Simple sentences with Kore vs Kono

Hello, so while I basically already know how and when those two should be used, there’s still one thing that I’m not really sure about, and I wasn’t able to find a straight answer to my question.

So from what I know, in a sentence “Kore” can’t be followed by a noun and it’s basically the topic of the sentence (it has to be at the beggining of the sentence and you need to add particle after it), also “Kore” can be used alone, while “Kono” is the polar opposite of that. So with that in mind, can anyone explain to me what’s the difference between those sentences:

Kore wa kuruma akai desu.
Kono kuruma wa akai desu.

Regards.

The first one is incorrect. It maybe should be: Kore ha akai kuruma desu. If so it translates as “this is a red car”. The second sentence would translate as “this car is read”.
So basically they’re different sentences with the same meaning.

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Hi, @RafaKowalski69. It helped me to think of kore as something like ‘it’, and kono as something like ‘the’. You can refer to something without specifying what it is with ‘it’, but ‘the’ always needs a noun after it.

On your example sentences, the first is gramatically incorrect, as it’s essentially saying “This is a car red.” “これはくるまです” (kore wa kuruma desu) would simply be “This is a car.”, but you could also change it to “これはあかいくるまです” (kore wa akai kuruma desu) to make it “This is a red car.”, which would be correct.

It’s a bit hard for me to explain the difference in this case, but I think the key is the placement of the ‘wa’, indentifying the subject of the sentence. Think of ‘kore wa’ in this case as “This is…”, while ‘kono kuruma wa’ is ‘This car is…’. In the first sentence, it’s saying, “This is a car red”, which doesn’t work, since the adjective needs to be before the noun, just like in English. “This is a red car.” works fine. The second sentence is saying, “This car is red.” Similar meanings, but a different nuance, and one would be more appropriate than the other depending on what kind of information you’re trying to get across. Are you identifying an unknown thing as a (red) car, or are you identifying an already known car as red? It’s mostly a matter of context in this particular example.

Hopefully that answer isn’t too confusing. lol More than anything, I think just seeing things like this in use more will help you get the hang of it. I picked up some absolute basics on grammar from Memrise and some online sources, but most of it I’ve been piecing together from just reading things on my own. Feel free to ask if you still have questions though. Good luck! :slight_smile:

(@RyouBakura posted while I was writing this, thus the overlap in my post.) :sweat_smile:

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Okay I think I finally get it now. Thanks a lot for explaining this to me. Cheers!

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