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Would you like to talk at a coffee shop?

seaDonkey

Kouhai
25 Jun 2018
83
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Genki student here. I am being asked to turn 'talk at a coffee shop' into a suggestion. What sounds right to me is 喫茶店で話をしませんか. With the verb 話す i am confused with my particles. do either of the following sound right?
喫茶店を話しませんか
喫茶店で話しませんか

Thanks for reading.
 
seaDonkey,

喫茶店話しませんか is grammatically correct. Here the particle で indicates where the activity is happening. In this example, で can be translated as "at". Another example of this usage of this で would be 学校勉強します, which means "study at school".

喫茶店を話しませんか does not work here. The particle を indicates the direct object of a verb. For example, "ocha を nomu" means to drink tea, with tea being the direct object of the verb drink. Your phrase using を would mean something like "Let 's talk about the coffee shop", which is not what you are trying to say.
 
And my other wrong example would sound like '... coffe shop and do speech' like cave man. Thanks for taking the time. I guess で somehow slipped under my radar even though I'd seen a hundred examples in the Genki vocab app I used to prepare myself for the exercises. It all started when I had fun making pictographs for the kana.....
 
で denotes "action entirely within the boundaries of an area". For example, "Nihongo で hanasu" (speak in Japanese) and "kawa で oyogu" (swim in a river, or perhaps swim around in a river).

We should also bring up the example of に which means to "travel from within the boundaries of one area into the boundaries of another area". For example, "kawa に oyogu" (swim into a river) and "Kyouto に hikkoshi suru" (move to Kyoto, in the sense of changing place of residence). Another example is "omawarisan に naru" (become a policeman, in the sense of changing from non-policeman-ness to policeman-ness). (Please forgive my use of the gender-bias word policeman.)

Then there is the usage of へ which means "to move towards an area without actually entering that area". For example, "kawa へ oyogu" (swim towards a river, without actually entering the river). (Please note that in this example, へ is pronounced as "e" not "he").

"It all started when I had fun making pictographs for the kana..... "

--> Don't forget to use the constellation Orion as a way of writing the katakana オ. I think オ is a great representation of Orion with its belt of stars, which looks just like the diagonal stroke in オ. Then there is the use of the English word akimbo to represent ア, which looks just like an akimbo.

"...like cave man."

--> I know lazy people who leave out post-positionals like に and で because these words are "just too much trouble". If we say, "Watashi ikimasu" it sounds like, "Me go! Me take airplane across burning desert!"
 
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I think wo is the easiest because consuming is such a direct action. As for で 'entirely within the boundrys' the particle の seems to do the same job almost but for connecting nouns 'entirely within the ownership of'. Your に examples helped me to understand transition to states of being as well as places so very useful and thank you. I will keep an eye out for へ again thanks for the tip.

Sp'o'kes of a wheel i had for オ but Orion I admit is cool. Back to the textbook for me chaper 4 awaits.
 
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