Stop! Grammar Time!

A couple of weeks ago, I was picking up some chinese food at a local place where I’ve become pretty friendly with the proprietors. While I was waiting on my food, they gestured at the whiteboard they have out to advertise their specials, and asked me if the English was right.

Actually, that’s not entirely true. First they asked me how to spell “business” and when I told them, there was much celebration and fist pumping from the woman who had apparently won a bet. Then they pointed at the whiteboard, and what it said was this:

“We also delivery office”

They asked me if that was right, to which I replied that it probably wasn’t, and tried to prod them for what they were actually trying to say. Their English isn’t fantastic, but they were eventually able to relate that they wanted to highlight the fact that they don’t just deliver to residences, but to businesses as well. I offered the following as an alternative:

“We also deliver to office buildings”

The whole thing took less than 5 minutes, and they were certainly grateful, but the entire time I found myself wishing that they were Japanese instead of Korean. I remember quite fondly that, when I was living in Sapporo, I’d often be sitting in the Engineering faculty (my adopted home, even though I took no classes there) and my advisor or one of his graduate students would come up to me and ask me to proofread a proposal they had written in English. Probably, they expected me to make some omissions and additions and provide them with a more fluidly flowing copy. I did this, but what they perhaps didn’t expect is that for every change, I would make a note in Japanese about why I made that particular change, and if the passage wasn’t grammatically correct, I’d make suggestions for how to write similar sentences in the future.

Even though I’d already been living in Japan a while the first time they asked me to check their work, I wasn’t sure how my comments would be recieved; I was kind of scared that they’d see it as an unwelcome criticism of their English writing skills. It turned out to be quite the opposite, however, as they seemed very surprised by and appreciative of my efforts, and started coming to me much more often afterwards. Unfortunately, I don’t speak a lick of Korean, so I was forced to just make my change, and have them take my word that it more accurately conveyed what they wanted to say — but it got me thinking about the fun I had correcting grammar in Japan.

I really enjoyed this, and miss it, as my love for English is equal to if not greater than my love of Japanese, and to be able to share that with someone who was genuinely interested in how the two relate was an unexpected joy. I was reminded again by this blog post by an old friend of mine, who does much the same thing in a very tongue-in-cheek manner (it’s a fun read even if you don’t understand the Japanese).

To that end, as sort of an exercise in easing myself back into using and reading Japanese on a daily basis, I decided to take my experience as an example and figure out what I would have said by means of an explanation if I were correcting that sign for a Japanese acquaintance. I will undoubtedly make mistakes here, so if any Japanese speaking friends of mine come across this, I encourage you to make corrections and be brutal. The first step, however is not to be afraid of making mistakes, so I’m going to bite the bullet and get this train a-rolling — I’ll also try to provide an English translation for the rest of y’all if you’re interested.

“We also delivery office”

最初に、この文には動詞がない。因に、英語の文を書くと、動詞を使うのはいつも必要だ。「to deliver」はもちろん動詞だが、「delivery」を使うと「すること」と同様に名詞になるしまう。だから、何かすると伝えてほしければ、「deliver」を使った方がいい。

To start, this sentence doesn’t have a verb (and when constructing an English sentence it’s always important to make sure you have one). While “to deliver” is certainly a verb, when you use “delivery” you change it into a noun in much the same way “suru koto” would turn “suru” into a noun. Therefore, if you want to express that you do something (in this case, make a delivery), it would be better to use “deliver”

「also」を使うのは当たり前だ。「自宅だけには配達する訳ではない」という意味があれば、英語にもいわなくても大丈夫。「also」は「も」という助詞と同じ使え方がある。

Your use of “also” is just fine. If you want to convey the sense of, “we don’t just deliver to houses”, even in English you don’t have to state that explicitly — “also” works the same way as the particle “mo” in this case.

最後に、英語でも「どこに配達する」と伝えることが必要だ。英語には「to」が「に」と同類の単語だ。そして、一般的の場合には複数形を使った方がいい。つまり、「offices」の方が「office」より一般的な意味を持っている。でも、「自宅」との相違を表してほしいから、「office buildings」を使った方がいいかもしれない。そうすれば「どんなビルでも大丈夫」の意味を特に強調できる。

Finally, it’s important to point out where you will deliver to. In English “to” can convey a similar meaning to the particle “ni”. Also, if you want to make a generalization, it’s often better to use the plural form. In other words, “offices” is typically more general sounding than “office”. However, since you want to contrast that to “houses” it may be better to use “office buildings”. In this way you can convey an impression that no matter what kind of building you’re in, we’ll deliver to you.

Whew! That was fun. Once again, I’d like to solicit any of my Japanese speaking friends’ assistance in pointing out what I’m sure are many and varied mistakes (particularly in choice of conjugation and use (misuse) of 書き言葉). Thanks for dropping by!