Beginning Japanese for Professionals: Book 2

2 ＋ mise みせ 店 store, shop ＋ deguchi でぐち 出口 exit ＋ dochira/docchi どちら、どっち which, which way, which area ＋ achira/acchi あちら、あっち over there, that way/direction ＋ koko/kochira/kocchi ここ、こちら、こっち here, this way, this area ＋ soko/sochira/socchi そこ、そちら、そっち there (near you), that way ＋ kouhai こうはい 後輩 junior member of a group The senpai-kouhai relationship is a strong mentoring relationship in many areas in the Japanese society including in school, in team sports, and at work. Usually the relationship is determined by who became a member of the group first rather than individual merits and abilities. Once someone is your senpai , you are expected to treat the person as such for a lifetime. Equally a senpai is expected to take care of kouhai members for a lifetime. This relationship can be most reliable connections in one’s social network even long after one leaves the group. Grammar Notes 5-1-1 Particle De indicating the Location of Activity A place noun followed by particle de indicates the location where some activity takes place. Depending on the context, it can be translated as ‘in’, ‘at’, ‘on’, etc. Iriguchi de aimas h ou. Let’s meet at the entrance. Amerika de benkyou-shimashita I studied in America. Doko de kaimashita ka. Where di you buy it? The particles wa and mo can be added to particle ni to indicate contrast or addition. Nihon de wa ohashi o tsukaimasu. In Japan, we use chopsticks. Chuugoku de mo ohashi o tsukaimasu. In Cnina, they use chopsticks, too. Recall that wa and mo REPLACE particle ga for the subject or particle o for the object. However, wa and mo are ADDED to particle de . In other words, de remains there to make a double particle. This is because de has a specific meaning (Semantics to be translated as ‘in’ ‘at’) while ga and o indicate the grammatical roles (Cases: subject and object). The former is called a ‘semantic particle’ while the latter two are called ‘case particles’. All the other particles that will be introduced from here on are ‘semantic particles’, and wa and mo are added to them rather than replace them. By the way, wa and mo are called ‘discourse particles’ because of their discourse-based meanings. The following summarizes these three types of phrase particles. Discourse Particles: wa (contrast), mo (addition) Case Particles: ga (subject), o (object) Semantic Particles: de (location of activity) and others