Talk:Japanese/Lessons/Introduction/Konnichiwa/Formal salutations

"As for me..."
'This whole sentence means "As for me, I am ___." '

I'm just beginning with Japanese, but I've noticed that a lot of translations use the phrase "As for ___" to translate "___ は". Why? Although it is technically correct, no English speaker in the world introduces himself with: "As for me, I am Bob." The sentence really 'means' "I am ___," so why not just say that?

It seems to me that "as for ___" is an attempt to keep an English translation's phrases in the same order as the Japanese words, but it reads poorly and only goes halfway. If showing the correspondence between Japanese and the English translation is important, I think it would be better to show an intermediate translation, like "I (subject marker) ___ are", and then show the actual translation, "I am ___".

Also, I am confused by the term "copula verb" which shows up a couple times on this page. I'm sure it makes sense to grammaticians and linguists -- people who casually throw around words like "schwa" and "gerund" -- but it is not helpful to a person trying to make sense of a new language.

Joe Lee 01:17, 26 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Hi. I think, in this case(when you say your name), you don't need "As for me". I've never seen the Japanese textbooks in the English world, but at least in the English texts we use in Japan, はじめまして is "Nice to meet you." and わたしはBobです is just "I am Bob."
 * However, it's true that "___ は" generally might have the nuance "As for ___". For example;


 * Imagine there're Bob and I here. Now if I say, 「Bob は 読書(reading books) が 好き(likes) です」, then you can interpret this in the two ways:
 * Bob likes reading books. (Just that. I don't say I like or not)
 * Bob likes reading books, but I do not.
 * If I say は weak(naturally), probably it's the case 1. If I emphasize は, it can be the case 2.


 * Application: Imagine there're Bob, Jack and I here. Now if I say, 「Bob は 読書(reading books) が 好き(likes) です」...
 * Bob likes reading books. (Just that)
 * Bob likes reading books, but I do not. (I don't know about Jack)
 * Bob likes reading books, but I guess Jack does not.
 * Bob likes reading books, but I do not and I guess Jack does not, neither.
 * In another word, "At least this can be said: Bob likes reading books." or "As for Bob, he likes reading books." Does it make sense? I don't know this is something to do with the word order... - Marsian / talk 05:00:17, 2005-08-26 (UTC)


 * Hi. Yes, that makes more sense to me, thanks.  I suppose this is something like stresses in spoken English, like the difference between "Bob likes reading books" and "Bob likes reading books."  I still don't like "As for ___" -- after all, all your interpretations above don't use it and sound much better for it -- but now I understand that it's a convenient way of emphasizing the subject of a sentence.


 * I also like your "Nice to meet you" better than "I am meeting you for the first time", as it is given in the lesson. But wouldn't "Nice to meet you" be a better translation for "どうぞ　よろしく"?  Or do both phrases roughly serve the same purpose as "Nice to meet you" in English?


 * Thanks. Joe Lee 21:49, 26 August 2005 (UTC)


 * A-ha, yeah, smiliar to the stresses in English, I think it's right.
 * Speaking of "Nice to meet you", ... well, in fact I don't think I understand enough the situations where "Nice to meet you." is used but... When you use どうぞよろしく, it should be placed at the end of your self-introduction (though I feel よろしくお願いします is much more common). Thus, the suitable English expression for どうぞよろしく might be "Thank you." at the end of the speech. Please see the search results of Eijiro, a famaous online Ja&harr;En dictionary. However, thinking about the inverse case(English to Japanese), I'm not so sure whether "Nice to meet you." can be translated to どうぞよろしく. - Marsian / talk 05:24:22, 2005-08-27 (UTC)


 * I agree that as for 〜 is totally unnatural English. Furthermore, I agree that it's unnecessary in simple sentences like watashi wa 〜 desu. Maybe it should be removed from the Introductions, and it should be avoided once the student has mastered wa. Having said that,  I think that it's a useful way to think about wa in sentences where the topic is not the grammatical subject. This is very common in Japanese.
 * watashi wa ashi ga nagai desu
 * I [topic marker] leg [subject marker] are long [polite ending]
 * As for me, (my) legs are long.
 * I have long legs.
 * I don't know about you, but I find the word-for-word translation harder to read and less informative than "as for me". I mean, if you know enough to understand all the [ 〜　marker] labels, then the word-for-word version probably doesn't add much to your understanding. Any thoughts?
 * -ToothingLummox 06:33, 5 September 2005 (UTC)


 * There's no reason to expect a natural English translation of yoroshiku onegaishimasu. English speakers don't say anything like that. ToothingLummox 06:40, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

kochira koso
For the first conversation, comparing the Romaji and English:


 * Hayasaka: Kochira koso, yoroshiku o-negai shimasu.
 * Hayasaka: Likewise.

When this is translated into English, does "Kochira koso, yoroshiku o-negai shimasu" literally translate to "Likewise, I look forward to working with you"? Does the rest of the sentence need to follow "Kochira koso" to emphasize what is likewise? I'm a little confused, perhaps because I read too literally into things.

--Fushigidane 05:04, 16 February 2006 (UTC)


 * With a few reservations, I would say, yes, it literally translates to "Likewise, I look forward to working with you". And, no, you do not always have to repeat the sentence after kochira koso, but at least in this case (formal introductions), I think it sounds better if you do repeat it. Maybe a better literal translation of kochira koso would be "It is me who (is looking forward to working with you)". -ToothingLummox 08:32, 22 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I am sorry to say this ToothingLummox, but your answer to Fushigade's question is not correct. The correct answer to Fushigidane's question here is NO, it does NOT litterally translate to "Likewise, I look forward to working with you"!!!
 * As with lots of Japanase words and phrases, also this one is difficult to translate litterally. What is said here, is the following:
 * こちらこそ, しく おいします. (Kochira koso, yoroshiku onegai shimasu).
 * こちら, kochira: "this side/way"
 * こそ, koso: "for sure".
 * こちらこそ, kochira koso can be translated as "it is I who should say so" (usually used in cases where you want to say "the thanks is all mine").
 * しく, yoroshiku: "well (in the adverbial sense of "good"), properly, suitably", also (more freely) translates as "best regards".
 * おいします, onegai shimasu: "do this humble request". Shimasu comes from the verb suru (to do), negai is a request or a wish and the o in front of negai makes it humble and therefore this makes the sentence more polite, so that it can be translated as "please, grant me this wish".
 * しく おいします, yoroshiku onegai shimasu can now be translated as "please, treat me nice/good", but it can also be used as "(please), my best regards". In a first meeting with somebody it can be freely translated as "nice to meet you"...


 * So, coming back to the complete sentence, if you want to translate it litterally (which you should not want do with Japanese! ;-) ) it would come to something like: "This side for sure, treat me good". But a better translation into an English sentence that would be used in similar situations is something like "Likewise (or: the pleasure is mine), it's nice to meet you". The last one you might find contradictory with Hajimemashite, wich was also used in the same conversation in the module and this also translates as "Nice to meet you". However, also this is not a litteral translation. Hajimemashite litterally means "we have started", and the Japanese combine this in a formal introduction with "(douzo) yoroshiku onegai shimasu". Personally, I think it's better to translate hajimemashite into "How do you do" which is used in the same way in (British) English, and yoroshiku onegai shimasu into "it's nice to meet you".
 * Japanese is and remains difficult to translate litterally, but it's sometimes interesting to do that... Shinjitsu 06:41, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

"Kanji"
Someone has been a little overenthusiastic here, or has read a dictionary without ever reading a Japanese book. There are also some places where the writer seems not to know the language.

The greetings that are all in kanji aren't generally used as such unless one is reading Edojidaibungaku.

Ohayou is always kana, and Kon'nichiwa likewise, because you can't differentiate Kyou wa (today is) from Kon'nichi wa "Nowadays" from the greeting. youkoso is never in kanji. The translation for yoroshiku onegai shimasu is wrong. Kochira koso is never in kanji, and neither is arigatou gozaimasu (and it should be Doumo arigatou gozaimasu anyway, because it's more formal). dou itashimashite is also never in kanji.

If the usage notes say there is a mixture of forms, then the chart is useless as it stands, because not only does the reader not know what's what yet, the chart says formal greetings. Ohayou can be used the first time you meet somebody on a given day, as long as it's not too late in the day.

The grammatical constructions are wrong, or at least fanciful: "ohayou" doesn't come from an adjective; if it comes from anything, it comes from a Classical Japanese verb, hence the "-oo" ending only goes on verbs. Moreover, these are all kimarimonku, or set phrases, and therefore constructing them is unnecessary; you just need to learn them like words.

I'm going to make some changes to fix some of this.


 * I have removed the kanji for greetings.
 * I have fixed the romanization.
 * I have removed the grammatical construction section, as the greetings are all set phrases.

I'll fix the Japanese when I'm on a Japanese enabled machine. MSJapan 18:56, 23 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Speaking of kanji, should the names (and also onegai) really be in kanji? I know that the names have furigana over them so that people will still be able to read them using the hiragana chart, but isn't it just confusing for a beginner to add in kanji symbols in the introductory chapters?


 * It makes sense in the vocabulary section where words that aren't going to appear until later are used as examples, but even then, kun should just be written in hiragana to match san.


 * I guess you could say that it makes it easier to see where the names are in the sentences because they look so different, but I think it would be better to stick with the kana in the introductory lessons and then add in kanji in the basic lessons. Hiragana is much easier to read than th furigana sitting on the kanji IMO Ikarsik 02:22, 3 November 2007 (UTC)