6.1. COMPARISONS, PREFERENCES AND CHOICE 277
ond hand information due to reading a book or watching a documentary
on television, not just having been told something. As long as it’s strictly
speaking unverified information, it counts as hearsay.
For nouns, a fully qualified statement involving the plain copula is
used:
”I heard he’s a teacher.”- Strong impression, manner, having the appearance of
To explain this word, we must briefly look at classical Japanese, in which
the noun , , was used to indicate a seemingness, which we still see
in expressions such as
or
. These mean, respectively,
”having the appearance of being a hardship” and ”having the appearance
of being a feast”. This meaning is preserved in modern Japanese through
the use of still, but read as.
This noun adjective combines with to create a conceptual
likeness, relating two manners to each other:
connotes: ”Please go about your business in a manner that makes it
appear as if you didn’t hear that.”
meaning: ”Please act like you didn’t hear that.”A special use of this likeness adverb is with the series
/ / / , with which it sets up an explicit ”manner” indicator:
- in this manner
- in that manner
- in that manner like so
- in which manner
Very similar in meaning to the / / / series, the deci-
sion of whether to use or (or -/ -/ - equivalents) is mostly
decided by what one’s intention is. When you need to be instructional, or
want to highlight a specific and exact act, as well as the way of performing
that act, (etc.) is used. If one wants to be illustrative, or descriptive,