2 simple sentence, one simple question

What’s the difference between these two sentences?

  1. きのうともだちが私に会いにきました。
  2. きのう私がともだちに会ってきました。

I’m thinking…

  1. Yesterday, my friend came to meet me.
  2. Yesterday, I went (?) to go meet my friend.

Not sure of my thinking here…

Both are “came.” That part didn’t change. What changed is who came in the sentence.

Also there’s a difference between 〜にくる and てくる but I’m not sure if you meant to make that change.

1 Like

Hey, ya that was actually the part I was wondering about. What is the difference between the 〜に来る and て来る with regards to the sentences.

Revising my second sentence to use came, it would be (?):

  1. Yesterday, I came to meet my friend. (omitting the ‘…to go…’).

Does this about sound right?

Thanks,

The にくる construction is the one that expresses " come for the purpose of doing something". てくる has multiple uses I recommend looking up.

1 Like

Hey there,

I’m not 100% sure, but I think 会って would be “present”
and not “past” so you wouldn’t use it in that situation.
I think for both examples you use 会いに.
But when you talk about yourself you wouldn’t use くる (come) or きました (came)
but いく (go) or いきました (went).

so it’s きのう私がともだちに会いに行きました.

Not sure what you’re referring to. 会って, as with all て form verbs, has no tense. It is dictated by the context. There’s nothing ungrammatical about 会ってきた, it just doesn’t mean the same thing as 会いに来た

1 Like

I would interpret the second sentence as “Yesterday I went to meet my friend and came back.” One of the uses of てくる is to indicate that you went somewhere and then came back, and that’s the one I would assume the speaker was using.
A similar way to express this sentence is きのう私がともだちに会いにいってきました。
Also, I would omit the 私が unless clarification is needed, but I’m sure you know that.

You’re right, I thought of あってくる, which would be present, I should have written that.
But well, I could have just left that part out because I wasn’t sure…
sorry, I hope I didn’t confuse anyone^^’

This topic was automatically closed 365 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.