Things exist in this world and we need to know how to tell others that. You might say “there is a TV in the living room”, “There is a McDonalds down the street”, “Over there is a TV”, “Tomorrow is a Test”. These are examples of phrases we use that show existence.
The root verb we start from is ある and we do verb conjugation from there to get our different meanings. This is a fairly often used verb in the Japanese language in many many forms so it is important to take some time and make sure you understand it. For that reason I am going to go ahead and write down several example sentences and their translations.
- あそこにマクドナルドがあります – There is a Mcdonalds over there. Notice the が instead of は? we use が instead of は in this case since it is presenting something. Normally if we were just talking about McDonald’s we would use は since it is the topic marker
- テレビがありません – (I don’t have a TV) here we are doing the negative present tense conjugation
- じかんがありますか – (Do you have the time?) time exists and it can be given or presented so we are asking for it
- かようびにテストがあります – (There will be a test on Tuesday) we can also use あります to specify an event is going to take place
- あしたはにほんごのクラスがありません – (There will be no Japanese class tomorrow) and as above we can also say there isn’t going to be an event
If you notice all the objects that have existed above are not alive. For that we use a different form います. Here are a couple of examples
- あそこにりゅうがくせいがいます – (There’s an international student over there)
- せんせいはどこにいあますか – (Where is the teacher?)
Hopefully this will be enough to get you started down the road of understanding how to refer to something or someone existing. I will hit on more in a later post as I shuffle more through particle usage.
If you have anything to offer to help others to understand this any better please leave a comment.
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
あしたはにほのごのクラスがあります。 Shouldn't this be: あしたはにほのごのクラスがありません。to match your translation ("There will be no Japanese class tomorrow").
あしたはにほのごのクラスがあります。 Shouldn't this be: あしたはにほのごのクラスがありません。to match your translation ("There will be no Japanese class tomorrow") ?
also i think you meant にほんご(日本語) instead of にほのご.
and shouldn't the います sentences actually be います and not いあます?
ex: せんせいはどこにいますか?
Thanks for that guys. Not exactly sure how that got in there. I checked my original source where I wrote the blog post before putting it in wordpress and it was correct. hmmm I am going to go check some of my older posts and see if there are any problems with those.
I did some more digging on other old posts and there are other problems I had to fix where the originals are correct, but the blot post is wrong. Am wondering if I am having a database problem. Going to have to keep an eye on things for a while I guess.
Thanks a lot.
It is acceptable to use the は particle if the sentence is negative. Makes no difference really.
That is good to know. I am still a bit flakey when it comes to particles. Feels like a never ending struggle at times. I'll get better though.