
Just to be absolutely clear, the fact that “imasu” 「います」 is included in this sentence does not impact what particle we use. The only difference is whether or not there is another verb (playing / asonde 遊 あそんで) in addition to “is” / “imasu” 「います」 , and of course the different particle in the case of Japanese. If we changed the “de” 「で」 example to also describe where Yui is playing right now, it would look like this:īoth English versions include the word “is”, and both Japanese versions include the word “imasu” 「います」. In my examples earlier, the reason I used “imasu” 「います」 in the present tense and “asobimashita” 「 遊 あそびました」 in the past tense was to make sure the focus was on the action those words described, not the form they take. Possible Point of Confusion – The “~te imasu” 「~ています」 form This, however, is only used to mean “to be” or “is” in the sense of “something is equal to something else”, for example, “The book is heavy.” For everything you ever wanted to know about the word “desu” 「です」, click here to read my detailed guide.

The third word meaning “to be” is “desu” 「です」.
#Define choose past tense plus
mostly non-living things, plus a few living things like plants). “Imasu” 「います」 is used for people and animals, while “arimasu” 「あります」 is used for inanimate objects (ie. These both mean “to be” or “is” in the sense of “something is somewhere”, for example, “The book is over there.” They describe existence. Two of them are much the same, as they are what we are talking about here: “imasu” 「います」 and “arimasu” 「あります」. Unlike English, Japanese has three words that effectively mean “is” or “to be”. There can be some overlap here and there, but for this lesson, we are focused only on the uses of these particles that relate to a place or location where something is or occurs. So, when we say “destination + ni に”, this “ni” 「に」 has a very different meaning to the location-defining one we are focused on in this article. We could call this destination a location as well, but hopefully it is clear that the actions that involve movement towards a destination, like “ikimasu” 「 行 いきます」 (go), “kimasu” 「 来 きます」 (come) and “kaerimasu” 「 帰 かえります」 (return home), are distinctly different from actions that don’t directly involve such directional movement, such as “tabemasu” 「 食 たべます」 (eat), “mimasu” 「 見 みます」 (watch) and “asobimasu” 「 遊 あそびます」 (play). Similarly, “ni” 「に」 has several other uses, one of which is to define the destination of an action involving movement. Just to be perfectly clear, it must be noted that…īoth of these particles have other uses that we are not concerned about here.įor example, “de” 「で」 has another major use which is to define the means by which an action occurs, such as a mode of transport or a tool used to complete the action.



