Newbie sentence construction

4 comments

1. Particles are indeed tricky.
   Asoko ni eki ga arimasu is the most natural of these options I’d say.
   The first one is completely wrong as it leaves oht the verb (Even in super-casual language where you sometimes can leave out the verb, it wouldn’t make sense here to do so). The combination wa + ga in one sentence (that doesn’t consist of a subset of sentences) is either not possible, or rather rare in my experience. The third sentence has the right spirit, but asoko is a location, so you would usually go for one of the location/direction particles: へ/he (pronounced “e”) =towards, に = at/to (and the most common one), で = through that medium/a location where the event described is happening.

2. Your 4th one. Or [eki ga] [asoko ni] arimasu, you can swap the order of the nouns.

   Only the second of your sentences is *totally* ungrammatical, though. Translated literally, they would be:

   1. Station’s there
   2. *station, there is over there (*huh?)
   3. Over there, that’s where the station is
   4. The station is over there / There’s a station over there

   Understanding when to use *wa* in place of another particle is complicated, but generally it’s changing the topic of the sentence, which is why the third sentence there might be translated with a slight paraphrase in English. We’re talking about *over there* in sentence 3, not about *the station*. In your third sentence it should probably be *ni wa*, with both particles (*wa* **replaces** *ga* completely, but it is **added** to *ni*), but I’m fairly sure it’s possible to hear the version with just *wa*. That’s stuff that you’ll acquire over time.

   It would be ok to say “eki wa asoko ni arimasu”, as well, instead of eki ga. Or instead of your first sentence – the version without the verb is something I would say to a friend, but it feels like a sentence fragment, part of a conversation but not something you would say on its own out of context.

   All that said, one thing to be careful with particles and ‘arimasu’ is that the next thing you’ll learn is how to use it to indicate possession. Basically if you say “X *wa* Y *ga* arimasu”, with wa and ga, it means “X *has* Y”. (So you can interpret sentence 3 as “over there has a station”, lol)

3. I’m not fluent, but I’d say, “Eki wa asoko ni arimasu.” is best. You want to say “The station is over there.” “The station” is not really new information.

   “Asoko wa eki ga arimasu.”, I think, would be more like, “There is a station over there.”, with “over there” being known already, but “a station” being the newer information, if that makes sense. (“Asoko ni eki ga arimasu” should also work if the “asoko” part is more of a direction/place than a topic/subject. … To this day, I don’t really know the technical difference between topic and subject in Japanese. I think of them both as the main thing that were taking about.)

   Even so, I make mistakes with “wa” and “ga”, so that’s just my best guess.

4. ***Eki wa asoko desu.***

   By the way your examples would mean respectively:

   – *Eki wa asoko ni.* “Over there the station.”
   *ungrammatical

   – *Eki wa asoko ga arimasu.* “The station has over there.”
   *ungrammatical + nonsense

   – *Asoko wa eki ga arimasu.* “Over there is a station.”

   – *Asoko ni eki ga arimasu.* “There is a station over there.”

   JFYI.