Apologies for the delay with this post. I meant to put up a summary of the comments on this post earlier but have been really busy the past two weeks.

Well, I should start by admitting my mistake. What I was hearing was ゆった, as many of you mentioned, and not いうった – no one says it with the extra syllable. Facebook friend Kaida noted that い and う are difficult to pronounce together, so they blend to the simpler and more “pleasant” ゆう. This is a phenomenon known as 音便 (おんびん) – in English, euphony or phonaesthetics.

Wikipedia lists four different types of 音便 – イ音便, ウ音便, 撥音便 (はつおんびん), and 促音便 (そくおんびん).

The first two are relatively straightforward – a character changes to い or う. Some cool examples:

「日向」　ヒムカ → ヒウガ → ヒューガ
I had a student named Hyuga, so I thought this one was cool. It’s also an area down in Kyushu.

「白-人」　シロヒト → シロウト → シロート 「素人」
This is totally self-applied.

「埼玉」　サキタマ → サイタマ
I’ve never been to Saitama or Sakitama.

撥音便 is when a character changes to ん:

「読み-て」　ヨミテ → ヨンデ 「読んで」
So clearly the language has evolved.

And 促音便 is the origin of the っ in many verbs:

「言ひ-て」　イヒテ → イッテ 「言って」
Getting closer to what we are interested in…

I don’t see how いう→ゆう falls into any of those categories (there are no y音便), so it must be a less rule-based phenomenon. Akaaki found this explanation in his dictionary:

ゆ•う【言う・云う・謂う】
「い（言）う」の終止•連体形を「ユー」と発音するところから、「ゆ」が語幹と意識されてできた語形。終止•連体形以外で「ゆわない」「ゆった」などと言うこともあるが、本来の言い方ではない。

So it isn’t formal 音便 per se, but it amounts to 音便. People registered いう as ユー, and it leaked over to other forms of the verb.

There’s a really interesting thread on 2ch where you can watch a bunch of locals fight it out. It includes this passage:

かつて動詞「言う」の活用は，
/ifa-/ /ifi-/ /ifu/ /ifu/ /ife-/ /ife/
と，語幹 /if-/ がはっきりしていたが，後の音韻的な変化によって，
/iwa-,io-/ /ii-,iQ/ /yuu/ /yuu/ /ie-/ /ie/
となり，語幹が /i-/ なのか /yu-/ なのかわからなくなった．
話者によっては（無意識的に）この状態を好まず，
基本型 /yuu/ の形に近い /yu-/ を新たに語幹として，
/yuwa-,yuo-/ /yui-,yuQ-/ /yuu/ /yuu/ /yue-/ /yue/
という，ある意味合理的な活用を作り出したと考えられる．

Which is similar to the research that Doug Durgee dug up. Back in Princess Mononoke times, there were like 100 times more sounds in the Japanese language. Then they all got drunk and before they realized it they were talking like おっさん (best part is last two seconds).

As for 行く, it was definitely ゆく before いく. I don’t think it gets used as ゆった, so I’m still convinced that 言った→ゆった also helps distinguish between the two (although that may not be a causal reason it originated). ゆく definitely harks back to more 渋い times:

歌なんかでは「ゆく」の方が多いような気もしません?

In the end, I think ゆう・ゆった・ゆわない is used pretty much all over Japan, perhaps at higher rates in the 地方. The best thing about this post is that it will force me, and hopefully some of you, to be a little more aware of how people are using it and who those people are. If you make any discoveries, definitely post them here. I’ll do the same. Until then, feel free to use either version yourself. Just be careful not to over-音便. We don’t want to end up saying things like “finky.”

One of the central themes of this blog is my lack of Japanese knowledge and how I’ve overcome it – how I’ve learned from mistakes, different study strategies I’ve used to improve, things I wish I had known. Well, I still have a lot of unanswered questions, so I thought that I’d let you guys help me write the post today. My question is about the verb 言う (いう, iu). Clearly it has the う sound in there, but it loses it when you conjugate 言う to the perfective tense – 言った (いった, itta). However, people do sometimes (not always) pronounce this いうった, adding that う back in. I remember hearing this for the first time in my third year of study – other students were using it, and I was never sure why. The teacher never said anything, so I wasn’t sure whether to imitate or not. I think I do say it sometimes.

