With
Structure
Noun (A) + は + Noun (B) + と + Verb
I want to ask regarding this example
僕は友達とごはんを食べる。
why it is not “僕の友達とごはんを食べる”?
That sounds more like someone else is eating with your friend
You don’t have to specify your friend. The topic of the sentence is you. What will you do? Eat, with a friend. We can assume it’s your friend since there isn’t a mention of it being anyone else’s friend/friends.
Same with English, “I’m going to eat with friends today” you don’t have to say my friends (unless you feel the need to point out to the listener that the friends belong to you, not them, and they are not apart of that group)
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Okeyyy. Thanks <3
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Is there a difference between the about sentence 「コーヒーを妻と飲む。」and the example sentence 「僕は友達とごはんを食べる。」? Does having Noun (B) after the object change the meaning than if it’s before the object?
To me it’s 90% the same thing. Think of it like:
I think I’ll go out today.
Today, I’ll go out I think.
I’ll go out today, I think.
There’s a minimal change in nuance, but it doesn’t change the sentence in a substantial way.
That makes sense. Thanks for the response and clarification!
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Question about example sentence: コーヒーを妻と飲む。
Here “wife” is after the particle wo. I was confused by this as when とwas covered in Duolingo (I’m aware perhaps not the best) I walked away with the understanding that a sentence like this would have appeared as 妻とコーヒーをのむ. Is it then possible to place the person with whom you are doing the object to the “right” of the object marking particle? An example sentence written both ways could be
友達とじゅうどうをします or じゅうどうを友達とします
Would love some clarification thanks y’all!
The key here is to see each part of the sentence as a component of it, with their order switched around.
[コーヒーを][妻と飲む]
I think a good way to think about this is that the particle next to the word establishes that word’s role in the sentence, and not quite the order in which the words appear.
This would also be correct! It’s basically just the order switched around.
It’s not that the particle can be thrown nillywilly, it’s all about what that particle is marking.
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So, in English, word order matters a lot more in regards to indicating the role a word plays in a clause. The English word order will most of the time be SVO (Subject-Verb-Object) “She[subject] reads[Verb] books[Object]”. In Japanese, because we have particles that allow us to explicitly mark the role of a word, word order matters a lot less. So you can have things ordered pretty much however you want and retain close to the same meaning. The emphasis of things may just change a bit. The closer to the front of the clause something is, the more it’s emphasized. Which is why the topic is generally placed at the front, but it doesn’t have to be. The only rule is that if a clause contains a verb, it must always come at the end of the clause. A clause can also end in an い-adjective or a copula/sentence ending particle though too if there is no verb. The only thing a clause can’t end with is a noun or な-adjective (which are technically nouns themselves.) Nouns have to have a copula attached to them to come at the end.