I’ve been learning japanese for less than 2 months and have been using duolingo. I know services like that may not be 100% accurate 100% of the time, so I’ve been checking elsewhere when I learn new concepts and grammar and such.
Recently, I got to a lesson about talking about one’s family. It started teaching me sentences like おっとはおもしろいです, あねは七さいです, and 母はエンジニアです with the translation of “my husband”, “my older sister”, and “my mom” without using “私の”.
I’ve presumed it’s like omitting 私は when the context is obvious you’re talking about yourself, but I just wanted to make sure because duolingo has used 私の every time up until now with other nouns, like 私のかばんはあかいです and それらは私のくつですか
4 comments
You’re likely to get a flood of anti-Duolingo responses, FYI. The more recent sentences you listed are ordinary, everyday Japanese.
The earlier sentences that you listed were odd; unless the かばん sentence was a response to a very specific context like “is this purple bag yours?”, it’s weird to include 私の. Similar context is needed for the くつ sentence to work, and including それら is very very weird. Maybe they are trying to account for every single word that is needed in the English sentence, but that’s not how other languages work.
In Japanese you’d very rarely refer to someone else’s mother/father/older sister with those words. They’re way too familiar and rude for referring to someone not in your circle. That’s why the 私の part is omitted, by using these words (母、あね、おっと instead of お母さん、姉さん、ご主人) the meaning that they are your family is implied.
When you are stating something is yours, you can’t omit it because it won’t make sense, correct. If you aren’t explicitly stating ownship over something, I wouldn’t use it. かばんはあかいです。Sounds much better, unless you are being asked if a different color bag is yours. Otherwise it’s redundant.
あね、はは、父 いもうと and many more are only used about **your** family. For example, I wouldn’t call my friend’s older sister my あね or refer to her with that word at all. I would use おねえさん instead. おねえさんはきれいな人ですね？(Your older sister is a very pretty person, right?) あねはきれいな人です。(My older sister is pretty.)
Same for 母, your mother would not be my 母, it would be [your name]のお母さん. If you see those words, 私の is entirely redundant.
It’s a little bit early to feel the nuances of the language yet, I’ve been learning for years and just starting to get it and it’s feeling natural. But it’s based on context. It’s always easy to tell based on the context of the conversation, and if it’s not clear, you use 私の to make it clear.