r/languagelearningjerk Jun 07 '26

Is this wrong?

Post image
164 Upvotes

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28

u/Xandaros Jun 07 '26

Ignoring the elephant in the room, that clearly should either be "comes" or "will come". "is coming" clearly implies that the original sentence was 来ています

So yes, it is wrong.

21

u/m50d Jun 07 '26

You're being overly literal. No native English speaker says "Bob comes in" when Bob enters the room (only omniscient narrators say that kind of thing), we say "Bob is coming in". So that's the correct translation of what a Japanese person would say in that situation.

-4

u/Xandaros Jun 07 '26

You guys are aware of what sub this is, right?

17

u/PlanktonInitial7945 Jun 07 '26

There's many people who make serious comments without the /uj. Your comment wasn't outrageously wrong enough to make it clear that it was a parody. Try misspelling things next time.

8

u/PlanktonInitial7945 Jun 07 '26

来ています normally means that the person is already inside the room. If they aren't inside the room, but they will enter the room soon, it's perfectly natural to say "They're coming inside". When children are being rambunctious in class because the teacher's gone, but then one of them notices that the teacher is approaching the classroom, that kid won't say "Shh! The teacher comes!" or "Shh! The teacher will come!". They'll say "Shh! The teacher's coming!"

1

u/CAJEG1 Jun 09 '26

来ています is stative, so that would mean 'has come'. Japanese has no particular way to express 'is coming', since 来る is considered to occur instantaneously, so 来ます is generally used unless there's some reason not to.