What’s the deal with 思います?

6 comments

1. As far as I know Sentence+ to + omoimasu can mean i think or someone thinks..can you give an example where it doesn’t mean think?

2. Such as? Give us an example of what you mean.

3. In my experience it’s also used as like a sentence softener. Like it’s the difference between saying something like “you’re cheating on me” and “I have a feeling you’re cheating on me.” One is not as assertive as the other

4. I feel like it can mean hope too.

   I understand what op is saying and I also feel uncertain about it even though I speak Japanese at least at an intermediate level.

5. As others have said, it’s a softener. We do this in English all the time. (Can’t speak for other languages.)

   “You’re an idiot” vs. ‘I think you’re an idiot’, as an extreme case.

   The main difference is that using -to omou is much more indirect, at least in Japanese, and indirectness in speech is more valued in Japanese than in English. Instead of bluntly stating a fact (at least to Japanese ears), you make it clear that this is just a thought in your head.

   More generally, if you use omoimasu as the verb in a sentence, that sentence *literally* means to think something. It may not be translated that way, but it’s very difficult to argue that in the Japanese, it doesn’t mean ‘think’.

6. 思います is one of the best examples of a “don’t overthink it” aspect of language. It does indeed mean “to think”, but applying a (presumably) native anglophone linguistic lens to this verb can often cause more issues than it solves.

   This is best learnt with the kinds of sentence structures/collocations that go with it to best understand how’s it’s used.

   It is indeed sometimes used as a softener as others have posted above, but it’s also sometimes used in a way which doesn’t make sense to try and translate.

   For example, when starting work meetings, Japanese will often say “それでは、始めたいと思います。”. This would best translate to “let’s start the meeting”, or, “let’s get started”. As you may note, there’s no “thinking about starting here”, it’s a simple definitive meaning of “we are starting now”, and there’s no “しましょう” used to denote “let’s”. It’s simply the construction used by native Japanese to say “let’s start the meeting”.

   Another example would be “皆さんに私の好きな本を紹介したいと思います。” This would translate to “I’m going/I would like to introduce my favorite book to you all.” Again, no “thinking about doing it” is going on, it’s just a polite construction used all the time to say you’re about to do something. If you say “紹介したいです。” it comes across as slightly rougher and more familiar, and so one might consider the 思います here as a softener, but only if a “softener” constitutes regular polite language or 丁寧語 in which case one might overplay the role of what “softeners” are in Japanese considering the whole language is built on a clearly demarcated system of registers depending on familiarity with the listener. I suppose I’m trying to say that saying 思います is a softener can be a bit reductionist.

   tl;dr Japanese 思います and English to think only intersect part of the way. It’s not always a clear translation, and you’re honestly better off trying to learn the structures used by natives and imitating them with your own input to sound natural rather than focusing too heavily on how the idea of “to think” fits in here.