Difference between ばかり and ところ?

Bunpro
#1

I just saw this in a review

bp
bp896×225 16.5 KB

why isn’t it おわったばかり accepted as well?

2 Likes
#2

This is one of the pain points of English translations. Allow me to explain the difference to the best of my understanding of both Japanese and English, as neither one is a native language of mine.

The word “just” has two different meanings:

  • only (ばかり) - 「見たばかりです」 “I only watched.”
  • exactly (ところ) - 「見たところです」 “[…] at the exact time when I looked.” (lit. “It is the time when I watched.”)

Of course, there are also other meanings of the word that have to do with the concept of justice, for example, but those are irrelevant here.

When you want to say that something happened at the exact time when you did something, you use ところ. While it literally translates to “place”, it is much more generally used to refer to situations as well. So in practice, when used with past tense verbs, it means “the time/situation when [verb] was done”. You can see ところ attached to other verbs quite often, and it almost always refers to the circumstances under which the verb takes place. Location, the literal meaning of ところ, is merely one of such possible circumstances.

On the other hand, ばかり means that only something happened, nothing more. It can be used in excuses, for example, but it does not carry a similar meaning to ところ in this context at all. It would translate to “[pronoun] have only done [verb] (and nothing more)”.

“I just finished eating.” means that you have done the act of finishing right now. If there was ところ in place of ばかり, it would be an extremely odd sentence, but it would mean that the act of finishing eating was the only thing you have done in relation to the context.
“I just finished eating. I need to rest for a moment before I can do anything.” (ところ) vs “I just finished eating. That doesn’t mean I don’t have to do my homework.” (ばかり)
I can’t think of a good way of explaining the concepts that would translate well into English.

9 Likes
#3

Thanks for the explanation. I am struggle with this grammar point too.

1 Like
#4

This video really helped me understand.

2 Likes