Back • Return Home

← Previous • Next →

Lesson 85: まい

[Video Link]

Today we're going to talk about an unusual but not uncommon element of Japanese that you'll certainly come across in your immersion.

It can be confusing because nobody really explains exactly what it is and what it does -- and of course they certainly don't explain why.

A number of people have asked me about this recently including my Red Kokeshi patron Bob Nagler, who says, "Have you ever done a video of verb plus 'mai'? I've not found a very useful explanation anywhere, only lists with examples and translation which give somewhat of an idea."

Well yes, that is pretty much the state of play. So let's do the video now.

"Mai" is a negative helper like "zu" and "nu", which I did a video on quite recently.

And like them it's something of a fossil, one of those elements that's not quite at home in modern Japanese.

But it's used quite a lot, so we need to understand it.

The first unusual thing about it is that unlike most helpers, it doesn't attach to one of the verb stems.

It gets stuck straight onto the end of the verb in most cases.

So if we want to put it onto "iku" we just say "ikumai".

This is always the case with godan verbs because there's no other way of attaching "mai".

With ichidan verbs we can attach it to the universal ichidan stem (as you know, with ichidan verbs we always, whatever we're doing with them, we always just take off the -ru and put on whatever we want to put on).

So, for example, "miru" can become "mimai", but just as often it's "mirumai".

With the two irregulars, "kuru" and "suru", they can be "kurumai" and "surumai", but they can also be "komai" and "shimai".

Now, strictly speaking, certainly in the past, using ichidan verbs in their entirety with "mai" on the end was probably ungrammatical, but now it's so widely done that it's generally accepted.

You'll see it everywhere on the television news or anywhere.

So what is this "mai"?

Well, it's really a sort of sister to the helper adjective "nai", which is the negativizing adjective.

What's the difference between "mai" and "nai" apart from the way it attaches?

Well, what "mai" actually is is the volitional form.

Now, adjectives don't usually have volitional forms, but in this case we do, and it has certain uses.

Like "nai", "mai" is an adjective, but unlike "nai" and just about every other adjective, it doesn't morph in any way.

You don't say "makute" or "makatta".

You only ever use it in its simple, unchanged form, "mai", so it is, in a way, a static element in Japanese, not an active element.

And this actually is quite natural, because it's the same with the positive volitional, isn't it?

We have te-forms and past forms of helpers like the receptive and the causative and, of course, "nai" itself, but we don't have past and te-forms, etc., of the volitional.

"Tabeyou": you don't put that into the past, it doesn't have a te-form, because that doesn't really make any sense with a volitional.

So what does a negative volitional actually do? It doesn't do all the things that a positive volitional does.

You can't use it as a call to action: "Ikimashou" (let's go).

You can't say "ikumai" (let's not go) -- it doesn't mean that.

You can't use it for, as I've shown in another video, forming a construction that means "try to do something".

So you can't use "mai" in let's-try-not-to-do-type constructions.

Its uses are pretty limited; it has a couple of direct uses and then a couple of other uses which are really quite useful.

So, let's look at them.

Its most usual use by a long way is saying that something is unlikely.

It's a volitional negative, so just in the same way that we can voice conjectures or assessments -- and this is very often used with the verb "aru", so we say "arumai".

"Sonna koto-wa arumai" (that's just not likely / I don't think such a thing is probable at all).

But it works just the same with any other verb.

"Kono furi dewa kare-wa komai" (in this downpour, I doubt if he'll come).

And this is rather related to the other adjectives of subjectivity that we've discussed elsewhere (and I'll put a link for that), such as "hoshii", which represents our desire for something, or "kowai" which represents our fear of something.

As usual, these adjectives are pointed at the thing that we desire, that we fear, etc.

And in this case, they're pointed at the thing that we consider unlikely.

It represents really our subjectivity about the likelihood of something.

If we want to give an exact Japanese equivalent, "arumai" is directly equivalent to "nai darou" (doesn't exist, I conjecture) or "nai deshou", and "dewa arumai" is directly equivalent to "dewa nai darou", "dewa nai deshou", "janai darou", "janai deshou", in other words, "A isn't B, I would conjecture, it seems likely" etc.

And the interesting point here is that, as we see, with this conjectural use of the volitional in its positive, more usual form, we don't attach the volitional directly to the verb that we're conjecturing about.

So we don't say "Sakura-wa sugu-ni kaerou".

That doesn't mean "Sakura will probably come".

We say "Sakura-wa suguni kuru deshou (or darou)", because that's the way we do it. We do it with the volitional copula when we're making that kind of conjecture.

But with "mai" we can attach it directly to the verb as we did in the previous example.

"Sonna koto-wa arumai" is directly equivalent to "sonna koto-wa nai deshou".

And there's no room for ambiguity here because "mai" has a more limited range of meanings, as we've just discussed, than the positive volitional has, so we're not going to get confused with, say, a call to action, because "mai" doesn't do calls to inaction.

So, the most common use of "mai" is as the negative adjectival of these "deshou/darou" conjectural constructions.

However, it is also used for one other negativizing structure that is directly equivalent to the positive.

So we can say "nido to ikumai" (I won't go there again; literally, I won't go a second time).

That's the other common meaning.

When it's not expressing a likelihood or possibility, it's expressing a strong decision or determination not to do something.

Now, beyond these few uses, there are also a couple of other common constructions in which "mai" is used, and you're pretty much certain to hear these.

One uses the positive and negative volitional forms together, meaning whether the verb is done or not. So, for example, "ikou ka, ikumai ka" means "whether I go or not".

Now, this is very similar to a construction that we've talked about before and that you probably know already, "iku ka dou ka" which means literally "whether I go or how", which in more natural English would be "whether I go or what".

Now, the other construction that you'll commonly hear is formed by simply attaching "shi", which is used for listing causes of something, but as we've discussed elsewhere, it's often used on its own just to imply a continuing list.

And this gives a construction that's somewhat comparable to the "it isn't as if..." or "it isn't like..." construction in English.

So if we say "kane mochi dewa arumai shi" which is roughly equivalent to the saying in English "it's not as if we're rich", or "sekai-ga owaru wake arumai shi" (it's not as if the world is going to end).

That's how we'd put it in English.

In Japanese, it's more like saying "it isn't that we're rich or something like that" (that's the "shi" , the something like that).

And the volitional is again marking a negative hypothetical.

Someone might act as if the world were going to end, but in fact it probably isn't.

We might look to some people as if we're rich but, well, we don't seem to be, do we?

So this is how the "mai" helper works in its various different common uses.