Need some clarification about what Google translate gave me when I was using it to check my translation. I wanted to specify possession or both the books and the desk.
My sentence was: “My books are on my desk.”
I wrote: 私の本は私の机にあります
Google returned: 私の本は机の上にあります which it translated to “My book is on the desk”
I understand the addition of 上 but not the removal of the second 私の. Is it more grammatically correct / preferred to not use 私 more then once?
Thanks
-パトリック (Patrick)
Overall, Japanese people like omitting things that are clear from the context.
For example, if you want to say “I like juice”, you could just say 「ジュースが好きです」without adding 私は～ in the beginning of the sentence.
It depends on the context that you’re saying this in… But like even in a scenario with multiple peoples’ desks, you’re by default probably referring to your own desk
If for some reason that would be really unclear, or someone asked like “whose/which desk are you books on?”, then sure throw in the second 私
Ah, so natively speaking it would just be redundant in most situations. So to make sure I understand how this conversation might progress, let me lay my thoughts out.
If I told the person 私の本は机の上にあります “my books are on the/my desk”. If they were unclear about which desk I was talking about or which one was mine they would asked me どの机 “which desk” or あなたの机はどれですか “which desk is yours?” I would point or gesture to mine and say その机 “that desk” or その机は私のものです “That desk is mine.”
Second question: would the use of あなた be a good idea or not? Everything I have read regarding あなた all agree that it is best not to use it. Also, going off of what trunklayer said above, asking the question of “which desk is yours?” seems like it would be unneeded information for this conversation as one could assume that my desk would be the one with my books. Would that be correct?
Thanks,
This really depends on context.
If you absolutely needed this level of clarity then something like this would probably be better, though it still feels unnatural to me (but not a native).
私の本は自分の机にあります。
If you wrote,
本は机にあります。
It would imply (my) books are on (my) desk.
Japanese is so heavily contextual knowing what to drop in a single sentence isolated from anything else is tricky and not always obvious.
Avoid using あなた. It ends up being considered rude, more often then not. It’s better to use the persons actual name. It’s definitely rude to use あなた if you do know their name. You could go with てめえ！ j/k…don’t use yakuza speak IRL 
unless you are yakuza then go right ahead
If you want to practice writing with native speakers, check out langcorrect.com You’ll can try out your writing skills and receive corrections from native speakers directly, no silly AI chatbots required.
Edit: also another readathon coming up this weekend if you want to join us 
!!!
Generally in pro-drop languages you would only duplicates pronouns like this if you’re making a very strong point about whose books are on whose desk. Like if you have a messy roommate who leaves his stuff all over the place and you scold him by saying “well my books are on my desk”.
Unless it’s paramount to your point to establish these possessives, you would usually drop one or both of them.
Sorry for the late reply back to you all.
Thanks for the suggestions and advice. It seems like part of the answer comes from just being exposed to enough of the language and just from practice with using it.
@shuly thanks for the “readathon” link. I missed it this time around but it might be something that I look into in the future. Also thanks for the “Langcorrect” link. I will be sure to look into that soon as well.
@simias Thanks for the pro-drop article. I’ll add that to my list of things to read up on soon.
- パトリック