I know that Japanese people tend not to write the kanji in these cases but I really would like to know which kanji this ありません comes from in the following example:

山田さんは学生じゃありません。

Is it "有りません" or "在りません"? I did a search and found more examples using "有" which I thought was strange as I understand it means "to have" whereas "在" means "to be".

Wouldn't it make more sense if "在" was used instead of "有"? Can we use either of them in this case?

Thanks for your help.

Most conventionally, it would be neither. じゃありません is almost always written in hiragana, but if you insisted on using kanji, it would probably be 有. Both cases mean "to exist", not "to have" though the 有る version is used to express possession.

JimmySeal Wrote:Both cases mean "to exist", not "to have" though the 有る version is used to express possession.

Practically all the dictionaries define the possession use as "to have", though. Including monolingual ones: 持っている, 所有している.

The only dictionary I have that makes a distinction says (in Japanese) that 在る is "to exist"; "to live" and that 有る has all the meanings.

SVTony Wrote:I know that Japanese people tend not to write the kanji in these cases but I really would like to know which kanji this ありません comes from in the following example:

山田さんは学生じゃありません。

Is it "有りません" or "在りません"? I did a search and found more examples using "有" which I thought was strange as I understand it means "to have" whereas "在" means "to be".

Wouldn't it make more sense if "在" was used instead of "有"? Can we use either of them in this case?

Thanks for your help.

I've never seen a kanji used in this situation in my life, so I wonder if it's perhaps best to say that any kanji would be incorrect here. Maybe someone else here can remember seeing it at some point? Or knows if it was ever historically written with kanji?

I've seen ある written as 有る many times, and 在る a few times, but never in a (noun)じゃありません construction.

Also, ありません does not 'come' from any kanji. Perhaps you could talk about Chinese loan words as 'coming' from certain kanji, but ありません is not from Chinese.

Vempele Wrote:

JimmySeal Wrote:Both cases mean "to exist", not "to have" though the 有る version is used to express possession.

Practically all the dictionaries define the possession use as "to have", though. Including monolingual ones: 持っている, 所有している.

My dictionary also says the main meaning of "有" is "have". That's why it was a bit confusing, although it can also mean "be, exist, be present"; but I thought this was more in case we were talking about objects rather than people?

Tzadeck Wrote:I've never seen a kanji used in this situation in my life, so I wonder if it's perhaps best to say that any kanji would be incorrect here. Maybe someone else here can remember seeing it at some point? Or knows if it was ever historically written with kanji?

I've seen ある written as 有る many times, and 在る a few times, but never in a (noun)じゃありません construction.

Also, ありません does not 'come' from any kanji. Perhaps you could talk about Chinese loan words as 'coming' from certain kanji, but ありません is not from Chinese.

I should have said the "あ" in　"ありません". I know the kanji is not written in this case but I'd like to know where it originally came from.

Back to the original sentence: the ある in じゃありません is not the "usual" ある, it's the copula である (you may know it as だ. じゃありません is just a polite version of じゃない). None of my dictionaries list a kanji for である, nor can I recall ever having seen a kanji used for it, so I agree with Tzadeck.

Quote:I know the kanji is not written in this case but I'd like to know where it originally came from.

His point is that (for kun-readings) the kanji comes* from the word, not the other way around.

*By which I don't mean to imply the kanji was created for the word (merely imported/assigned), though such kanji do exist: 働く.

SVTony Wrote:I should have said the "あ" in　"ありません". I know the kanji is not written in this case but I'd like to know where it originally came from.

I know that you meant just the あ.

What I mean is, why do you think it came from a kanji? I'm not sure how old the word ある is because I don't know about historical Japanese, but surely Japanese had a 'to be' verb before it had a written language. Japanese took Chinese characters and assigned them to Japanese words. The way kanji are used is still to represent words, not the other way around, and authors have a lot of freedom in choosing which kanji they want to use to represent a word.

That's why philosophically I think you could only argue that Chinese loan words ultimately 'come from' certain kanji, since they had a kanji when they came to Japan. Or, words that are made up based on kanji. You could imagine that the Japanese had steam trains (汽車), and then electric trains were invented and were called 電車, and in some sense the word came from the kanji. But that's not true of ある. If ある is not that old as it's pronounced now (I have no idea), it's very likely that it evolved from an earlier form, going back through history before kanji came to Japan.

It might be best to ask if ではありません historically used a kanji even after kana was common-place, and what it was. I have no idea. But my sense is that any kanji is incorrect in modern Japanese.

Thanks for your answers, everyone!

It's become clearer now. I didn't realise this is not the same ある. I always try to use as much kanji as possible when writing, but I guess it shouldn't be done in this case.

SVTony Wrote:My dictionary also says the main meaning of "有" is "have".

That's what it usually means in a compound, yes. But then again, the meaning of 在 isn't "to be", either: it's "to exist".

Quote:I didn't realise this is not the same ある.

To further clarify, it's the same verb, it's just that である is radically different from other uses of ある.

Quote:I always try to use as much kanji as possible when writing,

So long as you're aware that this will make your writing look unnatural. Depending on how far you take it, even native speakers could have trouble reading it.

Tzadeck Wrote:I'm not sure how old the word ある is because I don't know about historical Japanese, but surely Japanese had a 'to be' verb before it had a written language.

ある (classical あり) goes back to the earliest Japanese we have evidence for. It used to be used for both inanimate and animate things, but it certainly predates writing.

yudantaiteki Wrote:

Tzadeck Wrote:I'm not sure how old the word ある is because I don't know about historical Japanese, but surely Japanese had a 'to be' verb before it had a written language.

ある (classical あり) goes back to the earliest Japanese we have evidence for. It used to be used for both inanimate and animate things, but it certainly predates writing.

I was hoping you'd chime in--Thanks!

SVTony Wrote:山田さんは学生じゃありません。

The meaning of the phrase is "Yamada san isn't a student".　じゃありません is the negative of the verb です, and ではありません too. As they said before "じゃない" is the short version. I have never seen this written in kanji, and I think is better to not write words in Kanji if the japanese people don't write that particular word that way.