Re: subjective feelings about actions?
From: Sean Gilbertson (sean_at_bluebeard.org)
Date: 08/31/04
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Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2004 05:44:50 GMT
On 2004-08-31 00:16:45 -0500, "necoandjeff" <spam@schrepfer.com> said:
> "Sean Gilbertson" <sean@bluebeard.org> wrote in message
> news:2004083023211275249%sean@bluebeardorg...
>> On 2004-08-30 19:29:25 -0500, "necoandjeff" <spam@schrepfer.com> said:
>>
>>> "Kevin Wayne Williams" <kww.nihongo@verizon.nut> wrote in message
>>> news:10j7gml78ah7eb1@news.supernews.com...
>>>> necoandjeff wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> "Kevin Wayne Williams" <kww.nihongo@verizon.nut> wrote in message
>>>>> news:10j79a55o5dtkab@news.supernews.com...
>>>>>
>>>>>> necoandjeff wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> "Kevin Wayne Williams" <kww.nihongo@verizon.nut> wrote in message
>>>>>>> news:10j758ol9afr803@news.supernews.com...
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Sean wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> I was giving myself a bit of practice by writing a short email to
> a
>>>>>>>>> friend in Japanese. I was going to ask him "Do you want to come
> over
>>>>>>>>> to my house today?" but I didn't get very far.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Try looking up the -tai conjugation of verbs, and see if you come
> up
>>>>>>>> with any inspiration.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I think it would be a bit unusual to express "Do you want to come
> over
>>>>>
>>>>> to my
>>>>>
>>>>>>> house today?" with a -tai verb, unless the -tai verb was with
> respect
>>> to
>>>>>>> your own wishes.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> My first inclination would have been something like
> 僕の家へ遊びに行きた
>>>>>> いですか?, and I might use
> 僕の家へ遊びに行くことはいいですか？
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I was taught to use -tai forms for my own wishes and those of second
>>>>>> parties, and -tagaru when the wishes were those of a third party.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> How far off are those rules from what you consider to be normal?
>>>>>
>>>>> First, you don't need the personal pronoun. It is clear from the
> context
>>>>> that it is your house since, if it were anyone else's house, you
>>> wouldn't
>>>>> call it uchi.
>>>>>
>>>>> Second, from your perspective they would kuru to your house not iku.
>>>> Wouldn't that depend on where I was in relationship to the listener
> when
>>>> I asked? If we were at the office or school, wouldn't 行く be
>>>> appropriate? (Serious question: I always struggle with perspective on
>>>> coming and going).
>>>
>>> This is difficult in any language. I think if you were with the person
> and
>>> suggesting that you go to your house right then, you would use iku. But
> most
>>> other situations would probably be kuru. When talking about some point
> in
>>> the future, the presumption is that you would already be there so they
> would
>>> be kuruing from your perspective. I think even in English we would tend
> to
>>> say "come over" even when actually with the person wouldn't we?
>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> The problem is, even though "want" is involved here, you wouldn't
>>> typically
>>>>> express this request as "do you want to..."
>>>>
>>>> I guess I see a difference between "Would you like to go/come to my
>>>> house?" and "Please come to my house." For "Please come to my house", I
>>>> like all of yours and Juha's suggestions.
>>>
>>> Right, but the point is you wouldn't really ask if someone wants to come
>>> over like we might in English. This is an example of a situation where
> the
>>> direct translation approach just breaks down.
>>>
>>> Jeff
>>
>> This is the part I'm very interested in. I would like to know if the
>> culture exerted a force such that the actual language only allows you
>> to ask it in this way? Or, are there colloquialisms that have a more
>> western approach? I'm fine with either, I just want to know.
>
> In my experience, you could also ask in the positive with the right
> intonation such as "uchi ni kuru?" but it would be highly unusual to invite
> someone in the Western way by referring to the invitee's wants. You'll
> notice that none of the other examples given by Cindy (an NSoJ) referred to
> the wants or desires of the invitee either. I'm not saying there is never a
> situation where you could refer to whether someone wants to come to your
> house with a -tai verb, but just that you wouldn't typically invite someone
> over with such a construction.
>
> Jeff
It's interesting to learn a language in such a way that you have to
consider approaches to certain situations, rather than just trying to
convert an English phrase to a Japanese one. It seems to be that way
for commands as well, but I haven't gotten that far; I've been jumping
around a bit.
I don't know a whole lot of kanji, so some of the more verbose replies
I haven't sunk into yet, but I got some of the short phrases. Also,
some of the replies were encoded in ISO 2022-JP, which threw me off.
This has already been an educational thread!
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