I got this off the internet, not sure exactly where but it is useful. To an extent. I am a little confused here and there, such as…
Watashi = I Watashi wa = Me, about me. So a little confused here, because I and me are the same thing.
Watashi ga = I an the one that. Ok, no ide what this means at all.
Watashi no = My. I know this is possessive, no worries there.
Watashi ni = To me or for me. Now I know this is used when some thing is moving.
And the real reason why I am here, Wo, what does this actually mean. The reason why I am asking is because I keep answering one of the questions as Kohi wa kaimashita (コーヒーはかいました), but the answer is Kohi wo kaimashita (コーヒーをかいました).
So, I wonder why it is put as wo, and not wa, but seeing as I do not know what wo or wa actually is, it is hard to understand why I keep putting down wa, when I know it is wo. The thing is, my instincts are telling me it is wa, it feels comfortable or better as wa.
Can some one please clarify what exactly wo and wa are, and whilst you are answering that question, as above, ga would be nice to know/understand too.
Thank you.
It’s hard to explain but it’s something like this:
“Wa” marks that the thing that comes before it is the key information to the rest of the sentence or couple of sentences. In “watashi wa neko da/desu/de gozaimasu — I am a cat”, we mean that “I, ME” am a CAT, as opposed to Johan being a dog or something. In “iku wa! — (I’m) going!”, it stresses that I am indeed going, as opposed to “not going”.
“Ga” used to be possessive and still appears that way sometimes, but usually it just marks something (in the clause/sentence) as being a “noteworthy description”. “me ga itai — eye(s) [have] is-pain” = “(my) eyes hurt”. You can see this as either “I’m specifically describing that my eyes have (noteworthy) PAIN” or that the eyes “possess” the status of “is pain”. The possessive sense of “ga” has mostly just turned into that the sentence “possesses” the next sentence in meaning. Ga is used at the end of a sentence/mini-sentence to mark that something else that’s supposed to come next (but that we aren’t actually saying) is description for what we just said: “I went to the store (ga) milk was sold out” = I went to the store BUT milk was sold out. “I have a question (ga) do you hate me?” = I have a question AND HERE IS MY QUESTION, do you hate me?".
“No” isn’t just used for possession like what we do in English; they also say for example “me no warui hito — a person with bad eyes”, but that’s literally “eye’s is-bad human”; “no” also comes after verbs and mini-sentences, where it’s basically short for “thing, person, action, situation, hobby”: “utau no ga suki — singing (action) (description) like” = (I) like singing. “akai no ga suki — is-red (thing) (description) like” (I) like (the) red (one).
“ni” : creates adverbs (time/place/situation/method/manner), as well as meaning “to, in”. “shizuka ni : quiet-ly”, “gakkou ni : in/to school”. we can reword this as: quiet-method/manner, school-situation/time/place.
“wo” : marks the thing/mini-sentence as being affected by the verb. “coffee (affected) drank” = (I) drank coffee. the coffee was affected by my drinking. as said, it can also affect mini sentences (it’s not just for single words) but i can’t think of a good example right now.
“coffee (wa) bought” would mean it was the coffee itself that bought an item. “coffee (wo) bought” means it is something/someone else that bought the coffee. “coffee (ga) bought” would mean that for some reason it’s noteworthy that you BOUGHT COFFEE (instead of DRANK coffee, bought JUICE, etc).
I don’t know if this will feel too overwhelming for you right now but I’ve started trying to explain various grammar things in this post here, you can scroll down to the N4-N5 level:
This might also be of help:
I and me are not the same thing. “Me” would suggest being the target of something while “I” is being the subject. You would not say “As for I” or “… to I” or “Me walk …” in English for instance. In Japanese, Watashi is a pronoun. When you add a particle it changes the purpose of that pronoun. Now, trying to explain this in English means using English rules in the explanation but that does not mean English rules apply to Japanese. Be wary about that as you start to learn more Japanese.
Out of interest, what are you using to learn Japanese grammar now? Last I recall, you didn’t want any resources with kanji present on the page for some reason, but don’t remember much past that.
To answer your immediate question, wo (を) is direct object marker in addition to a couple of other things. So let’s say “(I) bought coffee”, that would be "コーヒーを かいました。”. The wa (は) is a topic marker so to use that is sort of like saying “Coffee has been bought” which is roughly “コーヒーはかいました。”. Note this is not something easy to explain as は and が seem to have similar functions at times. One way to help is to think of は as “About …” and が as “Is the one/thing that …” though again there’s more to it than that.
