料理する or 料理をする

[stef.rowlinson_500575]

So I'm working on some exercises in the volume I Genki textbook and I came across a question that asked me to make a sentence to say that I think Mary often cooks.

So I had: メアリさんはよく料理すると思います。

As the textbook lists to cook as 料理する。 But the answer key gave:

メアリさんはよく料理をすると思います。

I don't quite understand why the answer key gave the answer it did. To the best of my knowledge both sentences translate to "I think Mary often cooks". Is the second one more natural in Japanese than the first? And if so does the same apply to all noun + する verbs when they're preceded by a quantifier?

[thegooseking]

stefさん

Both are correct. The form of all する verbs is technically (noun)をする because the noun is the direct object of する. However, it is very common in Japanese to drop the を, to the point that I would say that dropping it is actually more natural than including it. Dropping the を is simply a contraction - if it were English, you'd have an apostrophe there.

There is another reason for dropping the を, which is that する verbs can have their own direct object. This gives you a sentence with more than one direct object, which normally isn't allowed. It is allowed in this case, but dropping the を in the する verb and treating it as one unit just makes it easier to read.

Dropping particles is something that does happen in informal Japanese, but dropping the を in する verbs is a special case that can happen even when you're not being informal.

小狼

[stef.rowlinson_500575]

stefさん

Both are correct. The form of all する verbs is technically (noun)をする because the noun is the direct object of する. However, it is very common in Japanese to drop the を, to the point that I would say that dropping it is actually more natural than including it. Dropping the を is simply a contraction - if it were English, you'd have an apostrophe there.

Aaaah, now it makes sense. Dropping the を　appears to be so common that the vocabulary listing of that lesson didn't even bother to include it and that threw me off a bit. I guess I also don't have as good a grasp of what を means as I'd like. Thanks for clarifying. ^^

PS I'm I correct in assuming that your name's read Syaoran?

[mmmason8967]

As it happens, I was reading a paper by some linguists the other day on this very subject (just the result of some haphazard browsing). They had a slightly different take on it: there's a sligtht shift in nuance depending on where the を is. For example:-

A　私は、魚を料理した。
B 　私は、魚の料理をした。

The difference is that sentence A says "I cooked a fish" or "I cooked some fish" or "I cooked the fish" (a fish mentioned earlier in the conversation), and sentence B says "I did fish-cooking" or, more sensibly, "I cooked with fish". It's just a nuance, apparently, and you'd probably translate both of them as "I cooked fish".

If you omit 魚 (or whatever it might be) it still works in a similar way, or so they reckon. So 料理をする is "to cook"and 料理する is "to cook something"--only there is no "something" in the Japanese sentence so the nuance isn't as strong as that.

マイケル

[Casandara]

マイケルさん、

そうですね。
That would explain why the answer key went with 料理をする in this context. So would it sound more natural to use 料理をする　in the sample I mentioned above or would nobody really notice if you used 料理する? Just trying to figure out if this is purely a style thing or one of those language quirks where one version is correct and the other is wrong, but nobody can really explain why.

(This discussion is proving to be a great way to memorize how to write 料理する　btw xD)

[mmmason8967]

I think, just as 小狼さん already said, "both are correct" and that's the most important thing. I don't think one version is any more correct than the other. The linguistic info says that there's a subtle difference in nuance, but at a basic level what's being said is the same either way.

If you inlcude the を (料理をする), it's very slightly more focussed on cooking as an activity. If you omit it (料理する) there's an implication that some noun followed by を has been left unsaid, and focusses very slightly more on the end result of the activity (the unsaid thing that's going to be cooked). I don't think the difference is very significant, but knowing there is one helps you to grasp the idea that both versions are correct (well, it helps me anyway).

マイケル

[Casandara]

Okay, just double checking. I've done enough translating and proof reading in English to know that sometimes things can be correct, but not natural. Thanks for all the help. ^^

カサンダラ

[community.japanese]

小狼さん、マイケルさん、
どうもありがとうございます。
いつもながら素晴らしい説明ですね。
stef.rowlinsonさん、カサンダラさん、
小狼さん and マイケルさん gave you the really good explanation.
However, if you have any questions, please feel free to ask us.
Yuki 　由紀
Team JapanesePod101.com

[doodoofan6899]

I had a lot of problem with the usage of を too. I still do now.

[community.japanese]

doodoofan6899 san,

If you still have problems, you can post them here.　

Yuki 　由紀
Team JapanesePod101.com