So this is just a nuance of things like 音/匂い/味 when talking about instances where they exist and can be heard/smelt/tasted you use がします rather than ある
Just my interpretation as a learner, but it seems like it’s saying not that the sound exists outside, but it is being done outside (to do); I guess since it doesn’t just exist on its own, but has to be caused by something else.
Again, just talking out my butt, but that kinda makes sense to me.
I used to ask these things. I realized it’s better to just accept it the way it is.
you can’t direrctly translate words and expect them to be the same as english. する is not just “to do”. it’s used for a ton of different things, and this is just one of them. Xする and Xがする are going to be common for a lot of actions or events. just take them as they come, phrase by phrase. if you dig too deeply into an individual word, you’ll end up in historical etymology and linguistics land, which is fine, but it will never explain “why” to a non-native.
It’s just Japanese grammar I guess. Consider it as an exception may be.
I always equated がする to emmination
Arimasu would be too static for a sound. A sound doesn’t just sit there in the air and persist. It is an active phenomenon. It’s emitted from something as an action for a while and then it’s gone….
Arimasu would mean that it’s sort of just sitting there and able to persist without any external support. That simply doesn’t fit the idea of a sound.
It would be like saying “there’s rain outside” instead of “it’s raining outside.” The latter makes more sense to us. Same for the shimasu version to Japanese.
that’d be because japanese is its own language with its own rules and ways of saying things, instead of just directly translated english
Maybe it’s just the fact that sounds (or smells or tastes) are not something that just is there, but rather the sound or smell is emanating from something else that is out there.
As far as I understand, がします indicates an active sensory perception, meaning the speaker is currently hearing or experiencing the sound:
今、外で鳥の音がする。 (I can hear bird sounds outside right now.)
On the other hand, がある indicates the presence of a sound without implying a direct focus on it:
今、外で鳥の音がある。 (Right now, there are sounds of birds outside.)
The fact that you think “There is (noise)” is because you are comparing Japanese to the English translation.
English is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT than Japanese. So do not even try compare sentences/translations. It isn’t a language based on English. The English translation only provides the gist of the meaning of the sentence and not the meaning of the sentence itself.
When you see a sentence in Japanese like this, just try to make sense of it by developing a completely different mindset than English. If it’s 外で大きい音がします, then make sense of it like the way it is written in JAPANESE. The English translation is just there as a supplement.
TL;DR: English and Japanese are totally different. Don’t use the English translation to make a literal sense of the Japanese sentence. Develop a different mindset reading Japanese.
Is that from anki? Can you share the deck? Thanks!
がする is about the sensation; がある is about the presence
The logic that might help you here is that we English speakers think of **Subjects Doing Verbs**, and we don’t realize that the formal grammatical requirement in English that all sentences must include subjects warps our thinking. We use subjects in every sentence and we let that random grammatical part of English fool us into thinking that the verb is not a complete thing in and of itself.
It is hot outside (What is hot?)
It is raining outside (What is raining?)
There is a book on the table? (What is there?)
All those are empty meaningless non-referring pronouns that our way of speaking English hides. We just put subject there, just because. And sometimes we even spend time back-rationalizing it, when we are monolingual.
In Japanese, there are two varieties of sentences.
1. Noun+ Copula (which also includes iru and oru, in many senses) where there is no action but there is a subject.
2. And then verb (which also includes so-called -i adjectives which are just verbs) And verbs (and -i adjectives) do not include a subject. There is not even a mindset, coming from Japanese, that there the verb needs a subject. You might add a subject in translation, but the verb stands alone. Just a verb all by itself is a complete thought.
Re-read that: *There are no verbs that necessarily include a doer. We add one when translating into English, but in general translating into English, without noting this distinction, lead to truly bizarre locutions.* If you do not include a subject in English, it’s not English. And if you include a subject in Japanese, very often you are not actually speaking Japanese that mean what you think, you are instead just making Japanese sounding noises.
Let that sink in. Watashi Wa etc etc. is not native Japanese for adding a subject to noun+Copula sentence, or the Verb Sentence. It is a way of contextualizing what the verb, or copula, is doing by excluding possible relations. If I say Watashi Wa, I am not saying I am doing, I am saying someone else is not doing.
So if you do not try to think of a verb as requiring a doer, it’s easier to see what, grammatical the sentence is saying. *It is not saying that a smell is doing something*, it is saying that the Verb ( that action, that stands by itself, without a logical of grammatical subject) is doing a smell. It is most definitely not that the smell is doing anything.
And specifically there are times when you say there is a smell via using arimasu. It’s just not in the case you are thinking of.
Experienced senses don’t just exist. So they don’t use ある for smell taste and sound they often use がする
If you want an explanation other than ‘that’s just the way it is’, Cure Dolly tries to explain it as the 音 actually DOING something. 音がする = sound does/sound acts. What does it to do? The only thing a sound really can do, the sound sounds.
Translation turns it into a statement about a noise existing because we just have different ways of expressing this idea in English.
I’m not necessarily sure how accurate this explanation is, as I’m just a beginner and some of Cure Dolly’s explanations are controversial for reasons I’m not experienced enough to understand, but it’s at least an attempt at an explanation, if that’s what you were looking for.
This was in lesson 73 specifically, if you want to find it yourself.
what app/website is this?
its not “exist”, it makes (a experience for the senses)
Id think because something is clearly making that sound. Like sound doesn’t exist without something that makes it. Same with smell or taste.
