What does it mean when (relative clauses question)

There’s a trend I’m noticing in articles on NHK Web easy where sentences will have a verb combined with 人.

For example: 耳がきこえない人
記事:NEWS WEB EASY|気象庁 耳が聞こえない人に津波を知らせる旗を作る

Example 2: 新しい コロナウィルスがうつうった人
記事:NEWS WEB EASY|専門家「コロナウイルスは消えないで広がっている」

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The clause that comes before it qualifies 人.
耳がきこえない人 is “a person that can’t hear” (presumably a deaf person)

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What @Kumirei said. Also, it’s called a “relative clause”, in case you wanted a searchable term.

Some linkz so you don't actually have to search

Relative Clauses and Sentence Order – Learn Japanese
https://www.wasabi-jpn.com/japanese-grammar/japanese-relative-clauses/
Relative Clauses | Japanese with Anime

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My brain just exploded. Stand-by as we try to run from backup…

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The important things to know:

  1. English has the same concept.
  2. It’s simpler in Japanese.
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The really high level explanation is that everything before the 人 acts as an adjective

(耳がきこえない)人
(新しい コロナウィルスがうつうった)人

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Ah, it’s only simpler in that English has it sometimes before the noun and sometimes after, while in Japanese, it’s always before.

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I’m a native English speaker and usually dont have to think of what kind of clause I’m using before I use it.

Now I have to figure it out in Japanese, wheeeeeeeee. (皮肉)

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I think it’s also simpler because you can get rid of the pesky “that”'s or “who”'s etc making the sentences a lot less clumsy.

今まで会ったこともない私を助けてくれてありがとう (thanks for helping me, who you haven’t even met before)

Especially when you’ve got several of these

分からない人を責める者が一番許しがたいと思う私が、そんなことをするわけがないよ。 (there’s no what that I who find those who blame people who don’t understand the most difficult to tolerate, would do such a thing!)

Sorry, for the cumbersome sentence (which I hope is at least passable grammatically), but it was kinda necessary to illustrate my point :slight_smile:

Literally just started this in Japanese class last night (lesson 22 in Minna No Nihongo!)

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That’s the funny part, they dont really use commas like what I’m used to. I dont even know what their commas are used for.

It doesnt make sense to me. Just looks like one big runon.

Commas basically just for setting clauses apart. You don’t need them for lists since Japanese has particles for that. They’re also used with conjunctions like in English.

The main reason they don’t get used much is that they don’t have a use in vertical writing, which is still pretty prevalent outside of the web.

As you get better at reading, you’ll be able to pick out the particles pretty easily and mentally parse the divisions. Some will still be pretty weird, but at that point it should be fairly intuitive.

What makes you say that?

This is a random page I flipped open to from a book I happened to have on my desk.

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They do still get used for lists though, since connecting everything with と just looks bad. They are also used in places where you don’t use particles, for example after temporal adverbs like 今日、今 and so on.
Also I don’t see a reason why you would only use commas in horizontal writing?

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Guess I was wrong on all counts. ごめん

Sorry @rabite30, I probably shouldn’t have generalized based on the stuff I’ve come across. @Leebo and @Myria make some great points.

You even have a list of vegetables separated with commas at the end of the page there :smiley:

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