Japanese is like a FPS game
Let’s say you found yourself in an unknown place. You don’t remember how you got here. You see a stranger walking by. How do you ask them where you are in Japanese? Non-native speakers might think you can say:
すみません、私はどこですか？
(TL: Excuse me, where am I?)
But this would sound strange. The stranger might get confused for a second. A more natural way to say it is:
すみません、ここはどこですか？
(TL: Excuse me, where is here?)
This example illustrates how Japanese and English have different ways of describing the world. English takes the bird-eye view and sees “I” as just one of many entities in the world. Therefore, it makes sense to ask “where is the ‘me’ entity in the world?” i.e. “where am I?”
Japanese, in contrast, takes the first-person view and describes the world as you experience it with your eyes, ears, etc. From this perspective, what’s unfamiliar is this place you’re seeing right now i.e. ここ, and wondering where it is. Thus, it’s natural to ask “ここはどこですか？”.
So you could say Japanese is like a FPS game whereas English is like a TPS.
Subjective Experience #
Taking the FPS perspective creates an interesting asymmetry between self vs others in Japanese. “I” is now an implicit observer, the pre-condition of the experience. Your thoughts and feelings are experienced directly. But you can’t do that with other people’s thoughts and feelings. This results in distinctive ways to express your experience vs someone else’s.
For example, when you say:
試験に落ちて、とても悲しい
(TL: I’m really sad to fail the exam.)
the subject, I, is implicit. By saying 悲しい, you’re simply expressing your own experience as it is, which is sadness. There’s no need to specify 私は because if the feeler is someone else, you would say something like:
友達は試験に落ちてとても悲しそうでした
(TL: My friend looked really sad to fail the exam.)
Since you can’t directly feel the friend’s emotion, here we’re using そう to add “hedging” i.e. showing uncertainty (but there are many other ways to hedge). Like this, you usually don’t make definitive statements about someone else’s inner feelings in Japanese.
The same goes for たい as well. It’s a common mistake to use たい for someone else’s desire like this:
(Unnatural) 友達がハンバーガーを食べたかったので、マクドナルドに行きました
(TL: Because my friend wanted to eat a hamburger, we went to a McDonald’s.)
You can make this sound natural like this:
友達がハンバーガーが食べたいと言ったので…
(Because my friend said they want to eat a hamburger, …)
If they didn’t explicitly say so but did look like they wanted a hamburger, then:
友達がハンバーガーを食べたそうだったので…
(Because my friend seemed like they want to eat a hamburger, …)
Another example of Japanese’s subjectiveness can be seen in how you express hopes in Japanese. Example:
面接に受かるといいね。
(TL: I hope (you) pass the interview.)
(TL (literal): It would be good if (you) pass the interview.)
Notice JP and EN use very different structures, yet functionally meaning the same. いい shows the impression felt by the speaker, even though there’s no word for “I”, because it’s implicit. (ね then tries to share the impression with the listener, but that’s not important for our discussion.) To change the person who’s hoping to someone else, you can’t just add “[person]が”, but you would need to wrap the sentence with, say, 思う:
彼は、面接に受かるといいなと思っている。
(TL: He hopes (you) pass the interview.)
(TL (literal): He thinks it would be good if (you) pass the interview.)
I changed ね to な because it’s a self-thought so ね’s sharing quality doesn’t fit.
Directionality of “Giving” #
This self-vs-others asymmetry also manifests as a category of grammar called 授受表現 (give-receive expressions), which express your social “attitude” about whatever action is being described. Here’s an example:
Weird: 私にお金を貸してありがとう
Natural: お金を貸してくれてありがとう
(TL: Thank you for lending me money.)
The only difference is the addition of くれて. If you don’t know what it is, it shows the action affects the speaker in a beneficial way. Because the other person did the favor of lending you money, you mark the verb 貸す with くれる.
But くれる is only used for benefits provided by others to self. Not the other way around. When you are the giver, you should use あげる:
田中さんにお金を貸してあげた
(TL: I lent Tanaka money.)
So くれる and あげる correspond to two directions of giving: from you to them and from them to you. Experientially and socially, these directions are qualitatively different.
There are other “giving” verbs such as もらう, 差し上げる, くださる, いただく, etc. but I will not explain them here.
What about when it’s not a benefit but a trouble or harm? When someone does something bad to you, you often use passive voice (so-called “suffering passive”) or the てくる auxiliary verb. Here’s a passive voice example:
財布を盗られた！
(TL: My wallet was stolen!)
Here’s a てくる example:
電車に乗ってたら、前に座ってる男の人がじろじろ見てきた。
(TL: When I was on a train, a guy sitting in front of me stared at me.)
If this was “じろじろ私を見た”, it would sound unnatural, oddly detached from the situation.
When you are the one to bother someone, you can add てやる but that’s not mandatory. When you want to punch someone, you might say:
あいつを殴ってやりたい
(TL: I want to punch them.)
Here てやる has the direction of self -> other, while also adding an aggressive tone.