Is it just to differentiate it from 行った and other homonyms? Is it a regional thing? Is it an old person thing?

If you know anything, put it in the comments. I’ll type up a summary and update this post later. よろしく！

P.S. Food for thought – it’s pretty clearly いって in the classic karaoke duet 3年目の浮気, although perhaps that’s because the extra syllable would throw off the rhythm?

I live with two Japanese girls and three Japanese guys. We were sitting around our kitchen at some point in the last couple of months, and I told everyone about a beer event – I think the IPA event at Towers back in August. I’m always trying to get them to come along, but they’re usually uninterested, often busy. One of the girls has been trying to be more social and outgoing. She still hasn’t come to any beer events, but she at leasts feigns interest initially. She also a thing for Korean guys, so she asked me if any Korean guys would be at the beer event. I said 来ないかもしれません.

One of my other roommates almost choked on his beer and was like, What the hell are you talking about? 来ないだろう! (Yes, those kana are italicized. No, I was not able to put 傍点. Boo.) There aren’t going to be any Korean guys at an IPA event!

This is the standard usage of だろう・でしょう. The intonation was emphatic, but mostly because the guy was straightening out my ambiguous answer – Korean guys will not be going to an IPA event in Tokyo. Generally the intonation is flat like most Japanese words.

This is what I like to call the “Weatherman でしょう.” Whenever the forecaster gives the weather on Japanese news, he/she uses the set form 明日＿でしょう, where you can insert 雨, 晴れ, 曇り, or a number of other possibilities into the blank. Tomorrow it will rain. Tomorrow it will be sunny. Tomorrow Korean guys will not go to cozy but awesome beer bars near Tokyo Station and drink super hoppy beer.

I think it’s relatively safe to equate this with the future tense and a high level of certainty. It’s not 100% certainty (as my 日本語文型辞典 tells me – no Japanese weatherman would make the mistake of giving a guaranteed weather report), but it’s more certain than かもしれない.

The main reason this pattern was so confusing to me early on is the wide range of meaning でしょう・だろう can have based on intonation alone. As a beginner, it was hard to differentiate the ですね, ですよ and ですか aspects of the phrase – no matter how many times I read the textbook explanation, 雨でしょう sounded like, “Will it rain?” until I got used to it by watching enough Japanese TV and hearing my roommate laugh at my かもしれない.

(I tried desperately to put Japanese emphasis dots on the だろう up there but failed epicly. Readers of Japanese are probably familiar with these. They go by the name of 圏点 (けんてん), 傍点 (ぼうてん), or 脇点 (わきてん), and they are the little dots above/beside (depending on the direction of the text) characters that emphasize certain words. They are roughly equivalent to italics in English, and they are definitely necessary to express the emphasis my roommate put on だろう. Beer to anyone who can tell me how to get the dots in Wordpress.)

Last Wednesday I forgot to include the most basic informal causative request pattern – やらせて (yarasete). “I wanna try!” “Let me have a turn!” I spent three years teaching and being neighbors with Japanese elementary school students, so it must have been them I really learned the pattern from and not the JHS English teacher as I claimed. There were two kids in particular who knocked on my door to play DS and they always wanted to use my DS…probably because they had already scratched up the screens on their own.

Sadly (and surprisingly) I can’t find a video demonstrating the proper intonation, but it should be super whiny with heavy emphasis on the や and せ. A less whiny version is useful when someone is bumbling and you know that you can do whatever it is better than they can. Just try not to show your frustration.

Matt added a couple of great comments to Wednesday’s post that are worthy of their own post.

Dude, I totally got dinged for calling -te the imperative form the other week. You’d better watch your back.

I just want to summarize the “miru 見る is controversial” thing for non-reading linguists: “miru” does indeed become “misaseru” if you add the “-saseru” ending according to modern rules. The controversy is whether it is acceptable to use this form instead of “miseru”, which is a separate verb meaning “show”. As far as I can tell there are two prongs to the controversy: (1) “misaseru” and “miseru” are equivalent, therefore the former is redundant, therefore it should not be used (you wouldn’t say “shisaseru” either, just “saseru”), and (2) “miseru” itself can be analyzed as “miru” + OJ causative suffix, therefore, “misaseru” is an ugly, modern usurper, functionally and semantically identical but aesthetically and morally inferior, and should be avoided. I’ve seen similar complaints about 着せる vs 着させる.

