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Wonderland

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I've been set a poser by my course lecturer. Given the sentance below

学生 金かく寺 しゃしん とりました

I'm to insert particles into the gaps to make it complete and meaningful. This is by far my weakest area but so far I've come up with.

学生 は 金かく寺 が しゃしん を とりました

As for the students, they photgraphed the gold temple

学生 と 金かく寺 は しゃしん を とりました

The students and the gold temple were photographed

学生 が 金かく寺 と しゃしん を とりました

The students were photographed with the gold temple

学生 に 金かく寺 は しゃしん を とりました

The students in the gold temple took photographs

学生 は 金かく寺 に しゃしん を とりました

The students took photographs in the gold temple.

Am I on the right lines, I only really know the particles は,が,に,へ,と so I don't think they're expecting too much of me
 
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I personally suck(ed) at these things too, b/c they are so unnatural. I personally think it's a horrible way to teach particles, but then again, I never learned Group 1,2,3 verbs until my 4th year, at which point I ignored them b/c it was too late. Anyways.


Wonderland said:
学生 は 金かく寺 が しゃしん を とりました
As for the students, they photographed the gold temple
Click to expand...

The sentence doesn't make sense grammatically, but a portion of it sounds like a the temple took a picture. To take a picture of something, you would literally say "take something's picture". So, 金かく寺のしゃしんをとりました。

学生 と 金かく寺 は しゃしん を とりました
The students and the gold temple were photographed
Click to expand...

Well, technically the verb would have to be different.
学生と金かく寺のしゃしんはとられました。 I'm not sure if you've covered passive tense though.

学生 が 金かく寺 と しゃしん を とりました
The students were photographed with the gold temple
Click to expand...

I would say this exactly like I said the previous sentence.

学生 に 金かく寺 は しゃしん を とりました
The students in the gold temple took photographs
Click to expand...

This is tricky based one what you have... in fact, are you not allowed to change the order? It should be 金かく寺の学生がしゃしょんをとりました。

学生 は 金かく寺 に しゃしん を とりました
The students took photographs in the gold temple.
Click to expand...

Yep -- nice one
 
I think you're misunderstanding the original poster's question. (Either that, or I am.) I don't think he(?) was given a bunch of English sentences and asked to change the particles around to come up with the Japanese for each one. I think he was just given the original Japanese with blanks and told "put particles in it to make it a natural Japanese sentence", and in his post he's just him trying out a bunch of different options and trying to figure out what each might mean in English (even though in most cases the Japanese sentences he's constructed are ungrammatical, and/or the English doesn't match what they say.)

There's nothing wrong with this sentence grammatically -- it's semantically that it doesn't hold up. As it is, it says, "As for the students, Kinkakuji took their picture." If you were to switch the position of 学生 and 金閣寺, it would be pretty serviceable as a contrast expression. "As for 金閣寺, the students took the pictures..." (implying something like "but at Kiyomizu-dera, the instructor took the pictures.")

GaijinPunch said:
To take a picture of something, you would literally say "take something's picture". So, 金かく寺のしゃしんをとりました。
Click to expand...
I think this is the best answer to the original question, if I'm understanding the question correctly. That is, 学生は金閣寺の写真を撮りました。 is probably the most natural sentence you could make by plugging particles into here. (or the は could be が, depending on whether you're emphasizing _what_ the students did or _who_ took the pictures, respectively).

GaijinPunch said:
Well, technically the verb would have to be different.
学生と金かく寺のしゃしんはとられました。 I'm not sure if you've covered passive tense though.
Click to expand...
Given that the passive is generally one of the later things taught in any Japanese course, I'd say it's unlikely that he'd have learned it before learning, say, the particle で.

I'd find it a whole lot nicer if that に were a で.
 
Hmm, It would appear that I've been a little over zealous in my sentence constructions then The order of the sentence is fixed and I can only insert particles in the gaps.



I understand the replies and can see my mistakes though, which is encouraging. In the first one, if I swapped wa and ga, would it make the sentence any more palatable. The inference being that the students are now the subject and the temple is the object being photographed. I suppose that the order would be different but is it reasonable to use it as a construction, I'm tending to think no....
 
If you're asking what I think you're asking (namely, what's the difference between using wa or ga), then look at this again:

 
Sort of, I understand that が in this case nominates the subject and は nominates the topic. I'm wondering if writing

学生 が 金かく寺 は しゃしん を とりました

is a reasonable thing to do or if the excursion from the normal subject, object verb sentence makes it unreadable.
 
