[pm215]

I think some of the "Japanese has a ton of grammar points" is an effect of how the Japanese-as-a-second-language teaching resources label things, where a lot of what you could classify as "sentence patterns" are described and taught as "grammar". For example, the Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar lists ~に比べると as one of its grammar points, but this (meaning "compared to ~") isn't really new grammar, it's just a specific usage of particle に, a particular verb and と for if/when (in the same way "compared to X" isn't new English grammar but is a pattern of use of a particular verb).

My experience is that Japanese grammar isn't particularly complicated, it's just that it works backwards from Indo-European languages. Vocab is a pain because there's no common root of word origins to help the way there is between say English and French, but that's true for Chinese too I suppose. The writing system is kind of silly but it is what it is (and of course it doesn't matter at all for conversational fluency).

[thaumasiotes]

> I think some of the "Japanese has a ton of grammar points" is an effect of how the Japanese-as-a-second-language teaching resources label things, where a lot of what you could classify as "sentence patterns" are described and taught as "grammar".

Sentence patterns are grammar. They are a major presence in English grammar, where e.g. in almost all cases you can only determine the subject of a sentence by the fact that it precedes the verb. Other languages are more explicit.

Fundamentally we use "grammar" to refer to whatever governs the meaning that appears in a well-formed sentence that isn't just part of the individual meanings of (the uninflected forms of) the words in that sentence. But this is not an entirely satisfactory definition, and grammar can show up in surprising ways.

Consider the difference between the verbs "look" and "see".

In Japanese, there is no difference. They are the same verb and they mean the same thing. Japanese learners do not understand why English speakers draw a distinction, and they struggle to use the correct word when speaking English.

In Mandarin, these verbs are also the same verb. But Mandarin speakers draw the same distinction that English speakers do - if they mean "look", they will say 看, and if they mean "see", they will say 看到, inflecting the verb with a grammatical suffix indicating successful completion. Although they do not use separate verbs, they have no trouble tracking the English distinction.

In English, obviously, the same distinction is drawn. But the mechanism is lexical; we treat these as being entirely different words.

I suggest that a Japanese learner choosing "see" when they mean "look" or "watch" is making a grammatical error, the same way that they'd be making a grammatical error if they said 看 instead of 看到 while trying to speak Mandarin.

[pm215]

What I mean is that, to use an English example "in comparison to X, Y" and "in contrast to X, Y" are not grammatically different -- the words are all doing the same jobs in the same structure, it's just a different verb. But they're both useful idiomatic patterns to learn. It happens that the standard in Japanese as a second language teaching is to call (the Japanese equivalents to) these different idiomatic patterns different grammar points. Personally I don't care too much about the terminology as long as everybody is on the same page, and because this is the standard in the J2L communities it's generally fine; but it does mean that looking at the size of the volumes of a "Dictionary of Japanese Grammar" is a bit misleading about how grammatically complex the language is.

I would suggest that choosing "see" when you mean "watch" is a vocabulary error, not a grammar error - you picked the wrong verb, but didn't use it in an ungrammatical way (eg wrong tense or mixing transitive and intransitive or getting subject and object the wrong way round).

[thaumasiotes]

> I would suggest that choosing "see" when you mean "watch" is a vocabulary error, not a grammar error - you picked the wrong verb, but didn't use it in an ungrammatical way (eg wrong tense or mixing transitive and intransitive or getting subject and object the wrong way round).

Have you tried doing this? In general you can't swap these verbs without the resulting use being ungrammatical. The problem is that "watch" is durative (it takes time) and "see" is punctual (it takes no time).

[IIsi50MHz]

"I'd like to see that film." | "I'd like to watch that film." (interchangeable)

"I see birds." / "I watch birds." (very different)

"I'm seeing birds." ~ "I'm watching birds." (semantic'ly identical, but the first one is unusual)

"I'll see you home." / "I'll watch you home." (second on is word choice error)

[pm215]

"I watched the hawk landing in the tree" ; "I saw the hawk landing in the tree" -- both fine grammatically.

[thaumasiotes]

Is this the level of analysis you apply to all your work?

Try "I was watching the hawk as it landed in the tree."

[Izkata]

> Consider the difference between the verbs "look" and "see".

> In Japanese, there is no difference. They are the same verb and they mean the same thing. Japanese learners do not understand why English speakers draw a distinction, and they struggle to use the correct word when speaking English.

Isn't that like 見る and 見える?

[chaorace]

My understanding is that in many (but not all) cases they're gramatically interchangeable, but imply different levels of directness. Something like the difference between "I see you" (direct) and "I can see you" (indirect), with a general preference for the latter in polite conversation. It's not a perfect comparison because in English both usages of see are transitive, but hopefully the general idea comes across.

Circling back to the original discussion: I'd say that it's better to compare the past & non-past tenses of Japanese verbs:

- "Thank you" in the past tense ("ありがとうございました") conveys that you are thankful for acts already rendered and that you do not intend to impose further.

- "Thank you" in the non-past tense ("ありがとうございます") conveys that you are actively thankful, generally when the act in question is still in progress or otherwise not yet completely rendered.

This is a nuance that English renders trivial with a simple "Thank you", much like Japanese renders trivial the difference between a completed "look" and an incomplete "see".

[chrisoverzero]

見える only means “look” in the “to seem” or “to appear” sense.

Often in English, we have multiple words for sensory experiences to indicate how much focus is put into the action. “Seeing” a picture is less focused than “looking at” a picture. “Hearing” a song is less focused than “listening to” a song.

[emmelaich]

I wonder if that inspired the lyric in "Come Together"

Got to be good-lookin', 'cause he's so hard to see

According to Wikipedia, "The lyrics were inspired by his relationship with Ono,"

[Izkata]

> “Seeing” a picture is less focused than “looking at” a picture.

Isn't that backwards? Like in the phrase "they look but do not see", which was what I had in mind in my first comment. Isn't that something like "見るけど見えない" ?

[jprival]

To look is to train one’s eyes on, or to scan for, something. To see is to perceive it.

So one can look without seeing, and one can also see something without intentionally looking.

[thaumasiotes]

But as you've implicitly noted, you cannot see something without looking. That would be physically impossible.

You can also use "look" to emphasize that focus does not exist; one of the sentences I've collected for interesting use is "He stared at the page, not seeing it."

In that case, there is no possibility of a page being overlooked or otherwise missed. What the sentence is telling us is that although "he" is directing his eyes at the page, his mind is on something else, so "seeing" never occurs.

The difference between "see" and "look" has nothing to do with focus. It is what I noted in the discussion of Mandarin - success. Seeing is the goal of looking.

Note that this phenomenon where native speakers have no trouble obeying a distinction that their language requires, but come out with total nonsense when asked why they choose one form or another, is completely characteristic of grammatical rules, and not characteristic of vocabulary selection.