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I keep forgetting these forums exist.
Anyway, I’ve just gotten onto the part about ために and was wondering something:
The examples given are in the order “for x, y” (like “for the test, I will study”) and I was wondering if an equally valid translation would be “y for x” like “I will study for the test”. Or would that be worded differently in Japanese?
Thanks!
AnonymousFor the sentence to be grammatically correct, it would be ‘for x, y’. However, I have heard Japanese people say ‘y for x’ when in a casual environment.
‘Y for x’ works fine when you’re doing translations into natural English, but it’s helpful to get into the ‘for x, y’ mindset, because basically every Japanese grammar form goes “Sentence X conjunction sentence Y”, and if you don’t think of it the right way, you’re going to get things backwards.
Yeah, the reason it’s written that way is to get your brain operating in a more Japanese order. In English, we tend to say who is doing something, what they’re doing, who/what they are doing it to (if applicable), some type of reason and finally time/location info. In Japanese the “what they’re doing” part usually comes at the end.
So a sentence like:
“Bob went to the store to buy an apple for his grandmother yesterday.”
Becomes, in “Japanese order” something more like:
“Bob, yesterday, for his grandmother, to the store, an apple, went to buy.”
or something like it…Japanese is a bit more flexible due to the particles.Thanks for the answers! Helped clear things up :)
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