Differences between English and Japanese Grammars (Part 2) (Gillian)

In my previous article, Differences between English and Japanese Grammars (Part 1), I talked about some of the more rudimentary differences between the Grammars of English and Japanese. In this article I want to dig slightly deeper, and consider some aspects of Japanese grammar that are expressed in a completely different way to how they are expressed in English. I hope that in reading this anybody who is either hoping to earn money by teaching English, or who is struggling with some of the never-before-seen grammar of Japanese, will be somewhat clearer on these differences.

The differences I will be pointing out in this article are all verb-based. They are transitive vs. intransitive verbs, the passive form and the causative form. The reason why I have chosen to look specifically at these is because I felt that these are the most commonplace parts of Japanese grammar that seem to work completely differently to the English method. I found that when I was learning Japanese I would want to know how to say something causative, but it took a long time before I was introduced to Japanese causative forms. When I finally did learn how to use the Japanese causative form what struck me as particularly interesting was how the causative form was so different to the English form. To explain the English causative form to a native Japanese speaker when you yourself might not know what the causative form is in Japanese, would be notably difficult.


Transitive vs. Intransitive Verbs
If any of you are tugging nervously at your collars, wondering whether or not you should admit that you do not actually understand what I mean by transitive and intransitive verbs, do not worry. You are not stupid. To be quite honest, these are terms that you really do not need to know unless you are studying either a foreign language or Linguistics. So, for those of you not in the know, transitive verbs are essentially verbs that require objects. In the sentence “I stopped the car”, for example, “the car” is the necessary object. Intransitive verbs do not need objects, so in the sentence “The car stopped”, having an object would make the sentence ungrammatical.

In English, transitive and intransitive verbs are more often than not the same word. You have sentence pairings such as “I opened the door” and “The door opened”, or “Tammy dropped my mother’s vase” and “My mother’s vase dropped”. There are a few exceptions, the most well-known of which perhaps being “set” vs “sit”, as in “Will you set the box on the table?” vs. “Will you sit down?”

In Japanese, however, these verbs are often different words. For example, “I stopped the car” in Japanese is “watashi wa kuruma wo tometa” (「私は車を止めた」) while “The car stopped” is “kuruma ga tomatta” (「車が止まった」). “I dropped the vase” in Japanese is “watashi wa kabin wo otoshita” (「私は花瓶を落とした」) while “The vase dropped” is “kabin ga ochita” (「花瓶が落ちた」). Native Japanese speakers would naturally assume that English verbs would have some sort of phonetic differentiation between the transitive and intransitive as well, and hope to use that differentiation to tell the verbs apart.

The interesting thing, however, is that the phonetic difference between transitive and intransitive verbs is actually not necessary, because it is perfectly clear from the context and the surrounding words (i.e. whether there is an object (covert or not) in the sentence) if the verb is transitive or intransitive. In English we are easily able to tell the type of verb using the context and nothing else, and it would perhaps be beneficial to make sure the Japanese are aware of this.


Passive Form

In English the passive form is separable from the active form in two main ways. First, the special passive “be” is added to the perfect form: “catch” vs. “is caught”, “ate” vs. “was eaten”, “will buy” vs. “will be bought”, etc. Second, the object and the subject switch position in the passive sentence, so the object comes first in the sentence. “The policeman caught the burglar” vs. “The burglar was caught by the policeman”, “The cat ate the fish” vs. “The fish was eaten by the cat”, “The boy bought the toy train” vs. “The toy train was bought by the boy”, etc.

In Japanese, however, there is no passive “be”. Instead there is a special “passive” form, which is more or less the same for every Japanese verb. “Eat” is “taberu” (「食べる」) while “was eaten” is “taberareru” (｢食べられる｣). “Speak” is “hanasu” (｢話す｣) while “was spoken” is “hanasareru” (｢話される｣). This is fairly different from the passive “be” that we use in English, and I would argue that the Japanese passive is easier, as it is one routine change in form, while in English the phonetic realisation of the perfect “be” changes as well as the verb form, and different English verbs have different phonetic realisations of the perfect form.

While the form of the verb is completely different in both languages, and for Japanese people to learn how to say and speak and recognise the change in the English verbs will probably take some time, the passive form can at least be recognised fairly easily by the fact that the subject and object swap around the same way in both languages. So in Japanese the sentence “the cat ate the fish” would be “neko ha sakana wo tabeta” (「猫は魚を食べた」), while the sentence “The fish was eaten by the cat” would be “neko ga sakana ni taberareta”「魚が猫に食べられた」. If a native Japanese speaker understands that similarity, then hopefully the English passive form will not be as much of a struggle.


Causative Form
The causative form is when, in English, we “make someone do something” or we “let someone do something”. So instead of saying “He went home”, with the causative it would me more like “I made him go home”. Instead of “I ate cake” we would say “He let me eat cake”. These are the past forms. The present forms would be “I am making” and “I am letting”, and the future forms are “I will make” and “I will let”. These all attach to the dictionary form of the verb, with the person being caused to do something nestling in between the “let/make” and the verb.

In English we use both “let” and “make”, and these words have different connotations. “Make” implies that you are forcing the action upon an unwilling participant, while “let” implies that you are allowing a willing participate to perform the action. Interestingly enough, we can probably tell whether “let” or “make” is implied by the context of the sentence. It is as highly unlikely that we would “let” a stubborn child do their homework, as it is that we would “make” that same stubborn child spend the day in Disneyland. In Japanese both “let” and “make” are represented by the same causative form. “To make/let eat” is “tabesaseru” (｢食べさせる｣), and “to make/let go” is “ikaseru” (｢行かせる｣).

This makes things difficult for both native English speakers learning Japanese and native Japanese speakers learning English. The native English speakers have to learn how to pay more attention to the context of the sentence to determine whether the “let” or “make” meaning is implied in a Japanese sentence, while the native Japanese speakers need to remember the difference between the two words. Perhaps it would help to have explained to them the difference in meaning between “make” and “let”.


In conclusion, the differences between English and Japanese grammars are certainly there, and it helps to understand these differences if one wants to either learn the other language or teach your native language to somebody else. Often native English speakers trying to teach Japanese people how to speak English struggle with these sorts of differences, because without the knowledge of either the linguistics of the English in question, or knowledge of how the Japanese equivalent works, it is hard to explain. Hopefully this and my previous article have helped in some small way to make that job easier. Good luck with your teaching.