Adding In The Verbs (を)
“You can never learn less, you can only learn more.” - R. Buckminister Fuller
So you’ve gotten the (very general) main ideas / takeaways of the particles を and に. Let’s go ahead and put them into some real situations now. I think this should help you understand much more clearly how to use them.
If you remember with を, it shows us what we’re directly doing to an object. This means we (or whoever the subject is) are doing something to something else. It’s not doing something on its own (that’s another lesson). We are the ones doing the action. Let’s take a look at these examples:
a すし を たべます
eat sushi / I will eat sushi
The “direct object” is the thing that’s before the を particle (in this case, すし). The action being directly done to the すし is “to eat” it. You’ll notice that this sentence has two translations, as well. It really just depends on the context. If someone asked:
a すし を たべますか？
Do you eat sushi?
You could answer:
a はい、すし を たべます
Yes, I eat sushi
Really, though, there’s not much difference between future tense (I will eat sushi) and present tense (I eat sushi). The one thing you don’t want to accidentally do, though, is to accidentally think these are “progressive” verbs. By “progressive” verbs, I mean the kind of verbs that have “ing” on the end of them (like sleeping, eating, or jumping). You aren’t doing something and in the middle of an action. ます form only refers to present and future tenses (“I eat sushi” & “I will eat sushi”). We’ll be going over “progressive” verbs soon enough (though they’re quite different, so it’ll be in a separate lesson).
Let’s see a few more examples.
a ビール を のみます
drink beer / I will drink beer
a テニス を します
I play tennis / I will play tennis
a にほんご を おしえます
I teach Japanese / I will teach Japanese
a えいご を ならいます
I learn English / I will learn English
One thing you’ll notice is that I’m adding in the “I” part into these sentences. This is just a reminder, but in a lot of cases, you can drop the “I” (わたしは) and not say it at all, unless the situation really calls for you identifying yourself as the person doing something. If it can be understood via context that you’re the one doing it, then the わたしは is implied, meaning you don’t have to add it in there.
We’ll work on this more pretty soon, but I want you to take a look at the に particle as well before practicing both of them, together.