to go to/toward
Structure
- Place + へ・行く
I’m very confused between the examples given on this topic and the ones given in the に topic.
There is one example whose translation is identical, “To go to the station”, with a hint of “to, toward” in the case of へ・行く, so that one would be clear.
But then there is “To go to school” also in both topics, with no differentiation.
And then other ones, only in one of the topics, like “To go to the hospital”, “To go to the classroom”, but how to choose between へ and に without additional indications?
There is a slight difference in nuance in that へ is more about the direction and に is more about the destination. You might see へ e.g. when talking about a bus route in terms of the final destination even though the bus also stops at other locations on the way.
In general usage, に is vastly more popular than へ and it’s almost always a safe choice. Exceptions are mainly certain set phrases that use へ, and when it’s followed by the particle の as in への (there is no にの).
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@nfive, @nekoyama is absolutely right, but I want to add that when I was learning about this, I asked so many Japanese people what the difference was and most of them didn’t know and used them interchangeably.
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I know this topic is very old but @matt_in_mito made the point that I want to ask about.
The grammar point for へ行くsays that ‘he’ and ‘ni’ are interchangeable but they have a different nuance to them.
'ni' has the nuance of 'going to' - it focuses on the destination.
'he' has the nuance of 'heading to' - it focuses on the distance traveled
Then BP follows up with the following two examples to complete their point.
- ジョンは学校へ行く。
John is heading to school.
- エルサは病院に行く。
Elsa is going to the hospital.
Everything is great up to here. But then the examples for ‘he’ consistently uses it in the ‘to go to’ sense, e.g.,
へ行く。
To go to school.
Followed up with ‘to go to school’, ‘to go to Tokyo’…BP used ‘he’ for all the examples instead of ‘ni.’ So if the Japanese uses these two interchangeably, why does BP point out this nuance. Furthermore, if BP decided to point out this nuance and followed up with that nuance in its two examples in the ‘About’ section, why didn’t BP use that nuance (‘ni’) in its examples? At least use it in some of the examples. But none???
I’m a newbie to this, so for future reference, because this topic was so old, so I have created a new topic, even though this one fell right in place with my question?