Grammar Study 04

Hello everyone,

Grammar time again. There some basic demonstratives which we didn't talk about. We will go briefly throught them and start the real deal.

There is the adjective demonstrative words こんな、そんな、あんな、どんな which mean "this/that/that(over there)/which kind of". By now you should have a grasp of it already. And the one about location ここ、そこ、あそこ、どこ which refer to place (here, there, over there and where) and these ones have a politer form which is respectvely こちら、そちら、あちら、どちら。

Given that we finish the most common demonstratives we can now move to the relative and reflexive pronoums. And once we finish those we can start our study on the wide range of japanese particles. This will take a while because it is one of my main difficulties.

The reflexive is easy. The word　自分 じぶん does all the work. It is used for any human and any other warm-blooded animal. In normal speach it will never be used for fish, reptiles, insects or objects, tough you see it being used for those in stories. Usually, 自分　is followed by で (condition) or の (possessive)
例えば：
自分でしなければならいんです。
I have to do it by myself.

自分の宿題は自分でしなさいよ。
ぶんのしゅくだいはじぶんでしなさいよ。
Do your homework by yourself!

大抵自分で勉強します。
たいていじぶんでべんきょうします。
I usually study by myself.

It has a slightly different meaning then 一人で ひとりで  which means "alone".

For the relative pronouns it will get a little tricky. There is no equivalent to "who, whom, whose" (when they are relative pronoums) in Nihongo. An example is worth thousands lines of explanation.
例えば：

The man who was running.
There is no equivalent to "who" in this phrase.

Imagine instead it was:
The running man.
走る男
はしるおとこ。

The girl who arrived yesterday.
The yesterday arrived girl.
昨日ついた女の子。
きのうついたおんなのこ。

Got it? It is a well seen characteristic of the Nihongo, there is no relative pronoum because the relative clauses precede rather than follow the words. This discussion waas taken manly from Baron's Grammar of Japanese which is a nice book which i used to study.

That's all folks. See you tomorrow!
Gustavo