Having trouble with particles “で”, “に”, and “へ”

3 comments

1. The dictionary of basic Japanese grammar helped me whenever an explanation in Genki was not enough for me. It also has a lot of sample sentences. If you don’t want to buy it for some reason, you can still find it with minimal Google skills.

   Especially で and に have a lot of different use cases (they have 4 and 7 different entries respectively in the basic dojg), and if you need it for school it is probably a good idea to get a complete picture.

2. What chapter are you on, and can you be more specific about the trouble you are having? People have particle trouble for various reasons — if you are just encountering the first ones in chapters 3 and 4 it shouldn’t be that confusing yet, so you may just not be practicing enough.

   One big mistake people make with particles (particularly に) is that it’s all about the explanation and conceptual understanding — if they’re running into problems it’s because they need to find the right conceptual understanding that will finally unlock everything and solve all the problems. But practice (input and output) is really important too.

3. I often get に and で confused. They seem to do very similar things. [Tofugu have a good article](https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/ni-vs-de/) explaining their conceptual differences.

   At their concrete level, に can mark a destination, or a place where something/someone exists. As soon as that something/someone starts performing an action in that place though, you need to use で.

   Another thing that can sometimes cause confusion is when you mistake the te-form of the copula (which is で) for the particle で.