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Advanced beginner here,

Going through some vocabulary flash cards and I’ve come across this sentence:

かれは私{わたし}の方{ほう}を見{み}ました。

I don’t understand why ほう is necessary here. It appears to me to be superfluous. Any clarification would be appreciated.

istrasci
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Matt
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1 Answers1

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方【ほう】 can refer to a direction.

彼【かれ】は私【わたし】を見【み】ました。
He looked at me.

Compare that to:

彼【かれ】は私【わたし】の方【ほう】​を見【み】ました。
He looked toward me. / He looked in my direction.

Please comment if the above does not answer your question, and I can update.

Eiríkr Útlendi
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  • I understand that it _can_ refer to a direction, but I'm curious if this is necessary to include in the sentence. As an English translation it makes equal sense without it. So it would, probably, be dropped colloquially. Is that assumption correct for Japanese or is 方 necessary? – Matt Jul 03 '19 at 21:17
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    "Necessary" here is very subjective. The "方" here is as necessary for this Japanese sentence as the distinction between "He looked toward me" and "He looked at me" is in English. They both make equal amounts of sense, but mean different things - or at the very least have very different nuances. In both Japanese and English, native speakers are presumably going to use whichever one best expresses what they're thinking or feeling. For anything beyond that, you'd have to start looking at empirical word frequencies. – Mindful Jul 03 '19 at 21:41
  • @Matt, what Mindful said. If the distinction between "at" and "toward" is important to the speaker, then being specific about the 「の方【ほう】」 is "necessary". Note too that, when translating, there's a difference between the translation _making sense_ and the translation _being a faithful rendering of the source_. (No dig intended, just making that point.) – Eiríkr Útlendi Jul 03 '19 at 23:14
  • @EiríkrÚtlendi I understand. Thanks! – Matt Jul 04 '19 at 03:44
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    @Matt in general you can't assume that just because a word can be dropped in English that it can be dropped in Japanese (or vice versa), and there is only rarely a one-to-one correspondence between the two languages. Even a simple verb like 見る can mean 'see', 'look' or 'watch' depending on context! – rjh Jul 04 '19 at 05:24