会話 Dialogue 1

The project team is visiting a company.

 

単語 Vocabulary

Romanized Japanese	Hiragana	Other Japanese scripts	English
biru		ビル	building
iriguchi	いりぐち	入り口	entrance
de	で		particle (location of activity)
Hayash-san	はやしさん	林さん	Mr/s. Hayashi
doko	どこ		where
asoko	あそこ		over there
ni	に		particle (location of existence)
imasu	います		be, exist (animate–people, animals)
senpai	せんぱい	先輩	senior member of a group
irasshaimasu	いらっしゃいます		be, exist, go, come (honorific) 5-1-3
hora	ほら		look, hey
＋mooru		モール	shopping mall
＋depaato		デパート	department store
＋suupaa		スーパー	super market
＋kouen	こうえん	公園	park
＋toshokan	としょかん	図書館	library
＋mise	みせ	店	store, shop
＋deguchi	でぐち	出口	exit
＋dochira/docchi	どちら、どっち		which, which way, which area
＋achira/acchi	あちら、あっち		over there, that way/direction
＋koko/kochira/kocchi	ここ、こちら、こっち		here, this way, this area
＋soko/sochira/socchi	そこ、そちら、そっち		there (near you), that way
＋kouhai	こうはい	後輩	junior member of a group

The senpai-kouhai relationship is a strong mentoring relationship in many areas in the Japanese society including in school, in team sports, and at work. Usually the relationship is determined by who became a member of the group first rather than individual merits and abilities. Once someone is your senpai, you are expected to treat the person as such for a lifetime. Equally a senpai is expected to take care of kouhai members for a lifetime. This relationship can be most reliable connections in one’s social network even long after one leaves the group.

Grammar Notes

5-1-1 Particle De indicating the Location of Activity

A place noun followed by particle de indicates the location where some activity takes place. Depending on the context, it can be translated as ‘in’, ‘at’, ‘on’, etc.

Iriguchi de aimashou.Let’s meet at the entrance.

Amerika de benkyou-shimashitaI studied in America.

Doko de kaimashita ka.Where di you buy it?

The particles wa and mo can be added to particle ni to indicate contrast or addition.

Nihon de wa ohashi o tsukaimasu.In Japan, we use chopsticks.

Chuugoku de mo ohashi o tsukaimasu.In Cnina, they use chopsticks, too.

Recall that wa and mo REPLACE particle ga for the subject or particle o for the object. However, wa and mo are ADDED to particle de. In other words, de remains there to make a double particle. This is because de has a specific meaning (Semantics to be translated as ‘in’ ‘at’) while ga and o indicate the grammatical roles (Cases: subject and object). The former is called a ‘semantic particle’ while the latter two are called ‘case particles’. All the other particles that will be introduced from here on are ‘semantic particles’, and wa and mo are added to them rather than replace them. By the way, wa and mo are called ‘discourse particles’ because of their discourse-based meanings. The following summarizes these three types of phrase particles.

Discourse Particles:wa (contrast), mo (addition) Case Particles:ga (subject), o (object)

Semantic Particles:de (location of activity) and others

5-1-2 Particle Ni indicating the Location of Existence

Ni is a semantic particle. A place noun followed by particle ni indicates the place where something or someone is located. While /a place + de/ above is followed by an activity verb, /a place + ni/ is followed by a verb of existence such as arimasu, imasu, and their variations.

Compare the following.

Toshokan ni imasu.He is in the library. (a person/ animal)

Toshokan ni arimasu.It is in the library. (a thing)

Toshokan de arimasu.It is held in the library. (an event) Particles wa and mo may follow ni.

Amerika ni mo arimasu. They are in America too.

Amerika ni wa arimasen. It’s not in America (it may be somewhere else.)

When the context makes it clear that the location of someone or something is under discussion, /a location noun plus desu/ can be used instead of /a location noun ni arimasu/imasu./

Yamada-san wa?How about Mr. Yamada?

–Toshokan desu.He is in the library.

–Toshokan ni imasu. He is in the library.

5-1-3 Irasshaimasu: Honorific Verbs

There are many ways in Japanese to show deference to other people. Being proficient in polite language is a requirement for working adults. The politeness system of the language is complex and it is part of the language curriculum in Japanese schools. Many companies offer in-house training for new employees to speak business- appropriate language, which includes a lot of polite expressions.

One way to create linguistic politeness is to position yourself lower than the person you are talking about, by either lowering yourself (Humble forms) or raising the person (Honorific forms).

Honorific forms are used to raise the person being talked about. You use them when describing anyone to whom you want to show deference such as your customers and clients, strangers and people you have just met, and people senior to you including senpai, bosses, supervisors, teachers, etc. Needless to say, you do not use honorific verbs to describe yourself.

Some of the commonly used verbs have a special honorific version as shown in the chart below.

Plain	Honorific
imasu, ikimsu, kimasu	irasshaimasu
tabemasu, nomimasu	Meshiagarimasu
shimasu	nasaimasu
mimasu	goran ni narimasu

All other verbs can be converted into an honorific form by following the pattern below.

O＋verb (masu replaced by ni narimasu) kakimasu  okaki ni narimasuwrite

kaerimasu okaeri ni narimasu go home

Sensei irasshaimasu ka. Is the professor here?

–Ie, okaeri ni narimashita. No, she went home.

5-1-4 Ko-so-a-do series #3

Kore, sore, are and dore, which came up in the last lesson, are representative of a pattern that you will see elsewhere in Japanese. In this lesson, we find three new ko-so-a- do series that indicate location.

	here	there near you	there away from both of us	where
location	koko	soko	asoko	doko
general area/direction	kochira	sochira	achira	dochira
direction (informal)	kocchi	socchi	acchi	docchi

The kochira, sochira, achira, dochira series indicates the general area or direction, or the alternative of two. (Dore means “which one of three or more while dochira means which one of the two). You may hear members of the kochira series used as more polite equivalents of the koko series—probably because the kochira series is more vague, it sounds more polite.

Kochira is also used to indicate the speaker’s side of a telephone conversation and

sochira the other side:

Kochira wa Hiru desuThis is Mr/s. Hill

Sochira wa dou desu ka.How are you?

Finally, the kotchi, sotchi, atchi, dotchi series is used among friends or in casual situations.