how do you write 'I am' and 'You are' and how would you use them in a sentence? - Feed Post by SatanicMax
how do you write 'I am' and 'You are' and how would you use them in a sentence?
posted by SatanicMax
Comments 6
Hell-o ;)
in Japanese personal pronouns aren't used in the same way as in English. People tend to use each other's names +sama/san/kun (which of these you will use depends on how polite/respectful you want to be. San is the safest choice in all situations since it's a neutral suffix). It's funny that the word for "you" あなた is taught in textbooks, because I've understood that saying "anata" is quite personal -> married couples call their wife/husband that and then the meaning is "dear/darling".
Words for I and you are for example:
私 わたし
君 (kimi)
if I were to ask you about how you're doing, I think I would say:
SatanicMaxさん は お元気 です か. Respectful o-genki and polite desu, neutral and polite -san.
If we were close friends, I might just ask:
きみ は、げんき です か。kimi wa genki desu ka.
Is this helpful in the least?
Pronouns are not strictly necessary, because people can understand context. For example, if I ask "Did you see that movie?", I'd only need a response of "saw". Japanese doesn't really /need/ to specify 'I am', or 'you are'. English is a very redundant language, so we often say words we don't need. We like to speak really specifically, so that there is no confusion.
Basically the only time you would say 'I am', or 'you are', is when you begin a conversation. あなた, as acidron says, is almost never used except among people who are very close (and there are other ways to express this closeness). I don't think I've heard it used by native speakers; they usually use +さん.
I heard a radio presenter say あなた towards a guy she was interviewing only around a week ago. http://www.radiokishiwada.jp
It's not really all that uncommon, but yeah, you definitely don't want to be using it every single time you want to say something to anyone. :D
I think it makes a difference how you are using the word. A wife might call out to her husband to get his attention by saying just "あなた" on its own. I'm sure this way of using that pronoun could be very wierd if used towards other people. However, I think just saying the odd one or two "あなたの"blahblahblah at some point mid conversation would be completely fine a lot of the time and wouldn't stand out in the slightest. There are still many other formality situations where you would never use あなた towards certain groups of people though...- Ooh, I knew there'd be a nice page explaining about using あなた on MaggieSensei's blog:
http://maggiesensei.com/2011/09/05/is-%E3%81%82%E3%81%AA%E3%81%9Fanata-ok-to-use-2nd-person-pronouns-nicknames/
^^ - I'm finding the hardest part about japanese is not vocabulary or grammar. It's discerning which rules are strict and which can be bent. The only way I've found to learn those is to take a risk and make a mistake...
- Languages by nature are formal constructs used in informal settings, and they're really only the tip of the communication iceberg. A lot of it is learning to play by ear once you can comprehend the words and grammar.
