Arimasu and Imasu
James
I've been learning Japanese for about a year now and I am having a debate
with my Japanese friend about the uses of 'arimasu' as a use of the words
'have/ownership' - in my Japanese book it says you can use (and has several
examples of this):
Sumisu-San kodomo ga futari arimasu.
Note kodomo means child which is a living thing.
However my friend says the whole book is wrong and every living thing should
have the word imasu used instead.
So in the above example it should be:
Sumisu-San kodomo ga futari imasu.
In the book, some chapters before, when arimasu and imasu are introduced it
explains that one is for inanimate objects and the other for animated or
living objects - now can they have missed this later on in the book with the
examples above?
Thanks in advance for your help.
James
PS my Japanese friend would absolutely loathe if they discovered I came here
to cross checked their Japanese! :-)
himtkitk
> Hi,
>
> I've been learning Japanese for about a year now and I am having a debate
> with my Japanese friend about the uses of 'arimasu' as a use of the words
> 'have/ownership' - in my Japanese book it says you can use (and has several
> examples of this):
>
> Sumisu-San kodomo ga futari arimasu.
This is something vague sentence and is not correct Japanese, since this sentence
would be taken with two meaning,
as;
"Sumisu-San, sokoni kodomo ga futari imasu." <= "Mr Smith, there are two children."
In this case never use "arimasu" since kodomo is/are living objects as your text
book explains.
or;
"Sumisu-San niha kodomo ga futari arimasu." <= "Mr. Smith has two children."
in this case always used with "niha" to show clearly who is the owner,
however,
"Sumisu-San niha kodomo ga futari imasu." also used with exactly same meaning,
but "Sumisu-San kodomo ga futari arimasu." is not correct Japanese.
"Sumisu-san kodomo ga futari imasu" is also vague sentence, and will not be said
by Japanese natives, however in this case most Japanese will take
"Mr Smith, there are two children." as it means, since it shows kodomo is/are
living things stronger than when used with "arimasu".
> However my friend says the whole book is wrong and every living thing should
> have the word imasu used instead.
Talk with your Japanese friend about the usage
"Sumisu-San niha kodomo ga futari arimasu. " to check if he/she is a good Japanese
speaker :-)
> So in the above example it should be:
>
> Sumisu-San kodomo ga futari imasu.
it sounds also something strange and vague if I hear this, to show the possession,
it should be;
"Sumisu-San ha kodomo ga futari imasu.", "Sumisu-San niha kodomo ga futari imasu"
or " "Sumisu-San niha kodomo ga futari arimasu."
but "Sumisu-San ha kodomo ga futari arimasu." is generally not used.
> In the book, some chapters before, when arimasu and imasu are introduced it
> explains that one is for inanimate objects and the other for animated or
> living objects
This explanation is correct,
> - now can they have missed this later on in the book with the
> examples above?
I think they picked up a wrong or irregular examples forgetting about the
exception, when talking about the possession, it is not important that the object
is animated or inanimated, so both "imasu" and "arimasu" are sometimes mix-used.
> Thanks in advance for your help.
Hope this helps,
> James
>
> PS my Japanese friend would absolutely loathe if they discovered I came here
> to cross checked their Japanese! :-)
I recommend you do cross check, since most of young Japanese even living
in Japan are not necessarily a correct Japanese user. :-)
himt...@insat.rnu.tn
himtkitk
> Hi,
>
> I've been learning Japanese for about a year now and I am having a debate
> with my Japanese friend about the uses of 'arimasu' as a use of the words
> 'have/ownership' - in my Japanese book it says you can use (and has several
> examples of this):
>
> Sumisu-San kodomo ga futari arimasu.
>
> Note kodomo means child which is a living thing.
This is something vague sentence and is not correct Japanese, grammatically right
sentence would be "Sumisu-san-niwa kodomo-ga futari imasu."
However it is difficult to say "Sumisu-san-niwa kodomo-ga futari arimasu" is wrong,
since the meaning is clear, not used often though, if the speaker is not care much
about the object "kodomo" is/are animated or not, then it may be used in conversation,
of course it is not used in formal or written Japanese.
More important is, do not omit "-niwa".
If you say "Sumisu-San kodomo ga futari imasu." it sounds strange and would be
taken as the following two meanings;
"Sumisu-San(, sokoni) kodomo ga futari imasu." <= "Mr Smith, there are two children."
In this case, "arimasu" is never used since "kodomo" is/are living objects as your
text book explains, and is SUBJECT.
or;
"Sumisu-San(-niwa) kodomo ga futari imasu." <= "Mr. Smith has two children."
in this case always used with "niwa" to show clearly who is the owner.
> However my friend says the whole book is wrong and every living thing should
> have the word imasu used instead.
maybe your friend is right.
compare;
"sokoni inuga imasu." and "sokoni inu-no okimono-ga arimasu." in Japanese
never say "sokoni inu-no okimono-ga imasu." unless if you intentionally tell
that the artificial dog is as if it is alive.
> So in the above example it should be:
>
> Sumisu-San kodomo ga futari imasu.
But I don't understand why your friend omitted "-niwa" if this is neglected it's
still not correct Japanese, it sounds also something strange and vague if I hear this.
> In the book, some chapters before, when arimasu and imasu are introduced it
> explains that one is for inanimate objects and the other for animated or
> living objects
This explanation is correct.
> - now can they have missed this later on in the book with the
> examples above?
I guess the author of your book is not a native Japanese speaker.
> Thanks in advance for your help.
hope this helps
健太郎
>[......]
>Sumisu-San kodomo ga futari arimasu.
>
>Note kodomo means child which is a living thing.
>So in the above example it should be:
>
>Sumisu-San kodomo ga futari imasu.
>
First of all in older ages there was no difference between "aru" and "iru."
