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 Posted: Tue Apr 27, 2010 10:50 am
QUESTION: What are the most universal ways to the basic questions, such as: Who? What? When? Why? Where? How? and How long?
ANSWER:
"Who" is だれ. Note, though, that when you ask "Who is it?" make sure to use "ですか" or "だ" because just だれか is used within sentences to mean "someone." E.g., "Is someone here?" だれかいますか。
"What" is なに＝何. The same thing applies to this as to だれ. 何か used within a sentence means something, e.g.: "Is something here?" 何かありますか。
"When" is いつ. Same thing as for the last two: いつか means sometime. E.g., "Want to go sometime?" いつか行きませんか。
"Why" can be either どうして or なぜ. なぜ follows the same rule as the last three, thus なぜか means "for some reason." E.g., "For some reason, they banned me." 私はなぜか禁止されました。
”Where" is どこ. Again, same rule here. どこか means "Somewhere." E.g., "There should be a pencil in this box somewhere." この箱の中に鉛筆がどこかあるはずです。
"How" is most commonly どうやって. However, the "somehow" is an exception from the previous examples. "Somehow" is 何とか. E.g., "Somehow, I'll finish this work up tonight." 何とか今夜この仕事を仕上げる。
As far as "how long," if you're talking about time, I think you just have to use a full sentence: "How much time did it take?" 何時間かかりましたか。 (Nanjikan kakarimashita ka?)
If you're talking about units of measurement, like "How wide is this?" or "How much is this?" then you can use いくつ (for a specific number of finite items) or いくら (for other terms of measurement). E.g. "How many apples do you have?" りんごがいくつありますか。 "How much does this apple cost?"このりんごはいくらですか。
Hope that helps! ^_^
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Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2010 12:20 am
As a side note, the usage of どうやって is not exactly how but more of "by what means". This is more commonly used in travel as I have found (this may be different for others). For example, "by what means did you go to the train station?" in English is the same as "How did you get to the train station.?" and in this case in Japanese, I would use どうやって, and it would look like this:
どうやって駅に行きましたか。
For a general "how" the more common word I see used is 「どの」 and is usually coupled with 「ような/ように」 depending on what follows it. I feel that the Japanese "how" is the trickiest question would you will find.
Hope that is a good addition for you Blue *^_^*
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Posted: Sun May 09, 2010 4:09 am
Just like to add that for "How", you can also use どう.
For example,
どうでしたか？ How was it?
どうしましたか？How did you do it?
気分はどうですか？ How are you feeling?
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Posted: Sun May 09, 2010 12:12 pm
あ～。いいな、バッドさん。「どう」ということばは忘れちゃったね。
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