I have a problem with it because I don't know what role 金かく寺 could play in that sentence; subject and object are already taken. If you want to say that what the students did at the temple was take pictures, then you would need a で in there: 学生が金閣寺ではしゃしんをとりました。
 

Is it correct to have a は after the で you mentioned?
 
masayoshi said:
Is it correct to have a は after the で you mentioned?
Click to expand...

In a word, yes. But I'd like it a lot more if the "金閣寺では" phrase came first. In this case, this phrase is indicating that the topic of the sentence is "at Kanekakutera". I would translate it something like "As for what we did at Kanekakutera, the students took pictures." It implies a contrast with what we did at another place.
 
I would have felt better about it being at the head of the sentence too, incidentally. I just wanted to maintain the word order that I was given to work with.
 
Inspired by the large number of replies I've received I thought I'd give another two a bash which look like they present more possibilities.

先生 目黒駅 えびす駅 歩きました

Has become

先生 は 目黒駅 から えびす駅 まで 歩きました

or

先生 が 目黒駅 から えびす駅 まで 歩きました

Meaning that the teacher walked from Meguru station to Ebisu station with the teacher as either the topic or subject.

Is it possible to use any other particles? I'm wondering if I should be using え and に in there but don't see a way to do it.

In other news.

毎日「朝日新聞」____ 読みます _____ .

I reckon the last particle can be either か or ね and the first one any of は,を,も,が. Is that right?
 
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I had to do many of these stupid exercises when I started to learn japanese.

I think "先生は目黒駅からえびす駅まで歩きました" is correct but が should be correct too. The second sentence should be "毎日「朝日新聞」を 読みます か。"

I'm wondering if I should be using え and に in there but don't see a way to do it.
Click to expand...

It is に and へ (only pronounced え).


Jan
 
へ, of course. Schoolboy error there..

Can I not make a sentence like

毎日「朝日新聞」は 読みます か or

I.e. is it not possible to make "Everyday, the Asahi Shimbun" the topic? Thinking about it you probably can't.

毎日「朝日新聞」を 読みます ね

Would mean "Everday you read the Asahi Shimbun don't you" I'm assuming that theres a topic waiting in the wings somewhere regarding someones reading habits. Or can you not use ね with ます?

I hate doing these, I can always get one which is correct and fairly easy to spot then I start to worry that there are other combinations which might work. So I get carried away and as this thread shows, end up doing stupid things. Still, experience is the product of mistakes and all that.
 

I think は is better, but then again it all depends on context. If someone asked, "who walked from Meguro Station to Ebisu Station?" then I would go with が. Other wise, I would go with は.

As for the second one, I originally thought that よ should follow 読みます, but I guess that isn't an option. か is good, but it seems to me to be a strange question to ask. Of course, ね is also possible, but it depends on what you want to say. I'd say go with か for your purposes, like @sl0815 suggested.
 

It's possible, but go with を for now. Getting into topics is beyond first year Japanese I would think. Just to let you know, you can make almost anything a topic.


You're right about the meaning, and you can use ね with any level of formality.
 
The question does state that there are multiple possibilities so I'm interested in finding out what works and what doesn't. I'm an engineer as my main job so I find it difficult not to pull something into its component pieces despite being told it won't work any better

毎日「朝日新聞」も 読みます か

This sentence would mean something along the lines of "Do you also read the Asahi Shinbun every day?" Is that grammatically correct or would it need 毎日 set apart as a topic somewhere?
 
Yes, it's correct.

But the sentence would become clearer this way: 「朝日新聞」も毎日読みますか?
 
How's about

学生 は 金かく寺 の しゃしん も とりました

As for the students, they took the Golden Temple's picture also?

Does that work or does it need を to indicate the photos as the object? I think I can assume it pragmatically, is that right?
 
も overrides を usually (except for some cases in formal written Japanese), so it's fine there. Since people will know that it isn't the temple taking pictures of the students, there's no problem. Also, Japanese generally follows a SOV order -- subject before object (although there are probably cases when it isn't followed so strictly) -- so since 学生 comes first, people will most likely think of it as the subject (or agent, I guess would be more accurate). The meaning could also be "the students took pictures of even the temple."
 
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