When I first read the book, the part about
article was startling. Because I was able to sense its notion directly for the first
time. Following are excerpts from the part.
[ 'a' is not an accessory for nouns]
-The difference between Japanese without
article and English that article is the basis of a logical process-
For example, there is a sentence as an
opening line as follows.
"Once upon a time, there were an old
man and an old woman. The old man…."
In English, they never say, "Once upon a time,
there were [the] old man and [the] old woman…" In Japanese, we use
"ga" or "wa" as particle that plays the same role as
article. When native English speakers speak and write English, noun doesn't give a category of meaning in advance, but presence or absence of article does.
Come to think of it, sometimes I see native
English speakers say like, "I ate a..a...a rice ball." In other words,
article comes first and they recall nouns come next.
As Mr. Petersen wrote in the book, I also feel
that English-language education in Japan has not taught the essence of article
even though I don't know the current situation. It isn't a bad thing to focus
on English conversation and good pronunciation, but I keenly feel the need to
learn such a fundamental sense of English first. (H.S)
