Quote:
Originally Posted by MMM
Japanese is all about context, and verbs certainly are conjugated, just not in the same ways they are in Spanish, French or Italian. To me, it us much simpler, as there is no difference in the way "I go" "You go" "They go" are conjugated, where all three are different in romance languages.
In Japanese unnecessary words are dropped. That's why "I" and especially "you" appear so rarely. "I am hungry" just becomes "am hungry" because it would be unlikely for you to be talking about anyone else's appetite. And if you are you would make it clear. "Are you hungry?" becomes "are hungry?" because who else would you be talking about?
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Yes, above all when you are talking about yourself it is easy. But I will offer you an example. We are in the same room along with my brother and my sister and later on they exit the room and I tell you: マーケットへ行った, it is kinda hard for you to understand who I am referring to...the boy, the girl or the both of them. With Spanish you can understand if only one or both went, with Italian and French (if not wrong about the latter) you can even understand if the boy or the girl went out without the subject.
True tho that the use of too many pronouns in Japanese can make the phrase even more misleading. It happened to me once that I was closing an email saying that my daughter wanted me to play with her and I wrote 娘は私を呼んでいるから、彼女と遊びたい (if I well remember). I got a reply saying that I didn't need to use 彼女, because it could be understood there was another woman present.