Particles を and に
“Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves.” - James Allen
While you’re studying the verb vocab words from the previous page, let’s learn a couple of new particles. So far, you know the particles は, が, and の. Now we’re going to learn about the particles を and に, which we will use with the verbs you’re learning right now. I’m going to do a quick explanation of each particle, but it’s going to make a lot more sense when you actually start using them for realsies.
The Particle を
The “official” explanation of this particle is as follows:
を shows us what the “direct object” is.
At least for me (and other non-English majors), I have no idea what a “direct object” is, and I’m guessing a lot of you have no idea what it is either. Here’s a simpler explanation on the particle を.
を is used to refer to the object / thing we’re doing an action to. For example: Wash the car. Eat food. Drink soda. The “direct object” are the bolded words. We’re doing things to them, using the verbs.
Don’t worry if you don’t understand now – all the examples will make things clear soon enough.
The Particle に
The particle に, unlike the particle を, can be used on a variety of things (and not only verbs). We’ll go over those other things at some point, but for now, we’re only going to focus on using に with verbs. When it comes to verbs, though…
- The particle に is used to indicate the indirect object (i.e. who, what, or where an object is directed to). For example, in the sentence “give a present to Sandra” we are indicating that the present is going to Sandra.
This definitely won’t make a lot of sense now, but like the particle を it’ll get a lot better once you see it used in action.
At this point it’s pretty safe to assume you’re somewhat confused by the above explanations. Awesome. Let’s add the verbs into the mix, and everything will be clear.
Also, before you move on, make sure you at least have a moderate understanding of all the verbs from the previous page. We’ll be using them, and the better you know the actual vocab words, the more you’ll be able to focus on the grammar aspect of everything.