When do you use deshou?

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Reply #26 - 2013 June 01, 11:10 am
Socky Member
From: United States Registered: 2013-05-24 Posts: 66

pauro02 wrote:

Socky wrote:

It seems like everyone else already has this covered, but just another example from a song:

いつか思い出すでしょう
(Itsuka omoidasu deshou.)

Translates to "You'll probably remember someday," or "I'm sure you'll remember someday."

The song is called "Uso" by SID if you want to look it up. It's pretty good ^_^

Could you please translate this literally? I mean the words, what is itsuka and omoidasu? thanks! It's just that I like the phrase... please..

Forgive me for not responding, I was inactive for a while. Thankfully uisukii was there to tell you ^_^

Anyway the song actually used 'deshou' several times.

Ex:
あの日見た空、茜色の空を、
君は忘れたのでしょう。
(Ano hi mita sora, akaneiro no sora wo. Nee, kimi wa wasureta no deshou.)
Translates to: The sky we saw that day, the scarlet/madder sky. You probably forgot it.
As I probably know less than you about mechanics and Japanese grammar, I don't want to go into great detail and mislead you (I'm a real beginner tongue), but I'll try to explain as much as I know regardless.

As for the first part (あの日見た空、茜色の空を), I won't get into it but it says, "The sky we saw that day, the scarlet sky."

Now for the part with 'deshou':
君は忘れたのでしょう
(Kimi wa wasureta no deshou.)
Kimi wa, obviously, just means 'you'.
wasureta is the past tense of 'forget', so 'forgot.'
And once again, deshou. In this context is says 'probably' or 'didn't you?'
So this translates to 'You forgot, didn't you?' or if you wanted to make a more assumed translation, 'You forgot about it, didn't you?'

Next example:
いつかまたね と、
てを振りあった けど
もう会うことは無いのでしょう
さいごのうそは 優しいうそでした、忘れない。
(Itsuka matane to,
te o furiatta kedo, mou au koto wa nai no deshou.
Saigo no uso wa, yasashii uso deshita, wasurenai.)
Loosely says:
"See you again someday," we waved.
But we won't see each other again, will we?
That last lie was a sweet lie, I won't forget it.)

The main focus of this was:
もう会うことは無いのでしょう
(mou au koto wa nai no deshou)
We won't meet again, will we?  or
We probably won't meet again.

Before I go into this analysis I want to point out that I am not the most reliable source and most other people here know much more than me about this but I want to try for my knowledge and yours to decipher this as best I can. If you or anyone else finds any mistakes in this please correct me. However, please don't completely mistrust me because of saying this, because I'm almost sure this is correct:

Mou is 'again' or 'more'.
Au is the root for 'to meet'.
When multiple verbs are in one sentence, you must change them to nouns by adding 'no' or 'koto'.
Therefore, 'aukoto' is like 'the act of meeting'.
'wa nai' negates it, so aukoto wa nai would be 'the act of NOT meeting'.
and finally 'deshou'. The speaker states that he is sure of the event, or that he predicts it.
So the full statement would be:
Again, we will probably not meet.   or more logically:
We won't meet again, will we?


I apologize for any errors and please correct me. I also apologize for including more than I needed to, but I wanted to share the great lyrics of this song as well as increase my own knowledge. I increased my own understanding by writing this also big_smile

But as far as I know there are no great errors here, and if there are, correct me right away.

In any case, hope this helped.

Reply #27 - 2013 June 01, 11:23 am
yudantaiteki Member
Registered: 2009-10-03 Posts: 3619

When multiple verbs are in one sentence, you must change them to nouns by adding 'no' or 'koto'.

This is the only part of your analysis I have a problem with; there are many ways to use multiple verbs in a sentence that don't involve "no" or "koto".  You use "no" or "koto" when you need to use a verb as a noun, as in this case.

Reply #28 - 2013 June 01, 11:52 am
Socky Member
From: United States Registered: 2013-05-24 Posts: 66

yudantaiteki wrote:

When multiple verbs are in one sentence, you must change them to nouns by adding 'no' or 'koto'.

This is the only part of your analysis I have a problem with; there are many ways to use multiple verbs in a sentence that don't involve "no" or "koto".  You use "no" or "koto" when you need to use a verb as a noun, as in this case.

Oh, sorry about that big_smile I recently found on some forums that in order to have two or more verbs in the same sentence (for example, "I ordered him to go to the park") you must turn all except one of them to nouns.

How exactly do you use multiple verbs other than with the use of "no" or "koto"?

Thanks ^_^

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Reply #29 - 2013 June 01, 12:15 pm
yudantaiteki Member
Registered: 2009-10-03 Posts: 3619

It depends on what the multiple verbs are doing in the sentence.  There are way too many possibilities to list them all.  Sometimes, as with "I ordered..." it would be through a verbal suffix (probably -saseta, or -sasete moratta or something like that).

Another example is that if your verbs describe two actions (usually) in a sequence, you can use a -te form to link them.  There would be no way to do that with no/koto.

There's no general rule for what to do with multiple verbs in a sentence.  There are far too many possibilities for what the two verbs are doing and what their relationship is to each other.

Reply #30 - 2013 June 01, 12:29 pm
Socky Member
From: United States Registered: 2013-05-24 Posts: 66

yudantaiteki wrote:

It depends on what the multiple verbs are doing in the sentence.  There are way too many possibilities to list them all.  Sometimes, as with "I ordered..." it would be through a verbal suffix (probably -saseta, or -sasete moratta or something like that).

Another example is that if your verbs describe two actions (usually) in a sequence, you can use a -te form to link them.  There would be no way to do that with no/koto.

There's no general rule for what to do with multiple verbs in a sentence.  There are far too many possibilities for what the two verbs are doing and what their relationship is to each other.

Using 'te' is easy enough. The hard thing for me is stuff like:

'I thought about eating food.'
'I whistled a song as I drove home.'
'I tried my best to walk away.'

Reply #31 - 2013 June 01, 1:22 pm
yudantaiteki Member
Registered: 2009-10-03 Posts: 3619

You think it's hard because you're trying to treat these as all the same thing, "using multiple verbs", and hoping that there's some way they can all be done the same way.  But all three of your examples are completely different structures in Japanese, so what you really have to do is learn the Japanese structures rather than trying to look at English sentences that have "multiple verbs" and wonder how they can all be expressed in Japanese.  IMO the concept of "multiple verbs in a sentence" is worthless in trying to learn Japanese and will only confuse you.

Of course, the structures are completely different in English as well.  You have "Thought about [clause]", "[verb] as [verb]", and "try to [verb]".

Reply #32 - 2013 June 01, 5:05 pm
Socky Member
From: United States Registered: 2013-05-24 Posts: 66

yudantaiteki wrote:

You think it's hard because you're trying to treat these as all the same thing, "using multiple verbs", and hoping that there's some way they can all be done the same way.  But all three of your examples are completely different structures in Japanese, so what you really have to do is learn the Japanese structures rather than trying to look at English sentences that have "multiple verbs" and wonder how they can all be expressed in Japanese.  IMO the concept of "multiple verbs in a sentence" is worthless in trying to learn Japanese and will only confuse you.

Of course, the structures are completely different in English as well.  You have "Thought about [clause]", "[verb] as [verb]", and "try to [verb]".

Yeah, I suppose I'll just keep learning and not focus on multiple verb sentences separately.