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Literal-mindedness
Apr. 7th, 2009 01:27 amToday (well, yesterday now) during our post-class chat session one of the students who’s really behind the rest of the class had a question for our TA, Tomo. She’s getting hung up on particles. And I understand what she’s asking. She wants to know what the literal translation of “wa” (は) is in a sentence such as this: Watashi wa Bruce desu. The sentence is simple enough, and so is wa here. A semi-literal translation might be, “As for me, I am Bruce” but that is of course horribly stilted, so a proper translation is “I’m Bruce”. But she’s hung up on the mindset of the Western language speaker in which every word as a separate and discrete meaning. Unfortunately Japanese just doesn’t work that way very often.
Here’s another example which helps demonstrate the complexity of Japanese particles:
Watashi no uchi de TV wo mimasu. Here we have three particles, no (の), de (で) and wo (を). No makes watashi possessive. Watashi no uchi means my home. Where before watashi wa meant I, watashi no become my. De then gives some context for the action to come, a literal framing of the action. Where did the action take place? In my house. And finally wo acts to point out the direct object. TV wo mimasu means (I/we) watch TV. TV is the recipient of the action, which in this case is watching. So the sentence taken together means, “I watch TV at home.” It’s simple, really, but for the beginning speaker it’s a potential choke point. I wish I could help my fellow student understand all this, but it’s been explained to her time and again. Every single time she says, “But what does wa MEAN?” I used to get hung up on this too, but I seem to have gotten past it. At least I hope I have, because this is just the tip of the iceberg here.
Here’s another example which helps demonstrate the complexity of Japanese particles:
Watashi no uchi de TV wo mimasu. Here we have three particles, no (の), de (で) and wo (を). No makes watashi possessive. Watashi no uchi means my home. Where before watashi wa meant I, watashi no become my. De then gives some context for the action to come, a literal framing of the action. Where did the action take place? In my house. And finally wo acts to point out the direct object. TV wo mimasu means (I/we) watch TV. TV is the recipient of the action, which in this case is watching. So the sentence taken together means, “I watch TV at home.” It’s simple, really, but for the beginning speaker it’s a potential choke point. I wish I could help my fellow student understand all this, but it’s been explained to her time and again. Every single time she says, “But what does wa MEAN?” I used to get hung up on this too, but I seem to have gotten past it. At least I hope I have, because this is just the tip of the iceberg here.
