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4.4: Dialogue 4

  • Page ID
    31528
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    Yamada: 何 なに か食 た べに行い かない? Nani ka tabe ni ikanai? Wanna go eat something?

    Emily:うん、いいわよ。 Un ii way yo. Sure.

    Yamada:何 なに が食 た べたい? Nani ga tabetai? What would you like to eat?

    Emily: う〜ん、ファミレスでいい。というか、ファミレスがいい。 Nnnn, famiresu de ii….. To iu ka, famiresu ga ii.

    Um, a family restaurant is fine. I mean I’d prefer a family restaurant.

    Vocabulary

    nani ka なにか 何か something
    tabe ni iku たべにいく 食べにいく go to eat
    ikanai いかない 行かない not go See 8-4-1
    tabe ni ikanai? たべにいかない?食べにいかない Won’t you go to eat?
    (Invitation)
    wa わ sentence particle
    (For female speakers; male speakers, often from Osaka area, use it with FALLING tone)
    nnn ううん Hesitation Noise; I’m thinking
    famiresu ふぁみれす ファミレス family restaurant
    de で て form of です
    to iu ka というか I mean; rather
    (reiterating, self-correcting)
    +te ka てか casual form of to iu ka
    +warikan わりかん 割り勘 equal split
    +harau はらう 払う pay
    +okane おかね お金 money
    +okanemochiおかねもち お金持ち rich, rich person

    Grammar Notes

    Non-Past Plain Negative Forms of Verbs

    In 8-1-2 above, we learned how to make the non-past, affirmative plain form of verbs. We now move on to learn how to make the negative form of these verbs.

    Group 1: U-Verbs

    In order to make the negative form of a verb in this group, change the final /u/ of the affirmative form to /anai/.

    nomimasu -> nomu -> nomanai ‘drink’

    If there is no consonant before /u/ as in kau ’buy’, drop /u/ and add /wanai/.

    kaimasu -> kau -> kawanai ‘buy’

    aimasu -> au -> awanai ‘meet’

    As you remember from the kana chart, the sound /w/ in Japanese can only be followed by the vowel /a/. It disappears when followed by other vowels /i, u, e, o /. So, in the stem of kaimasu, we assume that /w/ is dropped before /i/ and it shows up when followed by /a/ in the negative form. In other words, the original forms of the verb ‘buy’ are kawimasu (formal) and kawu (plain) but they respectively become kaimasu and kau due to this phonological requirement

    Group 2: RU-Verbs

    For the verbs in this group, replace /ru/ with nai.

    tabemasu -> taberu -> tabenai ‘eat’

    Group 3: Irregular Verbs

    The four members of this group have the following negative forms.

    kimasu -> kuru -> konai ‘come’

    shimasu -> suru ->shinai ‘do’

    arimasu -> aru -> nai ‘exist’

    ikimasu -> iku -> ikanai ‘go’

    Group 4: Special Polite Verbs

    The stem of the verbs in this group actually end in /r/, although it disappears in the ~masu form. This is why these five verbs are separated from Group 1.

    irasshaimasu -> irasshari -> irassharu

    To make the negative form, follow the rule for Group 1: change /u/ to /anai/.

    irasshaimasu -> irassharu -> irassharanai R

    emember that adjectives and nouns have two alternative formal negative forms. Similarly, desu can follow the plain negative verb form to form the alternative formal negative forms.

    Adjective: Takaku nai desu. Takaku arimasen.

    Noun: Ame ja nai desu. Ame ja arimasen.

    Verb: Tabenai desu. Tabemasen.

    Both forms are formal, but the form on the left is a little more casual than the one on the right.

    ~te form of desu; X de ii ‘X will do’

    We introduced the ~te form of verbs in Lesson 7. Here we add Noun + de (the ~te form of desu.) The ~te form is used to link sentences.

    Koohii wa 400-en desu. Keeki wa 500-en desu. -> Coffee is 400yen. Cake is 500 yen.

    Koohii wa 400-en de, keeki wa 500-en desu. Coffee is 400 yen and cake is 500 yen.

    Note the difference between the following two.
    Koohii de ii desu. Coffee is fine. (It being coffee, I’m fine.)
    Koohii ga ii desu. Coffee is good. (Coffee is my first choice.)

    In the dialogue above, Emily first mentioned that a family restaurant is fine with her, and then self-corrected to say that she actually prefers a family restaurant by switching de to ga.


    This page titled 4.4: Dialogue 4 is shared under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Emiko Konomi (Portland State University Library) .

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