[mirandatothemax]

From the other thread which I'll move over here and delete the other one..


"On Monday I met my sister at the train station."

The basic constituents are the time, the place, who, and the action, which are respectively, monday, the train station, my sister (and I) and met. You can pretty much swap these around as need be. Let's translate those basic words first:

月曜日　げつようび
駅　えき
姉　あね
合う　あう　（あいました）

To say 'on monday' of course, we need the particle に：　げつようびに
To say 'at the train station', we need the partlcle で：　えきで
Unlike in the English, we don't really need to emphasis my involvement- it's already obvious, so we'll drop the 私は（わたしは）for now.
which leaves the tricky bit : あね. It could be に　or it could be と、depending on the nuance.

So we could have: げつようびにえきであねとあいました。
or equally,
げつようびにあねとえきであいました
both of which imply a sense of 'togetherness', or mutuality. My sister had expected to meet me and I had expected to meet her. It also suggests we kind of hung about together a bit. Lit: "met with older sister"

Compare with:
げつようびにえきであねにあいました
it's the same thing; I met my sister at the train station on Monday, but the nuance is different- in this case, one party came into contact with the other. E.G. I may have expected to see her, but it's also ~possible~ it was by chance or she hadn't expected to see me. It has slightly less of the 'hung about a bit' nuance too- perhaps we just bumped into each other, said hi and dashed off our separate ways. Lit: "met to older sister"


Since my teacher is super azn and made the English sentence "I meet with my friend at Everett Mall this weekend" do you think she meant "I met" instead? The sentence makes more sense in past tense right?

I know saying watashiwa at the beginning of everything is redundant but I think since I'm learning such basic sentence structure my teacher wants me to include it. So "I met with my friend at the Everett Mall this weekend"

my basic components are

who: my friend (and I)
when: this weekend (is just shuumatsu okay or is there another part needed to make it specifically this weekend?)
where: Everett Mall
verb: met

So I'm getting confused with the beginning since I'm trying to start with "watashi" and not just the time. I know more Japanese than we've learned in class so it's really confusing for me to try to separate what I've learned in class from words I knew previously from living in Japan!

Watashiwa shuumatsu ni Everett Mall de tomodachi to aimashita?

We haven't learned how to say "with" or use to/ni in that context, so would there be any other simpler way to put this or is this the most basic way?