N5 Topics
L9: Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice
Become familiar with a wider range of ways to list things
Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice
In this Topic, we're going to learn about the parallel marker や. や is used to make non-specific, incomplete lists of nouns. We will also compare や to the other ways of forming lists that we've already learned about, and take a look ahead at some more advanced list-making grammar points.
Grammar in this Topic
や
Things like, And the like
や is a particle that has several different roles in Japanese, with the most common being as an adverbial particle. や is used similarly to と as 'and', but rather than listing specific things in a group, it lists 'things like (A)'.
や is always used to group nouns, and simply comes directly after them.
To compare how と and や are different, imagine that there is a bowl of fruit. In this bowl there are apples, oranges, and peaches. If と is used to list the apples and oranges, it would give the listener the impression that there are no peaches. This is called an 'exhaustive' list, meaning that all possibilities should be listed. However, if や is used, the listener would know that there are other things in the bowl apart from the apples and oranges. In this way, や is a better choice when you want to say 'and', but don't want to limit the group that you are listing.
Caution
や cannot be used after verb phrases. This is done with たり, or とか.
Details
As we've now learned a few different ways to list things in Japanese, let's review what we know and also take a look ahead.
Noun And Noun And Noun
Besides や, we have also learned about using と to make lists with nouns. As we now know, や is used with non-exhaustive lists (incomplete lists where other unmentioned things exist), and と is used with exhaustive lists (whatever is mentioned is the entire list, absolutely nothing else).
In N4, we will also learn about とか. とか is also used for incomplete lists, although it is much more casual and versatile than や, making it very common in everyday speech.
Verb And Verb And Verb
Importantly, や and と can only be used to list nouns. As we know, if we want to list actions (verbs) then we must either use て or たり.
Just like our noun markers, these have different nuances. て is used for actions that happen in a specific order. たり is used for examples of representative actions in no particular order.
As たり implies a random sample of representative activities, it is unnatural for strict routines that happen in a specific order. For that, we use て.
It is also important to remember that in proper writing or formal speech, a たり list must always end with する (or a form of する). Despite this, in casual conversation the final する is regularly dropped.
Class Presentation
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あや：「今年の夏休みは、家族でおばあちゃんの家に行ったり、川で釣りをしたり、近所の公園で野球をしたりしました。
私の家で友達とクッキーやアイスクリームを作って映画を見たり、動物園にも行きました。
新しいペットも飼いました。白い鳥と黄色の鳥です。まだ小さいですが、すぐに大きくなるとお母さんが言っていました。
鳥が大きくなって、言葉を話すのが楽しみです。
私は木を使って、小さい門を作りました。鳥がその木の上で遊んでいるので嬉しいです。
家族や友達や鳥たちと遊んで楽しい夏休みでした。」