sentences on bunpro where だ is omitted :wink:

Random example of that:

image

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#66

We could say that a sentence needs a predicate (not a verb), that one way of forming a predicate is combining a noun with a form of the copula, and that there is a zero form of the copula that is not explicitly expressed in words but clearly present because the meaning of a sentence doesn’t change when a final だ is removed. Meaning the predicate is still intact…

We don’t have to analyze it that way, but we can if we want to stick to the “every sentence needs a predicate” thing with no compromises.

As far as I’m concerned I’m fine with “the copula can be dropped” though since that’s all it ends up being anyway.

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#67

While this site says that it is grammatical. It is only grammatical in the terms of speech, and if someone wanted to get nitpicky, it is actually gramatically incorrect (Despite common convention). We need to keep in mind that language evolution and language correctness are two very different things. Also spoken speech and written speech are two very different things. Unfortunately this makes learning very different languages quite challenging for most people. Omitting ‘that’ before certain verbs is gramatically incorrect, however, due to language evolution we leave it out for the same reason Japanese leaves out lots of different particles (because it’s absolutely obvious which particle should be there).

Actually, です and だ have completely different meanings from eachother. To make matters even worse, they behave quite a bit differently from ‘to be’ in English.

です Behaves the same way that the す in する, and the で particle does. That is to say that the で indicates the tool or state used to achieve something, and the す indicates the point from which something is moving or capable of moving. それは猫です (That thing over behaves the way a cat does). More literally (As a cat, that moves/is). If your reply to this is ‘This doesnt sound correct’, that doesnt actually matter. Japanese wasn’t made to comfort the mentality of English speakers. (Again this is not me trying to be rude, just a common hang up that a lot of English speakers seem to have)

As for だ, it is simply the opposite of は. は indicates the normal state of a thing when the thing is well known/ always the same way. だ indicates the state of a thing when it has just become that way or is just noticed to be that way. Actually だ is almost exactly the same as が except that it is not clarifying the fact to anybody apart from the speaker themselves. This is why using です in response to things that don’t last a long time, or are somewhat surprising sounds reallllly weird.
あれは爆発だ！ （If you stuck です at the end of this it would sound veryyyy strange to a native speaker. Like the bomb was alive in some way or was expected to continue exploding)

#68

Um… It seems you’re changing the definition of “grammatical” to make your statement true.

I agree with you that there are common ways to say things that don’t necessarily conform to rules, but there is still a set of commonly accepted standards, or “rules”, that govern what is “correct” and “incorrect”. Using the survey argument, if you ask any editor or teacher, they will generally agree on a set of rules and that spoken language is not necessarily grammatically correct. In other words, just because something is in common usage due to language evolution doesn’t make it the definition of grammatically correct.
(And, of course, these rules didn’t appear until after the printed language became more widespread.)

Examples of the difference:
“I think we’re missing someone.” — grammatically correct, common usage
“I think that we’re missing someone.” — grammatically correct, uncommon usage
“Where you at?” — grammatically incorrect, common usage

Don’t get me wrong, your experiences have given you a more intuitive understanding of Japanese, and for that I’m a bit jealous, but if you make authoritative statements (about English or Japanese), I’m asking you to be careful about the words you choose in your statements.

We are all learners on this site (at least I hope we are), and I really like the fact that this community is available to discuss language learning from the humble learner’s perspective, and to exchange ideas knowing that it’s a long way to reach native-level fluency.

#69

@Lamster @Asher

From a practical perspective, these philosophical thoughts on Japanese are less useful to a beginner learner. Learners need some rules to follow before they can compare and contrast linguistic theory. (It’s confusing to say that they “have completely different meanings”.)

I would offer the perspective that だ and です function the same, as the copula, and mainly differ by level of politeness. The reason (that I see) for why 「爆発だ！」 is casual and sounds awkward in polite form is because it’s an emotional reaction where politeness goes out the window. Talking in polite forms is for the sake of the listener, not the speaker. Notice when Japanese talk to themselves, they use casual form. The emotional outburst also doesn’t have time to go through the politeness filter. If the speaker is talking about the explosion through an official announcement to the city, using the polite form would be natural. Or if the speaker is giving a lecture on chemistry, and gives a small demonstration, then 「あれは爆発です」is also natural.

(Note, this is not contradicting what Asher said, but offering another perspective.)

#70

I think we are misunderstanding each other here. You just agreed with me

#71

There’s words that are dropped in casual conversation --> I agree.

Saying “grammatically incorrect” to mean “uncommon usage” --> I disagree.

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#72

Fair enough. On that point I will say I should choose my words more carefully :hugs:

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