Today, it is hard to get my head round it. But when I can, it is some thing to ponder over thought fully. I will admit I was intrigued by the idea of the coffee buying itself, I do however see the point you were getting across. I still see Ni as moving, for me, your example of quiet and quietly sort of proves that, to me quiet is standing, and quietly is moving, as I said, it is the way I see it.
I do not read or understand Kanji, it is some thing I am not ready to learn yet. But there is more than enough here to work with.
I think I am going to enjoy this one. Saved, for later use. Thank you.
I am using Hiragana. As for Kanji, I have been steering clear of that because it is too large a task for me at the moment, I can not multitask at all. Kanji to me is like learning a new language, because it is in effect a new language. It took me a month to learn Katakana, and even today I am not 100%, in fact I still get mixed up between So and N, Tsu and Shi. If the words look the same, then it is confusing for me, Kanji is full of these words (Pictograms, I think they are called).
I think I understand the Wo being a direct object marker, as in coffee, it is stating coffee as the subject for being bought. As for the rest of what you wrote, well, to be honest, I am completely lost. Not sure if it is because it is a bad day, or because I just simply do not understand what you wrote. However, I will let you know that I do find things hard to understand on a natural level anyway, some times I need thing explaining, in, simple terms. I am not the smartest of persons, and I am not insulting myself, it is just me, I learn at a slow level.
And as for I an Me, I am unsure how you get that they are not the same thing, if I was talking about you, then it is you I am talking about, and no one else, I could address you as you, your name if I knew it or some other title, but you would still be you. I am Me, I am me, it is the same thing, basically. I did this, me did this, either way you look at it, it is still the same person. As you wrote, Me suggests being the target, and I being the subject, the only thing that has changed here is the target/subject, they are both one and the same. As for English, this is how English used to be, and it evolved from I, Me to One. Proper English consist of “If One wants a cup of Tea, One only needs to ask”, most commonly used though is “I want a cup of Tea”, but it is still used today “Me wants Tea”. It is rare, but this is Old English. In the UK, there are different slang terms for different things, it all comes from Old English. I am guessing you are American, which is past your time, you have your own language and slang terms. I do believe even in Japan they have slang terms, and they indeed still use Old Japanese terms, too. It is off topic here, but an example is words that are masculine and feminine, these can be considered out dated terms, but are still used, mostly business and family situations. It is the same thing, in some roundabout fashion.
Anyway, thank you for the reply, you are always helpful.
Particles are really just extra, decorational words; just like prepositions in languages that have cases, they’re not actually necessary for the sentence, they’re not what steers the sentence’s meaning (what steers it is word order and verbforms). They’re just extra words that further clarify what’s already “clear”. So you’ll often find sentences “without” a particle that you think should be there. The other reason why they’re hard to describe/learn is because they’re often short for a few different phrases (ex. “to” can be short for “toki, tomo, to suru, to iu”, “to suru” itself is short for something else). It’s usually easier to focus on informal Japanese (that uses particles a lot less often) first.
“Wa, wo, no, ni, to” for example were originally just single words (nouns/exclamations). “Na, yori” were verbs, etc. They’re just more single, descriptive words added into the sentence when needed. If you want more help you can look up the etymology of them and it might help you.
particles are VERY important
don’t wait too long with kanji either
think of it this way: if you do 10 kanji/day, it takes less than a year to do them all
you could do Speed Kanji at
or
2136 joyo kanji by grade
at
or
Kanji by frequency (no typing)
at
the first aim of kanji is reading them
you’re probably joking… imagine English or German without prepositions…
No I’m not. Also modern English isn’t a case language (aside from possessive case, and personal pronoun cases). We no longer say “hound, houndur, houndi, hound’s” but just “hound, hound’s”.
If your language already says “table-location/situation/time” (a-table, for example: just like a-shore, a-sleep, a-hunting) then there’s no NEED for the prepositions “in, on, under, below…” because the wordform itself already tells you, “the table is the location”. Those prepositions simply narrow down (=further clarify) that already-named location, just as we might say plain “in the morning” or further clarify it with “EARLY in the morning”. Usually you’ll see this kind of thing in so-called “advanced” grammar: magically prepositions disappear in set or literary phrases, for example (in Japanese, you have basically every particle “disappearing”, including て which disappears in literary language). This is really just showing the “true form” of the language; it’s hiding the decorations.
