Hello everyone,
I am learning two different grammar points and trying to combine them, but i am not sure if I am doing it right.
I want to say
I will go to the library to meet my friends and study.
And i came up with this：
図書館に友だちに会って勉強しに行きます
I am trying to combine the て Form for describing two activites and at the same time describing movement and purpose by using に行く
Am i on the right path?
Thanks!
I’d flip the order around a bit to make it sound more natural. Something like:
図書館に行って友だちを会って勉強します。
Maybe you’re supposed to use に for the verb 会う but a lot of my Japanese friends use を, so I think it’s fine. Someone will correct me if I’m wrong, I’m sure.
But you’ve got the jist of using て form in this way I’d say.
b^.^d
How about:
図書館に行って友達と会って勉強します。
Though this feels like you are saying “going to the library” and “meeting with friends” and “studying” are just things you will do (gives the nuance of them not being closely tied to each other). The thing about using the て form to chain verbs together is that it doesn’t imply any sort of relation between them other than “and” or “and then”. The sentence you are trying to frame using this form sounds rather stilted for this reason.
Or if you want to say “will go to the library and study with friends”:
図書館に行って友達と勉強します。
Or “will study with friends at the library”
図書館で友達と勉強します。
I’ve never seen を used with 会う by a Japanese person, so I’d be curious to hear about it. The options are に and と
They used this in writing with you? Do you have examples?
I agree with Leebo. The proper particle to use here, at least for physically meeting up, would be と. I think に would be used in combination with 合う when you’re talking about a kind of conceptual meeting, e.g. meeting/agreeing on a goal or point of interest.
That minor point aside, the sentence you constructed is perfectly fine for the purpose, Samuel. Although, the “I will” part is somewhat implicit and would have to be inferred from the context, and the construction you have would translate more literally as “I will go to the library and I will meet and study with my friends.” This is one of the issues with Japanese not having a fully-fledged future tense.
The way you use “to” in your sentence implies that you’re going to the library for the sake of studying with your friends, so an alternative I would suggest is something like this:
友達と合って勉強するために図書館に行くつもりです。
The -つもりです part conjugated with the base-form of a verb usually means “Plan to X” or “Will X,” while the ために clause usually means “because” or “for the sake of.” The 合って is kind of redundant in any version of the sentence of sentence, but it’s perfectly fine to use it for practice with the -te form.
Keep in mind the above suggestions are based on lessons I took in Japanese nearly a decade ago, so it’s possible there are more elegant or contemporary constructions to use.
Thanks Grant. My main concern was if it was ok to use it like that and still have the meaning i wanted it to have. So for practicing purposes i guess it is ok, right? Even if i would say this to a japanese speaker, do you think he/she would get what i am trying to ask without sounding awkward?
Also, when you talk about using the particle と do you mean using it as if it means “with”? I knew i could use と for saying with whom i would do something like 友だちと昼ご飯を食べます but the book does say that for meeting a person i should use particle に. So i can use と instead and just replace it for に?
Thanks!
I’m hardly an expert on Japanese linguistics, but I think in this case と is more appropriate, since the studying part of the verb takes more precedence. In fact, the 合って part could be dropped all together without changing the meaning of the sentence, since it’s implied that you will meet up with your friends for said studying. If 合う were the primary verb being used, then I think it would be more appropriate to use に as the particle. I think a Japanese speaker would understand what you mean in any sense, though the “I will” part would be implicit in your original construction, assuming you say it in the context of discussing what you’re going to do.
I don’t have any examples that I can find in my Line history now, but I remember asking my friend about it when I saw it because it threw me off. She said she didn’t really know why she threw を out there. At the time she thought having the particles in the sentence would be easier for me to understand.
A lot of times my friends drop a lot of the particles anyway, unless it’s like a location where you’d need で or something. Just browning through my line it’s filled with things like コーヒー入れてる、 USJ行ってグリフィンドールのマフラー買いたい.
The particles they don’t skip seem to be で and に for location/how to go. 歯医者におる、 車で行った.
Those are all pulled from various line conversations, but I can’t find the one with を会う.
I have learned that a lot of times natives aren’t always aware of the rules, like it is with any language. So this could just be something like that.
The only thing I can think of is that it might crop up in embedded clauses, because the rules can get bent for those. For instance you can see を好き in embedded clauses, because it feels like there is a tendency to try not to use the same particle for the same usage twice in a row.
But if you’re not making complicated embedded clause statements, I don’t see why it would come up.
I asked one of the teachers at the school where I work and she said no, she also can’t think of a situation where を会う would be correct.
EDIT: to clarify, this is a 国語 teacher at a Japanese middle school
Yeah, that makes sense. Maybe that’s why two of the same particles back to back sounds strange to me.
Well, it’s just something that I came across once I happened to remember. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
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