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Forums - まう >> まわる

Top > 日本語を勉強しましょう / Let's study Japanese! > Anything About Japanese



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Level: 163

How does the archaic まう suddenly receive a magical conjugation of ~わる that I've never heard of or seen before in other verbs?

0
1 year ago
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gillianfaith
Level: 855

What's the context you found まわる in? Are you sure it wasn't a typo or that it's necessarily a conjugation of まう? A google search turns up a single post on HiNative saying that it's a synonym for んでいる, a single definition from saying it means む, a book excerpt from 1888, and couple blog post where it looks like either a misspelling or an adjective. Outside of that I can't see any evidence of it as a verb in common use or まう being conjugated that way.

If わる is indeed a conjugation of う, I think the safest assumption is that it's some grammatical holdover from old Japanese and not a construction that you need to worry about being able to know or use. You can just treat まわる like its own word instead of an inflection of another one.

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1 year ago
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Maybe related, maybe not, but まう appears to be reformed spelling of まふ.

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1 year ago
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Level: 163

Understood, I too think it's some old language I randomly stumbled upon.

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1 year ago
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@お While we encourage and applaud your passionate effort to continually ask questions to learn more, it is also important that the people who are willing to help, be provided with more specific contextual information on your questions.

Specifically, what is the context where this second form appears where you stumbled upon?

For effective help from responders, it would be good to link or give a excerpt so we can examine the questions in context. And it helps the others understand your perspective better to offer you meaningful help instead of guessing in the dark. Japanese is a relatively much more contextual language, and without giving context, the possible interpretations of any phrase/sentence expands out quite a bit, yielding less specific answers.


To illustrate the point on contextual importance, here's an example with english.

Question: "What does 'black' mean?"
Interpretation: "is it the color... or...?"

More explanation: "No, it's not about color, it's something bad..."
2nd guess interpretation: "Is it... black out, the event of losing light source?"

Even more explanation: "No, it's nothing to do with light..."
3rd guess interpretation: "Um, so no black holes and physics, uh... racial trait? what could it be?"

Specific context given: "I saw it in a phrase 'This witch has a black heart'."
Finally interpreted correctly: "Oh, it means an unkind person."


This kind of guessing work happens a lot more in Japanese language learning as a foreign language, as the cues for the exact meaning may lie in a number of sentences before a certain phrase appear (It is hardest to guess correctly for things in mid-sentence without sufficient context).


In conclusion, it's fun exploring language and it's history of evolution. Giving more context and we can yield more accurate result to share.

Here's some historical Japanese language reform which may explain some archaic forms you may see in old texts:
- A.D. 1866+ Genbun Itchi
- A.D. 1946 Post-War Orthography Reform, pre-war rekishiteki kanazukai
- A.D. 1950+ Kanji Simplification Shinjitai

Hope the above links helps give you foundation for understanding the archaic forms.

Thanks for the questions, keep them coming, with more context! Let us all learn together
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1 year ago
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Level: 163

Thank you for the lengthy explanation, effort, and guidance. I'll make sure to provide full content next times I ask!

And also, thanks for the resources, they are interesting to read, though probably not something a beginner me can understand fully. Nevertheless, it's interesting history

I just know I won't be using it anytime soon

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1 year ago
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Getting the posts




Top > 日本語を勉強しましょう / Let's study Japanese! > Anything About Japanese


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