Long story short, cont’d: Brevity rules in Japanese grammar

A couple of weeks ago, my colleague Yuko Tamura wrote an insightful article about the many ways of abbreviating Japanese words and phrases. Today, I would like to follow up on this with a little overview of things abbreviated in the domain of grammar, where Japanese appears to be just as rigorous with cutting things out as it is with lexical expressions.

Our first exhibit is the negator ない (nai, not). When attached to a verb, the form is often reduced to a simple ん (n), as in 知らん (don’t know) or 要らん (iran, don’t need). By the same process, we also arrive at すまん (suman, sorry), derived from the apology formula すみません (sumimasen) via the informal すまない (sumanai).

Also based on a negation, though this is hard to tell after the cut, is the form かも (kamo). An offshoot of かも知れない (kamoshirenai, “don’t know if not,” in the sense of “maybe”), this highly popular expression illustrates that when it comes to brevity, Japanese doesn’t take any prisoners. One side effect of the shortening is that かも is homonymous with 鴨 (kamo, duck), making it an easy prey for all sorts of animal word play.

There’s a lot of potential for shortening when using verbs. Take the progressive, which is formed by attaching the auxiliary いる (iru, to be) to the te-form of the main verb. However, most of the time when we speak — and increasingly so when we write — the auxiliary is abbreviated into just る (ru), as in the commercial slogan, セコムしてますか (Sekomu shite-masu ka, Are you doing Secom?) by the namesake security company.

Staying with verbs, we must talk about “must.” Oddly enough, the most common way of expressing duty or obligation in Japanese is by using a double-negated conditional that literally translates as something like “won’t do if you don’t” or, in Japanese, しなければいけない (shinakereba ikenai). Luckily, Occam’s razor has weighed in here, too, shaving the form down to a much handier しなきゃ (shinakya). The same holds for the synonymous, and similarly lengthy, しなくてはならない (shinakute wa naranai), which is often reduced to a mere しなくちゃ (shinakucha).

Another common modifier for verbs is the form しまう (shimau). Used to express some unlucky state of affairs, it is often compressed into a simple ちゃう (chau). This is particularly so in nonformal speech, where an utterance like 忘れちゃった (wasurechatta, completely forgot) is far more common than the longer 忘れてしまった (wasurete shimatta). And even in formal style you will often find a shortened 忘れちゃいました (wasurechaimashita) more effective than the dull 忘れてしまいました (wasurete shimaimashita).

For requests and orders, brevity is an option, too. Two related forms that come to mind are ごらん (goran) and みな (mina). Both encourage the listener to “try and” replace the much longer ごらんなさい (goran nasai) and みなさい (minasai), respectively. If you don’t believe it, やってみなよ (yatte mina yo, just try it yourself).

A request form that can be entirely canceled is ください (kudasai, please). Thus we can say both 頑張ってください (ganbatte kudasai, do your best) or just 頑張って (ganbatte), which has the same meaning but is more informal — and saves you four syllables worth of breath.

One central expression in Japanese grammar is the “to be” verb です (desu). Though few people are aware of it, this form is an abbreviation, too. It derives from the much longer でございます (de gozaimasu), which is still in usage but only in hyper-formal contexts.

And it seems the shortening hasn’t stopped here, asです itself can be even further reduced into just っす (ssu). More a hiss than a full syllable, this form is particularly frequent in situations where the formal です seems a bit stiff but the relationship is not close enough to allow entirely plain speech. Maybe you’ve heard まじっすか (majissu ka, honestly?) or まじっすよ (majissu yo, honestly!).

At the very heart of Japanese grammar are the case particles, and some of these can be abbreviated, too. Most notably is the reduction of の to just ん, and the contraction of では into じゃ. Combining this with the abbreviated negator from above, this gives us a very relaxed いいじゃん (ii jan, why not?), as opposed to the more polite, and certainly less easy-going, いいのではないでしょうか (ii no dewa nai deshō ka).

But the case particles’ main job is to specify the syntactical roles in a sentence, and since this appears to be a task of quite some consequence, they’d better not be done away with all too easily. Or so one might think. But out in the wild, they are not safe from the Japanese tendency to cut things out either.

Take the sentence, 家へ帰ったらすぐにご飯を食べる (Uchi e kaettara suguni gohan o taberu, When I get back home, I’ll have dinner right away). It contains three particles: へ for direction, に to mark the adverb, and を for the accusative object. Now, when in a hurry, all three of them are in fact dispensable, giving us the perfectly acceptable, 家帰ったらすぐご飯食べる (uchi kaettara sugu gohan taberu). A grammatical sentence, without much grammar left!

Getting rid of things unneeded seems to be quite a virtue in Japan. Marie Kondo has built a whole business empire with her KonMari (notice the abbreviation) method of doing away with the clutter. Seems her native language is just as well attuned to the task.