Even if it is a living thing, "aru" was used naturally.
So, it sounds a bit old-fashioned but the sentence below
Sumisu-San wa kodomo ga futari arimasu.
is not wrong at all.
Second, the explanation that if it is a living thing, "iru" should be used
is
WRONG. If it is a vehicles too, iru is used.
IIRC, in Akita dialect, all the things can be used with "iru."
Third, you have to pay attention to what the subjective is in the sentence
on
reading Japanese sentence. In the sentence
Sumisu-San wa kodomo ga futari arimasu.
what is the subjective in that sentence?
That is the reason why that sentence is same as
Sumisu-San niwa kodomo ga futari arimasu.
The most impotant thing is that the main issue is not the composition of
'aru' versus 'iru.'
＿＿＿＿＿＿＿
kentaro＠tokyo
Koh
> Sumisu-San kodomo ga futari arimasu.
Not incorrct, but unusual.
"Sumisu-San niwa kodomo ga futari arimasu." would be better.
> However my friend says the whole book is wrong and every living thing should
> have the word imasu used instead.
>
> So in the above example it should be:
>
> Sumisu-San kodomo ga futari imasu.
"imasu" is more popular.
But, it should be
"Sumisu-San niwa kodomo ga futari imasu (OR orimasu)."
> In the book, some chapters before, when arimasu and imasu are introduced it
> explains that one is for inanimate objects and the other for animated or
> living objects - now can they have missed this later on in the book with the
> examples above?
That book is correct theoretically.
But, "arimasu" is occasionally used for living objects:
(A) as if it is inanimate objects.
(B) the opposite of "nai".
(C) a word-for-word translation from "HAVE".
[Reference]
丸谷才一「桜もさよならも日本語」新潮文庫 (第1章の1節および11節)
James
illustrated in the book) sorry for the typo.
However I understand better now what you mean, my Japanese friend told me
that if you use:
"Sumisu-San niha kodomo ga futari arimasu."
will be accepted by some Japanese, whilst others may raise the eyebrow there
and pick you up on it! :-) So it was recommended that I stick with
"Sumisu-San niha kodomo ga futari imasu".
As for the book, it is a few years old (Japanese for Busy People) so it
could explain why some sentences such as "Sumisu-San wa kodomo ga futari
arimasu." are in use by the book.. :-S however I think my friend simply
doesn't like the book because she feels it's not really teaching
conversational Japanese but instead more written Japanese. Still I am
enjoying the book cause it's a lot easier than some of the other books I
have seen! :-D
If there are any other books anyone would like to recommend please let me
know.
Thanks again for your replies.
James
"himtkitk" <himt...@insat.rnu.tn> wrote in message
news:40d1a5eb$0$1002$44c9...@news3.asahi-net.or.jp...
James
use of iru is used also with non living objects that are in motion, in this
case a car as pointed out. So imasu can be used for those purposes.
Domo arigato gozaimashita.
ジェイミー
James
PS I hope you can read the Katakana as I have several times tried to post
using Hiragana but get my posts come up with ???? - does anyone know what's
the cause of that? I do select Format - Encoding - Japanese (JIS) when I
posted but that didn't seem to correct the problem either. ありがとう ござ
います！
"健太郎" <kent_...@d1.dion.ne.jp> wrote in message
news:IDuAc.132$Fd...@news1.dion.ne.jp...
Dan Mills
> ジェイミー
>
> James
>
> PS I hope you can read the Katakana as I have several times tried to post
> using Hiragana but get my posts come up with ???? - does anyone know what's
> the cause of that? I do select Format - Encoding - Japanese (JIS) when I
> posted but that didn't seem to correct the problem either. ありがとう ござ
> います！
Hi James,
Your message was encoded in ISO-2022-JP (which I believe is JIS or
ShiftJIS, I don't remember). So that's ok. The problem is twofold:
* Your message did not specify an encoding. That is, it relies on the
reader either guessing, or just having the default set to the encoding
you chose. You should try to get your newsreader to set an encoding header.
* Your default encoding (for reading) is not the one you sent the
message in. Look around in the menus and you'll probably find a way to
change the encoding for the message you're looking at. Set it to JIS
and you should see your posts correctly. If you go to your preferences
there is probably an option somewhere for setting the default encoding.
You probably have it set to something like ISO-8859-1 (which I think is
Latin-1).
I personally prefer UTF8, FWIW. It is an encoding for Unicode.
-Dan
Unforgiven
news:108756290...@spandrell.news.uk.clara.net...
> ジェイミー
>
> James
>
> PS I hope you can read the Katakana as I have several times tried to post
> using Hiragana but get my posts come up with ???? - does anyone know
> what's
> the cause of that? I do select Format - Encoding - Japanese (JIS) when I
> posted but that didn't seem to correct the problem either. ありがとう ござ
> います！
You need to set Outlook Express to use MIME encoding for news messages. The
standard setting is UUEncode, which cannot handle Unicode at all, and for
all other encodings has the serious drawback that it cannot specify the
encoding, so the recipient has to guess what you used.
To switch your OE to MIME, do the following: Goto Tools/Options... On the
Send tab, under "News Sending Format", click "Plain Text Settings...". Under
"Message format", select "MIME". Now you can properly use encodings,
including the unicode utf-8 and utf-7.
About your katakana, I wonder if it is correct. If it's meant to be the
equivalent of James, it's not. Firstly, I would use ジェーミー (although ジェイミー
isn't technically wrong, afaik) but even then it spells JEEMII, which seems
to be Jamie rather than James. James would be ジェームズ, I think.
On a different note, please don't top-post. Top-posting is putting your
reply above the original text. It is considered bad Netiquette to do that.
Please use bottom or in-line replies as appropriate.
--
Unforgiven