Which particle is used with 話す?

5 comments

1. “I talked with (to) Bob.”
   私はボブに話しました。

   Let’s use a different verb to illustrate this.

   “Throw”. を marks the direct object, the thing that is being directly acted upon. So you’d say “ballを throw”. に is the *indirect* object marker. *Where* are you throwing the ball? Bobに. To Bob. Ballを Bobに throw.

   Back to 話す. Since *what* you say uses と to quote, we’ll ignore that. What you are directly affecting with 話す is the language. So you’d use を for that. But you’re speaking that language *to* Bob (indirect object). So it would be Bobに話す.

   The full sentence would be 私は日本語をBobに話しました。I spoke Japanese to Bob.

   Tl;Dr
   Yes, に used with who you are talking to.

   Edit: it’s most likely going to use が or で instead of を when using 話す.

2. https://tsukubawebcorpus.jp/headword/V.00140/

3. 「田中さんに話す」would mean something like “tell Tanaka” but you can also say 「田中さんと話す」to mean “talk with Tanaka.”

   If you want to say something like “I told Tanaka it’s tasty” you’d more likely use the verb 言う and say 「田中さんに美味しいと言った」

4. と is most common for for 話す. You can also use に, but implies doing so kind of implies it’s a targeted one-way thing.

   E.g
   Tanaka was talking with a customer on the phone.
   田中さんはお客さんと電話で話していた。

   The teacher told us that over and over again.
   先生は私たちに、そのことを何度も何度も話した。

   For future verbs you can always chuck them in jisho.org and hit links to get example sentences.

5. The person you are speaking to is the indirect object of the sentence and so should be marked with に