of hito [人] ‘person.’ The lips are not much rounded for the Japanese vowel u and are totally disengaged in the syllables su and tsu, for which the tongue is moved quite far forward, so that the u sound is somewhere between i and u.
We have not shown the distinction between the two kinds of g that are used by many speakers because the present-day situation is in flux and the distinction, which carries little semantic weight, is missing in many parts of the country. The prestige pronunciation, however, favors a “softened” form of ...g... when it is felt to be internal to a word, or begins a particle, as in ... ga [… が] . The softened form is pronounced through the nose, like the ng at the end of English ‘sing.’ Some speakers use a murmured version of ...g..., a voiced fricative, instead of the nasal.
The long vowels ō and ū are written with a macron in virtually all cases, though they are functionally equivalent to double vowels, oo and uu and are often so transcribed. The long vowels ā and ē are similar, but except in foreignisms, most cases of long ē are written as ei, following the practice of the hiragana orthography, which takes into account the fact that in some areas people pronounce ei as a diphthong, as once was true everywhere.
The long vowels are written in katakana with a bar (a dash) after the syllable; in hiragana they are written as double vowels oo, uu, ii, ee, aa, but for historical reasons most often the long ō is written ou. That is why when you use romanization to type your input for a Japanese word processor you have to write ho u ho u to produce the hiragana string that can be converted into the kanji deemed appropriate for the word hōhō [方法] ‘method.’ (But you input Ōsaka [大阪] as o o sa ka because the first element of that name, the ō of ōkíi [大きい] ‘big,’ happens to be one of the handful of common exceptions.) We write the word for ‘beer’ as bíiru [ビール] instead of putting a long mark over a single i both for esthetic reasons and for linguistic considerations: most cases of long i consist of two grammatically different elements, as in the many adjectives that end in …i-i or, less obviously, such nouns as chíi [地位] ‘position.’
GRAMMAR
This dictionary differs from other dictionaries in a number of ways. The verb forms are cited primarily in the normal polite form (…másu [… ます]), for that is what the beginning student will most often hear and practice using at the end of sentences. Other common forms are also given, such as the plain nonpast (…u […う] or …ru […る]) and the gerund (…te […て] or …de […で]). The nonpast forms, whether plain or polite, refer to general, repeated, or future situations (‘does’ or ‘will do’); they are also used for situations that started in the past but continue on into the present, such as ‘I have been staying here since the day before yesterday’ (ototói kara koko ni imásu [おとといからここにいます]), or that have a result that lasts, such as ‘I have gotten married’ (kekkon shite imásu [結婚しています]), another way to say ‘I am married.’
The past forms (‘did’) are easily made: for the polite past, change …másu […ます] to …máshita […ました], and for the plain, take the gerund and change its final e to a, with the result being …ta […た] or …da […だ]. The plain nonpast form for the [noun] désu [です] ‘it is [a matter of]’ is …dá […だ], but that is replaced by … no […の] or … na [… な] when the expression modifies a following noun. The choice of … no [… の] or … na [… な] depends on a number of factors that are described in grammars and textbooks. This dictionary gives the appropriate form in parentheses in many cases. The polite past of the [noun] désu [です] is … déshita [… でした], the plain past is … dátta [… だった] (even when the nonpast would change to na [な] or no [の]), and the gerund is … dé [… で]). The form … ni [… に], in addition to its many uses as a particle (‘to,’ ‘at,’ ‘for’), also functions as a form of … désu [… です], the infinitive in the meaning ‘so as to be,’ as in jōzu ni narimáshita né [上手にな りましたね] ‘has gotten good at it.’
The infinitive form of verbs (…i or …e) in spoken Japanese is mainly used to form compounds, and many nouns are derived from infinitives by a change of accent, e.g., yasumí [休み] ‘vacation’ or ‘work break’ from yasúmi [休み] ‘to rest’). The common nouns and infinitives derived in this manner are included in the Japanese-English section of this dictionary. The polite negative nonpast forms of verbs are made by changing …másu [… ます] to …masén [… ません] and the past to …masén deshita [… ませんでした]. They are run together as if they are one word; the plain nonpast forms end in …nai [… ない] and the plain past forms end in …nakatta [… なかった]. The negative gerund is …´náide [… ないで], as in Isogánaide kudasai [急がないで] ‘Don’t go so fast,’ but before … mo [… も] or … wa [… は], it is usually …´ nákute [… なくて], as in Isogánakute wa damé desu [急がなくてはだめです] ‘You’ve got to go fast’ and Tabénakute mo íi desu [食べなくてもいいです] ‘We don’t have to eat.’ In the English-Japanese section, the citation form for verbs is the English infinitive (‘to do’ minus the ‘to …’), whereas most Japanese-English dictionaries use the plain nonpast as a citation form; do not confuse that with the English infinitive. This dictionary gives most English translations as third-person singular (‘does’), but Japanese verbs nonspecific with reference to person.
Adjectives are cited in the plain forms -i [-い] (samui [寒い] ‘it’s cold’) for they are often used before a noun, where the plain form is most common. The polite forms appropriate at the end of a sentence end in …´-i desu (samúi desu [寒いです] ‘it’s cold’). The plain past is made by replacing -i [-い] with -kátta [-かった] (samukátta [寒かった] ‘it was cold’), and the polite past, with -kátta desu [-かったです] (samukátta desu [寒かったです] ‘it was cold’). (Do not confuse -´i desu [-いです] and -kátta desu [-かったです] with the [noun] désu [(名詞)です], for which the past is [noun] déshita [(名詞)でした].) The infinitive (‘so as to be’) ends in -ku [-く], as in sámuku narimáshita [寒くなりまし た] ‘it turned cold.’ There are many adverbs derived from the adjective infinitive, such as háyaku [速く, 早く] ‘quickly’ or ‘early.’ And the -ku [-く] combines with arimasén [ありません] (plain form nái [な い]) to make the negative: sámuku arimasén [寒くありません] ‘it isn’t cold,’ sámuku nái hí ni wa [寒くない日には] ‘on days that are not cold.’ The past of the negative is -ku arimasén deshita [-くありませんでし た] (plain past -ku nákatta [-くなかった]). The gerund of the adjective (‘being…’ or ‘is… and’) ends in -kute [-くて], and the negative gerund, as in -ku nákute [-くなくて].
But many Japanese words that translate as English adjectives belong to a different class of words and are treated more like nouns. For that reason they are sometimes called ‘adjectival nouns’ or ‘nominal adjectives,’ but you may want to think of them simply as ‘ na words,’ since they attach the word na (‘that/who is …’) when they modify a following noun: heyá ga shízuka desu [部屋が静かです] ‘the room is quiet,’ shízuka na heyá desu [静かな部屋です] ‘it is a quiet room.’ As with nouns, the nonpast form of na words is … désu [… です] (plain form dá [だ] or nothing, but replaced by no [の] or na [な] before a noun), and the past is … déshita [… でした] (plain form … dátta [… でした]). The negative is … ja arimasén [… じゃありません] (plain form … ja nái [… じゃな い]), the negative past is … ja arimasén deshita [… じゃありませんで した] (plain form …ja nákatta [… じゃなかった]); all are usually run together with the preceding word to make