110 CHAPTER 3. MORE GRAMMAR
Colloquially, the + form is often shortened by dropping the
, to create + instead. This means that the following two sentences
are technically the same, but the first is formal, and the second less formal:
”What are [you] doing?”Special conjunctions: /
Another important pair is the +
/ +
pair, where is some-
times wriĴen or pronounced as instead (this is not wrong, but simply
an older, alternate way to write/say , used a lot in songs, poetry and
still commonly used in many dialects). These two constructions stand for a
gradual process directed either towards the speaker in some way, or head-
ing away from the speaker in some way. This towards/away can be either
a physical process or an abstract process such as ”it feels like her mind is
slowly slipping away”:
”It’s (gradually) become spring.””Mt. Fuji is (gradually) coming into view.””It’s (gradually) becoming night.”While the translation in this last sentence also uses ’becoming’, be-
cause the verb is used we can gather that this is something that is less
desired than the evening that precedes it. Because this is phrased as if the
process moves away from the speaker, a feeling of something that is less
preferred is sketched. When used in this way, or are usually
wriĴen and instead of using kanji.
Note that these interpretations do not always apply. + for in-
stance is also a common paĴern used in combination with activity verbs
to indicate ”going (away) to do ...., and coming back once done” such as
, meaning ”going to buy something (and then come back after-
wards)” or , meaning ”going (somewhere) (and then coming
back after whatever one had to do there is done)”.