Huh, that was new to me too. But it seems to be a relatively loose distinction at best. I mean there are non-しい-ending adjectives that kind of describe stuff subjectively (or even human emotions), like 甘い (sweet, naive), 熱い (hot, passionate), or 可愛い (cute, lovable). And there are しい-ending adjectives which don’t seem to describe human emotions, like 新しい (new, recent), 易しい (easy, simple), 涼しい (cool, clear), or 正しい (correct, right).
Maybe I misunderstood this and somebody else has something to say about it. It seems like an explanation for the discrepancy could be that their original meanings (which are now maybe second meanings or archaic) might have had those distinctions into categories but it changed over time. Now, it definitely seems like one shouldn’t rely on i-adjectives being distinguishable in that way.
Yes, it’s more of an “interesting observation” than a fact about grammar as such, I think. The -i vs -shii distinction goes back as far as Old Japanese (700-800AD, which is the earliest version of the language we have information for) and even then it was only a “mostly true” rule-of-thumb (Frellesvig’s A History of the Japanese Language cites a reference that says that in OJ about 20% of adjectives don’t follow the “emotional meanings are -shii ending” pattern). There’s no consensus about where the -shi- might have originally come from or what its meaning/usage was (it would have arisen at some time too far back in the past when Japanese was a purely spoken language that left no historical evidence for us to see).
I think most native speakers don’t think about grammar at all; to the extent they do they’ll be falling back on the grammar as taught in school. I do note that the Daijisen entry for を lists the “location/origin of movement” senses separately from the “mark the object of the verb” sense. So I’m not sure that “を does more things than indicating direct objects” is a purely Western view of the language.
Incidentally, I think the Dictionary agrees that in 私は車がある the が matches the subject – that’s similar to some of the examples it lists under ‘Subject’ here. Plus there are not multiple entries for different が particle uses the way there are for を – there’s just the one “subject marker” entry. (Well, and one for が the conjunction, but that’s an entirely different thing.)
Is this grammatical? It looks a bit weird to me, but maybe that is just because I haven’t seen だった like that before? (I haven’t read enough narrative/non-dialog Japanese, I guess. xD)
おいしそう means looks delicious. So that makes おいしそうだった looked delicious, right? So おいしそうだったケーキ “a cake that looked delicious”, right? Just checking so I’m not even more confused than I suspect I am…
I think this is an artifact of the era in which DoBJG was published. Its first edition was 1986. I have the 45th printing from 2003. It didn’t become conventional wisdom that kana only instruction was markedly better than romaji until the late 90s or thereabouts. What might seem obvious now was quite different a generation ago.
I collect Japanese textbooks as a hobby (at least that’s what I tell myself when I buy another one). I have a copy of Learn Japanese New College Text published in 1984 that is entirely romaji. It introduces hiragana in the second lesson, but then completely, and utterly, ignores it in favor of romaji. And it was written by the Japanese Language department of the University of Maryland and published by the University of Hawaii press.
To which times change, the science of learning evolves. What seems a terrible decision now was the convention then.
Right, it was more だった used while modifying a noun that I don’t remember having seen before.
Also honestly this, because そう is used for things you don’t know personally. It is something you see or so. So your joke comment doesn’t actually fit what was written in Japanese, so it made me question if I’d missed something. If someone was talking about a cake they actually ate it would be おいしかったケーキ. So I wanted to doublecheck I hadn’t missed something grammar-wise.
I don’t collect textbooks as such but I do have a few books I picked up largely for historical interest The oldest I have is “Hossfeld’s Japanese Grammar” from 1904 (mine is the 1919 2nd edition), which is entirely romaji, a choice which is justified in the preface:
The native alphabet employed for writing the language has two different forms, one rendered intricate by the addition of numerous variations, known as the “Hiragana” form of character, and the other, the “Katakana” character, entirely devoid of variation, and therefore much simpler; but a movement has for some time been in active progress in favour of the adoption of the Roman alphabet according to the system employed in this work, where all the Japanese words are spelt in the native mode, by assigning to each of the native letters a corresponding equivalent from the English alphabet, and fixing accurately the sound of each. The acquisition of a knowledge of the hiragana and katakana characters is therefore entirely unnecessary, and it is quite possible to obtain a thoroughly intimate acquaintance with Japanese for colloquial purposes through the instrumentality of our own alphabet.
There were some attempts by Japanese people as well, and way earlier (around 1900 or so?). I’m sure @Myria can give names and details off of the top of her head
Some interesting romanisation choices in there – I spotted kwai/gwai which I’ve encountered before (notably in “Kwannon”), and, more unusually, omission of unvoiced vowels (arimas, mokrok, frui…).
Who was the prominent Meiji government figure who advocated for straight-up adopting English as the official language? (I want to say it was Fukuzawa or Mori, but maybe it was somebody else.)
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The oldest I have is “Hossfeld’s Japanese Grammar” from 1904 (mine is the 1919 2nd edition), which is entirely romaji, a choice which is justified in the preface:
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