Is there a general purpose equivalent for the "agent suffix" -er of English?


In English any verb can be turned into a kind of noun called an "agent noun",
that just means the do-er of the action:

  * to drive - driver
  * to walk - walker
  * to think - thinker
  * to drink - drinker

Yesterday I wanted to communicate the notion "drinker" meaning plainly "one
who drinks".

My Japanese is not good and the people I was talking with had a similar level
of English. So maybe we missed something, but the best they could come up with
was words meaning more like "drunk" or "habitual drinker". In English
"drinker" could mean this but could also, depending on context, just mean "not
a teetotaller" or even refer to a person or thing that drinks, even in non-
alcohol senses.

The English Wiktionary only lists these two as translations of English -er:

  * 者 (...しゃ, -sha)
  * 家 (...か, -ka)

Others that have been identified by various people reading this question are:

  * 手 (...しゅ, -shu)
  * 師
  * 士
  * 員
  * 人

So could 者 or 家 actually be appended to some form of 飲む to give something
similar to the English range of meaning that "drinker" has?

And really "drinker" is just the real life example. I'm actually interested in
the general case of turning arbitrary verbs into agent nouns just as much.




There are various agent suffixes or just plain nouns that get used in
Japanese, as opposed to the one straightforward _-er_ suffix in English.
You've mentioned a few, but all with the on'yomi -- the kun'yomi get used too
for at least the following:

  * 手  
_shu_ in on'yomi compounds, _te_ in kun'yomi compounds  
選手 _senshu_ -- "chosen hand" → player chosen to be on a team  
選び手 _erabite_ -- "choosing hand" → someone who chooses, a chooser  
買い手 _kaite_ -- "buying hand" → a buyer

  * 者  
_sha_ in on'yomi compounds, _mono_ in kun'yomi compounds  
初心者 _shoshinsha_ -- a beginner  
曲者 _kyokusha_ -- someone very skilled in the performing arts; a crafty or
cunning person  
曲者 _kusemono_ -- a crafty or cunning person

  * 人  
_jin_ or _nin_ in on'yomi compounds, _hito_ or variations thereof in kun'yomi
compounds  
商人 _shōnin_ -- business person, shopkeeper, merchant  
商人 _akindo_ (from _akibito_ ) -- business person, shopkeeper, merchant  
仲人 _chūnin_ -- a go-between  
仲人 _nakōdo_ (from _nakabito_ ) -- a go-between

In reference to your question about how to say "drinker", there are some
idiomatic and cultural issues in translating between English and Japanese that
require unpacking. For instance, Japanese doesn't have any implication of
"alcohol" when you say that someone "drinks". So if you just say 飲む人 ( _nomu
hito_ ), it's too vague to mean anything terribly useful -- this means
something like "someone who drinks [some unspecified liquid], someone who
swallows [something unspecified]". The question that arises in the mind of the
listener here is, " _What_ does this person drink? Water? Soup? NyQuil?". If
you want to specifically say that "someone drinks _alcoholic beverages_ ", you
have to be specific in Japanese: お酒を飲む人 ( _osake o nomu hito_ ), "a person who
drinks alcoholic beverages".

Regarding the broader question of creating agent nouns from verbs, it really
depends on the verb and the context. The most basic way is [verb or verb
phrase in plain form] + _hito_ , as in the "drinker" example above. Most of
the 手・者・師・家 etc. examples tend to be idiomatically constrained.

