Profound philosophical truths through Japanese grammar
The precion of expression in Japanese is astounding
“Japanese has only two verb tenses.” As a Japanese teacher, I get that every now and then. Ha ha ha, in your face! The level of nuance subtlety that you can express through Japanese grammar by far exceeds the English 26 verb tenses. In fact, that subtlety nearly always calls for making really deep phlisophical distinctions that you would hardly think existed. Just a couple off the top of my head.
寒そうです vs. 寒いです
Samusō desu. vs. Samui desu.“
”It looks like you’re cold.” vs. “I’m cold.”
In Japanese, it is grammatically impossible to say “you’re cold” because it’s a subjective feeling that is not available to an observer to experience directly. One can only say “ you appear to be cold” or “ you’re showing signs of feeling cold”. You can’t be me, I can’t be you. Our experiences will never be the same. How profound.
And here’s Winter Waltz by Kitarō (喜多郎 meaning “joyful chap”), a magical romantic wintry tune that will surely captivate your heart. It’s a perfect soundtrack to enjoying a steaming bowl of heartwarming oden and the rest of this story below.
Here is another grammar shtick: Japanese adjectives have past tense. The rules here are very strict: if anything was like this or like that in the past, the adjective describing it absolutely needs to be in the past tense.
美しい Utsukushii. “I am beautiful.”
美しかった Utsukushikatta. “I was once beautiful.”
No points sending your pictures from 10 years ago. Qualities and attributes that are present are not at all like those that are gone. I suspect this is where the famous Japanese aesthetic concept of mono no aware (物の哀れ) or “the misery of all creation” is probably rooted.
Japanese grammar is full of philosophical depths like that. I will be developing this into a series of articles to introduce you to them.
Sounds very interesting 🤞🏿