A question about 'ni' and 'de'

Hi there guys,

I've been learning Japanese for a while now, and I thought I had the difference between 'ni' and 'de' down. This evening, my Japanese teacher corrected some of my work and replaced one of my 'ni's with a 'de' and it completely threw me. Unfortunately her skill at explanation is really not great, so I come to you.

If I use a 'stative' verb (I don't know how else to call it) such as 'arimasu' or 'imasu', I will use 'ni'. For example, 'teburu no ue ni neko ga imasu,' or 'watashi wa uchi ni imasu'. On the other hand, if I want to speak about an action performed in or at a location, I use 'de'. So, for example, 'uchi de ringo o tabemashita'. Obviously there are other explanations for these particles, but the correction issued uses this application.

So what was the sentence? It was, 'in 2012, the Olympics are in London'. I wrote it as follows:

'Nisen juuninen ni Orinpikku ga Rondon ni arimasu'.

She corrected it to:

'Nisen juuninen ni Orinpikku ga Rondon de arimasu'.

Now I'm sure she knows Japanese better than I do (she is Japanese after all), but her explanation that 'de' is location and 'ni' is direction just didn't seem to cut it for me. Whether it's right or wrong, it did not help me understand where I went wrong.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Break it down for me and keep it nice and simple please.

She's not native, is she?

"Aru" indeed is a stative verb, but is also used as an action verb, meaning "to be held", "to happen", "to have" etc.(e.g. "Ashita shiai ga aru.; I have a game tomorrow.", "Yuube kaji ga atta.; A fire occurred last night.") "Orinpikku ga arimasu" is just this case. This is not "Olympics are in London" but more likely "Olympics are held in London". That's why "de" is used.

Whoa... thanks Toritoribe... that's going to take a while to sink in.

So... the examples you give are of 'aru' as an action verb. I suppose I get 'to be held' and 'to happen', because I can think of those in English and use 'de', but if it's action and stative as 'to have'... then I'm going to get rather confused when translating English to Japanese. Any tips or further clarifications you can offer?

To Mike Cash: she is a native speaker. I don't question her Japanese ability, only her teaching ability.

The reason I asked is wondering if she explained about である while she was at it in order to avoid confusion with that form. If she didn't (and you haven't already learned it), she should have.

TexMurphy01 said:

So... the examples you give are of 'aru' as an action verb. I suppose I get 'to be held' and 'to happen', because I can think of those in English and use 'de', but if it's action and stative as 'to have'... then I'm going to get rather confused when translating English to Japanese. Any tips or further clarifications you can offer?

Click to expand...

"Ashita shiai ga aru; I have a game tomorrow" actually means "A game will be held tomorrow and I participate in it."