Why We Don't Say 庭に誰がいますか Here (Minna no Nihongo 第１０課)

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:05]Who are the people in the garden?

[00:00:07]There's nobody.

[00:00:09]There's a cat. This is a pretty weird conversation. It feels like it belongs to Duolingo rather than Minna no Nihongo. I mean, Minna no Nihongo can be weird, but usually not this weird. So, it feels more like Duolingo. So, the first question, who are the people in the garden, is something you'd ask when you already know there are people in the garden and you want to know who. But, the answer to this is there's nobody. So, there's some conflicting information. Like, this dialogue contains more plot holes than Kimi no Na wa. So, imagine a situation where you are having a party at your colleague's house and you hear sound. In this situation, you'd say something like is someone in the garden?

[00:00:56]Here, you don't really know if there are people in the garden. You just suspect that there might be. And maybe the host has a cat. So, they can answer a cat.

[00:01:08]Oh, there's a cat.

[00:01:11]Oh, maybe there's a cat who goes in and out of the garden. So, they can use probably and say a probably a cat.

[00:01:25]Oh, it's probably a cat.

[00:01:27]So, that's something you can say. I think this is misleading for English speakers because the official translation is actually who's in the garden. And I think in English, if you hear sound, even if you're not sure if there are people, you can say who's in the garden. I think that sounds fine in English. But, the Japanese sentence does not sound fine because you can't just directly translate an English sentence into Japanese and expect it to work.

[00:01:55]>> actually translate an English sentence into a Japanese and expect it to work.

[00:02:00]Different languages have different ways of saying things. You know, when I talk about weird sentences in Minna no Nihongo, sometimes people say, "Oh, but Minna no Nihongo is written by native speakers." And that's true, but the weird part is it doesn't always feel like that. It sometimes feel like they just Google translated an English sentence. So, it's pretty weird. Anyway, context is very important because can sound fine in some very specific situations. For example, let's say you're making a movie and you're discussing, "Oh, who's going to play the main character?" Then you can say and who else is there? Who else is there?

[00:02:43]Besides Furiru-chan and Akane-chan, who else is there?

[00:02:48]And here, "Who else is there?"

[00:02:50]sounds like "Who else is there to play this role?"

[00:02:53]And you can answer by saying something like "Ruby-chan wa dou desu ka?" How about Ruby-chan?

[00:03:00]So, that works. Another very specific scenario is like, okay, you're a teacher and you're on a school trip and you're on the bus making sure that everybody is already there. Another teacher went outside to make sure that nobody is left outside and that teacher comes back, you can use soto, outside, and say mada soto ni dare ga imasu ka?

[00:03:26]Is there still anybody outside?

[00:03:29]And she can use sukoshi, a few, and say hai, mada sukoshi imasu. Yes, there are still a few outside.

[00:03:39]And you can say dare ga imasu ka?

[00:03:42]Oh, who are those people?

[00:03:45]So, the nuance here could be something like, "Oh, I thought everybody's here, so who else could that be?"

[00:03:51]So, yes, there are some other situations where "dare ga imasu ka" can make sense.

[00:03:56]But, in terms of frequency, I think there are more situation where you'd say "dare ka imasu ka" "Is there somebody?" than "dare ga imasu ka" "Who are those people?" But, if you really want to create an easy dialogue using "dare ga" how about something like this?

[00:04:13]Let's say your colleague wants to have a barbecue. He's going to use "nichiyoubi" "Sunday" and say "nichiyoubi" "babekyuu shimasen ka" "Do you want to have a barbecue on Sunday?"

[00:04:28]But, you want to know who's coming before deciding to go, which is a common scenario. Sometimes people like, "Oh, you know who's coming?" because you get along with some people more than other people. So, you can use "kuru" "to come" and say "mm" "dare ga kimasu ka" "mm" "Who's coming?" using "dare ga" and they can say "kurokawa-san to" "shiranui-san desu" And since you like them, you can use "iku" "to go" and say "ja ikimasu" "Then, I'll go." Not because of the superficial reason that they're both pretty, but because you like their personality.

[00:05:07]And again, I asked other native speakers to make sure that this is not just my personal opinion, and all of them said, "Yes, the original dialogue sounds weird." So, if you want to acquire practical Japanese so that you can hang out with cute Japanese with Japanese people with great personality, maybe you can join my email group because I have both free and paid lessons where you can acquire Japanese with natural, easy, and properly contextualized examples. So, click on the link in the description or on the screen and subscribe to my email group, Japanese with Yuta.