I'd like to apologise for the sound being ever so slightly too loud, and for a few minor typos in the subtitles. However, I hope it's still enjoyable to watch. Thank you! TYPOS: 3:47 - The subtitles say 'suzu' by mistake, it should be 'sezu'.
This is so interesting and helpful. Beginner material (which is what I use as I am a beginner) never dives deeper and only tells you the rules of a grammar point, not how it came to be. Please continue this series, it really is amazing. Thank you.
@@sanderforpresident thank you! I really struggled with Japanese until I began to learn about why and where the building blocks of Japanese came from. This series is basically all the stuff I wish I'd known when I first started learning Japanese!
Exactly! I am also a beginning student of Japanese (self-taught) and I find it not only interesting, but useful to know the origin and why forms are the way they are and how they evolved (whenever possible). That helps me learn and memorize them. I understand that most students find it boring, but I don't agree and I think they are missing out a good method to aid them learning.
ず is actually quite common in modern Japanese, and doesn't necessarily carry a connotation of archaic or poetic language. It is the primary way to turn a negative verb into an adverb, as in "without doing x" 怪我もせずに済んだ could be used to say "we managed to do it without getting too badly hurt." In terms of straight negation of a verb though, yeah, that is always archaic in style now.
A nice video! Btw, ぬ is also a way to make Perfect sentences in Classical and Old Japanese, like: 秋は来ぬ。「あきはきぬ」The autumn hath come 秋は来ぬれど = Thoʼ the autumn hath come / The autumn hath come, yet... 波立ちぬ。 [なみたちぬ] Waves have risen. 椿はいと美しく咲きぬ哉。 As for camelias, they've bloomed very beautifully, ah!..
It is interesting that Japanese, just like the totally unrelated Indo-European languages, also has the letter N in some of its negation forms. When I first started learning Japanese, this tidbit caught my eye.
Yeah, that's quite interesting! I think we should also mention the conception of the negative imperative mood in Classical Japanese: な + Continuative stem + そ and Terminal stem + な. Both appear in Japanese texts since Man'yôshû 「万葉集」 and go like this: 呼子鳥痛くな鳴きそ... [yobukodori itaku na-nak-i-so] "Ô calling bird, cry thou not that painfully / mournfully!.." 谷なる時鳥のあはれなる声を聞くな。 [tani naru hototogisu no afare-naru ko(w)e (w)o kik-u-na] Hear thou not the sad voice of a cuckoo in the glen.
Nice vid! Do you have any insights into why 〜ず is still used contemporarily to negate verbs? Whenever I've encountered it before I've always wondered why that form is used over the conventional 〜ない
@@magnussaeboe9669 in terms of your question as to why ず is still used, I can take a semi-educated guess but please don't take this as authority. 'The classical Japanese language (文語, bungo, "literary language"), also called "old writing" (古文, kobun) and sometimes simply called "Medieval Japanese", is the literary form of the Japanese language that was the standard until the early Shōwa period (1926-1989). It is based on Early Middle Japanese, the language as spoken during the Heian period (794-1185), but exhibits some later influences. Its use started to decline during the late Meiji period (1868-1912) when novelists started writing their works in the spoken form. Eventually, the spoken style came into widespread use, including in major newspapers, but many official documents were still written in the old style. After the end of World War II, most documents switched to the spoken style, although the classical style continues to be used in traditional genres, such as haiku and waka. Old laws are also left in the classical style unless fully revised.' ^ with that source in mind, it meant that ず was still being used, even as late as the 1900s, and especially in formal contexts. Therefore ず has survived even today as its official use in government stopped less than 100 years ago. I think it's far more common to see ず written, than actually said in everyday speech. I hope that helps a little.
It is used adverbially to convey a meaning of "without doing", usually as -ずに. When it is used in this sense it is not seen as particularly archaic or old-fashioned. As for why it came to be used almost exclusivity in this way, I can't say.
In keigo, verbs have the ending -masen, as in tabemasen, which is similar to Western Japanese -sen/-senu/-hen ending. So in keigo: tabemasen Western Japanese: tabehen But Eastern Japanese: tabenai I've read that keigo did not originally exist in Eastern Japanese but was adapted from Western Japanese. Can you do a video on the development of keigo?
@@danniesolis96 that's very interesting, I've never heard of that development before. I'll have to take a look at it. Keigo is something I'd definitely like to take a look at. In the mean time, if you watch the video on 'masu', it might cover some of the information you're interested in :)
I did a quick look on a dictionary. I found this: 'Shift from 仮ならず (kari narazu), itself from 仮 (kari, “temporary”) + ならず (narazu, “not becoming”), the negative continuative form of なる (naru, “to become”)' So to simplify I think what has happened is the following: 仮 - Kari - temporary + ならず - Kanarazu - not becoming Word for word = 'Temporary not becoming'. But, what I think conceptually is going on is that the word is saying 'what will happen will not be temporary', i.e., It will definitely happen. Sorry, it's a bit weird to wrap your head around, but often Japanese words/grammar forms don't fit super neatly in English, so you get these weird poetic phrases like, 'temporary not becoming', that you then have to find a way of putting into English.
hello, i think its important to know, the original oldest negative was ぬ with ず evolving from the 連用形 of ぬ and the polite す found in ます, this creating the old form にす which was used as the primary form in old japanese, but in earlier japanese as seen by the ryuukyuu languages this invention did not occur, leaving ぬ as the only negation. This verbal did retain its 連体形 of ぬ in japanese however and during the 連体形 shift seems to have shifted back to ぬ. Side related note, there was one more advent in the history of negatives, ざり which comes from the negative ず and あり. Otherwise good entry level video into japanese etymology.
@@tonythesopranos5310 no problem, Bentley's, «old japanese prose, a descriptive grammar» covers both at once. Frellesvig-Whitman's «proto-japanese prospects» and Jarosz's «proto-japonic morphology» which cover this from the proto-japonic lense. And while i dont have a source on hand, so this is anecdotal, all ryuukyuuan languages contain -nu as their negative. with those languages being split prior to old japanese, and the advent of -zu.
@@ant-ainmmise638 So I went away and had more of a read and I found this: (ず) from Old Japanese. Generally considered to be a combination of negation suffix ぬ (nu) in its 連用形 (ren'yōkei, “continuative or stem form”) of に (ni) + honorific suffix す (su). But then, 'Temporally speaking, although ず ultimately comes from にす, Old Japanese already had ず as the終止形' seems to imply that ず existed at the same time as ぬ?
