Japanese Learning: Sentence expressing where the place is; “[Name of a Place] wa [Koko] desu.”; The subject and predicate are reversed compared to yesterday.

Yesterday’s construction was as below;

1. [Ko-so-a word for place] wa [Name of a Place] desu.

The sentence construction of 1 is “noun predicate sentence”. A noun predicate sentence can be segmented as follows;

[Subject]+[Predicate].

Note that a noun predicate sentence is a little like “Noun1 is Noun2.” in English. Both the subject and the predicate are nouns. Let’s learn today a sentence construction in which subject and predicate are reversed from yesterday.

2. [Name of a Place] wa [Ko-so-a word for place] desu.

The following is just a review of Ko-so-a word for place/location that we learned yesterday.

– koko : here, this place

– soko : (1) When the speaker and the listener are close and sharing a limited place, “soko” is a place a little distant from the two.

(2) When there is a distance between the speaker and the listener, and the speaker calls the place of the listener “soko”, the speaker would say “koko” ((2) won’t be applied today).

– asoko : the place over there

Actually, ko-so-a words are sometimes called as “Ko-so-a-do”. I’d like to add “doko” to the above “koko”, “soko”, and “asoko”

– doko : Interrogative word “Where”

Take a look at examples for today’s construction.

3. Kyoushitsu wa koko desu. (The classroom is here.)

4. Kyoushitsu wa soko desu. (The classroom is there.)

5. Kyoushitsu wa asoko desu. (The classroom is over there.)

6. Kyoushitsu wa doko desuka. (Where is the classroom?)

Practice and remember the following sentences;

A : Toire wa doko desuka. (Where is a toilet?)

B : Toire wa asoko desu. (The toilet is over there.)

＜説明事項の漏れを防止するために、当ブログの”Japanese Learning”では、スリーエーネットワーク、”みんなの日本語 初級I 第2版”の練習Aを参照しています。今日は第3課のA2に関連しています。＞