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Worldview & Grammar in Japanese | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| JanKG Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 5767 days ago 245 posts - 280 votes  Speaks: Dutch*, English, German, French Studies: Italian, Finnish | Message 1 of 2 12 July 2009 at 10:33am | IP Logged |
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... and vocabulary.
As someone referred to Japanese at the worldviews thread, it might be interesting to explore that topic while referring to Japanese as a side aspect, starting from the question: what seems different in Japanese that might hint at a different worldview. I have some questions, inspired by a correspondent at the Worldviews thread: 1. How do Japanese refer to the future ? I suppose they have expressions (if not verb forms) to predict things ('It will work in 2015'), to refer to projects ('I am going to...'). Or do they have a very 'peculiar' 'relationship' with the future ? 2. Is it a coincidence that they use 'Do an effort' instead of 'good luck' ? I am inclined to think they have ways to refer to 'luck', or is Buddhism - this is just a hypothesis - not future oriented, or Shintoism? Edited by JanKG on 12 July 2009 at 11:04am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| hombre gordo Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5583 days ago 184 posts - 247 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Japanese Studies: Portuguese, Korean | Message 2 of 2 12 August 2009 at 1:37pm | IP Logged |
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To express the future, you can attach the auxiliary でしょう (deshou) which can mean "might" and is used when the speaker is not 100 percent sure.
To refer to projects, speakers can use つもり (tsumori) which means "intentions". Foor example, 私は会社を作るつもりだ。 (watashi wa kaisha wo tsukuru tsumori da) (lit. I have the intension to make a company) Classical Japanese had a future tense to some degree which could express intention (I will/I shall, etc...). It was the mu-form which eventually evolved into the modern Japanese volitional verb form. (let's/shall we?) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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