wa tashi wa...

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wa tashi wa...

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1Lodhi
Nov. 29, 2007, 8:02 pm

what is the literal translation of 'wa tashi wa'?

2Larxol
Nov. 30, 2007, 9:27 am

"I" or "me". The very formal spelling would be watakushi-wa.

3gscottmoore
Dez. 9, 2007, 2:35 pm

Literal translation is "I, as for...". "Wa" is a post-position indicator of subject. Watashi is a shortened and common usage of watakushi. I'm not certain about it's consistent usage but I find women use "watakushi" more often than men and assume it has some heightened measure of politeness.

Watashi wa ikimasu - I am going. Literally: I "as for" "going is".

Fun, isn't it? :-)

-- Gerry

4MMcM
Dez. 9, 2007, 2:58 pm

Extra-super-literal translation is something like "private matters, as for."

A reasonable case can be made for Japanese not having personal pronouns. All the words that fulfill that discourse function are ordinary nouns: no morphology, no special syntax, no restrictions on being modified by adjectives, etc. And they are fairly recent. And there are (comparatively) a lot of them for different situations.

5AshleyRechten Erste Nachricht
Jan. 6, 2008, 10:27 pm

"watashi" is a personal pronoun while "wa" is the topic/subject marker.

I find that if you are translating it to English it is almost always fine to translate it as "I am" or sometimes just "I"
Though there are more literal translations, in my opinion they are not practical for English usage.

6rm6532
Jan. 12, 2008, 9:31 am

I have to agree with Ashley that literal translations are not practical here, and can be somewhat misleading. The only times I can think that literal translations are useful are when you're trying to remember an idiom or trying to understand a text in the original language. There are several ways of saying 'I' in Japanese, and here are four in rough order of politeness:

Watakushi - very formal (more likely to be used by women)
Watashi - formal for men, standard for women
Boku - casual for men
Ore - casual for men

I'd say that 'boku' is more likely to be used when talking in a mixed group and 'ore' when talking just to men, but I'm not quite sure. There is also the cutesy 'atashi' used only by women and effeminate men.

I have this vague memory that it's also possible to say 'uchi ha' to mean 'I am' or 'I' but I may be wrong.

7Lodhi
Jan. 12, 2008, 10:15 am

Hey, thanks all for all input.

8chamekke
Jan. 12, 2008, 11:16 am

"Watashi wa" is closer to saying "As for me" than saying "I".

In English, would you say to someone, "As for me, I'm going to the store"?

You would do so only if your aim is to emphasize your actions in contradistinction to someone else's. ("You may be going home, but as for me, I'm going to the store.")

Otherwise - in Japanese, as in English - you simply don't use the phrase.

So in Japanese, "Ikimasu" simply means "I'm going" (with the subject - "I" - implied and understood), whereas "Watashi wa ikimasu" means "As for me, I'm going."

The unnecessary use of "watashi wa" is one of those things that marks a new speaker of Japanese. I tend to overuse it myself.

There's a very clear discussion of this (including the parallel question of when to use "watashi ga") in the wonderful book Making Sense of Japanese: What the Textbooks Don't Tell You by Jay Rubin. See the second chapter, "Wa and Ga: The Answer to Unasked Questions" (and also the first chapter, "The Myth of the Subjectless Sentence").

9rm6532
Jan. 13, 2008, 5:28 am

OK, I take your point that a simple 'I am' translation can also be misleading when you're speaking. However, when you're listening it works just as well as 'as for me'.

I have a couple of problems with 'as for me'. First of all the contrast with what other people are doing is not as strong as it would be in English for that phrase. For example, if a woman starts a conversation, 'watashi ha ne,...', although she's bringing the focus on herself, she's not strongly emphasising the contrast with someone else.

Secondly, I never use the phrase, 'as for me', in English (ever), whereas 'watashi ha' is reasonably common, though admittedly not as common as 'I am'. Taken at face value, the idea that 'watashi ha' translates to 'as for me' could lead to underuse or a sense that Japanese is a highly 'formal' language (in my opinion). Literal translations are problematic when two languages are so different.

However, given that there are problems with both 'I am' and 'as for me', I admit which translation you choose is down to personal preference, so long as you take either with a healthy spoonful of salt.

10Lodhi
Feb. 7, 2008, 3:38 pm

Thanks chamekke. I might actually get the book you've mentioned.

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