Zelda: Ocarina of Time/The Great Deku Tree speaks/Grammar

A small look at Classical Japanese

A tree hundred's, or even thousand's, of years old just spoke to us. His language will definitely be different to our own! No "yo dawg, what up", no cat memes, no leet speech. More on the lines of "The lady doth protest too much, me thinks" or "Hear ye, hear ye".

We get a sample of Japanese from the past in the very first sentence:

ハイラル王国に広がる深き森

Now, you may ask yourself "Why is it 深き and not 深い?", like it is in the Vocabulary page. The form 深き is the classical Japanese version of 深い. Both are attributive, meaning they both modify a noun (or an adjective in layman's terms).

You can get this form by taking off the い in the I-Adjectives and adding a き

• 高い　　高き
• 安い　　安き
• 赤い　　赤き

Classical Japanese pops up again in another sentence:

たったひとりだけ妖精を持たぬ少年がおったのじゃ…

An astute reader might recognize 持たぬ as the base 1 form of the verb 持つ plus ぬ. Again, this is "olden" speak of the negative form of 待つ, 待たない. Any verb can be put into this form: Just replace ない of the present causal negative of a verb and add ぬ

• 食べない　食べぬ
• 知らない　知らぬ
• 見ない　　見ぬ

These two conjugation probably won't be useful for most people, but it will be useful if you ever stumble across it. We will see ぬ　replacing ない in another sentence, but that sentence has new grammar to go over.

For an in depth look into Classical Japanese, visit http://kafkafuura.wordpress.com/classical-japanese/ Credit for the above info goes to both Kafkafuura for his/her above site, and Tae Kim's Grammar guide for the ぬ form here: http://www.guidetojapanese.org/negverb2.html

Expressing Have to or Must

We haven't even officially met our hero, and the Deku Tree is already requesting Link to do something:

• どうやらあの妖精を持たぬ子が立たねばならぬ時がきたようじゃ。

The verb 立たねばならぬ is the negative form of 立つ, minus ない and ねばならぬ tacked on. This means "Has to stand up/rise" The ぬ in this sentence is the same ぬ as discussed earlier, so in everyday Japanese, it would be 立たねばならない. So to say "must" you

• Put the verb in the negative form
• Take off ない
• Add ねばならない

Examples:

• 食べねばならない Have to eat
• 読まねばならない Have to read
• 寝ねばならない Have to sleep

する is irregular; it is written as せねばならない.

This form is usually used in written Japanese, or in formal speech.

Modifying Nouns with Verbs

Much of the Deku Tree's dialogue has verbs used to describe nouns:

• ハイラル王国に広がる深き森

• たったひとりだけ妖精を持たぬ少年がおったのじゃ

• ワシに残された時はもう…

As in English, you can modify nouns with verbs. In English, we sometimes put the verb in the -ing form:

• The running man
• The burning book
• The crying child fell asleep

In Japanese, you can use the dictionary form, past or present, to modify nouns

• 妖精を待たない少年

The boy without a fairy

When the doer appears before the noun, が is used, like the following example

• 私が買った本

The book I bought

These act like one noun, so can be used anywhere a noun can be used

• 私が買った本は安かった。

The book I bought was cheap.