How to Ask Questions in Japanese
How confident are you asking and answering questions in Japanese? How about when people are asking for personal information about you? It’s useful to be able to talk about yourself when you’re getting to know new people, speaking to an official person or filling out a form. Whatever the situation, the Rocket Japanese team have created this free audio lesson to make it easier for you.
Perhaps you’re booking into a hotel, or going for an interview. You’ll probably be asked some basic personal questions in Japanese like “what is your name?” “where are you from?” or “what is your date of birth?” These are all useful things to be able to talk about for everyday conversations as well, so how about we get started…
Pronunciation help for questions in Japanese
As hard as you try, without helpful feedback your Japanese pronunciation is never going to be the same as a native speaker’s. If you've found it difficult to perfect the way you say Japanese words and phrases, this lesson will help you.
Using the blue Rocket Record buttons you can record the way you ask and reply to each question, and compare it with the way a Japanese native speaker does. That’s right, with Rocket Japanese voice mapping technology you can record your voice as many times as you need until your pronunciation matches the Japanese speaker!
Japanese question words
Responding to Japanese questions
When you’re responding, you can follow one of the simple formats below. Just insert the appropriate information in the brackets. When you talk about your date of birth you have to add the ending after year, month, and day – nen – gatsu – nichi or ka, accordingly to the number. For example: “Watashi no tanjyō bi wa 1984-nen Go-gatsu Itsu-ka desu.” (05.04.1984).
Filling out forms in Japanese
If you find yourself being asked to fill out forms with your personal details, you won’t get the complete questions that you’ve studied above. Instead, you’ll get short words or phrases.
Sayaka Matsuura
Rocket Japanese
P.S. If you’d like to practice what you’ve learned in this lesson, just read on!
Exercise 1: Pretend that you are in Japan checking in to the Hotel Miyako. You can print this lesson out and write in your response in Japanese to the questions below. (There isn’t one single right answer.)
| Receptionist: | O namae wa? |
| You: | _________________________________ |
| Receptionist: | Anata no kokuseki wa? |
| You: | _________________________________ |
| Receptionist: | Anata no jyūsho wa nan desu ka? |
| You: | _________________________________ |
Exercise 2: Read the following conversation and translate it into English below.
| Guest: | Ee, san-nin kodomo ga imasu. |
| Host: | O kosan wa imasuka? |
| Guest: | Ee, kekkon shite imasu. |
| Host: | Kekkon shite imasuka? |
| Guest: | _______________________________________ |
| Host: | _______________________________________ |
| Guest: | _______________________________________ |
| Host: |
