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LESSON 4

What?

Tips

By now you find you can say a great many things with very little in the way of grammar. Just stringing the words together with appropriate pauses is enough to convey a lot of meaning. Japanese often talk this way, but they also often add various elements to make the meaning clearer. We will learn about these elements little by little. Notice that a Japanese word has a much wider, and vaguer, meaning than the corresponding English word. Tabako means not only “cigarettes” but “a cigarette,” “the cigarette,” “some cigarettes,” “a pack of cigarettes,” etc. Anata can mean “you,” “yours,” “the one you are going to use,” etc. Of course when the Japanese wants to be specific he has ways to narrow the meaning down, but usually he finds it unnecessary to be too specific. Do not worry about little English words (like a, the, some, none, it, you, me, etc.) which often do not appear in the Japanese sentences. Japanese speakers, like Japanese artists, can achieve great effects with a few nicely poised strokes—they leave all they can to your imagination. This is part of the charm.