会話Dialogue 4

 

単語 Vocabulary

Romanized Japanese	Hiragana	Other Japanese scripts	English
nani ka	なにか	何か	something
tabe ni iku	たべにいく	食べにいく	go to eat
ikanai	いかない	行かない	not go See 8-4-1
tabe ni ikanai?	たべにいかない？	食べにいかない	Won’t you go to eat? (Invitation)
wa	わ		sentence particle (For female speakers; male speakers, often from Osaka area, use it with FALLING tone)
nnn	ううん		Hesitation Noise; I’m thinking
famiresu	ふぁみれす	ファミレス	family restaurant
de	で		て form of です
to iu ka	というか		I mean; rather (reiterating, self-correcting)
＋te ka	てか		casual form of to iu ka
＋warikan	わりかん	割り勘	equal split
＋harau	はらう	払う	pay
＋okane	おかね	お金	money
＋okanemochi	おかねもち	お金持ち	rich, rich person

文法 Grammar Notes

8-4-1 Non-Past Plain Negative Forms of Verbs

In 8-1-2 above, we learned how to make the non-past, affirmative plain form of verbs. We now move on to learn how to make the negative form of these verbs.

Group 1: U-Verbs

In order to make the negative form of a verb in this group, change the final /u/ of the affirmative form to /anai/.

nomimasu  nomu  nomanai ‘drink’

If there is no consonant before /u/ as in kau ’buy’, drop /u/ and add /wanai/. kaimasu kau  kawanai ‘buy’

aimasu  au  awanai‘meet’

As you remember from the kana chart, the sound /w/ in Japanese can only be followed by the vowel /a/. It disappears when followed by other vowels /i, u, e, o /. So, in the stem of kaimasu, we assume that /w/ is dropped before /i/ and it shows up when followed by /a/ in the negative form. In other words, the original forms of the verb ‘buy’ are kawimasu (formal) and kawu (plain) but they respectively become kaimasu and kau due to this phonological requirement.

Group 2: RU-Verbs

For the verbs in this group, replace /ru/ with nai. tabemasu  taberu tabenai ‘eat’

Group 3: Irregular Verbs

The four members of this group have the following negative forms.

kimasu kuru  konai‘come’ shimasu  suru  shinai‘do’ arimasu  aru  nai‘exist’ ikimasu  iku ikanai‘go’

Group 4: Special Polite Verbs

The stem of the verbs in this group actually end in /r/, although it disappears in the

~masu form. This is why these five verbs are separated from Group 1.

irasshaimasu  irasshari irassharu

To make the negative form, follow the rule for Group 1: change /u/ to /anai/.

irasshaimasu  irassharu  irassharanai

Remember that adjectives and nouns have two alternative formal negative forms. Similarly, desu can follow the plain negative verb form to form the alternative formal negative forms.

Adjective:	Takaku nai desu.	Takaku arimasen.
Noun:	Ame ja nai desu.	Ame ja arimasen.
Verb:	Tabenai desu.	Tabemasen.

Both forms are formal, but the form on the left is a little more casual than the one on the right.

8-4-2 ~te form of desu; X de ii‘X will do’

We introduced the ~te form of verbs in Lesson 7. Here we add Noun + de (the

~te form of desu.) The ~te form is used to link sentences.

Koohii wa 400-en desu. Keeki wa 500-en desu. 

Coffee is 400yen. Cake is 500 yen.

Koohii wa 400-en de, keeki wa 500-en desu.

Coffee is 400 yen and cake is 500 yen.

Note the difference between the following two.

Koohii de ii desu.Coffee is fine. (It being coffee, I’m fine.)

Koohii ga ii desu.Coffee is good. (Coffee is my first choice.)

In the dialogue above, Emily first mentioned that a family restaurant is fine with her, and then self-corrected to say that she actually prefers a family restaurant by switching de to ga.