In this lesson we discuss the “existence” verbs いる and ある, and give an in-depth discussion of using the は and が particles. Music by Luz Fonte.
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4 Comments
funny sidenote;
i learned a while back (thx, internet) that there are two helper robots that work at the hospital near me (leading people to rooms, opening doors, etc) so i went down there one day after work and ask the receptionist if i could “meet” the robots. she said 「すみませんですけど、ロボットさん５時まで働いています」
or something like that. first off, i found it pretty funny robots have specific working hours, but then i realized that whenever she referred to the robots, she was using いる- so i asked some japanese friends and they all confirmed that いる was the appropriate verb to use for robots, not ある!
apparently robots are 生き物 in japan
Yeah, while I use robots and the undead as a joke in the podcast, the true rule of thumb is probably “if it looks alive-ish, then you use いる”. So a corpse would be ある, but a shambling zombie いる. You can also use いる for purposes of anthropomorphizing, especially, for example, when talking to children. At night after my 3-year old son takes a bath, we often say something like お月さま、今日はいるかな？ and go to the window in his bedroom to see if we can see the moon. We also use いる for his stuffed animals. Things like microbes and slime molds, however, certainly fit a technical definition of “living things”, but because they don’t have the same “feel” as something like a raccoon or a fireman (or even a zombie, for that matter), their existence would probably be discussed using ある／ない.
Sensei,
For the は particle, is the contrastor characteristic pretty much built in or is it only sometimes the case?
The end break down of それでわwas very interesting. (related) I had heard on another website (co-hosted by a native japanese) that まったね (not sure if I have the spelling write) could be construed as for use by girls, women, young boys and gay men, and that if you were a straight man you should use まったな. Would まったね have a similar derivation to where, at least to me, it doesn’t seem that な would be needed for male, female or other differences. It seems commonly used by everyone on websites but I cannot say about native speakers.
@Shutoh– The contrasting function is always there to some extent, but will be more or less emphasized depending on context. Actual conversational patterns are very complex (in any language, of course), and as you learn more Japanese (especially *real* conversation), you will learn many tricks for avoiding はs when that nuance isn’t wanted.
Saying that またね is effeminate is a bit of an exaggeration. It would actually be the tone of one’s voice that made it sound that way. If you watch anime, pay attention to the tones used at the ends of sentences–they are slightly different between men and women. Using a lilting, “cute” tone at the end of またねー can make this sound very “girly”, but just use of ね here won’t. To me, またな can easily sound overly macho, but a lot of it depends on who’s saying it, and how.