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Lesson 40: Three Pitfalls

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Today we're going to discuss some pitfalls in Japanese structure.

These are very small elements, single kana elements of the language, but very vital ones that can, if you don't know about them, be very confusing because one element can be easily confused with another one that looks identical.

And the textbooks, in many cases, don't tell you about this at all.

They leave you completely floundering.

The first one we're going to look at is "de".

Now, "de", as you know, is a logical particle.

It has a very clearly defined use which we introduced in Lesson 8b.

Like all logical particles, it marks a noun, and it tells us that that noun is the place where an action took place or the means by which an action was done.

However, there is another "de", which is not a particle, which is also used very frequently in Japanese, and the textbooks make no attempt to distinguish these two completely different but identical-looking elements.

The first time most of us will meet the second of these "de"s is in the use of adjectival nouns, which are very confusingly and misleadingly called "na-adjectives" by the textbooks.

So if we say "Sakura-ga kirei de yasashii", what we're saying is that Sakura is pretty and kind.

"Kirei da" is an adjectival noun.

If we want to say "The flower is pretty", we say "Hana-ga kirei da".

And if we want to say "the pretty flower", we have to put "kirei da" on the other side of the flower, so we say "kirei na hana".

And that "na", as we know, is the connective form of "da".

But if we want to say "Sakura is pretty and kind", we can't use "da" and we can't use "na", but we do have to use the copula.

What we use now is the connective form of the copula, that is to say, its te-form.

And the te-form of "da" is "de".

So if you say "Sakura is beautiful and kind", this is a true adjective, an "i-adjective", and we use the te-form to connect it: we say "Sakura-ga utsukushikute yasashii."

If it's an adjectival noun, we still have to have the copula, so we say "Sakura-ga kirei de..."

That's the te-form of the copula.

Now, I've already explained that in our lessons on adjectivals, but we also find this "de", the te-form of "da", in lots of other cases in Japanese.

So let's take a couple of cases and see if you can tell which of the two "de"s is being used.

A very common thing to say to someone when you're leaving them, perhaps for a while, is "o genki de".

Now, "genki", as you know, means "well" or "healthy" or "lively" and the "o" is just an honorific or prettifier.

What is the "de" here? Is it the logical particle or is it the te-form of the copula?

This is the te-form of the copula, not the particle.

The particle doesn't make any sense here, does it?

What's the te-form of the copula doing?

Well, we know, don't we, that the te-form is often used to make an imperative, to tell someone or ask someone to do something.

So, if we say "matte" -- "wait" -- this is kind of short for "matte kudasai" and we're asking someone to wait ("matte!" -- "Wait!").

Now, it's exactly the same with "de", which is the te-form of the copula.

So, "genki da" means "is genki", someone is genki, someone is healthy or lively.

"Genki de" is telling them to *be* genki or lively.

"O genki de" -- "be healthy / be lively / keep up the good spirits".

Right. So here's another one: "buji de yokatta" is another very common expression and it means "I'm glad that you're all right / it's good that you weren't harmed / it's good that you're safe" -- "buji de yokatta". What do we have here?

Once again, we have the te-form of the copula.

"Buji", which means literally "no incident" and therefore it means "nothing happened / nothing bad happened / you weren't harmed / you're safe."

So, "buji da" means "you're safe / you weren't harmed / nothing happened".

"Buji de" is turning that "da", that copula, into the connective form.

We use the te-form to connect things, don't we?

So, just as we might say, "osoku natte sumimasen" -- "That I came late, I'm sorry"-- we also say "buji de yokatta" -- "That you weren't hurt, that was good."

And this connective te-form is also used in longer compound sentences.

So, for example, we might say "Sakura-wa iiko de mainichi gakkou-ni iku" --

"Sakura is a good child and she goes to school every day."

We have two complete clauses and, just as with the te-form of any verb, we can use it to connect that verb-ending clause to a second clause, so we can do exactly the same thing with the copula.

