PERSONAL PRONOUNS. 43
Just as we say
i.e. He
Sono ko wo hidoi me ni awasemashital treated that
Tit at child [accus.] harsh eyes to caimcd-to-mct'll child Very
j badly, so also may we say
Vatakiishi wo liidoi me ni } TT
i , He treated me very badly.
awasemashlta. } J J
There is therefore no such thing as a declension of pro- nouns or any special set of possessive pronouns. 71. The chief thing to remember in connection with the Japanese nouns answering to our personal pronouns is the extremely rare use that is made of them. Except in cases of special emphasis or antithesis, the information concerning persons which is in European languages con- veyed by means of pronouns, is left to be gathered from the context. Thus the single word kaenmashlta will mean " I have come back," or " he, she or they have come back," according to the previous drift of the conversation.
Kore karafuro wo tsukaimashoY 1 '^ "will now
This from, balli [accus. part.] wilf-itsc j take a bath "
naturally means " / will now take my bath." For it is almost a matter of course that, in such personal matters, each individual can speak only for himself. I can only eat my own dinner, probably only love my own country, and only work to support my own wife and children. To be, therefore, for ever reiterating and harping on the words " I," " me," " my," you, he, etc., seems to Japanese ears absurd and tedious tautology. A Japanese will often discourse for half-an-hour without using a single personal pronoun. The perpetual recurrence of watakushi and anata,is one of the surest signs of a clumsy foreign
