Vocabulary

• ‘asoko’ means ‘there’ when we can point to it; ‘achira’ means ‘there’ when we cannot point to it.
• ‘sayonara’ means ‘so long’ or ‘farewell’, i.e., it is a fairly definitive goodbye.

Sample sentences

Eng: I have a few friends in Ueno.

lit: Friends in Ueno? There are a few.

Comments

The following comments explain some of the grammar in more detail.

Adverbs

tabun – たぶん, 多分

‘ta-bun’ (多分) share the ‘bun’ kanji with ‘juu-bun’ (十分), and with many other words that have to do with proportions. 分 (bun) means ‘part’. It is also used to mean ‘minute’ because a minute is a ‘part’ of an hour.

and many others.

‘tabun’ can mean many similar but different things, each one with its own nuance: ‘probably’, ‘maybe’, ‘perhaphs’, and ‘I think’:

Particles

de – で

In this lesson, ‘de’ is used to mean ‘by means of’, meaning a manner of transportation.

ni vs. de

Both ‘de’ (lesson 6) and ‘ni’ (lesson 9) can mean ‘at’ a location. The difference is that:

• ‘ni’ marks the location where something is or exists (e.g., i-masu, ari-masu, sundei-masu)
• ‘de’: marks the location where something happens (e.g., tabe-masu, kai-masu, shigoto wo shi-masu)

Some of the verbs are surprising: ‘to sit’ and ‘to stand’ are considered existence states, not actions, so we mark the locations with ‘ni’; while ‘to wait’ is considered an action, not a state of existence, so we mark the location with ‘de’.

Verbs

aimasu – あいます

‘ai-masu’ means ‘to see’ in the sense of ‘to meet’, i.e.g, ‘I’m going to see some friends’ or ‘I’m going to meet some friends’. The object of ‘ai-masu’ is marked with ‘ni’, not with ‘wo’:

The verb ‘to miss (someone)’ doesn’t exist in Japanese. Instead, we say ‘I want to meet you’: