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What can't you eat?
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What can't you eat?

Mar 14, 2022
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Hi again. Niko here.

This week’s prompt

You're visiting Tokyo, and your friend there has offered to take you out to dinner. They're trying to pick out where to take you, so they ask if there's anything you can't eat.

* You can submit a response in Japanese here. *

Please try to submit your response within 48 hours of receiving this email. Please only write one response per form submission.

Corrections will arrive in your inbox next week.

Last week’s corrections

Your friend texted you to ask if you’re still coming to the たこ焼き party at their house tomorrow night. You are, but you have a question for them about it.

I’m very good at confusing myself when deciding if I should use 行く (いく // to go) or 来る (くる // to come) in a situation like this.

We do this weird thing in English where we’re say “come” about somewhere that we’re actually going to “go” because we’re thinking about it from the perspective of a person who is or will be there.

This doesn’t sound odd (to me, at least):

A: Are you still coming tomorrow night?
B: Yeah, of course I’m still coming. Why?

But if this conversation were in Japanese, and person B used the verb 来る (くる // to come), it would sound strange*.

Don’t adopt the listener’s perspective when talking about somewhere you will “come” or “go” to. Stick with your own perspective.

In short, you wouldn’t use the word 来る (くる // to come) in response to the prompt shown above, but you could use 行く (いく // to go).

*Rei pointed out to me that, according to the internet, there are some regions of Japan in which people do say 来る in situations like these (maybe down in 九州 [きゅうしゅう]?). She’s never actually heard someone say it, though, which is why all corrections are using 行く and not 来る.

Speaking of corrections, let’s look at how a native speaker would rephrase all of your submissions:

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