11.2) The を Particle [Part 2]
Hey everyone! I hope you are doing well and are in good spirits. Continuing our posts about those pesky particles, today I want to finish talking about を. Last time we saw how を can be used to mark the direct object. Now I want to show you the other 2 main uses. Let’s get into it! Here is the vocabulary for this post.
The second usage of を deals with departure. Attaching を to a location makes it the point of departure when used with certain verbs. Take a look at the following examples:
In example ① the speaker / writer left or departed from university by graduating. In example ② the departure was from a company and it was from quitting. Finally in example ③ the meaning of the sentence is “I left home.” as in moving out of the house.
A very important thing to point out is that the particle から is also used to mark points of departure, however there is a difference that is worth noting:
から can only be used when the departure involves literal (physical) movement.
Examples ① and ② would sound strange if you said 大学から卒業した. or その会社から辞めた. The verbs in these 2 sentences express figurative and not literal movement. Example ③ on the other hand could be changed to 家から出た but the meaning of the sentence would also change.
から implies that there is a destination / goal of the departure while を is only focused on the departure itself. Think of the difference between “going from A to B” compared to “just leaving A.”
Because of this difference in nuance, 家から出た means that you are simply leaving the house to go somewhere. Interestingly, if you pronounce the word 家 as うち, there is no longer the meaning of moving from the house. うちから出た means there was a destination in mind while うちを出た focuses only on getting out the house. This is a very interesting distinction that you may not have thought about in English!
Before we get into the last usage of を, I want you to think of a tunnel. It could be a train tunnel, a car tunnel, or even a foot tunnel. There are 2 things that are true about going through tunnels: 1) you enter the tunnel on one side and you come out on the other side and 2) when you go through the tunnel, you are restricted to that path until you come out of the other side. This idea of going through a tunnel helped me picture the other usage of を.
The second usage of を is to mark how a person or a thing moved through something like a tunnel, and came out on the other side. Take the example:
This means “〜 walked through the park.” If we imagine our tunnel analogy, we can imagine the park as our “tunnel.” Once you enter the park, you have to (that is, plan to) exit as well. In English, we use the preposition “through” to express this idea. Another example is
This means “〜 cross the street.” This may not be obvious at first but you have to walk into the street from somewhere, whether it’s your car or the sidewalk. Once you are crossing the street, you have to get off the street at some point, usually to the sidewalk on the other side. This is again similar to our tunnel analogy where the street is the tunnel. It is a kind of medium that you go through. That is the other usage of を.
You can imagine the mountain as the tunnel. The only thing different in this case is that when you come out on the other end of a “mountain tunnel”, you are at a higher place than when you started (possibly the top of the mountain).
【Passing Through Other Mediums】
This idea of passing through tunnels is not only for physical places like streets, parks, rivers and mountains, but it can also be used with time periods and numerical amounts! Take a look at the following examples:
Note how in the last example, there is no specific number given. This is ok because you can imagine the standard as some line before the end of the tunnel. When coming out on the other end, you are then below the standard.
Compared to some of the other particles you will run into, I think を is one of the easier ones to understand. The three main possibilities when you see an を-marked bundle are 1) the direct object 2) a point of departure or 3) a tunnel-like medium that is being passed through. Now, I don’t want you to think that these are ALL the uses of the を particle but I’ve found that they cover about 80% of the cases that you will run into in beginner or intermediate Japanese.
Next up, I want to talk about the particle から more in depth. As always, if you have any questions feel free to ask away, and thank you so much for reading and checking out KakeHashi. See you next time!
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