- Forum >
- Topic: Japanese >
- "I went to South Korea on the…
"I went to South Korea on the weekend."
Translation:週末は韓国に行きました。
32 Comments
509
When you click the message bubble to bring you to these comments there is a speaker icon at the top of the screen that plays the full sentence.
360
I would like to ask how does one determine the topic? I thought the main topic here was South Korea so I wrote:
「週末に韓国は行きました。」
How is this wrong? I also just assumed that に is often used after dates/time. Help ( ⚈̥̥̥̥̥́⌢⚈̥̥̥̥̥̀)
If you put the 'HA' after Korea and make it the subject, it would mean "Korea went" If you remove 'weekend' for a moment, they you can assume the phrase to be "watashi ha kankoku ni ikimashita", so naturally the subject would be 'watashi' The particle 'NI' can be used for different purposes, including places specially with some verbs like 'norimasu' > "BASU ni norimasu" = 'i ride the bus'
503
I agree with you gamjawoo_. I feel like the English sentence could be answering many questions:
1) Who went to South Korea this weekend?
2) Where did you go this weekend?
3) When did you go to South Korea?
My understanding is that the answer to the question goes after the は, and everything that's just the context that's assumed by the question should go before the は. So the corresponding Japanese sentences would be:
1) Who went to South Korea this weekend? 週末韓国には行きました。
2) Where did you go this weekend? 週末は韓国へ行きました。
3) When did you go to South Korea? 韓国には週末行きました。
I probably got the use of へ・に wrong but that's my understanding of how the topic marker works.
314
I agree with your point. I'm not sure about your examples, but I think your 2nd example should be 週末は韓国に行きました as へ is used for general and に for a specific place.
Hopefully someone can confirm what statements are correct
65
朝鮮 (朝鮮民主主義共和國) is Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) and 韓國 (大韓民國) is Korea ([Great] Republic of Korea)
65
These are also Hanja characters, which is same as TraditionalChinese characters and Kyujitai Japanese characters.
755
It accepted 週末に韓国へ行きました for me. I'm still trying to get this particle thing down, particularly as に can be used in so many situations where other particles work.
1570
Why is not South Korea the subject? "On the weekend" I had never imagined to be the object
You're right confused!
There's no "subject" here. A subject is an agent that does an action, and the object has that action done to them. So, I (the subject) go (the verb/action) to South Korea (the object). In Japanese a subject is marked with が, but there's no agent mentioned here, only implied. So there's no が and no subject.
Instead the TOPIC is marked with は. In this case the topic is the weekend. The topic is basically the main point of the sentence, like sort of the reason why the sentence is being spoken. In this case, the important point is that this takes place at the weekend - so the weekend is marked as the topic.
I hope that makes sense.
314
What if the sentence in this question is to answer "When did you go Korea?" Wouldn't Korea be the topic then?
Then does that mean 「韓国は週末に行きました」would be correct?
400
According to Saint Google, Narita is roughly 1200km apart from Seoul. (~800 miles). A comercial planes speed is around 575mph. So, technically, you can go to Korea from the Narita Airport in about 2 hours. That's really close, actually.
293
Some routes in Asia can be quite cheap as you would find it within Europe. So it is possible indeed.
314
I would say it's not accepted cause I'd see that sentence as having 2 topics, 週末 and 韓国. This answer puts 週末 as the focus so there's no は after 韓国
If you want to ask how about putting 韓国 as the topic, I asked before, but to no avail
I got caught out on two counts here:
Because the term for "South Korea" has previously been used to refer to "Korean" things in general, I was looking for the word "South" to add in, which isn't needed;
I keep forgetting that when referring to the weekend, you need a particle. As I recall you don't need this for words such as 昨日 (yesterday) or 今朝 (this morning). How come?
245
How would you write "he went to south korea last weekend"? Which part would be the topic?