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- "I go to the office at around…
"I go to the office at around nine o'clock."
Translation:九時ごろに会社へ行きます。
61 Comments
The answer had an extra kanji for the word かいしゃ. This extra kanji was not provided in the blocks of words used to form the answer sentance. Then it gave be a wrong answer.
I am having a hard time understanding this. Can anyone explain this further?
九時ごろにかいしゃへ行きます
九時ごろ - Around 9 o'clock
に - Time particle
かいしゃ - Office
へ - Direction/place particle
行きます - Go
Basically, the sentence structure is time + place + verb.
What does time particle mean/stand for? I'm Dutch and I don't understand the English in this case instead of the Japanese.
English doesn't really have an analogue for Japanese particles. As far as I know, no Western languages does.
They're just a Japanese grammar thing you have to learn. Particles are like "markers" that help you to distinguish where one word/phrase of the sentence ends and the next begins and also help to clarify what purpose in the sentence each word/phrase is serving. There are a lot of different particles in Japanese (64 according to Wikipedia).
For example, the は in "わたしは..." that you might have seen earlier in this course is a particle. は is the the "topic marker" particle. If you explicitly mention the topic in your sentence, you place a は after it so people know that's the topic. Whenever you see は being used as a particle like this, you can read the sentence as, "As for , ..." if that helps. For example, わたしは... = "As for me..."; ねこは... = "As for the cat..."; etc.
Another particle is が in sentences like パンが好きです (I like bread). This one is the identifier particle in this context. It functions similarly to は and many people get the two confused. One of the main distinctions is that は emphasizes what comes after it, while が emphasizes what comes before it. You can think of が as if it were were marking the answer to a question and you were emphasizing the answer.
For example, consider the sentences たなかはせんせいです and たなかがせんせいです. They both say "Tanaka is a teacher" and are grammatically correct sentences, but you'd use them in different contexts. If someone asked "What's Tanaka's job?", you'd use the sentence with は in it, because you want to emphasize the latter part of the sentence - "Tanaka is a teacher." But if you were in a room of people and someone asked, "Who is a teacher here?", you'd use the sentence with が, because you want to emphasize the first part of the sentence - "Tanaka is a teacher."
Anyway, back to the original sentence: に in this context is a particle being used to mark the time that something is happening. The closest English translation would be "at." 九時ごろに = "At around 9:00.."
Later in the sentence, へ is also a particle. It's used to mark the direction the person is going. The closest English translation would be "to" or "towards." (The closer translation is "towards," but it's also used as "to" often, for reasons I'll explain below.) かいしゃへ行きます = "Going to/towards the office."
To confuse you a bit more, に can also be used as a particle to indicate direction and translated as "to." に and へ are largely interchangeable when deciding which direction particle to use, with the subtle difference being that に is closer to a literal "to" and へ is more of "towards" (aka "in the direction of"). However, they are not interchangeable to mark the time something happens - you can only use に for that. That's why へ is often used in the sentences in these lessons to mean "to" even though the more accurate translation is "towards" - because に is already being used earlier in the sentence as the particle to mark the time. Technically, you can use the same particle multiple times and it wouldn't be incorrect, but Duo just likes to use different particles to keep it cleaner.
This is absolutely the best explanation regarding particles. I never really understood them until reading this response. どうもありがとうございます！
I swapped them - 『会社へ九時ごろに行きます』- and was marked right, but was concerned that it might be, er, unidiomatic. Does it matter?
It's more common to put the time at the beginning of the sentence, but your answer isn't wrong, per se.
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I will never thank you enough for your detailed answer. It is very useful and on point for a beginner like me. Perfect !
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Both に and へ (at and to) would normally be called prepositions in English, which might clarify further. Not all particles are prepositions but those ones are and some others (such as from から and to までmeaning as far as) . That helps me grasp those that have English equivalents, and those that are more specifically Japanese grammar.
Great answer and helps me alot. Wish I could save this on here somewhere to refer to later
@RVJioWts thank you so much for this explaination it was the most precise thing I have read till now. Please if you feel ok with it, can I have your mail so that I can ask you a few doubts in future.... I will not bother you much and no spamming I promise. Or if you have a. Youtube channel or blog that would be great too
To my understanding it just tells you in what context is the sentence or word used in, knowing this you can then tell that the sentence is talking about time. Dont take my word for it
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Think of に as "at (the time)" At 9 o'clock ９時に... It can also mean in/to. You still will be understood if you skip it though not gramatically correct.
But cant ni also be used a particple to indicate a place/ action.
E.g Gakko ni ikimasu/Gakko he ikimasu
Technically speaking woukdnt both these sentences be correct ?
