can someone please explain why the doko goes at the start of one sentence but at the end of another?

on duolingo, one sentence is “shusshin wa doko desu ka” but the other is “ doko ni sundeimasu ka”

by cbilas

7 comments
  1. Doko ni sundeimasuka is equivalent to kimi wa doko ni sundeimasuka. Japanese often omits the kimi wa (you).

    It could also be Peter-san wa doko ni sundeimasuka, if referring to a third party.

  2. In both cases, you’re putting it immediately before the verb, so I’m not quite sure what you mean.

    Though in the more general sense, Japanese has extremely loose word order. You can often reorder the words and still have it be grammatically correct. This is part of the reason for grammatical particles – to clarify parts of speech.

  3. “出身は” is the topic, and topics usually go in front of everything.

    One thing also to keep in mind is Japanese doesn’t really care about word orders as much as English, especially in colloquial usage, as long as they are accompanied by the correct particles. Switching things around does change the meaning subtly sometimes though.

  4. Doko is after the subject and before the verb in both examples. In the first example “shusshin” is the subject (marked by “wa”) and “desu” is the verb (to be). In the second example the subject is omitted but would appear before “doko” and then “sundeimasu” is the verb. Think of in English when we say “stop right there” the subject is “you” but it’s omitted. Same with “doko ni sundeimasu ka” the “you” is omitted.

  5. the way that English always puts question words first in a sentence is actually very rare. in Japanese question words come in the place in the sentence that matches their role (subject, object, location, etc)

    It’s as if we asked “you live where?” or “it is where?”

    also the sentence there where doko is first has a dropped pronoun.

  6. Japanese language is not strict about grammar like English is. There is various ways to use doko. (Same as nani, dare, naze and so on)

    For example:
    Shusshin wa doko doko desu ka? People just say “doko shusshin desu ka?” or “doko shusshin?”(casual).

    Doko ni sundeimasuka? You can say “Sundeiruno wa doko desu ka?”

  7. well if you change the sentence to :

    omae wa doko ni sundeimasuka?

    it is pretty much same structure.

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