77543
I am going through a Genki exercise (Genki 1, page 163) and there is a picture
of a man, with questions on the side. For example, "暇ですか". Would this usually
mean it is asking about the man or yourself?

This is kind of confusing because some of the question do have the
topic/context for example "この人" or "ここは".

I do know that Japanese is a context heavy language but who would it usually
be directed towards if you said something like "暇ですか" or "頭がいいですか" because to
me, it seems almost as likely that if you asked "頭がいいですか" then you would be
asking if you yourself are smart.
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-05-23T14:17:27.160
77537
2020-05-23T18:00:42.200
36633
question
questions context
Context when answering questions
While this may not be what you were hoping to hear, the answer is: it really
all depends on the context. That said, I think this word "context" gets used
very broadly in situations like this - the reality is that some of that
"context" is word knowledge and common sense. Let's look at some of your
examples:

`暇ですか？` is almost certainly about someone else, because you know whether or
not you are free - in essence that's a decision you make. It would be bizarre
to ask someone else.

`頭がいいですか` is again overwhelmingly more likely to refer to someone else. The
reason here is a little more difficult to pin down, but I would say it boils
down to the fact that it's very weird to ask someone else to determine ground
truths about your own intelligence. Even in English, `Am I smart?` strikes me
as a bizarre question. Note that if it were intended to be rhetorical,
Japanese has other mechanisms used to make that explicit like `かな`.

Now, conversely, if you ask `頭がいいと思いますか？` this could easily be a question
about whether the other person thinks you are smart. It could of course also
be a question about whether the other person thinks _they_ are smart; this is
one of those cases where context really will make the decision. In a vacuum
though, I would assume this meant `Do you think I'm smart?`.

There are always ways to make things ambiguous, though. If you are in a group
of three and someone asks `暇ですか?`, it would be perfectly appropriate for you
to clarify who they were asking about with something like `私ですか` or `私がですか？`.

Also while you likely wouldn't use the word `暇` in this case, it is
conceivable that you could be asking someone else about whether _you_ were
free in a sentence like

> 日曜日は空いてますか？

If that person managed your calendar, and you were talking about your
calendar.
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-05-23T18:00:42.200
77543
2020-05-23T18:00:42.200
7705
77537
answer