"I eat inside the restaurant."
Translation:レストランの中で食べます。
8 Comments
I'm afraid I don't understand. Why is the particle で used here, instead of the particle に? Do they not both indicate position (e.g. ...間にいます)? I've looked it up online, but I can't find a satisfactory explanation. Is this just one of those things that you need to memorize for every situation?
638
Basically, に is used for existance. That is, where something is located. で is used to denote where an action takes place. So, since we're describing where the act of eating is occurring, we use で.
の is a possessive particle, 中 is inside. レストランの中 can be thought of as "the restaurant's inside". You wouldn't use "the restaurant's inside" in English, but in Japanese, when you want to say you did something somewhere, you use で.
The same is with の隣(next to), の前(in front of), の後ろ(behind), etc.
I think because what you are saying is "I eat 'at' the restaurant" rather than "i eat 'in' the restaurant" the difference is that in the first one could mean that you had take out or ate on the patio but the second means you did the act of eating 'in' the restaurant
