To Love And To Hate
“Fear leads to Anger, Anger leads to Hate, Hate leads to Suffering.” - Yoda
Remember those vocab words you looked at from before? Let’s start using them, integrating with the grammar (which you already know how to use, might I add).
For example, when you like something, you might say something like this:
みずがすきです
I like water
When you really like something, you may say this:
せんせいが大すきです
I love my teacher
Be careful, depending on the context, you might <ahem> really like your teacher if you say that. You know, “like like” </end ahem>.
With きらい, it’s the same exact thing. Instead of “to like” you replace it with “to hate.”
みずがすきです
I like water
みずがきらいです
I hate water
And then if you really hate something, you just use 大きらい instead.
せんせいが大すきです
I love my teacher
せんせいが大きらいです
I really really hate my teacher
This just means you really hate your teacher, and doesn’t have creepy meanings like 大すき has when it comes to your teacher. I’m sure you’ve all had a teacher like this (the hate one, not the lovey-lovey kind).
The pattern is the same for everything. Simply a:
[thing] が [like/dislike] です
You can feel free to switch out and replace anything you like. As long as you know the four “like/hate” words, you’re only limited by your vocabulary of things. Worst case scenario? You can just use これ, それ, or あれ to refer to “things” that you don’t know the name of (or if it’s just more convenient). For example…
You’re holding onto a monkey wrench, but you don’t know the word for “monkey wrench” in Japanese. Instead of trying to figure out how to say a word you don’t know, you can say “I don’t like this.”
これがきらいです
Or, maybe you need to talk about a whole “situation.” Something that doesn’t have a single word. Say your friend is doing something that you hate. He’s continually arguing with anything you try to say, no matter how ridiculous he sounds (he does this when he gets angry, and there’s no stopping him). Instead of saying “I hate when you argue about everything no matter what because you’re angry,” you can say…
それがきらいです！！
Don’t forget that you have これ, それ, and あれ in your arsenal. They are great ways to refer to things that are otherwise hard to refer to!
Before you move on, there’s a worksheet that will help you to practice everything you’ve learned up until now. It gives you a “thing” and then asks you to fill in the rest (i.e. do you like this thing? Do you hate it? etc). Hand write the answers or type them, it doesn’t matter too much, as long as you understand the concepts behind everything, and you are able to create your own love/hate sentences without a prompt later on.