Learn common adverbs of frequency used for daily habits
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| Hi, everybody! My name is Alisha. |
| In this lesson, we’re gonna talk about using common adverbs of frequency to talk about your daily habits in Japanese. |
| Okay, let’s begin by looking at the vocabulary that we’re going to use in this lesson. On this side of the board is this bar graph. The idea with this graph is to give you an idea of the differences in frequency between these adverbs. |
| So, for this lesson, let’s imagine that this is a scale of days, so from zero days in a week to 1, 2, 3, all the way up to 7 days a week. We’re going to look at different adverbs of frequency that you can use to express different levels of frequency of an action for your life. |
| So, let’s begin over here. |
| At the seven-day level is まいにち (mainichi). |
| まいにち (mainichi) |
| まいにち (Mainichi) means “every day,” every day. |
| “Every day” まいにち (mainichi) |
| Something you do every day is something you can use まいにち (mainichi) to talk about. |
| Second is this one, いつも (itsumo). |
| いつも (itsumo) |
| So, いつも (itsumo) means “always,” always. So, something that you do very, very often, but maybe not every day can be used with always. So, we can use いつも (itsumo) to describe that. |
| The next one is よく (yoku). |
| よく (yoku) |
| So, よく (yoku) means “often.” よく (Yoku) is something that’s a little bit less than “always,” something a little bit less than いつも (itsumo). Maybe, on this scale, around the 4 to 5-day mark. |
| The next one is ときどき (tokidoki). |
| ときどき (tokidoki) “sometimes.” |
| ときどき (tokidoki) |
| So, sometimes is a little bit less than “often.” |
| Following that is あまり (amari). |
| あまり (amari) |
| あまり (Amari) means “seldom,” seldom, so something you don’t very often. |
| And finally, at the end of the scale over here at the zero-day point is ぜんぜん (zenzen). |
| ぜんぜん (zenzen) |
| So, ぜんぜん (zenzen) means “never.” |
| So, we’re going to practice using all of these words and we’re going to put them together with some other information to create basic sentences that you can use to talk about your daily life. |
| So, let’s move along to the dialogue section. |
| Okay, let’s take a look at a short dialogue that uses one of these adverbs of frequency. |
| Let’s start with the short exchange here. |
| So, the first person says: |
| あさごはんを たべますか。 (Asagohan o tabemasu ka.) |
| あさごはんを たべますか (Asagohan o tabemasu ka), which means “Do you eat breakfast?” |
| あさごはんを たべますか。 (Asagohan o tabemasu ka.) |
| The response is: |
| はい、まいにち たべます。 (Hai, mainichi tabemasu.) |
| はい、まいにち たべます (Hai, mainichi tabemasu), which means “Yes, I eat breakfast every day.” |
| In this sentence, まいにち (mainichi) in red is the adverb of frequency. This one means “every day.” So, the response is, “Yes, every day, I eat” quite literally. |
| So, let’s take a look next at some other example sentences that use different adverbs of frequency. |
| All right, let’s take a look at a couple of other example sentences that use adverbs of frequency. |
| First: |
| ときどき おんがくを ききます。 (Tokidoki ongaku o kikimasu.) |
| ときどき おんがくを ききます。 (Tokidoki ongaku o kikimasu.) |
| In this sentence, the adverb of frequency is here, ときどき (tokidoki) “sometimes.” |
| This sentence means, “I sometimes listen to music.” |
| ときどき おんがくを ききます。 (Tokidoki ongaku o kikimasu.) |
| You’ll notice the verb at the end of this sentence is positive, ききます (kikimasu). |
| ききます (kikimasu) |
| Let’s compare this to the next example sentence: |
| あまり コーヒーを のみません。 (Amari kōhī o nomimasen.) |
| あまり コーヒーを のみません。 (Amari kōhī o nomimasen.) |
| In this sentence, the adverb of frequency is here, あまり (amari), which means “seldom.” |
| This sentence means, “I seldom drink coffee.” |
| Note in this sentence, the verb is in the negative form, のみません (nomimasen). |
| のみません (nomimasen) |
| あまり コーヒーを のみません。 (Amari kōhī o nomimasen.) |
| In this sentence, the verb at the end was positive. We’re going to talk about why in the next section when we look at the grammar. |
| Okay, now, let’s take a look at the grammar patterns you need to know to make sentences like these. These are two patterns, one uses positive and one uses negative verb forms. Let’s look at the positive verb form pattern first. |
| You use this positive verb form pattern when your adverb is one of these - いつも (itsumo)、よく (yoku)、ふだん (fudan)、ときどき (tokidoki)、たまに (tama ni)、まいにち (mainichi). So, we didn’t talk about ふだん (fudan) and たまに (tama ni) in this lesson. We didn’t use them in the focused vocabulary section, but they are commonly used. You can think of ふだん (fudan) as something like “usually,” and たまに (tama ni) as something like “occasionally” or “every once in a while.” |
| The point is, when you use one of these adverbs of frequency to express your idea, you need to use the positive verb form. So, this means (something, something) ます (masu). So, this indicates you need to use the verb in the positive form. It can be polite or it can be a casual form. That’s up to you, depends on who you’re talking to, but make sure you use the positive verb form when you use one of these adverbs. |
| For example, we saw that up here in: |
| ときどき おんがくを ききます。 (Tokidoki ongaku o kikimasu.) |
| The positive form. |
| Then, the negative form. When we use one of these adverbs of frequency, あまり (amari) or ぜんぜん (zenzen), you need to use the negative verb form. So, (something, something) ません (masen), if you’re using the polite form. |
| If you’re using the non-polite form or the casual form, that’s also okay, but just make sure that you use the negative. We saw this in this example sentence here. |
| あまり コーヒーを のみません。 (Amari kōhī o nomimasen.) |
| So, we use the negative because we use this adverb of frequency, あまり (amari). |
| So, when you’re building your own sentences, make sure you consider which adverb of frequency you’re going to use and check to make sure that your verb form matches. |
| A quick and easy way to remember the pattern to use or to remember the order of words is this. You can imagine “I” here for your subject, if you’re making a sentence about your everyday life. |
| (I) + your [adverb] here + your [verb phrase] |
| So you can put these three elements together; subject, adverb, verb phrase, to make a sentence like this. |
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