What's the difference between 未来 and 将来? - Feed Post by RovkirHexus
What's the difference between 未来 and 将来?
posted by RovkirHexus
Comments 6
将来 is the near future. 未来 is just the future in general, but it's also used for words like futurism 未来学 and furturist 未来学者 (think Ray Kurzweil). 未来 makes me think of a Futurama-type future.
Oh, that makes sense. Thank you!
My Japanese teacher explained it like this when I asked. 将来 is the future. Kinda boring normal, what you normally think is future when you think about it in English. Where is 未来 has a very positive connotation to it. A politician would use it in their speech to talk about how great the future will be, or when being wishful about what the future holds.
未来 would be about the future in general, the advancement of humankind, etc, whereas 将来 is about generally your future. What do you want to be(when you grow up)? would be a question where you'd use 将来 as opposed to 未来.
Another point is that 未来 is just a normal noun and can also be used as a so called "no-adjective". 将来 is a temporal noun which can be used as an adverbial noun (like 今日, 明日, 来週, etc.).
So you can say 将来結婚したい to mean "In the future I want to get married" but you couldn't use 未来 here. If you tried to use 未来 it would be more like saying you want a "marriage of the future", like a futuristic style of getting married like when we're all living on the moon and flying in spaceships or something... Probably not quite accurate, but hopefully you get the general idea of what I mean?
Also, if you've ever watched Dragon Ball Z, "未来トランクス" or "未来のトランクス" = Future Trunks (also often referred to by fans as 'Mirai Trunks'), the teenager/adult character who travelled back from the future during the Cell saga. Sorry if you've never watched it (although you should if you haven't!) just that all this talk today of DBZ made me think of this. :D- Of course I've seen DBZ! lol
You make a good point by pointing out how they are used grammar wise.
