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Lesson 26: Similes

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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".