Demonstratives
Demonstrative is a fancy word for "location" words. In English, our location words have two categories: near and far. Such words include: this, that, these, those, here, there, et cetera.
In Japanese, there are four categories: near you, near the listener, far from both you and your listener, and question word. Japanese has a very easy system to figure out which it is.
こ (ko-) - near you; this
そ (so-) - near the listener; that
あ (a-) - far from both you and the listener; that over there
ど (do-) - question word; which
れ (-re) words:
これ (kore) - this/these
それ (sore) - that/those
あれ (are) - that over there/those over there
どれ (dore) - which
* All of these words have the meaning of "this one" or "this." However, this is never used to mean "this..." with another word following it. That job is taken up by "-no" words.
* Also, I have a slash between the singular and plural words English has. However, Japanese does not make this distinction, so it is assumed that the rest of these are used for both singular and plural.
の (-no) words:
この (kono) - this...
その (sono) - that...
あの (ano) - that over there...
どの (dono) - which...
* These words are always followed directly by another word.
こ (-ko) words:
ここ (koko) - here
そこ (soko) - there
あそこ (asoko) - over there
どこ (doko) - where
* This group has an irregular word. あこ (ako) is never used and あそこ (asoko) is used instead.
んな (-nna) words:
こんな (konna) - this kind of...
そんな (sonna) - that kind of...
あんな (anna)- that kind of...
どんな (donna) - what kind of...
* These words are always directly followed by a noun.
ちら (-chira) words:
こちら (kochira) - this, this way
そちら (sochira) - that, that way
あちら (achira) - that (over there), that way (over there)
どちら (dochira) - which, which way
* These words are a bit different than the れ (-re) words. These have three uses.
1- a polite way to point out people.
2- a way to out direction.
3- a way to point out an item when two items are in question. This is different from the れ (-re) words because (-re) words point out an item when there are three or more in question.
っち (-tchi) words:
こっち (kotchi) - this, this way
そっち (sotchi) - that, that way
あっち (atchi) - that (over there), that way (over there)
どっち (dotchi) - which, which way
* These are simply a more colloquial version of the "-chira" words above. They have the same usages except they aren't used to point out people.
These words are very useful to know. It shouldn't take too long to learn all these groups.
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