Japanese Learning: The particle to indicate who acts with you when you make action; [Person] to [Verb].

The particle “to” has already been introduced as the particle that parallelizes two nouns in the form of “[Noun1] to [Noun2]” as “1” below.

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

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

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

“2” and “3” above are wrong. The particle “to” cannot parallelize neither two adjectives nor two verbs. But today’s new function of “to” is to be used for a verb. Of course it’s not to say two verbs parallelly. today’s new function of “to” is to indicate who acts with you when you make action in the following form;

4. [Person] to [Verb].

example: Watashi wa Suzuki-san to Kombini e Ikimashita. (I went to a convenience store with Mr. Suzuki)

Where;

– Watashi: pronoun; I

– wa: particle; topic marker, and in this case also subject marker

– Suzuki-san: noun; a major family name of Japanese.

– to: particle; indicates who acts together with the subject

– Kombini: noun; a convenience store

– e: particle; the reaching point of the action

– Ikimashita: verb in form of past-positive; went

When you ask “With whom did you go there together?”, the interrogative word is “Dare”.

Practice and remember the following conversation.

A: Sato-san wa Dare to Depaato e Ikimashitaka. (Ms.Sato, with whom did you go to the department store?)

B: Watashi wa Suzuki-san to Depaato e Ikimashita. (I went to the department store with Mr. Suzuki.)

– Depaato: noun; a department store

<この投稿は“スリーエーネットワーク、みんなの日本語 初級I 第2版, 第5課A3”の内容を参照しています。>