Do you have a sister? If you don't, we can try something else. Maybe a dog, or brother? A sweater you love?
If the answer to any of these is yes, that's great! You don't have them in Japanese, though.
The very concept of "having" something (possessing it) is very prevalent in certain languages. In English, you can have pretty much anything. A family member, a bad day, a beloved pet, etc. In Spanish, you have the amount of years old you are.
Yo tengo 30 años.
The verb here, tener (meaning to have), is used to denote that you are a certain age. Literally translated, it means "I have thirty years".
In Japanese, however, it may shock you to find out that this concept is almost completely foreign. You can possess things in Japanese - via literally holding them or owning an item - but the use of the concept is not nearly as liberal as it is in English.
Let's go back to our first example.
I have a sister.
Here's what it looks like in Japanese.
私は妹がいります。
In both sentences we can see a lot of similarities. I'll write both of them out again and color code just the nouns, subjects, and verbs.
I have a sister.
私は妹がいります。
If you're confused about the syntax - which I won't delve into here - feel free to check out
this article about it.
Back to our two sentences, they look pretty similar at first glance. The main place they really differ is the verbs; I have them both colored in red to signal that they're different words. Have is one every English speaker is familiar with. It just makes sense, it's a fundamental. But what is いります?
いります, or irimasu, is (the formal conjugated version of) one of two Japanese verbs denoting existence, i.e. 'to exist'. いる, in this context, is used to denote a relationship between two people the same way that have does in English. In literal translation, the Japanese sentence above can be said as "As for me, a sister exists".
These existence verbs, いる (iru) and ある (aru), can be used for a variety of different relationships. Where いる is used mainly with living things, ある is used mainly with inanimate, nonliving things.
日本はたくさんのレストランがあります。
(Japan has many restaurants).
In English you can also say this as, "There are many restaurants in Japan". But again, a more literal translation would be, "As for Japan, many restaurants exist".
If you want to say that you literally have something, you can use the verb 持つ (motsu). Where いる and ある are to denote that there is something, or to denote certain relationships, 持つ has a connotation of owning, holding, or possessing something.
お父さんは会社を持ちます。
([My] father owns/has a company.)
彼女はカバンを持つ。
(She holds/has a bag.)
^ Both can work, depending on the context of the situation.
ある could work in both sentences above too, but the implication of them would change slightly. Using 持つ in this context would refer to a certain bag, one that is most likely seen by whoever is speaking the sentence.
彼女はカバンがある。
(She has a bag.)
This is referring more to a bag that is not physically present, or one that the speaker only has a concept of. She owns a bag [somewhere]. Make sense?
There's an argument to be made about Japanese being a very mild language in comparison to English. The way relationships between things, people, ideas, etc. are expressed can feel very limp in comparison to how robustly they are expressed in English. We have, we own, we command. Something we possess in English merely exists within our sphere in Japanese.
Something to remember though is that ultimately there is no right and wrong way to think about these things, only different ways to express them. It's consumingly fascinating how many different ways there are to communicate different ideas. Words and word order are interesting parts of learning any language, but really understanding how things are articulated is the key to understanding cultures, people, and emotions.
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