Hi, I’m a beginner at Japanese (\~month’s dedicated study). I’ve started being able to dissect sentences into their constituent parts for a very rough understanding of what’s written, assuming I know the vocabulary.
For example, in this sentence:
土曜日の夜は倶楽部に行きます。
Which translates to: I’m going to a club on Saturday night.
I was able to deduce that the speaker is saying something about going to a thing saturday night ( 倶楽部 = to the club, with furigana assistance). However I’m a bit confused on how one could determine the so-called “tense” of this sentence, and whether that’s even a valid question. That might be English-centric thinking.
I’ve learned that many aspects of Japanese conversation are implicit. Is it implicit that the speaker here is referring to the future? In my mind, I can’t tell if they’re saying “I went to” or “I am going to”.
Slightly better example:
私は図書館で本を読みます
I know this says something about reading books at a library. The translation from the anki card specifically: (I will) read books at the library.
Basically I am wondering about the parenthesis. How could I tell if this person was saying that they *will* read books, *are* reading books, or *have* read books at the library? Thanks for any help.
4 comments
Keep going with whatever book you’re using, genki or otherwise, you must not have gotten to tenses yet. The verb in this sentence contains the tense information. It would be 行きました or 見ました if it were past tense.
>土曜日の夜は倶楽部に行きます。
This sentence could not mean “went” purely on the grounds that the verb ending does not indicate that the action has already been done. Look into verb conjugations for more info on this.
It also can’t mean “I am going” because if it were happening presently as you are speaking, you shouldn’t need to clarify a date and time because it would be clear that the action you claim to be doing right now is happening right now.
>私は図書館で本を読みます
This one is more dependent on the context. If you were asked what you do at certain times, it doesn’t make sense to think of it in terms of future tense. If you were being asked what you’re doing on the weekend that hasn’t arrived yet, it doesn’t make sense to think in terms of the present tense.
Really, Japanese explicitly only has “past” and “non-past” and stuff like present and future tense are only made relevant by context, more or less.
>I can’t tell if they’re saying “I went to” or “I am going to”.
Past always ends in た/だ, e.g. 行きました. All languages have tenses (past, present, future), they just differ in how the tense is expressed.
Also a beginner, but both of your examples are just non-past polite. So it can either be go or will go (read or will read). And which one it is based on context. -ing form of verb is from my experience is the te form followed by iru verb.