「で」(1) Indicate a location where an action takes place
「で」(1) Indicate a location where an action takes place
At, in, on
The particle で has many uses. One of them is to mark the location at which an action takes place. When で is used to indicate a location, it can be translated as at, in or on. It is placed directly after the noun that indicates the location where the action takes place.
学校で
at school
学校で昨日大変な事故が起きた！
A serious accident happened at school yesterday!
ジムで大胸筋を鍛える。
Train the pectoral muscles at the gym.
スポンジボブがカニカーニでカーニバーガーを作る。
SpongeBob makes krabby patties in the Krusty Krab.
It is important to note that で cannot be used to show the location where something exists. This is a specific function of に!
Special Note
At its core, the particle で serves to delineate the boundaries, field, or parameters within which an action takes place or a specific state exists.
You will see that this concept gets extended a bit further in other cases, such as the material something is made with, or the tool something is made by, etc. In all uses, it singles out a particular parameter from others.
Making the location the topic
In Japanese, each element of a sentence can represent a case, which tells us the function an element has in the sentence. As we learned in this lesson, the ～で case can tell us where an action takes place.
図書館で、本を読む。
(I) read books at the library.
(Literally: At the library, read books.)
In this sentence our place-of-action case is 図書館で. Each case like this in a Japanese sentence can be turned into the topic of the sentence using は. Depending on the particle the element uses, the change to は looks a bit different.
Below you can see an overview of the changes that happen when turning a case into the topic.
が | を | に | で | へ | と | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Case | が | を | に | で | へ | と |
Topic | は | は | には | では | へは | とは |
Let's now take our example from above and turn our ～で case into the topic.
図書館では、本を読む。
At the library (as opposed to other places), (people) read books.
So, what is different from the first version of this sentence? The exact meaning depends on the context.
Adding は could simply be used to add a sense of contrast, expressing that one reads at the library, but not at other places.
By turning 図書館で at the library into our topic, this structure can also be used to make a general statement about libraries, namely, that people read books there.
Formation
学校で
General Structure
学校で弁当を買う。