So, "Sakura-ga iiko da" -- "Sakura's a good girl" -- is a complete sentence in itself.

If we want to connect it to a second clause to make it the first half of a compound sentence, we turn that "da" into its te-form, "de".

So, "Sakura is a good girl and she goes to school every day."

And as is usual with the te-form connector, it tends to imply a positive relation between the two.

It has this implication of "Because Sakura's a good girl, she goes to school every day," but it's not stating it as strongly as if we'd used "kara".

Now, another confusion, which is not kept such a deep, dark secret by the textbooks, but they don't always stress it clearly enough, and it's very important because it concerns the very center of the Japanese language, and that is the ga-particle.

The ga-particle, as we know, is the one particle that no sentence or clause in Japanese can ever be without, whether we can see it or whether we can't.

"Ga" marks the A-car of every sentence, the do-er of an A-does-B clause and the be-er of an A-is-B clause.

But there is also another "ga".

It's not easy to confuse the two, provided you're clearly aware of them.

The other "ga" is also a clause connector.

And usually it's a contrastive clause connector.

So, if we say, "omise-ni itta ga pan-ga nakatta," we're saying "I went to the shops, but there wasn't any bread."

So, this is a contrastive conjunction.

We went to the shops hoping that there would be bread, but there wasn't any.

It's not possible to confuse this with the other "ga", the "ga" that marks the subject of the sentence, the A-car, because that "ga", the particle "ga", can only ever mark a noun.

And the clause-connector "ga" can only ever mark a complete sentence.

The particle "ga" can't mark a complete sentence, because a complete sentence can't end with a noun.

It has to end with a verb, an adjective, or a copula, as we learned in our very first lesson.

So it's not possible to confuse these two so long as you're clearly aware of them.

One more thing that we should note is that "ga" doesn't have to be contrastive.

Most of the time it is, but it can be used as a regular, non-contrastive conjunction.

It's worth knowing that, because if you see it connecting two clauses and there doesn't seem to be any contrast there, you don't have to rack your brains to find the contrast -- occasionally it is used in a non-contrastive manner. And the other thing you need to know is that you will sometimes find this contrastive "ga" at the end of a sentence.

And I have talked before about sentences that end in a conjunction.

Strictly, they're not complete, because what they're doing is implying a following clause.

"Ga" at the end of a sentence is often a politeness, because "ga" is in fact more polite than "kedo" or "demo", the other ways of saying "but".

So if we said something like "koohii-ga hoshii ga" -- "coffee is want-making (to me)" and then we've added "ga".

And what that "ga" is doing is saying "but..." and it's implying a second clause but not stating it, so "koohii-ga hoshii ga" means something like "I would like coffee, but... if it's any trouble please don't try to get me any coffee" or something along those lines.

The last one we're going to consider is less common, but if you're reading any amount of Japanese you're going to come across it pretty soon, and that is "ni".

Now, we know "ni". It's again a logical particle.

It's the targeting particle, and I've done a whole video on this because it's an important and complex particle.

But there is also another "ni".

And this other "ni", which is a slightly old usage -- it comes from older Japanese -- it means the same as "to". It can be used to and-together two nouns or a list of nouns.

So in the folk tale Beauty and the Beast, when the father asks one of the less good sisters what she would like him to bring back for her, she says "kutsu ni yubiwa ni boushi".

She's saying she would like shoes and a ring and a hat.

So this "ni" can be used to and-together two things or a list of things, and it's completely different from the particle "ni".

It's a little bit literary, so you're more often going to see it in written Japanese.

But if you don't know that it's there, you can spend a long time puzzling over what "ni" means in these contexts.

It's also more commonly used in the expression "sore ni", which means "furthermore" or "in addition to that".

And, as you can see, this is made up of "sore", which means "that", plus "ni" -- not the particle "ni" but the "ni" that means "and".

So, have you seen any apparent particles or parts of Japanese that don't seem to be doing what they ought to be doing?