308 CHAPTER 6. LANGUAGE PATTERNS
you’re used to the English way of expressing yourself, but in Japanese,
these seemingly trivial things require quite a bit of explanation, as they are
dependent on relative social status, direction of giving or receiving, as well
as involving a careful choice in particles to use. Involving both plain verb
forms as well as form conjunction, the acts of giving, or doing for some-
one, and receiving, or taking a liberty or having someone do something,
covers some of the more complicated verb constructions in the language.
What makes things so complicated is that the verb used, and its im-
plied meaning, can make the difference between respectful behaviour and
rather blatant indirect insults; confidently using the wrong verb can preĴy
much declare that you experience your status relative to your partner very
differently from what they thought it was. In the best case, this can lead to
short lived misunderstandings, but more often than not it will result in an
suddenly much more distal relationship.
So, let us look at the right way, as well as the wrong way, to handle
this culturally grounded practice.
Giving, doing for someone
In Japanese, ”giving” and ”doing ... for (someone)” are, at least grammati-
cally, the same thing. However, while in English, ”giving” is just one verb,
in Japanese, things are not that simple: depending on the social status of
the individual parties and who is doing the giving, different verbs are used.
This comes down to two possible ”directions” of giving/doing for, the first
of which is giving ’away’:
- first person (”I” or ”we”) to second person (”you”), i.e. ”I give to
you”, - second person to third person (”him”, ”her”, ”them” or ”it”), i.e.
”you give to her”, and - first person to third person, i.e. ”I give to them”.
Giving or doing for, in this ”direction”, can be done using three different
verbs, the choice of which depending on the social difference between the
giver, and the receiver:
- if the giving is being done to someone or something whose status is
irrelevant (very good friends, young children, pets, etc), ( + +)
is used.