Saturday, June 3, 2017

grammar - Explaining Tense in Japanese


I find that Japanese is a weird language for its learners, especially for those who've already learned English. In English one usually uses two tenses: present and past, however in Japanese there are accomplished and unaccomplished tenses, and these look strange if literally translated to English. For instance:




わたしは日本に行くとき、ラジオを買いました。
Literally "When I go to Japan, I bought a radio."



Here, the English sentence has two different parts which use two unrelated different tenses, so it's obviously logically wrong.


Another example:



私は日本に行ったとき日本製のテレビを買う予定です。
Literally "When I went to Japan, I decide to buy a TV made in Japan."




And this sentence also sounds strange.


Can anyone explain how to think about Japanese tenses for sentences like these? I'm really puzzled by it.




No comments:

Post a Comment

periodic trends - Comparing radii in lithium, beryllium, magnesium, aluminium and sodium ions

Apparently the of last four, $\ce{Mg^2+}$ is closest in radius to $\ce{Li+}$. Is this true, and if so, why would a whole larger shell ($\ce{...