nihongo wo benkyou shitai

The posts have been rather long, so time for a quick one.....

One thing that bothered me until a Japanese friend saved me from insanity was the difference between our old friends なければなりません, なければいきません and にちがいない.

In English it's easy... take a look at these sentences:

I have to finish the homework
I have to eat all my dinner
I have to write a proposal for a £3million tender

Simple stuff in English. I guess this is English being Japanese (bear with me on this). The Japanese language likes to be ambiguous. It's a politeness thing. The Japanese avoid definites. Take the simple phrase 'I don't know'... This is dead simple to translate.

English: I don't know
Jenglish: [know + negative]
日本語： 知りません

Of course it's wrong. It's the classic gaijin mistake. the verb 'to know' implies , well... knowledge. And knowledge is definite: You either know something or you don't. And when we translate this we end up with something rather arrogant. What we need to do is not be so arrogantly definite.

There are three states of knowing.... (1) I do not know, (2) I know, and (3) I am in the process of knowing (coming into know) - spot the ambiguous one....

A quick dictionary search shows that 'come to know' is the verb わかる. So, to be Japanese about this, you should say 'I have not come to know the answer to your question', or わかりません.

Anyway, where were we? Oh yeah. Definites. English being Japanese. Ambiguity.

The three English statements above are all ambiguous. What exactly does 'I have to' mean in this context? We've all done it...

Friend: matey, you coming to the party tonight?
You: nah. I have to clip my toenails.

You actually don't 'have to' clip, you 'want to' or 'feel the need to'. No-one had actually told you to . And it's here the Japanese make the distinction. If you are obliging yourself to do something, use なければいきません. If you have been told to do something by someone or some external thing (like a sign), use なければなりません.

See, said it was a short post.

おやすみ