Hi everyone,
I’ve been rolling this question around my head for some time and did some light research but didn’t find much of a solid answer. (Or my google-fu was off..)
I understand that this could be a person to person preference, but I wanted to see if there’s a common standard for speaking of those who have passed away, when speaking beyond small initial “condolences” type phrases. Present tense or past tense, or maybe special words even as examples.
My grandmother who was Japanese, passed away a few years ago and I have the opportunity to speak with our extended family in Japan. I have no doubt at some point it will be discussed, and I want to try my best to do so in politely in Japanese. Unfortunately she didn’t teach us much language ability, so I’m definitely in the very early levels of N5 still learning on my own.
In the above statement, I used “was”, but sometimes I hear people say “is” instead of “was” as an example of what I’m curious about, but in Japanese.
I know it’s a bit of a dreary subject but I appreciate y’all for taking a look and sharing your knowledge.
2 comments
I’d say go for “was” and if you get corrected then go for “is”. Except, that’s what I’d do or you could also go for the words that you do know until you know how to actually say the words.
I can’t provide specific vocabulary advice due to a lack of experience, but I am sure others will. Just wanted to say that in general I think as long as you seem genuine in your attempts to be respectful about her, they will appreciate it even if you make a small faux pas, and they might politely correct you if you do – and that’s no big deal, it’s natural.
Sometimes people in the JP learning community overplay how much Japanese people will be offended by non-native speakers making mistakes that would be considered rude if said by a Japanese person. I bet even without getting additional vocab, you’d do fine.