I’m studying Japanese using Duolingo (up to level 9 today!), and today I came across these two sentences:
1. 父と母 は元気です
2. 父も母も大阪出身です
Why does the first sentence use “父と母 は” and the second use “父も母も”? Does it change the meaning, or could either of these sentences have been written with either construction?
Thanks!
3 comments
From what (little) I’ve learnt, と is the equivalent of “and” and も is the equivalent of “also”.
So I would read Sentence 1 as “My father and mother are well.”
And Sentence 2 as something like “Both my father and mother are from Osaka.”
(but I may be entirely wrong!)
“mom and dad” are…
“both mom and also dad” are…
と combines two nouns into single group noun
も indicates “both” or “as well”
も can be used on it’s own in a lot of cases, it just implies there’s things other than what’s said
母も元気だ
“mom is also fine”
clearly there’s a second person other than mom that’s fine, but it’s unsaid
Congrats on your journey!
One thing I would suggest depending on how serious you want to be is start learning from a text book on top of DuoLingo.
Duo sort of just throws concepts at you and expects you to be able to parse them. Obviously forums like this can be a good place for help but if you learn via a book as well Duo will be a good supplement to put into practice things you’ve been learning via text.
This is of course dependent on your goals so if you’re having a good time doing duo and don’t want to dive any deeper keep doing it and you can always change your mind later !