"田中さんはたぶん学校に来ると思います。"
Translation:I think Ms. Tanaka will probably come to school.
54 Comments
I think that tanaka is a common name for males in japan but i guess ms/mrs tanaka should also count as correct
Tanaka is a surname and therefore unrelated to any male/female distinction.
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If a male calls another male "Tanaka-chan", it usually means he thinks Tanaka is effeminate.
The hiragana for 学校 is がっこう. The d indicates an extra "beat" on the beginning of the next syllable. Because the first sound in the next syllable こ is a hard sound, it isn't really audible.（If anyone has a better way to explain the pronunciation of っ please add it.)
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The little っ does have a little hesitance before the next syllable, but it's over exaggerated in this audio and kittycat2223 is right, it's not correct.
Maybe it is stressed too much, but I think it will help beginners hear the small つ. っ
I also feel like it's over done and is a bit confusing. Hard to express why, something about the tone / rhythm? Maybe I'm listening with overly English ears.
Could it be confusing this with the が particle?
Aha: on a later exercise it sounds very different. In this example the sentence sounds completely over after the が in 学校 (がっこう).
I'll report it.
It should allow "Mister" for "Mr." Also, why is the position of "probably" limited to be between "will" and "come?"
"Probably will come to school"
"Will probably come to school"
"Will come probably to school"
The first two should be accepted where the last one probably shouldn't as far as I think. I'm not aware of any rule saying that we can only have "probably" between "will" and "come".
Is there any grammatical difference in English to saying "will probably" verses "probably will"? I got it wrong for using one over the other.
The first, "Mr(s) Tanaka will probably come to school", only expresses the estimated likelihood that (s)he'll come.
The second, "Mr(s) Tanaka probably will come to school", feels like there is some implied constrast. E.g. "(s)he will come, but 本田さん won't", or "at first (s)he wouldn't come, but now the situation has changed".
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I think the preserve the grammatical structure of the sentence duolingo went with "probably", but you're right, that's the gist of the sentence.
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I keep writing "I think Mr Tanaka will maybe come to school" which admittedly sounds somewhat awkward. I wish they'd accept it though - "probably" is a whole other level of certainty, isn't it.
"Probably" is probably closer to たぶん than "maybe" though. When you look at its kanji (多分) you can see it implies "many parts"/a majority share, which -although not certain- is more than a 50/50 chance.
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I had never seen that kanji until now, so this is quite interesting - thanks. (Is there another word closer to "maybe" in meaning?)
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If you want to stress that there is only a slight chance of something happening, then you can add "kamoshirenai" 「かもしれない」to the end of the sentence
私は東京に行くかもしれない
I might go to Tokyo
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"Tabun" can mean "maybe", as well as "probably", "perhaps", "possibly" and "likely".
Could it also be translated as: "Mr. Tanaka is probably thinking about coming to school"? How can I differentiate whether the sentence refers to "myself" or "Mr./Mrs. Tanaka"?
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You use 思います (omoimasu) to say "I think" and 思っています (omotteimasu) to say "he/she thinks".
So is there a different verb for what other people think? How would I say "Tanaka-san thinks that I'll come to school today" ?
IsolaCiao "You use 思います (omoimasu) to say "I think" and 思っています (omotteimasu) to say "he/she thinks". " Read before asking please.
The rule is that the verb directly in front of と should always be in plain/informal form, and as V2Blast just said, there already is one, namely 来る. だ only shows up in constructions where the first clause would otherwise end in a noun or adjective. E.g. 犬だと思います ("I think it's a dog") or 花は紫だと思います ("I think the flowers are purple").
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だ is the informal form of the verb です. The verb in the clause, however, is 来る.
Sometimes it accepts tanaka and sometimes it has to be Mr tanaka like whyyyy
why would "I think that Mr Tanaka will most likely come to school" not be accepted
Perhaps "most likely" expresses a stronger degree of certainty than たぶん.
How does "たぶん学校"works? Because literally says " probably school ".. How do I know the interpretation here?
In different languages, sentences can have different word orders. If you keep the Japanese word order in a literal English translation, you end up with Yoda English. Instead, you have to look at the rest of the sentence, break it down into the right segments, and restructure to fit the language you're translating to.
For example: 田中さんは --> Mr/Mrs Tanaka, たぶん --> probably, 学校に来る --> come to school, と思います --> I think. In other words: "I think Mr/Mrs Tanaka will probably come to school."
The pronunciation is off here with the tabun and gakkou... sounds really weird.
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The thing about this sentence is, Tanaka-san is probably a fellow student, so it is odd to translate the "-san" as "Mr.", since high school kids usually don't refer to each other as "Mr." and "Ms." If Tanaka were a teacher, he (or she) would be called "Tanaka-sensei". I think in this case, it's probably best to leave the "-san" as is in the translation.
google translate : たぶん is "maybe". duolingo : たぶん is "probably" confused.
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Google Translate is often innacurate or lacking, especially for Japanese. たぶん basically means "not 100% certain", so it can be translated as both "maybe" and "probably". If you want to emphasize that the probability is high, then "おそらく" might be better. If you want to emphasize that the probability is not so high, then adding "かもしれない" to the end of the sentence will get the point across. If you are uncertain when the other person uses "たぶん" you can say, そのかくりつは？ which means "What is the probability of that?
Doesn't this English sound a little unnatural? Think and probably? I know it's "correct", but still.
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"I think he'll probably come" is quite natural. However, translating ~san as "Mr." (or "Ms./Miss) is unnatural if the other person is a fellow student or otherwise a peer.
I typed in "Mister Tanaka", and it told me it was wrong and gave me "Miss Tanaka" as a correction. (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ I still haven't been able to do one the placement tests without mistakes even for my natives language. The Japanese course is particularly flawed because Japanese grammar and sentence structure are so different from English.
