も – What does mo mean in Japanese? Linking Words, Numbers and Surprises!
も in Japanese is a particle which means also, and, in addition to, and so on. It shows up to connect different words in the same sentence and between multiple sentences. It is a commonly used word and important for understanding Japanese Grammar. So, let’s take a closer look.
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When and How to use も in Japanese
Like all other particles, も follows nouns. It can occupy any position in a sentence. That could be the subject, object, or other nouns in a phrase. When も is in the position of the subject or object, が and を, then those particles are dropped.
In all other cases, も comes right after the particle. So, for example, you would get the following:
に → にも
へ → へも
で → でも
も links Nouns Together
も is one of a few different listing or linking particles in Japanese. Listing particles are just conjunctions such as and/or which connect individual nouns into a string of nouns.
トムは猫も犬も飼っている
Tom has a cat and a dog (raises/keeps a cat and a dog)
The sentence above takes the object position in the sentence and splits it between the dog and that cat. If we wanted to, we could break up the sentence, duplicate the verb, and create two sentences.
トムは猫を飼っている。そして犬も飼っている
Tom has a cat. Also, he has a dog
The meaning would be the same, but just in two separate sentences.
も tells you this in addition to that
Now we know that Tom owns both a cat and a dog. In the last two examples, both animals had the same relationship with Tom. They were both being raised by Tom and the same verb 飼う was used for both of them. It is possible though to two different verbs with phrases if there is some logical connection. Let’s learn more about Tom to see how that works.
トムはあまり人に積極的に話しかけるタイプじゃない。人を無視する傾向もある
Tom is not the type to actively talk to people. He also has a tendency to ignore people
Above we have two sentences. The first one talks about how Tom does not like talking to people. The second one however talks about how he ignores people. In both sentences, different words are used to describe Tom. However, since we are talking about a personality description of Tom there is a logical connection. For that reason, it is ok to use も.
How も surprises you with the unexpected and unbelievable
Sometimes, も in Japanese tells you that something is unexpected or unbelievable. In this situation, there does not need to be multiple nouns connecting together. We can use just one noun with も to emphasize something.
何を食べたい？と聞いたけど、トムは返事もせずにそのままどこかに行った
I asked Tom what he wanted to eat but without even responding he went off somewhere, just like that
Here, the も does not connect Tom’s response with any other activity. Instead, it is showing the speaker is surprised since he or she would expect that they would get at least some response. Even if Tom had made a suggestion to eat something that the speaker disliked.
Number and Quantities
も can similarly show you with numbers that something was done in excess.
トムに三回も聞いたのに、一度も返事しなかった
I asked Tom three times but he did not respond even once
The number expression does not only need to be a number of times. It can also be a duration.
トムの返事を10分も待っていた
I waited 10 minutes for Tom’s response
も in Japanese talks about Nothing and Nobody, Everywhere, All the time
Finally, も in Japanese has a unique effect on question words like who, what, when, and where. What it does is turns them into words for anyone, anything, always, anywhere, and so on.
どうしてもトムが何も言わなかったので諦めた
no matter what Tom would not say anything, so I gave up
結局どこにも行かずにそのまま家に帰った
in the end, we didn’t go anywhere and just ended up going back home
トムはいつもそうだから仕方がない
Tom is always like that so what can be done
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