Jisho.org Forum

Those are really simple and contrived sentences. Try reading a novel or a historical text and you'll find tons of ambiguity due to omission of parts of sentences.
Grammatically you can probably spell out almost everything the same way as in English. It's just the WAY people talk that takes a lot of getting used to.

When you come to Japan an older person might just ask you いくつですか。
When you think about that in English it just means "how many?" ... how many what!?
But they're asking how old you are.
Or you'll hear "どっちらですか。” Which you learn means "Which (of 2 choices)"
And you'll think "which WHAT?!" But they mean "where are you from?" The fact that it isn't at least "どれですか。"Makes it confusing.
An all Indo-European languages that I know of, these questions are asked directly, so there is no loss of information if you translate them literally.

I don't know whether these are clarity, subtlety, or just confusion.

Japanese makes diffirence between そのandあの, as well as それandあれ. But in English there is no different word for "near that" and "far that".

Japanese also makes difference between the intention of first/second person たいand third person たがる. The reason is that "I" surly know what I want, and I can know what "you" want by the conversation between you and me, but we cannot know what "he/she" wants because he/she is not with us. So we can only "feel" what he/she wants. Denshi Jisho gives a definition of the suffix がるas "to feel (on adj-stem to represent a third party's apparent emotion)". Interesting?

Well, I guess a couple obvious examples are with specificness of words, e.g., お兄さん、弟. I often have trouble translating when someone says "my brother" or "my sister" from English to Japanese (and the same with Chinese and Korean, where it's even worse (for Korean) because the word choice depends on the speaker's gender also) because I don't know if they are older or younger necessarily.

Perhaps another example is you can distinguish nuances/meanings a lot more with 漢字. For example, 由美子に会いたい versus 由美子に逢いたい, both read ゆみこにあいたい, but the second suggests romantic feelings whereas the first does not. (I'm sure there are better 漢字 examples, but this is the best thing that comes to mind now).

However as the Great Paul has said, pretty much anything you can say "clearly" (as in make understood to a native speaker) in one language you can likely say "clearly" in another. It's just that the ways of clarifying things or adding nuances is different in each language. What really corresponds to the various ending particles （語尾）of Japanese (or even n'est-ce pas of French) in English? It is true that the same Japanese sentences could mean many different things according to context, and the same is true for English, but things don't quite line up. Namely, if you want to translate an out-of-context Japanese sentence into English, you need to guess some context to make the translation, and that's probably why people were telling you that. In practice, I don't think Japanese is much more vague than English, though culturally Japanese (and British) tend to be more indirect than Americans, so the indirectness requires some cultural understanding also.

Maybe this also goes along with your question---there are often times where I know exactly what I want to say in Japanese (while I'm speaking English), but I don't know exactly how to make the same thing come out in English (e.g., ご苦労様です、ですよね、…）You just need to get used to the idea that the way of saying things is different in each language, and sometimes one is more convenient than the other.

P.S. Another example you might want to think about is something like the various "if, then" or "when" constructions in Japanese. They add different nuances, but then again we have different constructions too, and no one construction in Japanese exactly lines up with one in English, but I'm not sure which would win at your game.

Actually, all of those three mean different things, only the 2nd one means what you wrote in English.

1. I too want to study Spanish next year.
2. I want to study Spanish next year too.
3. Next year, I want to study Spanish as well.

Posted By: Tobberoth

[p]Actually, all of those three mean different things, only the 2nd one means what you wrote in English.[/p][p]1. I too want to study Spanish next year.

2. I want to study Spanish next year too.
3. Next year, I want to study Spanish as well.[/p]

Actually, the second English sentence could be used for all three of my Japanese ones, depending on where the spoken stress/written italics go:
1. <<I>> want to study Spanish next year too. 私も
2. I want to study Spanish <<next year>> too.来年も
3. I want to study <<Spanish>> next year too. スペイン語も

That's precisely my point - that you can tell exactly what the Japanese sentences mean by the position of "も", but the English word "too" (or "also", and to a lesser extent "as well") is less clear.

Of course you can structure the English in such a way as to make it more clear, but you can also write it in a vague way - whereas in Japanese you have to use も in such a way that the meaning is obvious.

I see your point, but isn't that very much a spoken problem? You wouldn't write "I want to study Spanish next year too" if you meant the meaning in the 私も sentence. I mean, it only works when speaking it since you can emphasis the word being important, just like particles can usually be skipped in Japanese speech.

I nominate the set of particles は and が as one of the advantages of Japanese.

When someone ask me who I am, I will say,
私はルミです。 I am Rumi.
But if someone ask, "which of you is Rumi?" I will raise my hand and say,
私がルミです。 (It's me!) I am Rumi.
In the example above, が emphasizes the subject of the sentence, while は simply shows what is the subject of the sentence.

Thus Japanese can express the importance of subject by means of using particles (of course, this is not all).

I recommend you to have a look at my blog. You may find it helpful. It's all about speaking in Japanese. Tips and How Tos...

I've also introduced a helpful toolkit in my blog which is useful:
http://japanese-speaker.blogspot.com/

To the ones who actually answered my question - thanks.

To the ones who thought I was looking for a grammar lesson or something - I wasn't, but thanks anyway I guess.