Vocab
| Word |
Pronunciation |
Meaning |
| 料理人 |
りょうりにん |
cook |
| ステーキ |
|
steak |
| 焼く |
やく |
to grill |
The cook grills a steak.
料理人がステーキを焼く
This sentence would mean that the cook grills a steak regularly, e.g. as in “the cook grills steak every day”.
More natural would be to use -ている as a continuing action “the cook is grilling a steak”:
料理人がステーキを焼いている
The cook grilled a steak yesterday.
昨日料理人がステーキを焼いた
The past tense of 焼く is 焼いた.
The cook will grill a steak tomorrow.
明日料理人がステーキを焼く
Japanese does not have a future tense, so the addition of “明日” (tomorrow) is necessary to make the sentence unambiguous.
The steak is grilled by the cook.
ステーキが料理人に焼かれる
The passive form of 焼く is 焼かれる.
The indirect object (that is the direct object in the active voice) is marked by the particle に.
The steak has been grilled by the cook.
ステーキが料理人に焼かれた
This is closest to the English grammatical structure and is simply the past tense of the previous sentence. However, in English the sentence could also be a clarification / explanation about the steak. In this case the steak is the topic of the sentence, which would translate as follows:
ステーキは料理人が焼いた
The steak will finish grilling in 10 minutes.
ステーキは十分に焼き終わる
Once again there is no future tense in Japanese, hence without stating a time it will be ambiguous if the steak will finish grilling or the steak finishes grilling.
To state that it finishes, we can combine the verbs 焼く with 終わる (to finish) into the compound verb 焼き終わる.
The cook wanted to grill a steak.
料理人がステーキを焼きたかった
Japanese has a verb conjugation for desire, namely the ending -たい. It behaves as an い-adjective, and thus the past tense becomes 焼きたかった.
The cook would have grilled a steak.
This was the most difficult for me to translate. Counterfactual conditions (“if X had happened, then Y would have happened”) are translated with the -たら or -ば form of the verb in the antecedent and adding だろう to the consequent (“もし X -たら、Y だろう”).
However, in this sentence the antecedent of the conditional is missing. The following are translated by a native speaker:
料理人がステーキを焼いて置けばよかった
The ending 置けばよかった translates as something like “to wish it had been”, literally meaning “if [it is] put [like this], then [it] was good”. So the closest translation in English would be “If the cook had grilled a steak, then that would be nice”.
This is a different kind of conditional than I wanted, however.
料理人がステーキを焼いてもよかった
This sentence emphasises that the cook did grill a steak. Adding もよかった is translated as “would also be good”; the literal translation is “[If] the cook grilled a steak, [that] also [would have been] good”.
This one is quite close to the conditional I wanted.
料理人がステーキを焼けただろう
焼ける is the potential form of 焼く, meaning “to be able to grill”, with past tense 焼けた.
The だろう at the end expresses uncertainty or seeks agreement. Hence the literal translation is “I guess the cook could have grilled a steak”. However, this sentence is what would be the consequent of the conditional if we add the antecedent: 晩ご飯を食べなかったら料理人がステーキを焼けただろう.
The cook could grill a steak.
料理人がステーキを焼ける
Japanese has a potential conjugation of the verb: 焼く becomes 焼ける. As in english it is used both for expressing the possibility of an action as for expressing the ability to do an action.
The cook couldn’t grill a steak.
料理人がステーキを焼けない
Once again we can use the potential form 焼ける, but this time negated to 焼けない.
Alternatively we can state that the cook is unable to grill a steak by creating a noun 焼くこと, literally “the grilling thing”, or more precisely “the act of grilling”, and adding the verb できる, “to be able to” in the negated form できない.
料理人はステーキを焼くことができない
Hey cook, grill a steak!
料理人さん、ステーキを焼け
To make a vocative of 料理人, we add the respectful -さん suffix. Basically it becomes “mister cook”. It could be omitted if you want to be especially rude.
As in English, the imperative 焼け is very rude. A more polite way is to use the -て form, which can be interpreted as a command as well:
料理人さん、ステーキを焼いて
This is a shortened form of the following sentence, which is the most polite, and would be translated as “Hey cook, could you please grill a steak”:
料理人さん、ステーキを焼いてください
I saw the cook that grilled a steak.
ステーキを焼いていた料理人を見た
In Japanese subordinate clauses do not use pronouns, but instead are just pasted in front of the noun they are modifying.
The sentence ステーキを焼いていた uses the -ている form in the past tense to denote a continuing action in the past (“the steak was being grilled”).
ステーキを焼いていた料理人 is then translated as “the cook that was grilling a steak”.
The steak grilling cook was tired.
ステーキを焼いている料理人は疲れた
This is translated similarly to the previous sentence, with “steak grilling” being a sentence that is placed in front of the noun it is modifying.
I remember these things, like my Latin textbook’s “Marcus is hastening to the Rhine.” I can barely even say “hastening” to my sister now without us going into in-jokes.