Lesson 18 · プレゼントを あげます — the giving chapter

Give and take, and both halves of the door

Chapter 17 taught verbs that do things to things. Today's nine verbs do things to things for people — and six of them arrive in pairs: give and receive, lend and borrow, teach and learn. One event, named from both ends. Then the sheet does something no sheet has done before: it delivers a whole conversation, both sides of a Japanese doorway.

≈23 minutes · every reading and every commonness tag checked against Jisho.org · the word list is Minna no Nihongo I lesson 7

1.Three pairs, one frame

The frame has not changed since chapter 17 — noun, を, verb, and the verb last. What is new is the shape of the verbs themselves. Six of the nine come as three matched pairs, each pair naming a single event from its two ends:

The course has met this arrangement once before: 行きます and 来ます named one journey from its two ends in chapter 16. Today the same idea reaches the things you own and the things you know.

2.The nine verbs

Three pairs, two senders — おくります for the parcel, かけます for the phone call — and きります, the one verb on the sheet that works alone. Every one is common; one marker on the sheet is not right.

Three of the kanji are for recognition more than for use: あげます, もらいます and かけます are usually written in kana — the textbook prints all three without kanji, and 上げます and 貰います are the sheet's own additions. The standing rule from chapter 14 has not moved either: each verb is one fixed shape with its ます attached; the group numerals build forms this course does not build yet.

3.One sound, three words

Eight chapters running, the dictionary check has said that a short kana string identifies almost nothing, and today it outdoes itself. Three of this chapter's plainest nouns are homophone triples, every member common:

The chopsticks and the bridge are the textbook example of Japanese pitch accent — はし falls for the chopsticks, はし rises for the bridge — which is how speech tells apart what writing tells apart with kanji. And ちち is the dictionary at its most deadpan: look the sound up and milk comes back before father.

4.The desk in katakana

Seven office nouns arrive, and not one of them needed a kanji: this desk was imported. But the words are not simply English said slowly — each one has been worked on by a different Japanese habit, and the habits are worth more than the words:

• Clipping. ワープロ is ワードプロセッサー cut down to four beats; パソコン is パーソナルコンピューター cut the same way — two beats from each half. Long loans get clipped so routinely that the clip becomes the real word and the full form sounds like reading a label aloud.
• Brand names gone generic. A stapler is a ホッチキス because the first ones sold in Japan carried the E. H. Hotchkiss company's name; tape is セロテープ from the Sellotape brand — and the sheet's own English gloss, Scotch tape, is a third trademark doing the same job in American English.
• Hybrids. けしゴム is the course's first word spelled half in kanji, half in katakana: 消し, the native erase, welded to ゴム, Dutch rubber. The spelling is the word's biography.
• Narrowing. シャツ alone historically means the undershirt; the buttoned one is ワイシャツ, swallowed whole from white shirt. A loanword does not have to keep its donor's range.

5.The family, twice over

Four rows of the sheet are two people named twice, and the doubling is the lesson:

Talking about your own father to someone outside the family, he is plain ちち — lowering your own side is a form of politeness toward the listener. Someone else's father is always おとうさん, dressed in the honorific お and the さん the course has put on names since chapter 11. (At home, speaking to him, he is おとうさん too — the humble words are for pointing inward while facing out.)

6.Already, and not yet

もう and まだ close the main list, and they are one pair, not two adverbs: もう says the event is behind us, まだ says it is still ahead. They answer the same question from opposite sides — the fourth two-ended pair on one sheet.

7.The season

Five scenes, forty-one words, each in exactly one of them. The route this time is not a day but a season — which the sheet supplied itself: クリスマス is on the list, and every noun on the page is a thing you give, a tool you give it with, or a person you give it to. The presents move; the words move with them.

8.Forty-one words

Six of these are deliberate repeats. はし, かみ, ちち and はは are lesson 4's two-kana cards; きっぷ is lesson 5's; りょこう is lesson 7's. Each is here because the chapter's own argument needs it — the utensil set is defined against はし, the register pair cannot be taught without its humble half — and かみ, きっぷ and りょこう gain their kanji here for the first time. Their English and Arabic are the same as before; a word met twice is not two words. はな is the exception that proves it: same kana as lesson 4's card, genuinely different word, so it gets a new card of its own.

Drill them for meaning

Chapters 10 to 18 are also available as a flash-card deck, which mixes all the chapters together and remembers which words keep catching you out.

9.Both halves of the door

Seven rows of the sheet are utterances, and for the first time they are not half of anything: they are a whole scene — a visitor at a Japanese door, and the host behind it, each holding their own lines. Read them in order and you can hear the door open:

1. 1.Excuse me — anyone home? — called at the door

   Japanese 🔊

   ごめんください。

   gomen kudasai

   Arabic 🔊

   السَّلَامُ عَلَيْكُمْ.

   as-salāmu ʿalaykum

2. 2.How nice of you to come — welcome!

   Japanese 🔊

   いらっしゃい。

   irasshai

   Arabic 🔊

   أَهْلًا وَسَهْلًا.

   ahlan wa-sahlan

3. 3.Do come in — literally, come up

   Japanese 🔊

   どうぞ おあがりください。

   dōzo oagari kudasai

   Arabic 🔊

   تَفَضَّلْ بِالدُّخُولِ.

   tafaḍḍal bi-d-dukhūl

4. 4.Excuse the intrusion — said crossing the threshold

   Japanese 🔊

   しつれいします。

   shitsurei shimasu

   Arabic 🔊

   عَنْ إِذْنِكَ.

   ʿan idhnika

5. 5.Won't you have some tea? — offering, with the sheet's 〜は slot filled

   Japanese 🔊

   おちゃは いかがですか。

   ocha wa ikaga desu ka

   Arabic 🔊

   مَا رَأْيُكَ فِي فِنْجَانِ شَايٍ؟

   mā raʾyuka fī finjāni shāy?

6. 6.Thank you, I'll start — said before eating or drinking

   Japanese 🔊

   いただきます。

   itadakimasu

   Arabic 🔊

   بِسْمِ اللهِ.

   bismi llāh

7. 7.What a nice…! — admiring what you have been handed

   Japanese 🔊

   すてきですね。

   suteki desu ne

   Arabic 🔊

   مَا أَجْمَلَ هَذَا!

   mā ajmala hādhā!

Three of these repay a closer look. おあがりください says come up, not come in, because a Japanese entrance hall is a literal step below the house — the invitation is onto the raised floor, and the language kept the architecture. いただきます is not a loose bon appétit: it is the humble verb to receive — this chapter's もらいます, bowed lower — so the table formula is the giving chapter's own grammar, aimed at the meal. And the Arabic column is matched by function, not translation: at an Arab door you announce yourself with a greeting of peace, not an apology, and at the table you say بِسْمِ اللهِ, naming God rather than receiving humbly. Each column is what that language actually says at that moment.