Today’s vocabulary course focuses on spatial landmarks. So what exactly do I call spatial landmarks ? All the words that I am going to give you are nouns which will then serve you to locate yourself in space. I will tell you at the end of the course how to use these terms and how we can use them in sentences.
北 .
きた
. the North
南 .
みなみ
. the South
東 .
ひがし
. the East
西 .
にし
. the West
右 .
みぎ
. the right
左 .
ひだり
. the left
上 .
うえ
. the topside, above
下 .
した
. the underside, under, below
前 .
まえ
. the front, the opposite
後ろ .
うしろ
. the back, behind
内 .
うち /
中 .
なか
. the inside (中 refers more to "middle")
外 .
そと
. the outside
間 .
あいだ
. the interval
奥 .
おく
. the bottom
表 .
おもて
. the side up
裏 .
うら
. the reverse, the upside down
横 .
よこ
. the side
側 .
そば
. the proximity
隣 .
となり
. the neighborhood
周り .
まわり
. the area
You will have noticed that all these words that I have just taught you are all composed of a single kanji and are in purely Japanese pronunciation. We are going to use these words to create what we call prepositions in English. So, how are we going to use prepositions in our Japanese sentences ?
Let us first take a word like "the piano" which is said ピアノ.
If we want to say "on the piano" or "under the piano" or even "behind the piano", we will use the new words that we have just seen with the particle の. Take a look below :
on the piano → ピアノの上
under the piano → ピアノの下
behind the piano → ピアノの後ろ
And if we mean "to the piano’s right" and "to the piano’s left" :
to the piano’s right → ピアノの右
to the piano’s left → ピアノの左
There you go, a very easy thing. You use the particle の of possession, then you add either the particle に, or the particle で to implement your place correctly in your sentence. Because yes, we will see the particle で very soon. Keep that in mind, you will understand when the time comes.
This course is now over. Thank you for reading it. Keep on working well and we will meet again very soon, I hope, for the next vocabulary course.
Introduction