The counterarguments to the above include (1) to some speakers at least, they aren’t equivalent; everyone has “miseru” in their vocabulary, and the fact that some people also use “misaseru” indicates that for them it performs a function that “miseru” can’t, and (2) whatever, dude, living Japanese isn’t bound by your rules and regulations, and these forms sound fine to me.

Nice. I see how they are semi-redundant, but I also see the logic behind having them both – one is “you show it to me” and the other is “please allow me to see it.” Even in English the latter feels more かたい, which is why I think all three of the links bring up television “announcers”: people on television, especially the MCs for game shows, speak in keigo constantly. They are a dirty petri dish for the evolution of polite new linguistic terms (or at least terms that sound new/strange to everyday folk). Japanese people love arguing about this stuff. I heard lectures about 不思議な日本語 or whatever at three different midyear conferences during my stint as a JET, and at each one the speaker debunked some sort of new keigo usage.

さ、参りましょう. Matt then provided this great parallel which shows that these must be separate terms:

Incidentally the case for non-equivalence is more obvious with “kiseru” vs “kisaseru”. The former means “put clothing on someone” (e.g. a child) and the latter means “cause/allow someone to put clothing on”. Because there is an indirect object the difference is more stark, but then compare to “miseru” vs “misaseru” using a fanciful but parallel definition: “put something into someone’s visual cortex” vs “cause/allow someone to put something into their visual cortex”. The difference, or at least the possibility of some speakers keeping the two conceptually separate, becomes a little clearer.

Time for some serious old school How to Japonese now that Murakami madness is over.

Causative tense is not the easiest to get used to. Once you’ve mastered it, though, it’s really flexible. A couple of things to note before we get to today’s little trick:

- It’s important to remember that causative tense can just as easily mean “let/allow someone to do X” as it can “make someone do X.”

- In my very first set of posts, I introduced the 敬語 form 〜させていただきます. Basically this is just a fancy way to say 〜する. You can turn it into a formal request easily enough by saying 〜させていただけませんか or 〜させていただけませんでしょうか.

And now for today’s trick. There’s also a cool way to use the causative tense as an informal request. Normal requests take the form 〜してもいい or 〜していい, which literally means “Is it okay if I X?” Make that more normal English and you get “May I X?”

If you use the causative straight up – 〜させて – with a little rising intonation on the end, you can say, “Lemme do X.” You can make it even more casual by saying 〜さして, which is a slurred version and slightly easier to say. I remember hearing one of the English teachers I worked with use this. Whenever he was looking at papers or worksheets that the students were holding he would say, ちょっと見さして. “Let me take a look.” 見る is a fairly controversial case, apparently, but I think this works with most verbs. ちょっと食べさせて is an especially good one that will earn you some freebies from friends.

Update:

As requested, a version for linguists:

Standard causative is ~saseru. The perfective tense of this is ~saseta. The imperative form is ~sasete, which is often slurred to ~sashite (or ~sasite depending on the romanization you use). This is a great form for informal requests. You can change miru to misasete, or taberu to tabesasete if you want someone to “let you” take a look at something or have a taste of something. Important here to remember the flexibility of the causative tense.

Bonus update thought:

I think using させて・さして (sasete/sashite) on its own must always imply that the speaker wants to be let/made to do the action. If you’re trying to get someone to make or let someone else, then you probably need to use させてあげて・さしてあげて (sasete agete / sashite agete)? Hmm…when I think about it, させてあげてd (sasete agete) feels like it would always be “let” rather than “make.”

After two straight weekends of awesome globetrotting madness, I finally had a weekend to myself and could make use of a couple of terms my host mom in Nishiaizu taught me:

骨を休め – literally “rest one’s bones,” take a physical rest

羽を伸ばす – literally “spread one’s wings,” a similar pattern but also includes a mental rest aspect, and another alternative is…

鬼の居ぬ間に洗濯をする – literally “do laundry while the oni is away,” where oni = unpleasant boss-like person/situation that oppresses you

Get the scoop on these and other idioms at this awesome ことわざ dictionary.

