What is the logic and grammar for 「水をコップに八杯」? Why is the rule for this and why isn’t it just 八 ぱい ? Any help is appreciated. Thank you !

10 comments

1. [deleted]

2. I’m not native so please take this with a grain of salt, but my first answer is that I am not sure I’d even write it this way. Usually my first inclination is to consider rewriting if it doesn’t fit the structure nicely.

   コップ8杯の水を飲みなさい is more natural imo and comes up in more searches of content online.

   My other comment is that while it’s possibly not technically correct because 水 isn’t technically countable, I’d say the structure you’ve chosen (minus the に) is fine given how flexible word order tends to be with these things. See the initial sentence in an example article here:

   https://gigazine.net/news/20100827_drinking_water_help_weight_loss/

   Edit to use OP’s original verb conjugation to show that I’m not also suggesting a chance to the verb.

3. Is this Duolingo? Some of their content is wrong. (Not just for Japanese, have encountered mistakes in multiple language lessons, including German, Spanish, Hungarian.)

   I’m no native speaker, although I have been studying and working in Japanese for many years now. The grammar of this sentence sounds quite odd to me, the Japanese and English don’t quite seem to match up, and the reading of 八杯 as _hachihai_ sounds off (more accustomed to hearing _happai_).

   As my wife often says, _”I reserve the right to be wrong.”_ 😄 That said, I think this is more correct as Japanese:

   > [毎日](#fg “まいにち”)、[水](#fg “みず”)をコップ[八杯](#fg “はっぱい”)[飲](#fg “の”)みなさい。

   In short, the に in the screenshot seems wholly superfluous.

   ___

   EDIT:

   As noted by u/Jwscorch, since we’re just talking about _”eight glasses”_ generically, there’s no need to include the word コップ either. So an even better Japanese rendering might be:

   > [毎日](#fg “まいにち”)、[水](#fg “みず”)を[八杯](#fg “はっぱい”)[飲](#fg “の”)みなさい。

4. I think はっぱい is valid as a pronunciation for 8杯 / 八杯. I’m getting sources saying both はっぱい and はちはい are ok, and the IME on my computer converts both to the kanji.

   (Is that what you’re asking? Or was it about the particles? This sentence means “drank water in eight cups”, I am not sure it’s the most natural way to say it but it’s valid. Anyway the numeral/counter comes after the particle, that’s why it’s coppu-ni hachihai rather than coppu hachihai-ni. You’re also allowed to say hachihai-no coppu-ni (八杯のコップに), but you should try using the numbers after the nouns because it’s less intuitive and needs more practice)

   (Or are you saying you think it should be 水を八杯飲む? Honestly I think it’s valid but the example sentence there has more…. “correct” grammar)

5. Grammar is wrong, but I’m just a simple native so I can’t explain why and how. If you insist me to translate this.. well I still can’t, because it just doesn’t make sense.

   毎日コップ八杯の水を飲みなさい is one of the correct translations for the English sentence below.

6. I do not particularly like the order of the sentence here. It feels grammatically wrong. It should be 八つの水のコップを飲みなさい. 水をコップ is very wrong because Cup is not a verb

7. I’m wondering what the に particle is doing in this sentence?

8. That…that sentence is cursed.

   Remove the コップ and at least you could make sense of it, but I’m fairly convinced that’s bullshit.

9. I’m a native Japanese speaker and it sounds nothing wrong with me.
   Hachihai and happai, both are okay.

10. This sentence is super wonky. Either I’m losing my mind, or it should be はっぱい. But it doesn’t make sense that they’re labeling it as “cups” since that counter already means cups/glasses of something. Maybe they’re wanting to specify that it’s exactly 1 cup and the doulingo generated English is wrong? But Japan uses the metric system so I don’t know why they’d be using cups to measure liquids instead of milliliters.