Yeah, you can’t separate a particle from the word it attaches to like that. In pretty much any case. Unless some other particle is making a compound particle with it.
I am doing みなの日本語 book 1, on page 51, chapter 6 the book is introducing the particle を。One of my answers is:
はい、べんきょうをします。
This is incorrect and I can only think that it is because べんきょう is a verb? Can を only be used for nouns? I checked Joshi.org and it is stated as a noun or suru verb.
I don’t really understand this and wonder if someone with more knowledge could explain it please?
Both べんきょうします and べんきょうをします are fine, though you might need to shift some of the other particles in the sentence around depending on which you use (for example, 日本語の勉強をする versus 日本語を勉強する).
べんきょう on its own is a noun - it only becomes a verb (a compound verb) when する is stuck on the back.
Did it actually say that this was incorrect? Or did it just list something else in the answer section. Because things can be phrased in multiple ways without being incorrect. If they explicitly worded the question in a way that would exclude べんきょうをします as an option, then that’s a different situation.
Thanks to both of you for your responses.
The first part of the sentence is as follows:
あした 日本語を 勉強しますか。
I answered:
はい、べんきょうをします。
It wasn’t explicit in the answers as incorrect, but the answer was given without the particle を
It’s true that your answer doesn’t really feel like a response to the question. You could be studying anything if you say べんきょうをします. It’s common to omit objects, but if you put in an object like you did then it feels like you’re not omitting anything. But you didn’t specify 日本語, so it feels unnatural.
If you just said はい、べんきょうします, then if feels like you’re omitting the object and it’s a more natural response.
That’s how it feels to me anyway.
Hi guys, sorry if this is basic stuff but I’m pretty much starting out.
I’ve just learnt about じゃない and ではない but what’s the difference? Is it more polite to use ではない, or is it a context thing?
It’s like “do not” vs “don’t”; じゃない is a contraction of ではない。
ah okay, thanks!
I don’t get this grammar point at all. In what way? Is this sentence lacking context or something?
This is the “In such a way as to” meaning of ように, which also comes up in phrases like ~ますように (when you wish for something), or 壊さないように気をつけてね “Be careful not to break (it)”. In your sentence, it’s functioning as an indirect quote, so it means “I told you to buy eggs” rather than "I told you, ‘buy eggs’ ".
It’s a basic grammatical structure. “A Dictionary of Japanese Grammar” (Makino and Tsutsui) says:
〜ように言う
means “tell someone in such a way that he will do something.” With examples:
先生は学生に宿題をするように言った。
坂本さんは雪江に図書館の前で待っているように言った。
It’s a kind of imperative, but much gentler than the imperative form (しろ、待て)
I’ve only been studying Kanji and not looked at grammar a single bit ever since I started learning Japanese. Sooner or later I need to change that lol
So I bought A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar and I had a question about the format for some of the entries. For example, in the ‘も’ entry, under ‘Formation’, some of the other particles are in parentheses and some aren’t. They differentiated them with ‘Noun (particle)’ and ‘Noun particle’, with specific examples being (に)も and にも.
Do the parentheses mean something specific, since they’ve separated them into different formation sections? Does it mean that the particles in parentheses can be dropped in some situations or does it mean something else? Any extra clarification would be much appreciated.
Regarding ni here:
“さっきあの人に言われたこと”, how do I know what it does?
If the answer is “context,” what if there isn’t any? At best I can give you:
"さっきあの人に言われたこと、妻にいうべきかどうか悩む。
How do I know the “direction” of ni? Like, how do I know whether it’s – what that person said to me or – what I said to that person?
If you said it to that person, あの人 would be the subject, and as such take が/は as particle, I think
Makes sense. And since there’s no が or は here, it’s implied that the subject is the speaker, right?
Yes. Unless specified in previous sentences. So I would translate as: I am worried about whether I should tell my wife what I was just told by that person.
And that’s how it’s more or less translated on BunPro. Thanks.
Also the use of 妻 implies that the subject is the speaker. Otherwise it might say 奥さん instead, to imply a certain distance between the speaker and somebody else’s wife