Let's learn another expression using the Plain Past form, TA Form.
Today's expression is quite handy, and we, native speakers, use it a lot in our daily
conversation.
So, please watch this lesson a few times and fully master today's expression.
では、質問です。Ok, here is a question.
昨日の夜、何をしましたか。
As you learned back in Japanese 4, you can use TE Form to combine multiple actions in
one sentence like this.
"I studied Japanese and watched a movie."
日本語を勉強して、映画を見ました。
Here you have the TE Form of the verb "study" 勉強して.
This is one way to do it.
You picked two activities that you did last night and put them in the order that you did
with the first verb in the TE Form.
So, in this case, you first studied and watched a movie.
Not the other way around.
This is one thing you need to keep in mind when you use TE Forms.
When you use TE Forms to connect multiple verbs for a specific timeframe, such as last
night, then it sets the order of the actions.
On the other hand, the structure that we are going to learn today is free from such orders
and simply list random activities as examples.
So, if you want to use these two activities as examples out of other things that you did
last night, then you phrase it this way.
"I did such things as studying Japanese and watching a movie."
This structure indicates these two are only examples, and you didn't necessarily do these
two actions in this order.
Besides, it automatically implies you did other things last night.
In Japanese, you phrase it this way.
Please take notes, ok?
日本語を勉強したり、映画を見たりしました。
As you can see, this structure takes the TA Form of the verb for the example activities.
Here you have 勉強した for studying and 見た for watching.
And you add り after each example action.
Because of this, many Japanese textbooks refer to this particular structure たりたり
expression.
So, when I say たりたり, please remember that I am talking about this structure.
Today in this lesson, we are going to practice this たりたり expression.
Ok, here are two other things that you did last night.
I did such things as doing laundry and chatting online with a friend.
Let's use these two as examples now.
By the way, "chat online" is チャットする in Japanese so here you have to use
its TA Form, チャットした.
洗濯したり、友達とチャットしたりしました。
Can you say it smoothly?
Please repeat after me.
洗濯したり、友達とチャットしたりしました。
はい、OKです。
Ok, I need to point out one important thing.
When you use たりたり, you can create various phrases by changing the ending.
As always, the tense and speech style of the phrase is determined by the end of the sentence,
Here you have "did" しました, so this sentence is in the past tense as in "I did
such things as..."
Now, you still have the same example actions, "勉強したり and 映画を見たり" but
now you end the sentence this way.
したいです。したいです instead of しました.
What does this sentence mean?
そうですね。That's right.
It means "I want to do such things as studying and watching
a movie, for example."
勉強したり、映画を見たりしたいです。
これはどうですか？What about this one?
勉強したり、映画を見たりする予定です。
そうですね。Now, it means "I plan to do
such things as studying and watching a movie, for example."
Let's try one more sentence.
勉強したり、映画を見たりするのが好きです。
Now, the sentence means "I like doing such things as studying and watching a movie, for
example."
Like these, you can create many different phrases with たりたり simply by changing
the ending.
And, of course, you can also change the speech style from this Formal speech to Informal
speech by using Plain Forms at the end of each sentence.
勉強したり、映画を見たりした。
勉強したり、映画を見たりしたい。
勉強したり、映画を見たりする予定。
勉強したり、映画を見たりするのが好き。
With the sentence-final particle よ, they are going to be like these in Informal Speech.
This よ adds the tone of the strong intention of the speaker to convey the information.
It's not exactly the same but kind of similar to "you know" in English.
勉強したり、映画を見たりしたよ。
勉強したり、映画を見たりしたいよ。
勉強したり、映画を見たりする予定だよ。
勉強したり、映画を見たりするのが好きだよ。
Ok, let me put it back to the Formal Speech.
So, this is the summary of たりたり expression.
You put the example actions in TA Form, place り after each TA Form, and complete the phrase
as you like.
Just so you know, in writing, we often add this comma after the り except for the last
one on the example list.
Ok, let's practice with another question.
子供の時、よく何をしましたか。
Let's say these are the example actions that you did in your childhood.
"fighting with my big brother" and "playing outside."
So, you are going to phrase the response as "I did such things as fighting with my big
brother and playing outside, for example."
Can you phrase this by yourself now?
少し考えてください。Please think about it for a while.
では、答えです。Ok, here is the answer.
兄とケンカしたり、外で遊んだりしました。
By the way, you don't have to always list two examples for this structure.
You can actually list only one example like this.
外で遊んだりしました。 This is completely fine too.
Or, you can increase the number of examples like this too.
"fighting with my big brother, playing outside, and reading books."
兄とケンカしたり、外で遊んだり、本を読んだりしました。
And here, the question asked you しましたか so you have to conclude your response with
しました.
If the question asked you this way instead, "What did you like doing when you were a child?"
子供の時、何をするのが好きでしたか, then you have to answer with 好きでした
like this.
外で遊んだり、本を読んだりするのが好きでした。
"I liked doing such things as playing outside and reading books, for example."
For the Informal Speech, you change the ending 好きでした to its plain form, 好きだった.
You can add the sentence-final particle よ like this too.
And then, as we learned in the previous lessons, these particles are often dropped in Informal
Speech, so you can drop them and go like this too.
子供の時、何するの好きだった？
外で遊んだり、本を読んだりするの好きだったよ。
I hope you are getting comfortable with たりたり expression.
If I ask you this question, can you give me your own answer?
Let me give you my answer first.
Let's see if you understand what I'm saying here.
わかりますか？What did I like doing when I was a child?
はい、そうですね。I liked doing such things as drawing and playing piano when I
was a child.
I would rather phrase my response this way actually because I really enjoyed doing these
things.
絵を描いたり、ピアノを弾いたりするのが大好きでした。
Ok, let me ask you the question.
子供の時、何をするのが好きでしたか。
You can leave your own response in the comment area below.
こんにちは、ゆうこ先生です。
日本語オンライン学校、スマイル日本語アカデミーで 日本語を教えています。
I have been teaching Japanese for over 20 years
and now I have my online Japanese school.
If you are interested in learning Japanese with me, please check the available courses
in the description box below.
I look forward to having you as my student.
I look forward to studying Japanese with you.
See you in the next lesson!