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Hello,
I’ve been posting some sentences on Lang-8 and have a question I hope you can help me out with.I wrote, “I didn’t think he was mean”
“かれは わるかった と おもくなかった。The correction I got back was かれが わるい と おもわなかった
So I understand I mixed up the conjugation, but my question is the difference between the sentence in English and Japanese, because they put “warui” into present tense, even though I was trying to write it in the past (“was mean”). I would read the corrected sentence as “I didn’t think he is mean”. Is that just how they would express that thought (“I didn’t think he was mean”) in japanese? Or is the correction different from the desired sentence?
Thanks!
Eric
AnonymousThat would be the common “double tense” mistake. Citation does not work the same way in Japanese as in English. Whatever goes in the citation needs to be what would occur AT THE GIVEN TIME.
雨が降ったと思う。 ＝ I think that it rained.
雨が降らないと思う。＝ I think that it won’t rain.
雨が降ると思った。 ＝ I thought it would rain.
雨が降ると思わない。 ＝ I don’t think that it will rain.雨が降ったと思った。X This sentence is typically wrong, although it is not always wrong if you’re relaying your experience or writing a novel. Then it would mean “I thought that it rained IN THE PAST, NOT AT THE TIME I WAS THINKING.”
と quotes the thought that one has. So at that time you were thinking, that guy would be mean, not that guy was mean.
Yeah, I think 「かれは わるかった と おもくなかった。」is more like “At some point in the past, I had the thought that he was mean at some *further* point in the past, longer ago than I actually had the thought”. That probably seems a convoluted explanation but it’s just that – as far as I know – English doesn’t have such a succinct equivalent. Simply saying “I thought he was mean” could suggest he was mean at the same time as you were having the thought OR that he was mean *before* you had the thought (but maybe not at the time you had the thought; maybe he’d changed his ways by that point).
I doubt it would be that common a construction, so just take Tsetycoon13′s advice :)
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