ほうがいい example sentence

かえったほうがいい です。[帰(かえ)る]

It’d be better to go home

I see than sentence in japanese and my head thinks it means “It’d be better to return”, as there is no mention to home anywhere. I suppose with a context it will make sense, but without it, it is confusing.

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You are right!
Though it is important to notice, that Japanese is highly contextual language and 帰る by itself is very often used when talking about coming back home and also translated that way.

I have fixed the translation as you suggested so it should be more clear now.
Thank you very much for the feedback :+1:

But go home seems like the meaning that would generally be implied with no context, so I think that translation makes more sense. :man_shrugging:

“come back” is a good compromise I think. :grin:

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Hmm… wouldn’t “return” rather be 戻(もど)る?We just had a discussion about that in class and our (Japanese) teacher said she’d never use 帰る to just mean “return to some place” if that place is not where she lives. But maybe different persons have different intuitions for words…?

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If 帰る always have that meaning of going home, it will be good to explain it, or use other verb. This is a N5 grammar point, so people is probably not aware of that detail and will get confused, probably try to write home somewhere in the sentence.

If the translation given is “go home”, clearly that’s the meaning of 帰る. I don’t think Bunpro should get in the habit of teaching vocabulary since it’s a grammar learning site.

This also highlights why people should use Bunpro as a supplement, not a primary means of learning grammar — particularly early on. An important aspect of Japanese is inferring from context. But this also means inferring a common meaning when no other context is given. A common example is leaving out 私は when the speaker is obviously the topic. In the case of this example sentence, that means inferring “home” since no other place of return is specified.

@Nicole @madmalkav @seanblue

In various dictionaries, it is translated(and in textbooks taught) as “to go home/to return/to leave”.

帰 represents the idea of “homecoming”.

Generally, 帰る expresses the idea of going to the place where a person originally should be - where they belong. Their “base of operations”.

So that’s why it can mean their home country/their city/and most often their home.

戻る is wider than that since it can mean returning to a place(including home), but also returning to a state(coming back to health etc), returning lost items, turning back etc.

So if we traveled like this:

(we live here) USA (アメリカ) -> Germany (ドイツ) -> Poland (ポーランド) -> Russia ( ロシア ) (we are here now)

We would say:

ポーランドに戻る
ドイツに戻る
アメリカに帰る/戻る

My point is, expecting someone doing N5 grammar to know that much about 帰る to understand a grammar point that have nothing to do with 帰る seems unneeded.

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But you don’t have to understand any of what @mrnoone just explained to answer the question. The meaning is literally in the translation so I don’t see what there is to figure out.

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That is why it is simply translated as “to come back” now :+1:

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