On Thu, Mar 22, 2018 at 10:15 PM, cafe...@pacific.net <cafe...@pacific.net> wrote: > > What does "masu" mean in Japanese?
Japanese has lots and lots of homophones (words that sound the same but mean different things.) My dictionary says that its primary meaning is "measuring container; measure". Written with a different, but related, kanji character, it means "box" as in theater-seating; it also can refer to a square on a grid, or the bearing block at the top of a pillar. > Looked online and found one source that defined the word as an affirmative ending of a verb. Masen being the negative. Not as a separate word, really, it is the imperfect postitive verb ending, yes. So the verb "wakaru" (to understand) is conjugated "wakarimasu" ([I] understand), for example. > Another source said "masu" means "you." None of my dictionaries have that, but as I said, Japanese abounds in homophones. Just checked the Japanese wikipedia, and apparently it's also a fish (trout relative, looks like.) There's a disambiguation page for the word which has lots of other options (a bunch of transliterations from English of the word "mass," among others). But: > Does the term Masu Box mean anything special? Historically, rice was measured with small, square wooden boxes - these are themselves just called "masu" in Japanese, and as such, "masu box" in English is actually a bit redundant. A "masu" just is one of those objects. Here's a (Japanese) wikipedia page about it: https://tinyurl.com/ycomu8up Hope that helps! Anne
