Japanese Learning: The particle that parallelizes two nouns; [Noun1] to [Noun2]

Yesterday we learned an expression to talk about days of the week;

A : Yasumi wa Nan youbi desuka. (What day of the week is your holiday?)

B : Yasumi wa Moku youbi desu. (My holiday is Thursday.)

If you are “B”, and if your holidays are Saturday and Sunday, then how do you answer to the question that “A” is asking?

1. Yasumi wa Do youbi to Nichi youbi desu. (My holidays are Saturday and Sunday.)

In the sentence 1, you see the particle “to”. This particle “to” is used when saying two nouns parallelly. Although it looks like English preposition “to”, Japanese postposition “to” has completely different function. You may think the Japanese “to” works the same as “and” in English, but you need to be careful about its application.

2. right : ringo to mikan (an apple and a Mandarin orange)

3. wrong : yasui to oishii (reasonable and tasty)

4. wrong : hashiru to oyogu (run and swim)

“To” is used to say two words parallelly, only when they are nouns. You can use Japanese particle “to” for neither two adjectives nor two verbs. When you want to say two adjectives or two verbs parallelly, they have to be connected by different ways. These “different ways” will be explained later, not today.

Let me introduce two nouns that are used in today’s practice;

– Nihongo: noun (Japanese language)

– Jugyou: noun (class, teaching in classroom)

Using the particle “to”, practice and remember the following conversation.

A : Nihongo no Jugyou wa Nan youbi desuka. (What day of the week is your Japanese class?)

B : Nihongo no Jugyou wa Ka youbi to Kin youbi desu. (My Japanese classes are on Tuesday and Friday.)

Note that;

[Noun1] no [Noun2] => particle “no” is used to modify Noun2 by Noun1.

[Noun1] to [Noun2] => particle “to” is used to say two nouns parallelly.