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Pronunciation of a sentence in Japanese. | ||
Tags: Pronunciation | Japanese | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| RiderofNesme Diglot Newbie United States Joined 6036 days ago 12 posts - 12 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Japanese | Message 1 of 28 27 November 2007 at 6:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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When saying Are you going to have a beer?Which is the correct pronunciation "Biru o nomi masu ka" or Biru nomi masu ka".
Also why are they using O instead of WA? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6226 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes  Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 2 of 28 27 November 2007 at 6:41pm | IP Logged | ||
They're using O instead of WA because 'beer' is the direct object, not the subject. In English, you say "Are you going to drink a beer?", and beer is what you'd drink; it's the same in Japanese. If they used wa, it would be "Is the beer going to drink X?", where X is something implicit, understood through context or convention; I have trouble imagining what it could be in this case. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ryuukohito Bilingual Diglot Groupie Malaysia Joined 6023 days ago 89 posts - 98 votes Speaks: EnglishC2*, Malay* Studies: French, Japanese | Message 3 of 28 28 November 2007 at 1:32am | IP Logged | ||
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I will try to provide a simple and effective comparison to help you, without going into grammar:
"Biru wa nomimasu ka?" -> As for beer, would you drink it? "Biru wo nomimasu ka?" -> Would you drink the beer? When you use 'wo' (を) you are doing something directly to the object (in this case, the beer). If you use wa (は), you are merely referring to it. A simple (and sweeping) explanation to help beginners is this: if you are doing something to an object (e.g. 'eating rice', 'kicking a ball', 'ironing clothes', 'reading a book') you would use the を particle. That is the simplest explanation I can give. I hope I've helped. (I apologize in advance if any learned students of Japanese find mistakes in my simple explanation.) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| furyou_gaijin Senior Member Japan Joined 6173 days ago 540 posts - 631 votes Speaks: Latin* | Message 4 of 28 28 November 2007 at 7:23am | IP Logged | ||
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And what about 'biru GA nomimasu ka'? :-)))
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| ryuukohito Bilingual Diglot Groupie Malaysia Joined 6023 days ago 89 posts - 98 votes Speaks: EnglishC2*, Malay* Studies: French, Japanese | Message 5 of 28 28 November 2007 at 11:31am | IP Logged | ||
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Err, that's the part which I don't quite understand, because they seem to have similar functions in this case. But going by Tae Kim's explanation I'd gather that 'ga' is an identifier particle, and would be more suitable, as in 'biru ga nomimasu ka', but the thread-author did not ask for a comparison of 'ga' and 'wo', so there.
Please do not embarrass me, I am not very fluent in Japanese (yet) :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6226 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 6 of 28 28 November 2007 at 4:22pm | IP Logged | ||
Your Japanese is much better than mine, but as far as I can tell, that's something that's absolutely never said. If I'm wrong, please enlighten me. Beer, whether a subject or a 'topic', just doesn't drink, at least in my universe. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| SpaceCakeGirl Groupie United States Joined 5993 days ago 51 posts - 50 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 7 of 28 28 November 2007 at 11:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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The benefits of having a Japanese textbook to consult!
The short answer, what I would tell you without a book to reference, is that 'wa' is the TOPIC marker while 'ga' is the SUBJECT marker. They are frequently interchangable, but not always. Now, my textbook (Yookoso) says: 1. use ga after a question word and in the answer to a question using such a word. "dono hito ga buraunsan desu ka" which person Ms. Brown is ? 2. Use wa in statements or questions that seek to identify or describe X. kore wa hon desu. this book is. are wa hon desuka that book is ? 3. Use wa in negative statements ano hito wa kawamurasan dewaarimasen. that person Mr. Kawamura is not. There's a more advanced section discussing these particles, but I think that that's enough grammar for one day, haha. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6226 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 8 of 28 29 November 2007 at 5:58am | IP Logged | ||
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SpaceCakeGirl: That's a typical textbook entry. However, none of your three points apply to furyou_gaijin's post, as far as I can see, unless you're arguing for an implicit question word and an interpretation of "which beer would you like to drink?".
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