I often talk about the various unique aspects of the Japanese language, in part because I just think languages are cool, but also in the hopes of helping anyone interested in learning Japanese get their bearings. Naturally Japanese is very different from English, featuring a different word order (SOV instead of SVO as we use in English), the ability to casually omit the subject and object in sentences if the meaning is clear from context, and so on. One aspect of Japanese grammar that proves challenging for students early on are the verbs います imasu and あります arimasu, which both mean “to exist [in a place].” The catch is that imasu (pronounced ee-mahs) is used for animate objects, anything that’s alive ike a person or a cat, and arimasu (ah-ree-mahs) is for any inanimate object. A good basic sentence might be, 私は東京にいますが、家は大阪にあります watashi wa Tokyo ni imasu ga, ie wa Osaka ni arimasu, which means “I am in Tokyo, but my house is in Osaka.” I remember tormenting my teacher with questions about these verbs, asking which I should use if referring to an android that was indistinguishable from a human, or an undead zombie, or a Venus Fly Trap, as my brain sought to define the boundaries of the new concepts I was learning. When I came to Japan I happened to meet a small child who mistakenly referred to cars driving down the road with imasu instead of the correct arimasu (the cars move, though they’re not alive). I felt a strange kinship with her, since I might have made the same error myself. (For the record, the Japanese staff of J-List reports that zombies and robots would use imasu since you can interact with them, but all plants would use arimasu.)
Another example: Where is the scary clown? He’s standing right behind you.