The Japanese are a curious set of folks. Endlessly courteous and patient in most normal circumstances, when they get behind the wheel, they are transformed into vicious tailgating demons. Yes, this is a blanket statement and I realize that it’s not exactly fair, but after spending three years driving every day in this country, I feel qualified to make the claim that Japanese drivers are at least creative with their interpretations of traffic laws. Red lights don’t really count for the first couple seconds. The speed limits are actually 30km faster than actually posted. Hazard lights instantly make any location a parking space.

One of the funniest things is the highway patrol cars. Because they aren’t the police, they don’t have the authority to give out tickets, so they drive their SUVs at the speed limit (generally 80km/h) with lights flashing, suggesting that drivers slow down. People zip around them at speeds up to 150km/h.

The actual police drive unmarked white cars. There are a couple signs that give them away. One, there are always two guys in the car. Two, the guys are always wearing helmets – no joke. And three, there are two rearview mirrors, one for each of the dudes. Japanese refer to these guys as 複面 (ふくめん), 面 referring to the flat plane of a mirror, and 複 doubling it. These dudes mean business, and everyone knows this. If you ever come across a single line of cars going the speed limit in the left lane, more than likely one of these unmarked cars is at the front of the line; best to follow along until the 複面 exits, at which point everyone speeds up again. It’s hilarious to watch some drivers speed past everyone, realize they just passed the cops, quickly move to the left, and then slam on the brakes.

I believe this blog post has one of the few photos of a 複面 (and proof that I wasn’t just hearing things when a friend explained this to me). The caption above the photo of cars says that the driver was warned by a 複面 over a microphone.

Update:

Oops. Looks like I messed up here. I my defense, I swear that a friend taught me the set of kanji above. I vividly remember his explanation and writing down the kanji in a notebook…that I am not able to locate at the moment. *gulp* Also in my defense, a Google search that reveals 複面パトカー is a somewhat uncommon input mistake. Not nonexistent, though.

As Gulab has noted in the comments, the correct kanji is 覆面. Here, let me make that enormous for you:

Booyah. As he noted, it means concealed or, in this case, unmarked. Thanks, Gulab. Sorry it took me so long to update this post!

In which I play advice columnist to a reader. Elinor asked me about a Japanese guy’s response when she asked him out. See my response in the comments on one of my favorite old posts about かもしれない.

Tokyo Damage Report has a nice post taking a look at the 小さいつ and all its different roles. Very interesting stuff. He breaks it down into four categories. I’ll switch them up a bit:

3. Contractions. Put two kanji together, and often the sound between the characters gets contracted. Uninteresting, as he notes.

4. Emphasis. Now we start to get interesting. People add an extra syllable into words like とても and よほど to emphasize them. In English we tend to draw out vowels for emphasis, but in Japanese they hover on that moment riiiiiight at the beginning of the consonant and then hit that fucker with a wicked staccato. This theory works in the next two sets.

1. Onomatopoeia/り. I’m not sure that these words sound exactly like their actions (Is it possible to “sound” like “looking very similar,” which is what そっくり means? Although, maybe it is possible. Maybe the Japanese are just hyper-aware of the sounds of different actions. I guess they do have way more noises than English. Hmm…), but they are at least more aurally interesting than your average word. They also extend on the emphasis theory. The number of superlatives in the group is impressive. One I picked up from a friend is ごっつい, which I think means “huge.” I wonder if there are any XっXり words that haven’t been taken by meanings yet. Get ‘em quick before some domain-name squatter can.

2. と. I believe all of the words in this category are adverbs, whereas the words in the り category can actually be verbs themselves. I guess that proves と is a nearly universal marker of adverb-ness? Again these are used to modify verbs and make them even more extreme.

I think the best way to get used to these is to not study them on their own; they almost always work with other verbs, and you should pick one or two for each pattern. Generally they only work with a very limited range of verbs anyway. さっぱり, for example, is used almost exclusively with 忘れる or 分からない, implying a complete blankness of mind.

The other trick is to figure out which ones work on their own (ばっちりです！ そっくりです！) and which ones work with する (すっきりした！ ).

Great stuff. My personal favorites are ばっちり (with uncomfortably dorky thumbs up), そっくり (I am ルパン) and こっそり (eating onigiri on the train).