'Can' in Japanese

[Spiderwick]

Hi
I' really having trouble with the word 'can' in Japanese. I'm trying to work through my textbook but the grammatical notes are really not helping me. This is what it says:

でます　is the verb which expresses ability of possibility. A noun and verb dictionary form ことbefore が　indicates the content of ability of possibility.

1) Nouns
Nouns placed before が　are mostly nouns which express actions such as driving a car, shopping skiing, dancing etc. Nouns such as　にはん, which is associated with the action はなすor ビチノwhich is associated with the action ひくcan also be grouped here.

ミラーさん　は　 にはん　 が　でます
Mr Miller can speak Japanese

ゆき　が　たくさん　ふりましたから、　ことし　は　スキー　が　できます
It snowed a lot, so we can ski this year


2) Verbs
When a verb is used to describe ability or possibility こと　should be attached to the dictionary form of the verb to make it a nominalized phrase (I've underlined this) and then が　できます　put after it


ミラーさん　は　かんじ　を　よむ　こと　が　 できます
Mr Miller can read Kanji.

カード　はらう　こと　が　 できます
You can pay by credit card


I just can't see the difference between 'Mr. Miller can speak Japanese' and 'Mr. Miller can read Japanese'. Can someone please help me on this, I'm really pulling my hair out here. Can you not have:
ミラーさん　は　 にはん　を　はなす　 こと　が　 できます
If not, why not

In addition, I also don't understand 'nominalized phrase' – what it is, why its needed and how it functions.

If anyone can help me on this I would be much appreciated.
Thanks, Anne

[QuackingShoe]

What's a にはん? Do you mean にほん? Or in your examples, にほんご, rather? 'cause にほん is the country, にほんご is the language. Also できます not でます, which is an entirely different word, but you corrected that halfway through.

Anyway. The real issue here is that there isn't a word 'can' in Japanese. I guess saying that can come off as banal, but it is important to appreciate that there really aren't a whole lot of equivalents.
In Japanese, the potential is expressed by conjugation of the verb. The most simple way to wrap your head around the potential in Japanese, and so what's usually presented first, is できる (できます) which is essentially just a potential する (します).

So in the same way that you might say べんきょうをする, to express 'doing' a noun that involves an action, you can also べんきょうができる, expressing that you CAN do a noun. が is generally used here as the potential is generally considered intransitive. In にほんごができる you're literally saying "Japanese can be done." Presumably, by you.

Nominalizing is turning something else into a nominal (a noun). This is required for certain grammatical constructions, such as this one. It's VERY important in Japanese. In this case, you can use こと which means 'thing' to nominalize a phrase ending in a verb. You may not have learned how to modify nouns with verbs in general, yet, but, well, you can, in the same way as anything else. So in the same way that you can have a しろいくるま or a はやいくるま, you can also have a はしるくるま, a car that, well, runs. こと, though, is so generic as a 'thing' that it basically just serves as the verb that modifies it. So よむこと is like 'the reading thing' 'the thing that is reading' or, simply, 'reading.'
Now that you've nominalized the phrase with こと, you can affect this noun phrase in the same way that you'd affect any other noun. So, 読むことができる = The reading thing can be done = I can read.
To answer your question about what the difference is, there isn't one. You can as easily say かんじができる as かんじをよむことができる, because while what you 'can do' with the kanji isn't stated, it's pretty obvious. The latter is just more explicit. It's just a choice.

Besides all this, there's also the actual potential conjugations for every verb, as I alluded at the start. For instance, you could just say かんじがよめる and have it mean (essentially) the same thing. I'd suggest reading about this somewhere else, though There's the guidetojapanese, as always.

[Spiderwick]

Thanks for your help on this - and for being so understanding that I spelt Japanese language incorrectly (Doh!). I feel like I've learned a great deal from your post.

1) The dictionary form of the verb can be used to suggest 'doing' a noun. I knew this from

I'm poor at writing Japanese!
私　は　にはんご　を　かく　の　が　へた　です

But I didn't realise this was a general usage of the form. Things are starting to make sense. I've been studying on my own, without lessons and only using textbooks/CDS, for over a year. Though I write a great deal in Japanese, it's moments like this that I realise I'm not fully appreciating the stucture of the language. Sorry for being thick about the whole 'nominalizing' thing whilst my entire understanding of が leaves a lot to be desired. I'm going to go through your notes again and hopefully I will be more confident in this part of the textbook. Thanks again
Anne

[Spiderwick]

Sorry- spelt Japanese language wrong again! Dear me
私　は　にほんご　を　かく　の　が　へた　です

[QuackingShoe]

Glad to help, but,

The dictionary form of the verb doesn't have anything to do with the property of doing a noun (beyond the normal direct object relationship like in your example). Sorry for being misleading. That's a function of する, which just means 'to do' whatever. Because of this there's a whole line of 'する verbs' that are nouns that you 'do,' because the noun actually describes an action, even though the word is, again, a noun. Again, べんきょう is one, and you can write either べんきょうをする or べんきょうする. Or any conjugation thereof - again, the fact that it's in the dictionary form here doesn't have anything to do with anything.
Of course, in reality, this is all just an extension of the direct object relationship, but we teach it as some special thing anyway. Meh. Just because する gets a LOT of play this way, and we don't do anything similar in English (commonly).

So, する can be used to 'do' pretty much anything, including a nominalizer. Like　よむことをする, 'do the thing of reading,' if you had reason to be so indirect about it (which, uhm, generally you wouldn't, but it does come up). And because できる is really just the potential equivalent of する, you can use it the same way, which creates a roundabout potential for 'reading' instead of using よめる.

Clear? Not clear?

[gerald_ford]

Yeah, I think QuackingShoe hit it on the head. "dekiru" is just another verb, but happens to mean the potential of doing something, not actually doing it. So for any instances of "suru", you can replace with "dekiru" and instead of doing it, you're saying you can do it.

Good luck!