I don’t know German but Icelandic (4 cases, same as German as far as I know) works exactly the same way: Magically in the “advanced” grammar you’ll have things like a quote inside a sentence without prepositions, just changes in case; which is what little you might see of the fact that prepositions are, historically speaking, decorations. Likewise the rules for when to use which case at all are entirely dependant on the meaning of the word in the sentence (we say “I’m in a box = no movement” and “I walked in = movement” with the same preposition, but we’d change cases. It’s the case controlling the meaning, not the preposition.)
If you look at a language from its most complicated side (=usually polite language; ex. how “masu form” is just a separate verb tacked on to the original basic verb in order to increase politeness) as if it’s the basic, original side, you’re going to get problems. In the case of Japanese the complicated side is the one with particles, considering you can read (almost) anyone’s Twitter or open up (almost) any manga and see tons of sentences without any at all.
For example: “kesa, keeki tabeta” = “this morning, cake ate” = “(I) ate cake this morning”. There’s no adverb-marker (kesa… ni), no accusative marker (keeki… wo), no personal pronoun (“watashi wa/ga”) etc. If you look at this thinking that Japanese grammar is steered by prepositions/particles, you’re going to have a hard time. If you study Icelandic thinking that each separate preposition or verb steers each case and thus when to use which one has to be memorized one-by-one, instead of seeing the underlying rule, you’ll also have a hard time.
When I read this, I thought interesting, maybe I do not have to struggle understanding particles after all. But then I realised, particles are important, they are necessary. Take Ni for instance, it changes a word to make it moving, fair enough, maybe, just maybe Ikimasu is enough, but it just does not feel right, even a learner such as myself knows this. Watashi, or watashi wa is just I or me, standing around or waiting, but change it to Watashi ni, then I am moving. Back to watashi, and watashi wa, they both mean myself, but in a different context, whilst I guess you could get around with just watashi, watashi wa sounds better. These are just 2 instances where particles are used and with it an importance is placed upon them. You need them to make a conversation make that much more sense.
I understand particles were originally full words, but so are a lot of words in Japanese, take Konnichiwa for instance, it was a much longer word, today it means good day or hello, but originally it meant so much more, and yes, longer too.
Particles are important, and even though I struggle here and there, I do have the basics, the rest will take time. As for using informal words to learn by, I am uncomfortable with that, I very much prefer to use the polite terms/versions. It sounds better, and feels right.
Thank you for the reply.
I cannot do that, 10 a day for a whole year. It would take me longer than that for sure. It would be best for me to learn the most commonly used Kanji. This is the best way for me to learn. Besides, when does anyone actually use all 3.500 Kanji. To be honest, I am surprised Kanji is still being used, at the moment Japan is using 4 languages, Kanji, Katakana, Hiragana and English, fair enough English is used but most people do not understand it. Kanji is not even Japanese, and it adds a couple of extra years to the school curriculum, to me that seems a waste, especially when you have Hiragana which is Japanese and Katakana which was developed for English borrowed words, and then we come to English… I am sure Japanese people in schools nowadays would be happy to ditch Kanji to learn English instead.
There was a poll once, asking if Kanji should be ditched, the percentage was not entirely good, but it won through, give it a few more years and if asked again, I would think Kanji would be voted out.
Of course, this is no excuse for me to not learn Kanji, I just prefer at the moment to learn everything I can with Hiragana and Katakana until I have exhausted all avenues and I will have to take Kanji. It is not important that I do it anyway, not as if I will be going to Japan soon, and there are no Japanese where I live. And to be honest I am only really learning Japanese for my favourite Animes and J-Pop.
Whatever the outcome, I thank you for these suggestions, I will add them to me ever growing list of things to learn.
therd are 2136 important kanji
2136/10 = 213.6 days + time for rdpitition
it’s omly about recognizing
takes maybe 15 minutes/day
I would need more than 15 minutes a day, and I am sure I would not learn that many either. When the time comes I will do my utmost, maybe even surprise myself.
Apart from the problems I have with learning Japanese, I think I am doing well. Enjoying it and at times actually having fun doing it, and when it is not fun, it is interesting to the point of it makes me concentrate. With a short attention span, this is just what I need. It is great. Kanji is a long time project, I do not want to start it, until I can focus everything in to it, I believe I will need it.
There is plenty of work to do, and the links you gave me, I will be busy for a while.