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HOW THE LANGUAGE WORKS<br />
■ General / Articles / Nouns<br />
264<br />
General<br />
The Japanese language has a number of characteristics<br />
which are very different from European languages, the most<br />
important of these being that there are no changes for case,<br />
number or gender and that verbs do not change according<br />
to the person or number.Also, pronouns, both personal and<br />
impersonal, are often omitted.<br />
Another distinctive feature of Japanese is that small words<br />
known as postpositional particles are used after a noun or<br />
pronoun to indicate whether it is the subject, object or indirect<br />
object of a sentence. See pages 269.<br />
Articles<br />
There is no equivalent in Japanese for either the definite<br />
article ‘the’ or the indefinite articles ‘a’ and ‘an’. The exact<br />
meaning of a word or phrase will be clear from the context.<br />
Therefore, zas·shi (magazine) can mean ‘a magazine’ or ‘the<br />
magazine’.<br />
If you want to be more precise, you can use the demonstrative<br />
adjectives sono/ano (that) or kono (this) with the appropriate<br />
word (see page 282).<br />
The number hitots (one) (see page 286) can also be used to<br />
translate ‘a/an’, but generally this is not necessary:<br />
biru hitots, onegai shimas<br />
[‘beer one please’]<br />
a beer, please<br />
Nouns<br />
Japanese nouns only have one form. Singular and plural<br />
forms of nouns are the same and there are no distinctions for<br />
gender (masculine/feminine/neuter).Therefore: