～ておくTo do something in advance

Most Recent Replies (37 in total)

• 

  Pushindawood

  to do something in advance

  Structure

  • Verb[ て ] + おく

  View on Bunpro

• 

  allinlabs

  Misa from JapaneseAmmo just made a video about ておく. It would be good if you added it to the grammar point
• 

  mrnoone

  Hey and welcome on community forums

  I have added it to the “readings” section!

  Cheers,

  PS
  Cool avatar, what does it depict?

• 

  Pep95

  Would I be able to write ておく as て置く when referring to this grammar point in a sentence? Or should I simply keep writing hiragana when referring to these types of grammar points?

• 

  mrnoone

  Hey

  You should keep writing them in hiragana, otherwise, it can cause confusion.

  Cheers,

• 

  eran

  来週らいしゅうまでに漢字かんじを30字じ おぼえておかなく てはいけない
  why is the translation " By next week, I have to memorize 30 kanji in advance ."?
  according to this grammer point: https://bunpro.jp/grammar_points/67 it should mean I DON’T have to right?

• 

  mrnoone

  Hey

  You have negative て form of おく used here 覚えておかなくてはいけない, which together with はいけない form double negative, meaning must must なくてはいけない grammar point.

  It sounds complicated, but basically なくてはいけない means “must” while てはいけない means “must not”. It is quite a long phrase, so it might be confusing, but you will get used to it.

  ---

  Negative て form is really easy to make：
  おく→negative form->おかない-replace い with く→おかなく-add て->おかなくて (done)

  I hope it helps,
  Cheers!

  PS
  てはいけない means “must not”, in other words, something is prohibited, not allowed. It is important to not do that.
  ここで駐車してはいけない。
  You must not park here. Do not park here. Parking here is prohibited.

  While “don’t have to” means there is no ...

• 

  Ambo100

  Could とく/どく be added as synonyms or included in the structure as they are casual contractions of ておく? (Perhaps used in examples as well)

  This also would be helpful for people trying to find what とく means when they don’t already know it’s a contraction.

• 

  mrnoone

  Thanks!

  I actually thought we had those on the site already

• 

  siditious

  This double negative is really unintuitive, this can’t be common usage.

• 

  matt_in_mito

  Hi and welcome.
  This double negative is the Japanese way of saying that someone has to do something. There are some different ways of doing it, for example;
  ～ないといけない
  ～なければいけない
  ～なければならない
  but they’re all double negatives and they’re all used all the time in everyday speech. It comes very naturally after a while.

• 

  kelth

  Hello, just to see if i am understanding correctly,
  覚えておか なく てはいけない
  is saying you must not not memorize in advance?

• 

  matt_in_mito

  No, it’s a double negative so it means you must remember in advance.

• 

  kelth

  That would be how the double negative ultimately ends up in the English version I wrote: “you must not not memorize in advance.”
  I believe the Japanese is saying you are not allowed to not memorize it in advanced, not that you must memorize it in advanced. It ultimately means the same thing, but the logic is not the same.

• 

  nekoyama

  This is a fairly normal way to say this though that’s used when one would say “must” in English. So it’s better to think of it as translating to “must” because Japanese speakers do not perceive this as a particularly strange construction in the way a literal translation to English is perceived by speakers of English.

• 

  siditious

  So why not use the more traditional forms
  覚えておかなければいけない
  or 覚えておかなければいません
  both mean the same thing, the expectation of the prompt is very ambiguous as is the translation of the solution.

• 

  mrnoone

  Hey

  All the forms are correct and used, so it is good to learn all of them .
  What is more なければいけない is introduced in N4 lesson 8, and ておく appears in lesson 7 so we have used なくてはいけない (from lesson 1) instead, since we are building on previously learned grammar constructions.

  I hope it helps,
  Cheers

• 

  pasi

  Hi, one of the examples has ~おこう. Which grammar point is this from? Is this something I haven’t run into yet because I’ve chosen Tae Kim path?

• 

  FredKore

  @pasi Check these out:
  Volitional form
  https://www.bunpro.jp/grammar_points/121
  https://www.bunpro.jp/grammar_points/70

• 

  pasi

  Thanks, so it’s casual volitional. I guess my “Kim Tae path diagnosis” was correct.