"トイレはどこですか？"
Translation:Where is the bathroom?
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Just pray that they point in a general direction and take it from there
1366
Remember: Hidari's kanji has "e" in it, as in lEft, and migi's has "ro" in it, as in Right! For spoken, though, I remember it as (being a right-handed person) "migi" is shorter, so it requires less energy to say than "hidari" and when I use my right hand, the task is easier since I'm using my dominant hand.
- 834
When you ask someone for directions, I can pretty much guarantee that they will never answer in kanji.
If you know Spanish you can think of 左 as "izquierda" which means left (of course), the I stands for izquierda :p
- 1366
I had a substitute teacher who knew a little bit of Spanish. The only phrase she learned was "Where is the bathroom and tell me in English." Sounds like a protip to me.
Does トイレ mean bathroom or toilet? As in room with a toilet in or room with a bath in? Or the actual toilet?
Since japanese bathrooms are traditionally completely separate from the toilet, it doesn't refer to the bathroom, but you could use it for a bathroom which has a toilet
- 1847
The English word "bathroom" is not restricted to meaning "a room with a bath", and a room with only a toilet in it can be called a bathroom in English. The Japanese word トイレ can be translated as restroom or bathroom, but I do not believe it would refer to a room without a toilet.
- 1339
The room with a toilet - トイレ or お手洗い（おてあらい）
The room with a bathtub - 浴室（よくしつ） 浴場（よくじょう）風呂場（ふろば）
The room where you change clothes before taking a bath - 脱衣場（だついじょ）
- 1339
And the one you see in the hotel where toilet and bathtub are set together - ユニットバス (unit bath)
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Yeah, I prefer using otearai. Sounds less...crude to me (just like how I use the word "restroom" in English.)
This is precicely the comment I was searching for. When I first started learning Japanese about 20 years ago, I was taught that bathroom was あ手洗い and we never really went over it being called トイレ, so this adds a great amount of clarification.
In England a lot of homes have separate rooms for bath and toilet, so if a visitor asks for the bathroom, they will be shown to the room with the bath. If you want the toilet, the polite word is "loo", but never bathroom.
As an Englishman/Brit I disagree with this; if anyone asks for the bathroom it is perfectly common to direct them to the toilet/loo/lavatory, which in almost all cases is housed in the same room as with a bath. It is not common place (even with upper class guests) to direct to a separate room with a bath, perhaps your circles are simply more affluent.
- 834
This must depend on who you talk to.
To me, the polite word is "toilet". The word "loo" sounds impolite, to me.
(I am English, just to be clear.)
Cyzaki - it actually means lavatory / toilet. However, due cultural differences, specifically a trend to prudishness, Americans tend to call them bathrooms or restrooms.
Since mit already ihre the acoustic treffende toilet this should be clear. The problem is American English, where people are too afraid to talk about the toilet and what is done there. It is comparable to the behavior of Japanese women that used tremendous amounts of water to flush the toilet stool that none could hear their own splashing sounds (to save the precious water quite some toilets have sound generators installed). Neither concept is found in Europe. In Sweden it is even more extreme, where you find toilets where women can watch and talk to each other, while doing their business. International English does not share this strange relationship to one's physiological necessities and calls a toilet a toilet.
Actually you are correct! But the sentence would be very informal so be careful with using it.
Particle omitting is quite common in colloquial Japanese especially between friends.
Da is declarative. You can't use da as a straight swap for desu. Don't fall into the mistake of thinking da is just the informal version of desu. They are not interchangeable!!
For the plain form, "toire wa doko?" is enough, or even just "toire wa?" With rising intonation.
Only in polite wording. If you say どこはトイレだ？(plain form of the question) you dont use か.
- 1710
Americans will sometimes use the word "john" to refer to a bathroom - very slangy, but still a thing. As it was one of the tiles, I tried it, but Duo said no.
Why is it どこですか and not どこありますか? ある seems to be more appropriate for describing location of an object, but why is です used instead?
- 1339
In short, both of them are correct and have the same meaning. This is a famous topic "unagi-sentence"（ウナギ文）
The original sentence of the unagi (eel) sentence:
僕はウナギだ (As for me, eel)
We can well translate this as "I am an eel" but this is not probably what it means.
The conversation is probably like this.
- お食事は何にする？(What do you want for the meal?)
- 僕はウナギだ (As for me, eel.)
The sentence 僕はウナギだ is actually a contraction of 僕はウナギにする
This is exactly the sentence for トイレはどこですか: a contraction of トイレはどこにありますか
On the bathtub question I entered お風呂はどこにありますか, but it was marked as wrong. I know お風呂はどこですか probably is the more normal way to say it, but I was wondering if the other way was right. Did I miss something or is does Duolingo just not have this in their answer bank?
Ok, this is really important... do people in Japan ask for directions to the bathroom like this? If I went to someone's house, and I asked, "Where's your toilet?" that would come across as a little vulgar... I don't want to go to Japan and find out the awkward way that they would find that vulgar too
ちょっとすみませんがトイレにどう行けばいい？？From what I've learned this phrase is quite a polite way to ask how to get to the toilet (Please correct me if I'm wrong), but essentially it's 'Excuse me but how can I get to the toilet?'
Perfectly fine in an Australia home . If you ask where the bathroom is I would assume you want to use the mirror or wash your hands or something and you'll be directed to the bathroom (which doesn't have a toilet). If you want to use the toilet , you'll need to ask , where is the toilet. Usually 'your toilet' in a home , and 'the toilets' in a restaurant .
I thought the same because the previous question 'is this a toilet?' started woth kore, not toire. I find it so difficult to know what is the subject of a sentence and therefore should go first.