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So this is just a nuance of things like 音/匂い/味 when talking about instances where they exist and can be heard/smelt/tasted you use がします rather than ある
Just my interpretation as a learner, but it seems like it’s saying not that the sound exists outside, but it is being done outside (to do); I guess since it doesn’t just exist on its own, but has to be caused by something else.
Again, just talking out my butt, but that kinda makes sense to me.
がする goes for smell, sound, taste, and so on. – [https://bunpro.jp/grammar_points/117](https://bunpro.jp/grammar_points/117)
Could you please share a link to this resource?
I used to ask these things. I realized it’s better to just accept it the way it is.
you can’t direrctly translate words and expect them to be the same as english. する is not just “to do”. it’s used for a ton of different things, and this is just one of them. Xする and Xがする are going to be common for a lot of actions or events. just take them as they come, phrase by phrase. if you dig too deeply into an individual word, you’ll end up in historical etymology and linguistics land, which is fine, but it will never explain “why” to a non-native.
It’s just Japanese grammar I guess. Consider it as an exception may be.
I always equated がする to emmination
Arimasu would be too static for a sound. A sound doesn’t just sit there in the air and persist. It is an active phenomenon. It’s emitted from something as an action for a while and then it’s gone….
Arimasu would mean that it’s sort of just sitting there and able to persist without any external support. That simply doesn’t fit the idea of a sound.
It would be like saying “there’s rain outside” instead of “it’s raining outside.” The latter makes more sense to us. Same for the shimasu version to Japanese.
that’d be because japanese is its own language with its own rules and ways of saying things, instead of just directly translated english
Maybe it’s just the fact that sounds (or smells or tastes) are not something that just is there, but rather the sound or smell is emanating from something else that is out there.
As far as I understand, がします indicates an active sensory perception, meaning the speaker is currently hearing or experiencing the sound:
今、外で鳥の音がする。 (I can hear bird sounds outside right now.)
On the other hand, がある indicates the presence of a sound without implying a direct focus on it:
今、外で鳥の音がある。 (Right now, there are sounds of birds outside.)
The fact that you think “There is (noise)” is because you are comparing Japanese to the English translation.
English is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT than Japanese. So do not even try compare sentences/translations. It isn’t a language based on English. The English translation only provides the gist of the meaning of the sentence and not the meaning of the sentence itself.
When you see a sentence in Japanese like this, just try to make sense of it by developing a completely different mindset than English. If it’s 外で大きい音がします, then make sense of it like the way it is written in JAPANESE. The English translation is just there as a supplement.
TL;DR: English and Japanese are totally different. Don’t use the English translation to make a literal sense of the Japanese sentence. Develop a different mindset reading Japanese.
Is that from anki? Can you share the deck? Thanks!
がする is about the sensation; がある is about the presence
The logic that might help you here is that we English speakers think of **Subjects Doing Verbs**, and we don’t realize that the formal grammatical requirement in English that all sentences must include subjects warps our thinking. We use subjects in every sentence and we let that random grammatical part of English fool us into thinking that the verb is not a complete thing in and of itself.
It is hot outside (What is hot?)
It is raining outside (What is raining?)
There is a book on the table? (What is there?)
All those are empty meaningless non-referring pronouns that our way of speaking English hides. We just put subject there, just because. And sometimes we even spend time back-rationalizing it, when we are monolingual.
In Japanese, there are two varieties of sentences.
1. Noun+ Copula (which also includes iru and oru, in many senses) where there is no action but there is a subject.
2. And then verb (which also includes so-called -i adjectives which are just verbs) And verbs (and -i adjectives) do not include a subject. There is not even a mindset, coming from Japanese, that there the verb needs a subject. You might add a subject in translation, but the verb stands alone. Just a verb all by itself is a complete thought.
Re-read that: *There are no verbs that necessarily include a doer. We add one when translating into English, but in general translating into English, without noting this distinction, lead to truly bizarre locutions.* If you do not include a subject in English, it’s not English. And if you include a subject in Japanese, very often you are not actually speaking Japanese that mean what you think, you are instead just making Japanese sounding noises.
Let that sink in. Watashi Wa etc etc. is not native Japanese for adding a subject to noun+Copula sentence, or the Verb Sentence. It is a way of contextualizing what the verb, or copula, is doing by excluding possible relations. If I say Watashi Wa, I am not saying I am doing, I am saying someone else is not doing.
So if you do not try to think of a verb as requiring a doer, it’s easier to see what, grammatical the sentence is saying. *It is not saying that a smell is doing something*, it is saying that the Verb ( that action, that stands by itself, without a logical of grammatical subject) is doing a smell. It is most definitely not that the smell is doing anything.
And specifically there are times when you say there is a smell via using arimasu. It’s just not in the case you are thinking of.
Experienced senses don’t just exist. So they don’t use ある for smell taste and sound they often use がする
If you want an explanation other than ‘that’s just the way it is’, Cure Dolly tries to explain it as the 音 actually DOING something. 音がする = sound does/sound acts. What does it to do? The only thing a sound really can do, the sound sounds.
Translation turns it into a statement about a noise existing because we just have different ways of expressing this idea in English.
I’m not necessarily sure how accurate this explanation is, as I’m just a beginner and some of Cure Dolly’s explanations are controversial for reasons I’m not experienced enough to understand, but it’s at least an attempt at an explanation, if that’s what you were looking for.
This was in lesson 73 specifically, if you want to find it yourself.
what app/website is this?
its not “exist”, it makes (a experience for the senses)
Id think because something is clearly making that sound. Like sound doesn’t exist without something that makes it. Same with smell or taste.