The first difficulty which Japanese people would face in studying English is the difference between singular and plural nouns. In Japanese, we rarely differentiate them. Please take a look at the following example:

Tori 鳥(とり)

This word is a noun and means either “bird” or “birds”. In other words, it can be considered as a singular or plural form depending on the context and situation. This ambiguity is not unique to the word, “tori 鳥(とり)”. (Almost) all Japanese nouns have only one form.

Contrary to this, in English and some other languages, there is a border between singular and plural nouns. The difference between these two forms is often just “s” or “es”, but still they are different. Thus, Japanese learners who are familiar with the border will feel strange when they find out that Japanese doesn’t have the border at all. As I already mentioned, Japanese nouns have only one form. This means that we cannot see information about numbers through Japanese expressions unless they contain numbers themselves. In this article, I’d like to talk about Japanese ambiguity between singular and plural nouns through proverbs. Why proverbs? Interestingly and surprisingly, some proverbs are common in both English and Japanese. I believe that using them as examples would help us to focus on only the ambiguity between singular and plural nouns, and also, on the interesting points which I’d like to introduce to you.

First example is:

Me kara uroko ga ochiru 目から鱗が落ちる(めからうろこがおちる)

The scales fell from my eyes.

Let me explain Japanese words first. Here, “me 目(め)” means “eye” or “eyes”. “Kara から” is a case particle used to express the start point of movement which is described by the following verb. This particle corresponds to the English preposition, “from”. “Uroko 鱗(うろこ)” means “scale” or “scales”. “Ga が” is also a case particle and used to make the subject in the sentence. In this case, “uroko 鱗(うろこ)” put just before the particle “ga が” is the subject. “Ochiru 落ちる(おちる)” is a verb meaning “fall”.

As you can see in the previous paragraph, in Japanese, the border between singular and plural nouns is not clear. From the Japanese expression, unfortunately, we cannot see how many scales fell from eye/eyes. Certainly, the English expression doesn’t tell us the exact numbers, but the expression is not “a scale fell from an eye”. The English expression gives us more information than Japanese one. In the next paragraph, I’d like to talk about this point.

I’m not sure how other Japanese people feel, but for me, the proverb “me kara uroko ga ochiru 目から鱗が落ちる(めからうろこがおちる)” had been an expression using two singular nouns, “me 目(め)” and “uroko 鱗(うろこ)”. This means that, in English, my understanding can be expressed as “a scale fell from an eye”. Therefore, when I found this proverb written in English at first, I was so surprised. I had never imagined that the proverb could express “scales fell from both eyes”. What this story tells us is that at least one Japanese guy tends to understand nouns as singular nouns unconsciously and that the Japanese expression never helped him to make the ambiguity clear. In my opinion, this is very suggestive and helpful to understand a piece of Japanese culture. We often avoid to point out one thing or person. Keeping the object ambiguous also contributes to respectful expressions in Japanese, I think. Sometimes this ambiguity can be a big problem though…

In the upcoming article, I will introduce another proverb and keep explaining the ambiguity.