Quote:
Originally Posted by MMM
"I am hungry" just becomes "am hungry" because it would be unlikely for you to be talking about anyone else's appetite. And if you are you would make it clear. "Are you hungry?" becomes "are hungry?" because who else would you be talking about?
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I'm not sure what you intend to illustrate with this example, since as you yourself stated, there is no "is"/"are" distinction in Japanese; the verbs remain the same across subjects. I'm pretty sure that to make it explicit that you were addressing the listener, you'd need to either throw in a pronoun, or a particle at the end of the sentence like か or ね ("is hungry" and "is hungry?" seems like a pretty clear distinction to me).
Although maybe I just misunderstood you
EDIT: Yeah, I misunderstood, the fact that you used "are" in the second sentence is coincidental, and the question mark is the critical part, as I alluded to. Sorry about that.