Yes it can. Don't quote me on this because I've read it here in the comments. If you use ni you are emphasizing the location. If you use he you are emphasizing the direction. Additionally, you would use ni to say that you're going there and do something like study. If you use he you're just saying you're going towards the school, maybe to meet someone there and go from there not doing anything in particular at that location.
why does the ni go after goro? shouldnt it be right after kyu-jin-ni-goro instead of goro-ni
The simple answer is: because it's "at around nine o'clock" instead of "around at nine o'clock".
The more complicated answer is: because ごろ is an adverbial noun suffix in Japanese and as a suffix, it can't very well exist on its own. Inserting a particle after 時 here essentially cuts the entire structure in half - it links 時 to the verb, without ごろ, and ごろ becomes just a lonely suffix word with no noun to modify, so the entire sentence structure just falls apart.
So, this seems to be a late reply but I have seen no one has corrected this. The word that denotes hour is ji, jin is used to indicate person/nationality. When it comes to hours there are also a couple more exceptions to the standard counting. Those exceptions are mostly for the 4 and the 9. Instead of pronouncing yon-ji (よん時「じ」) they say yo-ji (よ時) for 4 o'clock. Instead of the regular kyuu for 9 they will pronounce ku-ji. Depending on the way you learned to count 7 (nana/shichi) Japanese will understand you if you would say nana-ji but overall the common usage is shichi-ji.
Can you please explain what you mean by time and direction particle? I get the structure of "around 9 oclock, the office os where i go" but im having trouble remembering or even figuring out when and where to put these... conjugations(?)
oo thanks! I only missed "he" out of the sentence I knew something was missing XD this was very helpful! :D
Also had some hard time, but I finally got it.
In the tips section they said: へ = to (direction)
"へ indicate a direction toward which something or someone moves. This movement is the direction away from the current location. When used as a particle, へ pronounce as /e/"
From previous questions we learned that "time + ごろに" = around (time).
We can split the sentence into two parts: First part indicates the time ( 九時ごろに = around 9 o'clock) and second part (かいしゃへ行きます = I go to the office) indicates the action.
In English it'd be something like: I go to the office + at around 9 o'clock, it's pretty much a word by word translation but the two parts just swap their position.
I have a question. Why is it wrong to add午前 to describe it's 9am? Is it too much redundancy?
It's correct to don't put "午前" because in any moment describes if it's 9:00 am or 9:00 pm. It just say "nine o'clock."
That's what I thought as well, because there's nothing harmless in putting 午前 to confirm it's 9 in the morning, so I wonder as well.
You could be heading there at 9 in the evening. The sentence makes no mention of whether it's morning or evening
It's not harmless. The question doesn't specify time of day so you shouldn't include it here.
Is it possible to put another に particle in place of the へ？. Not sure if particle redundancy is a thing.
No, it's not a thing. Using に twice here is not a mistake, you can say 九時ごろに会社に行きます. However, へ is used more frequently to mark the place in this type of sentences, unless you really want to emphasize the location.
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My japanese teacher says that you can't use に particle and ごろ particle at the same time, They often use に when time is very exact. If there is an aproximation you use this form: 午後9じごろ会社へいきます。 But if you want to give more emphasis and say that time is very exact you use only に. Using ごろ would be a contradiction. But let me know if I am wrong.
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かいしゃdoes not mean "office", but "company". Someone goes to an office to work, but another goes to a factory to work.
Can someone could help me break this sentence down bit by bit? I don't understand how it is structured. :(
九時ごろにかいしゃへ行きます。 九 is "nine", 時 is "time", ごろ is "around". So, 九時ごろ is "around 9 o'clock". に is "to", かいしゃ is "office", へ is "to" (に vs へ is complicated, but their are a great deal of good explanations on this page), 行きます is "(will) go". So, I will go to the office at around nine o'clock. It's kind of backwards. It starts with the time (around nine o'clock), then it gives the place (an office), then it gives a verb (to go). I hope that helps. I'm still learning, so it may not be a perfect explanation.
Essentially yes, it serves (in this sentence at least) as the 'at'. So, considering your answer, it would be the same as replacing 'at' with a comma or pause in speech i.e. 'Around 9 o' clock, I go/will go to the office.'
Most people would use the kanji unless they're Japanese learners or children who haven't learned kanji yet.
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I typed; 9時ごろ会社に行きます and was accepted, but what is the difference and which is more common? Any feedback is appreciated, thank you ッ
the way i answered was 会社へ九時ごろに行きます which it accepted as correct, I am just curious how this is understood compared to the given correct translation?
Why does this use に and へ but the one where you don't go to school it only uses に?
I thought so, too, at first, but stick with it. This specific section gave me quite a bit of trouble, but once I practiced it several dozen times it finally clicked. Now it's one of my favorite lessons to retry because I know it is difficult, but I get it.
Previous answers allowed ごろ before the time, yet for this one, 「ごろ九時に会社へ行きます」 was rejected.
九 (nine) 時 (hour/o'clock) ごろ (around) に (location/time particle) 会社 (office) へ (direction particle) 行き (go) ます。
