You should be familiar at this point with the days of the week, if you need a refresher go back to the Basics of Japanese homepage. In order to make sentences more descriptive, we need to introduce some new words as well as phrases and that is what this section is about.
| Eigo | Nihongo |
|---|---|
| This morning | Kesa |
| Tonight | Konban |
| Last night | Yūbe |
| Today | Kyō |
| Yesterday | Kinō |
| Tomorrow | Ashita |
| This week | Konshū |
| Last week | Renshū |
| Next week | Raishū |
| This year | Kotoshi |
| Last year | Kyonen |
| Next year | Rainen |
| Every day | Mainichi |
| Every week | Maishū |
You've learnt about verbs and particles and with some new words we can now make some detailed sentences, so here are some examples:
Example 1: Ashita wa panya ni ikimasu - Tomorrow I go to the bakery.
Example 2: Kinō wa sūpā ni ikimashita - Yesterday I went to the supermarket.
Example 3: Renshū wa shigoto ni ikimasen - Last week I didn't go to work.
I talked about learning some new phrases and here is a very useful one - dō desu ka (which means how about we do x or a suggestion in other words). An example using this expression would be - Raishū wa dō desu ka - how about next week. To answer you can use ii desu ne (that sounds good) or sore de kekko desu (that's fine). Another example is - kuji wa dō desu ka - how about 9 o'clock?
On the Basics of Japanese section there was a phrase "o kudasai" which means may I have x(item), well we can now add some more context to that using number counters. The first of which is for flat objects and you simply add 'mai' to one(ichi), two(ni) and so on. Example: kitte o ni-mai kudasai - may i have two stamps please.
| Eigo | Nihongo |
|---|---|
| One item | Ippon |
| Two items | Nihon |
| Three items | Sambon |
| Four items | Yonhon |
| Five items | Gohon |
| Six items | Roppon |
| Seven items | Nanahon |
| Eight items | Happon |
| Nine items | Kyūhon |
| Ten items | Jūppon |
Some examples of items that this would cover would be pens, umbrellas(kasa), bottles, batteries(denchi), etc.
Example: Denchi o Happon kudasai - May I have 8 batteries please?
This item/object counter is just a general counter as it can be used for anything.
| Eigo | Nihongo |
|---|---|
| One item | Hitotsu |
| Two items | Futatsu |
| Three items | Mittsu |
| Four items | Yottsu |
| Five items | Itsutsu |
| Six items | Muttsu |
| Seven items | Nanatsu |
| Eight items | Yattsu |
| Nine items | Kokonotsu |
| Ten items | Tō |
Example: Jitensha o futatsu kudasai - May I have two bikes please?
Quiz time, as per usual grab a pen and paper or use the text box below!
I would also recommend that you check out my YouTube channel as there is additional content on there that isn't on this website.