170 CHAPTER 4. PARTICLES
when it doesn’t maĴer which you use. For instance, take the following
two sentences:
”(I) will go to Tokyo.””(I) will go to Tokyo.”While in English the sentence ”I will go to Tokyo” can both mean
that Tokyo is the destination, or that Tokyo is just the most identifiable
point in indicating a direction of travel, in Japanese there is a subtle differ-
ence:
”(I) will go to Tokyo. This is my destination (for it is marked as a
location).””(I) will go in the direction of Tokyo (this is not necessarily my des-
tination, for it is not marked as a location).”Sometimes it doesn’t maĴer in a conversation whether you say some-
thing is a destination or just a general direction of travel, and even Japanese
will use them interchangeably under those circumstances, but there are
also examples in which it’s impossible to use one instead of the other. For
instance, if you want to say where you’ve been during your vacation, you
can only use , because you’re talking about locations you’ve visited, not
directions you travelled in. Similarly, when you’re navigating your way
through a forest and want to go west, there’s no specific or even general
location you want to go to, you only want to head in a particular direction,
so you can only use to describe this.
In questions, it’s typically customary to answer with the particle
that was used in the question. Thus, if someone asks you a question with
, you answer with , and if you get a question with , you answer with
, of course observing that you’re using the right words to match the par-
ticle.
- Genitive
We already covered in chapter 2 when we talked about noun particles,
but there is one more thing that it does that requires a bit more explanation,