In the last post we talked about
this (これ) and that (それ and あれ) in Japanese. However, those words we talked about do
not work if we wanted to say “this book” or “that umbrella” in Japanese. Why not? What should we
say instead? Below we’ll go into more detail!
A friendly reminder I’m still learning so don’t take this as 100% true
この / その / あの vs. これ / それ / あれ
In English, when we say “this is a book” and “this book is mine”, we use the same this word in
both places. The same thing applies to “that is an umbrella” and “that umbrella is mine”. There
is no distinction between their uses (pronoun vs. adjective).
A “pronoun” is a word that can function by itself as a noun phrase (such as I, you, she, it, or this.) An “adjective” is a word that describes a person, place, or thing (such as big, round, old, or even this).
In Japanese, though, those sentences do not use the same word. If you are using the word this
or that in the adjective form, it must be followed by a noun.
この, その, and あの are adjectives in Japanese that mean the same thing as their counterparts
これ, それ, and あれ but require a noun to follow them instead of a particle.
So, if we look at the example “this book is mine” - I could not say このは本私のです. As この
is followed by the particle は instead of a noun. I should, instead, say この本は私のです (As
for this book, it is mine). Like the これ counterpart, the assumption is that the book I’m talking
about is close to me (the speaker).
What if I wanted to say “that umbrella is mine”? If we assume the umbrella is closer to you (the
listener), I would say その傘は私のです.
And what about if I was standing next to you and pointed to my cat that was far away from both of
us and said, “I love that cat”? I would then say あの猫は大好きです.
In all of these examples, we can see that this or that is followed by a noun when we use
[こ|そ|あ]の.
This vs. these and that vs. those
In English, if we are talking about a group of things, we switch from this to these or that to
those. Japanese, however, does not differentiate between the two.
What does that mean for our Japanese sentences above? It turns out they can have multiple different meanings and you have to have context to truly understand them.
For instance, the sentence, この本は私のです could mean “this book is mine” - but it could also
mean “these books are mine.”
Likewise, if I said あの猫は大好きです - it could mean “I love that cat” - but it could also
mean “I love those cats”.
Concluding Thoughts
It’s been quite interesting / challenging to figure out how to describe the idea of this and
that in both English and Japanese. I think by trying to write this post I got a much better idea
of how these things work.
Did this post make sense to you? Did some other resource help this click for you? I’d love to know ^.^