Tonari and rai?

Do they both mean "next"?

because on lesson 2.5 Visiting History kenny said that "rai" means next ?

kungfoolai-san, Excellent question. *TONARI* is the word used to say "next" in reference to something else, such as yourself, your house, a shop. For example, you can say, WATASHI NO TONARI meaning "next to me". While WATASHI NO IE NO TONARI means "next to my house." As you can see, TONARI is used as an independent word. *RAI* on the other hand cannot be used independently - WATASHI NO RAI doesn't make sense. RAI is a *__prefix__* (a tack-on word that is added before other words) which indicates "next". It is combined with words like "week," "month," and "year" and end up with - RAINEN "next year", RAISHU "next week", RAIGETSU "next month." -Sayaka :P

very detailed explanation definatley helped me clear things up ^^

kungfoolai-san, I am glad it cleared things up! -Sayaka :P

Things like this happen a lot in Japanese and it's very nice to know the difference between the two...

Derek-san, Yes, that is true! Which makes the Japanese language more challenging and... exciting! (I hope :P )