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Lesson 24: Hearsay and Guesses

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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.