Where does いる end and ある starts?

6 comments

1. Beyond humans, it gets vague. Dogs, cats, cows, insects, things that are evidently animated are いる. Trees, rocks, rivers, things that are evidently not animated are ある.

   Note that the essence of the concept of ‘animated’ is that the thing has an animus, or soul. So, viruses and bacteria are usually out, because it’s hard to imagine them having a soul.

   AI is a bit iffy, since the AI that we have right now is not actually AI, just a brute force roundabout facsimile of one. AI cannot yet think. But, if this should change in the distant future, and AI starts to gain more of a personage (and assuming that Japanese doesn’t change significantly in that amount of time), we could see AI being referred to by いる.

   Because much like pronouns in English, they’re not actually dictated from on high or by the person in question (as many like to believe nowadays), but are based on the interpretation of the speaker. So, it will depend on how the speaker views the AI.

2. “animate”, not necessarily “living”, so it’s vague, but the closest general rule is “animals and humans = いる”

   and it’s changed over time, ある used to be fine for people

   and still is in some cases like 彼女は子供がある

   so there’s likely no *exact* boundary, but if something isn’t meant to be animate in some way, like a corpse, then いる would be creepy

   plants and viruses are ある tho

3. Doesn’t work like that. Both ある and いる are used for both animate and inanimate objects depending on context. There is no hard cut-off point based on the actual size or level of animation involved. It’s more nuanced than that.

   First, you have to understand that the Japanese language is very animist. Meaning that even inanimate objects are treated as being able to do actions, which also leads to them occasionally receiving honorary animate status.

   Like if we take:

   本がわかる – what does that actually mean? Most would translate it as: “I can understand the book” / “The book is understandable”. But grammatically that’s not what is said at all.

   It’s more like: “Book does understanding”. Because わかる is a verb and a verb has to have a do-er. A subject. English can’t even translate this properly, but that’s how it works grammatically. The book, an inanimate object, is doing a verb, an action, to itself. It’s doing the action of “to understand” to itself. Giving us the meaning that “the book is understandable” to whomever is referred to as the topic

   Japanese has no issues making inanimate objects as subjects in a sentence that do all kinds of things.

   Let’s look at some examples with ある and いる:

   窓 が 開いて いる – “Window open is” / “The window is open”. (unclear if anyone opened it)

   開いて is a self move / Intransitive word, and て-form of 開く (though in truth it’s both intransitive and transitive at the same time, because that definition is faulty to begin with). It means to exist in the state of openness. いる is used for inanimate objects if they seem to exist in their state of their own volition.

   窓 が 開けて ある – “Window open is” / “The window is open”. (because someone opened it)

   開けて is a other move / Transitive word, and て-form of 開ける. ある is used for inanimate objects when their state is clearly caused by external forces. Like a window that’s been opened by someone.

   So as you can see, **Japanese blurs the lines between animate and inanimate, and finds uses for both ある and いる for all things, living or not.**

4. As other redditors said, it’s not that simple, but I’ll share a quick rule of thumb from my teacher: if the subject can pee, it’s iru, if it can’t, it’s aru.

5. I’m currently translating a light novel with robots that they call AIs. They use いる for them.

6. https://youtu.be/-DNlvpkfjD0

   This video explains いる vs ある pretty well. Basically, for anything that can move, including movable trains and cars, use いる. For things that can’t move, like trees, frozen fish, broken cars, use ある