- 1366
In English, the subject and topic of a sentence tend to be the same thing. This is not the case in Japanese. "Toire wa" indicates that the topic of the sentence is the toilet. So, it's starting off with "Speaking of the toilet..." And the rest is about the toilet. In this case, "Speaking of the toilet, where is it?" For "This is not a toilet" the topic may be "this" ("kore") instead of "toilet." "Speaking of this...it is a toilet."
See the difference?
Why トイレ "restroom" is wrong translate in this question? And success in another?
Probably because like English, Japanese has multiple words for a toilet, for example:
トイレ - toilet; お手洗い - bathroom, restroom; 化粧室 - bathroom, restroom (literally "powder room", be careful about this one, it's feminine colloquialism)
I image that duo accepts only "toilet" as the translation of トイレ since that is what it literally means. If I wanted to swap "toilet" for "restroom" I'd use お手洗い.
- 1366
I guess that, technically speaking, "your" could be implied here. The word itself isn't in the sentence, though. I'm not sure whether it's worth reporting or not.
- 1366
I know question marks are, but I think it may give it a more casual feel than using the Japanese maru. Since Japanese already has particles like ka and no to indicate questions, I don't think the question marks are all that necessary most of the time.
Is it just me or does トイレ sound like toide here? It should sound like toire, right?
The Japanese れ・レ・re sound is a bit different than our English approximation. Instead of curling lips to enunciate an r sound, try not using your lips at all - only tongue. If you wave/flick it in a certain way, you'll hear a soft r sound that's suspiciously close to a d and l. That's because the tongue follows a very similar path to make these sounds. It's an efficient way to pronounce syllables with r sounds but the catch is that it's a soft consonant and can be a little ambiguous to those who aren't used to it - like us.
On the plus side, it makes some things much easier to say like 「彼らは (かれらは) ... 」 or the ara ara~ meme or any line from Bakemonogatari that references Araragi.
Japanese tend to be very relaxed about discussing bodily functions - much more so than prudish 'Anglo-Saxons'. Talking of which, if Americans call a toilet a bathroom, what do they call an actual bathroom, as in a room containing a bathtub?
I thought japaneses put a loud sound (Using large amount of water to make sounds flushing or with some sound box) in the toilet because they don't want people hearing their bodily functions, it's strange to say they are very relaxed about that, but, anyway, it's cultural. Here in Brazil, bathtubs and toilet generally are put in the same room. I've never seen a room with just a bathtub here. (Maybe some public bathroom)
- 1710
Also bathroom - toilet and tub are usually in the same room here.
Not sure if this is true for others, but in our house we had a room with just a toilet and sink which we referred to as the "half bath".
I am very upset that "where is the John" is not an adequate translation.
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Oh man imagine the confusion that would cause... "John-san wa dare desu ka?" "Iie, 'John' wa toire desu." "Hidoi yo! D<" "Iie, chigai masu! Anata ga wakari masen!" "'Anata?!'" "Eeeeeto-! Sumimasen. Gaijin desu..." "Ah. Wakari masu."
Is it sad that i find katakana easier to read and understand that Hiragana and Kanji? ._.
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It could be because you're a beginner. Kana used to be easier for me, too. (WAY easier than kanji. Learning radicals (the building blocks that make up kanji) helps a lot.) But the trick to katakana that makes it difficult is that it's mimicking a foreign language...and not necessarily in the way that native speakers of that language would construct it, themselves. So, rather than thinking "how would I build this word using katakana?" you just have to memorize how the Japanese build them and repress what comes naturally to you. That, my friend, is what makes it difficult, and you'll become more and more exposed to this as you advance (while kanji will become easier over time since you're learning something you don't have a frame of reference for.) Katakana foreign-borrowed words and kanji seem to have opposite learning curves, with kana seeming easier to begin with and harder as you progress, and kanji being hard to begin with, and easier as you progress. This is what I've observed in my own studies, and also what I've seen from advanced learners.
If it is, then I must be really happy because I'm the other way round! For some reason I just can't get the katakana at all, and guess most of it. I guess we've all got our weak point. Keep going - some aspects of language learning are just hard slog:(
In actual spoken context would you take out the は？Could you also take out the か？I'm asking as if you are asking a stranger, so Keigo Would トイレどこです？still be Keigo in spoken terms? Im assuming you would also probably say すいません and yes I meant to type it that way as ゆたさん says its more common in spoken also.
- 1339
For me, it sounds like without か, this is spoken by a female and the speaker thinks herself superior to the listener. So it doesn't sound very polite to me.
If you're asking how the toilet bowl is called that would be 便器 (べんき). However, you wouldn't ask for where the toilet bowl is if you needed to use the restroom. You would most likely use トイレ, which is why Duo is teaching it.
トイレ refers to any room that contains a toilet bowl. In western household that is often the bathroom, which is why Duo took that as the translation, though "restroom" would be a more universal answer.
In English speaking countries, there is traditionally a toilet included in most bathrooms, to the point where, when asking for directions to the facility like in this sentence, bathroom and toilet are used interchangeably.
In fact, many people tend to avoid asking for directions to the "toilet" because the word is conceived to "sound dirty" due to the dirty image associated with it. These people ask for the restroom or bathroom instead (or other alternatives).
That fact makes this translation rather fitting, since to my knowledge, a similar thing is going on in Japan where some people tend to avoid using the native word for toilet "便所" due to the dirty image associated with it in favor of loan word "トイレ" which sounds more clean to a Japanese person.
- 965
In later lessons duo uses お手洗い/おてあらい (kanji here is for hand and wash I think) and people said that this word is much more commonly associated to toilet and rest/bathrooms rather than トイレ. Please correct if something's wrong