Yesterday was my first day back in Japanese class after break and we were talking about what we did over the holidays. I was trying to say "I missed my friends" but I didn't know how. When I asked the professor, she said that Japanese didn't have a non-archaic way of saying you miss someone. Is she correct? If so, is there another word or phrase that would get the point across even if it doesn't directly translate? Is there a cultural reason Japanese doesn't have a way to say this? I'm curious.
It's not a cultural thing - Japanese just expresses the concept differently, so your teacher couldn't give you a literal translation. The most natural way to express missing someone (or something) is to use the たい form of the verb. For people, you would say 会いたい - 友だちに会いたい, or 友だちに会いたかった for "missed." If, for example, you wanted to say you missed a kind of food, you could say something like メキシコ料理を食べたかった。 (Living in Japan, I have this thought a lot! ^^; )
The other common way to express missing someone is to say （名前）がいなくて寂しい - literally, "I'm lonely because (Name) isn't here." I wouldn't use this one with 友だち, though, because it sounds like you're saying you're lonely because you don't have any friends.
There are a couple words that might correspond more literally to "missing" - 恋しい comes to mind - but your teacher's right: no one uses them in normal conversation.
ありがとう！ I'm not sure why my teacher just didn't say to use 会いたかった, because I know we've used that in class before for things like wanting to meet people. I'm sure this topic will come up again after spring break so I'll be sure to keep this grammar in mind!
The last thing I want to do is paint broad strokes, but I have seen a very strong tendency in Japanese professors (both in teaching Japanese as well as teaching English) that prescribe very closely to the 'direct translation' model - which often results in a word-for-word style change between one language in the next.
Because of this, when the translation relies more on intended meaning/feeling of the sentence instead of the literal meaning, they tend to hesitate.
While I completely agree with できるだけ's suggestions, this is possibly what was going on in the teacher's head:
"Yes, 会いたかった has a very similar perceived meaning to 'miss you', but it also literally means 'I wanted to see/meet you', so I shouldn't use this as a translation for 'miss you'.
I think it is easiest for us in general to be able to have direct links between words/phrases; I've been doing a lot of translation for an upcoming renshuu feature, and while I often know that the direct translation is not something that we'd say in English, there is a part of me that feels uncomfortable using a more natural translation that captures the meaning/feeling of the sentence, because it often results in using words that have no direct relation to a specific word(s) in the original language.
This particular professor does tend to use a lot of direct translation, so that makes sense. Unfortunately, especially past beginner level, Japanese and English don't seem to directly translate naturally. It sure makes me appreciate all the work that goes into translation of books, games, movies, etc.
マイコー, I understand where you're coming from, and I often run into the same issues when translating things for students (in either direction.) But I also think that a bit more focus on natural target language use may be appropriate in a classroom setting. It's kind of a difficult line for Renshuu and other online resources, because learners may struggle if the connection between the English and the Japanese isn't apparent, and not everyone asks when they run into issues (though some people do, and I think that's awesome.) In a class, though, when you can explain the appropriate phrase for the situation and any differences in translation, surely it's more helpful to teach whatever phrase best captures what the student wants to say? It's like when I get E->J translations from my Japanese students, and they're all like あなたはあなたの名前を書いて下さい。 Drives me crazy!
It is definitely a fine line to walk - neither is 100% sufficient in a classroom setting, because you simply aren't going to have the time to let them learn language the way we naturally do, which is much more exposure, pattern matching, and getting a 'feel' for what should be said in certain situations. So, of course, we end up relying on and using rules whenever we can (and that certainly is not a bad thing) because it is easier to make progress given the other constraints of the classroom.
I think the problem can occur when, as I often see, it is 100% rule-based, even when it is more convenient and interesting (which I would argue is an investment into them wanting to continue to study) to give them some natural goodness from time to time :).
I, personally, have come to feel that a lot of explanation takes place when it really isn't needed at all. Of course, when there is something interesting about the phrase, or explanation will help clear up something - go for it...but I have seen students easily pick up things with very little explanation (taking time to confirm that what they think is what you think they think). I have also seen students that would get the simple explanations, but get bogged down and completely confused when the teacher dumps a ton of grammar terms on them that they really *do* not need to know at their level.
It is indeed fun to explore what explanations, what selection of words will cause the greatest number of students to understand what you are talking about. Nothing beats having a class that didn't go so well, then analyzing what you did and making subtle changes in the next class that causes a HUGE increase in comprehension.
How about 「友達のことをいつも思っていました。」? You could throw in the 私の at the beginning to make it clear, but I think it'll work well enough without. 寂しい and 恋しい lend too much pathos. T T
