Japanese Demonstratives: これ, それ, あれ, and どれ

Last time, you learned question markers か and の with closed questions, such as “田た中なかさんは大学生だいがくせいですか？” and “田た中なかさんは大学生だいがくせいなんですか？” When it comes to open questions, objects you’d like to ask are likely to be ones you don’t know. What should you describe such things? This is where demonstratives come into play.

Explanation for Japanese Demonstratives: これ, それ, あれ, and どれ

In English, you have demonstratives like “this” and “that.” They have several functions, e.g. pronouns: “this is good,” determiners: “this pen,” proadverbs: “this kind of,” etc. Japanese ones also have almost the same functions. In this lesson, we will focus on the function of pronouns in order to explain the concept.

The Usage of これ, それ, and あれ

First of all, let’s start learning the basic concept. Proper demonstratives are determined by where objects are. Take a look at the following pictures.

When Speakers and Listeners Are at Different Places

That’s simple, isn’t it? The important point here is that the concept of the plurality in Japanese is completely different from English. For example, when you describe shoes in the following picture by demonstrative, you will probably use “those.” However, you have to use それ in Japanese, though それら is the plural form of それ.

それ and これ in the above examples are the demonstrative pronouns for the same object. *We will tackle どれ in detail later.

When Speakers and Listeners Are at the Same Places

Unlike the first case, the border of それ is not clearly defined. Thus, これ and あれ are more often used than それ.

Here, both of あれ indicate 富士ふじ山さん. In this way, you need to identify what demonstratives indicate depending on positions.

Wh-question: どれ “Which One”

With the picture above, you say “あれは城しろですか (Is that one over there a castle)？” because the object is far from the speaker, which is a suitable situation to use あれ. Then, this is a closed question. You’re asking whether that one over there is a castle or not.

By contrast, when you ask a question in order to specify something, in this case it’s to specify which one a castle is, you say “どれが城しろですか？” The structure is very simple. You just replace あれ with どれ. Here are more examples.

Identifier Particle が with Wh-questions

When question words are used as subjects, you always use the particle が. This is one of the functions of が called "Identifier." Using question words mean that you haven’t specified what you’re talking about, and thus topic particle は cannot be used. Here are more examples.

On the other hand, you often face this kind of structures.

This is because the どれ doesn’t work as subjects in the contexts. As you remember, subjects are often omitted when the contexts clearly tell what or whom you’re talking about. In conversation, it’s more natural to omit somethings obvious. Let’s check the following breakdown.

By considering particles’ functions and the presence of subjects, you can easily figure out what wh-questions mean. One last thing, if demonstratives and question words appear before question marker の, they will conjugate as same as nouns. That is to say, if you express the third example with the question marker の, it will be like this: [ホテルは] どれ（なの / なんですか）？

Summary

1. Japanese demonstratives are これ, それ, あれ, and どれ.
2. The proper usage will be determined by object’s positions.
3. The particle が is always used if question words are subjects

We think that Japanese demonstratives are similar to English ones and not complicated very much. Now, you can express “this,” “that,” “that one over there,” and “which” in Japanese. On the other hand, this is still part of the explanations. Next we will pick up the rest of functions such as determiners and proadverbs with various wh-questions.