Supposition, Deduction and Appearance

Make sure you have read the legal bit on my home page.


In Japanese, it is considered bad form to state as a fact something which is supposition. It may be the case that Sabrina looks unhappy. You may reasonably deduce that, having had a spell cast on her, Sabrina is unhappy. But these are deductions and appearances, not facts. You (unlike the wizard) cannot read minds, so you cannot know that Sabrina is unhappy.

Similarly, since you don't know Sabrina personally, you cannot really say that she is noisy or a talkative person. Instead, for example:

saburinasanhaurusasoudesu. "Sabrina seems noisy." The sentence termination soudesu indicates supposition. Finding the right syllable to connect it to the rest of the sentence is tricky. For i adjectives, drop the final i.

warumonosanhaureshisoudesu. "The ruffian seems happy." Other people's feelings are always supposition, so soudesu should always be used.

saburinasanhaoureshikunasasoudesu. "Sabrina seems unhappy." For negated i adjectives, replace the final i by sa.

mahoutsukaisamahayumeinasoudesu. "The wizard is famous (I presume)." For na adjectives, include the final na.

Note an exception: saburinasanhakireidesu. "Sabrina is pretty." Prettiness is implicitly your judgement, not supposition, so cannot be combined with soudesu.

Note also a serious limitation: there's no way of linking soudesu with nouns.

For the past tense, replace soudesu by soudeshita:

saburinasanhaurusasoudeshita. "Sabrina seemed noisy."

warumonosanhaureshisoudeshita. "The ruffian seemed happy." Note that it's the seeming, not the happiness, which is in the past tense.

saburinasanhaoureshikunasasoudeshita. "Sabrina seemed unhappy."

mahoutsukaisamahayumeinasoudeshita. "The wizard was famous (I presume)."

The sentence patterns for supposition and hearsay are similar. I won't deal with hearsay yet. When I come to it, remember that it's going to be confusing. I'll also leave "seems not to be" until later.


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