確か・確かに

You sure about that? - How to Japanese - September 2024

This is How to Japanese, a monthly newsletter with something about Japan/Japanese and a dash of いろいろ.

日本・日本語： Impossible Pairs

There comes a time in your Japanese studies when you have to learn the difference between 確か (tashika) and 確かに (tashika ni). I don’t remember exactly what point that was for me. There’s no embarrassing anecdote I can share that shamed me into understanding the difference. There was just one day when I got sick of not having control over them and made the resolution that, dammit, I would know the difference between these two usages!

Funny enough, that resolution seems to have stuck.

確か is a signal that speakers use at the start of a sentence to reflect a trace of uncertainty about something that they are fairly certain is the case. For example, if someone asked you about the first Japanese anime you watched and you’re 95% certain it was Dragonball Z on the Cartoon Network, but there’s a slight chance your cousin had a copy of Record of Lodoss War on VHS you watched one Thanksgiving, you could say:

確か、ドラゴンボールZだった (Tashika, Dragonball Z datta)

I’m pretty sure it was Dragonball Z.

This is somewhat ironic given that 確か in adjective form means “definite/certain.” You see phrases like 確かな証拠 (tashika na shōko, definite/firm evidence), which means the evidence is rock solid and not wishy washy like your Strong Zero-hazed otaku memories. 確か in our Dragonball Z sentence is an adverb modifying the predicate. 

When you add a に (ni) to the adjective form to make 確か an adverb in a different form, that wishy washiness disappears, making it certain once again:

確かにそうです (Tashika ni sō desu)

That is definitely the case.

This is an extremely useful phrase in conversation when you need to emphasize something is indeed the way that someone described it.

You can also reassure a business partner regarding the receipt of materials:

Xを確かに受け取りました (X o tashika ni uketorimashita)

I can confirm we have received X.

Having phrases like this lodged firmly in your brain is a great way to get a handle on pairs like 確か and 確かに, but at some point you have to force yourself to remember them, one way or another. I think of this as “brute forcing” them, which I’ve written about before. As a reminder, these are the steps to brute force a phrase:

1. The first step is realizing that you’re not fully understanding something. This is a tough step sometimes.

2. Look up the Japanese definition and dissect it.

3. Diagram simple Japanese sentences that you understand.

4. Proceed to look at these over and over and use them to access and understand other example sentences you encounter.

5. Eventually come to an understanding that you then loathe to translate back into English.

There’s no subtlety about it. Saying you can’t handle 確か and 確かに after a couple years of Japanese is a bit like saying “I’m bad at Microsoft Word.” Sorry, that doesn’t cut it anymore. You just need to figure out how to use it in this day and age. 

There are a number of other sets of words like 確か and 確かに. I think of them as “impossible pairs,” and I’ll be introducing them here and there going forward. I initially put them all into a single newsletter but it became unmanageable pretty quickly, so I thought it might be more effective to divide them up.

4日　8日

This is likely one of the first impossible pairs that students encounter during their studies. The difference is so subtle. 4日 (yokka, the fourth of the month) with the geminate consonant versus 8日 (yōka, the eighth of the month) with a long vowel.

To be honest, this is a pair that I still don’t have complete control over, and I’m embarrassed to admit that. I feel like there’s dessert-desert potential here; my fourth grade teacher gave me a mnemonic I’ve never forgotten: “You always want more dessert, so it has more Ss.” 

Maybe long vowel, later date? Now just to cram that in my mind. (longvowellaterdate, longvowellaterdate, longvowellaterdate!)

The good (?) news is that it’s not just non-native speakers who mess this up. A brief review of Twitter posts shows that this is a relatively common issue amongst Japanese.

Some even use the pronunciation はちにち (hachinichi) to prevent confusion, and then double down when their drunk friends make fun of them!

So just know that this is an alternative if you get stuck, but I believe that I can do it, and that you can do it as well. We’re better than these impossible pairs, even if we haven’t perfected all of them just yet. Look forward to more of these in the near future, and let me know if there are any you’d like me to look at.

いろいろ

• The podcast is online over at the blog. I ramble for a bit about exploring your local neighborhood in Japan to find cafes, restaurants, and bars. You never know. You might end up finding a writer you like as well. I recently discovered Kakuta Mitsuyo on the shelves at a 読書カフェ (“reading cafe”) near me. I’m using one of her online essays for my monthly reading group. Give it a look, and you’re welcome to join the USJETAA Japanese Reading Group page over at Facebook.

• It’s also Murakami Fest season. I’m reading through a really interesting period during Murakami’s trip to Italy in Greece, which he wrote about in his memoir Distant Drums. Norwegian Wood has just been published, and Murakami has just run the Athens Marathon in 1987. He’s mentally and physically exhausted, so they’re taking a break, but it still seems like he’s at a loose end, unsure of how he should be spending his time. I’ve gathered all my posts on this memoir in an index.

• If you haven’t seen Shohei Ohtani’s dog Decoy throw out the first pitch at a Dodger’s game, you owe it to yourself to take a look.