Spontaneous impression of a Japanese person

Japanese
#1

こんにちは!

One of the particularities of Japanese is the non-past concept, the usage of the same form both for what we call the present tense and the future tense. Another particularity is the heavy reliance on context. Taken both together, the ambiguity of the non-past concept resolves itself naturally, in most cases.

Now, what would naturally come to the mind of a Japanese person when presented with a non-past sentence without any context? For example:

  • くる
  • 家にいる
  • あの店でビールを買う
  • 東京に家族と一緒に観光する

And, associated to this, would this spontaneous understanding be different between a spoken sentence and the very same sentence read in a piece of paper?

答えてくれてありがとう!

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#2

I might be wrong, given I’m not Japanese, but to me the first and fourth examples sound like future, the second sounds present and the third sounds habitual (present).

That said, it would be interesting to hear a response from a Japanese person :blush:.

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#3

Hey, if you care you could post this question on HiNative or somewhere and share the results here. There is a high chance some native will respond and it’s pretty interesting. My impressions are the same as @Jose7822.

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#4

Hi, thank you so much for the suggestion.

I didn’t know about HiNative. I’m not registered though, I’ll consider doing so for this or else, would anyone be so kind as to do me the favour of posting my original question verbatim in HiNative!?

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#5

I’ll post it.

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#6

ポストをしてくれてありがとうございます, @Jose7822 さん!

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#7

もちろん!:blush::+1:

でも、まだ日本人からの回答を待っています。今のところ、AIの回答しかありません。

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#8

Here’s the link to the answers given by a couple of Japanese natives on HiNative:

Pretty much what was expected, except for one of them saying I was being aggressive with my question. I was like…how? :joy:.

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#9

¡Mil gracias! Thank you so much for your kindness.

Even the retort about the aggressiveness is insightful, in a way. It’s been always said that we Spanish people are too direct and even blunt. Put this together with the Japanese tendency to being indirect and there you have it: el hambre y las ganas de comer. :sweat_smile:

In summary, the context is everything, although the default case might be the present tense as per Antarcticbear second reply.

I like particularly 一郎さん’s answer, with which I fully agree: “I think it would be better to understand a foreign language as it is, not to force it to apply to the grammar of our own mother language”. This is the aim of the Bunpro team and they are making a huge effort to make it happen.

一郎さん also sounds a bit annoyed, BTW. 私の疑問は愚問でしたかな…

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#10

Naw, that guy is just too sensitive (or perhaps my question was misinterpreted due to the language barrier). The rest were chill about it though.

But yours wasn’t a foolish question. It’s good to pear into the mind of Japanese people in order to better understand the language from their perspective. Good question!

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#11

I know this is about a native’s interpretation, but for me I assume all to be “future” except for 家にいる which is present. I would only assume the others were present if you had some kind of time word signifying that it’s happening now, for example 今東京に家族と一緒に観光する

edit: also, wouldn’t the last sentence be 東京で観光する, に seems wrong to me

edit 2: after doing some searching, I didn’t see any で either, but mostly all の or を, like 東京を観光する or 東京の観光をする

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#12

I’d agree with HiNative guys: this question doesn’t have much sense to me.
It’s like: “I read a book”, what is this tense you guys think, is it simple present or simple past?

#13

Past tense because nobody would use a sentence like that in the present tense. They would say “I am reading a book” or “I read books”. “I read book” in the present tense sounds like a caveman / Tarzan.

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#14

@Slysoft Thank you for your answer and for the edit, I guess に wouldn’t work here., should have been を.

Thank you once more. As you rightly point out, the question mightn’t make much sense but just the act of asking it triggers an answer that unveils a bit of the underlying mind of the person answering it, thus serving its purpouse. It would be a kind of linguistic psychoanalysis. :yum:

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#15

This sounds weird to me because you don’t habitually visit Tokyo with your family now. Had you made it “Every Year” (Or every month, etc), then it would make sense for it to be present, since that’s a habit. Like this:

毎年東京を家族と一緒に観光する。

At least to me it sounds off otherwise, and would be better if you had the ている form if you want to use 今 :

今東京を家族と一緒に観光しています。

Again, I could be wrong, so take my objection with a grain of salt. I’m just going by what sounds natural to me (given my limited experience with the language).

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#16

Since we’re all language pedants here (:sweat_smile:) I’ll just mention that the correct word in this case would be ‘to peer’, which means something like ‘to see into (e.g. a room) or at a distance (e.g. on the horizon)’, and is possibly related to the word ‘to peek’.

The word spelled as ‘pear’ is always a noun, as far as I can think of – being the slightly oblong fruit that grows on trees, similarly to apples – and is pronounced the same as the words ‘pair’ and ‘pare’ (and so rhymes with the similarly-spelled animal called ‘a bear’).

‘A pair’ is the same as ‘a couple of things; i.e. two objects considered together’. And ‘to pare’ is ‘to cut away at’ especially in the sense of removing parts from a thing which are unwanted, e.g. to use a knife to cut and peel off the skin from a fruit.

Also, the noun ‘a peer’ (distinct from ‘to peer’) means ‘someone of a similar status’, such as a classmate in school.

Meanwhile, the homophone ‘a pier’ is a long dock or boardwalk, typically extending from land out over a body of water. You might go fishing on a pier, or someone might passive-aggressively tell you to, “Go take a long walk off of a short pier!”

So, for example:

[P.S.: Good question and follow-up discussion, BTW!]

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#17

One of the particularities of English is the lack of T/V distinction, the usage of the same pronouns and conjugations for both polite and familiar settings. The level of politeness is usually carried through context or other non-grammatical markers. Taken both together, the ambiguity of politeness levels resolves itself naturally, in most cases.

Now, what would naturally come to the mind of a native English speaker when presented with a neutral sentence without any context? For example:

  • Do you want some bread?

  • I sent you an email with all the details.

  • I saw you yesterday at the mall.

  • Your daughter is so nice!

And, associated to this, would this spontaneous understanding be different between a spoken sentence and the very same sentence read in a piece of paper?

[I hope that you see my point, if a language lacks a feature it doesn’t necessarily mean that the native speakers feel obliged to “fill the blanks” in order to understand a sentence. We feel like we need a sentence like “家にいる” to either be present or future, and not both at the same time, because that’s how we think in our native languages, but I’m sure that for a Japanese speaker there’s no such friction. It’s just a non-past, out of context sentence and that’s it.]

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#18

Wow! All of that just from a typo :joy:.

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#19

Hello! I was curious about this too!! So I asked my Japanese partner about it. So this is his personal opinion.

来る
あの店にビールを買う
appear to be future tense to him.

家にいる
appears to be present tense.

He said the sightseeing could go either way so he wouldn’t be able to make a judgement about it.

also to note, maybe? he put a かな、 after he said all of it, but he’s a very direct Japanese person so the most vague he goes is putting a かな after most sentences.

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#20

答えを教えてくれてありがとう!

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