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For instance, you can ask someone:

> Did you go to the store today?

or

> You went to the store today?

Would those both be translated as: 今日、乾物屋{かんぶつや}に行ったか？

Or is there another way to express did + Verb?

Note: how do you do furigana + kanji on this board?
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2012-02-19T17:45:34.367
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2012-02-20T00:36:35.860
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grammar verbs
How do you express "did" + verb in Japanese?
> １ Did you go to the store today?
>
> ２ You went to the store today?
>
> ３ 今日、店{みせ}には行った(か)？ (I took the liberty of adding `は`)

(1) is a normal English question; you've been taught that (3) is the way to
form normal questions in Japanese; so therefore, the equivalent of (1) in
Japanese is (3), right? Then surely, you have the answer to your question
already?

Maybe I can get closer to what's troubling you, though.

The questions you're asking in Japanese, such as (3), would normally be
structured in English as (1) and not (2) -- yet the Japanese grammatical
structure resembles (2) more closely than (1), since the word order doesn't
change at all from an ordinary statement. This makes you want to look for a
different structure, maybe one that is closer to (1) instead.

However, you can't hope for Japanese and English sentence structures to align
in this way. Even though (3) seems to be structurally very similar to (2), it
**does not mean (2)**.

The sentence (2) in English sounds like it's seeking "confirmation", or is a
surprised statement. To represent its equivalent in Japanese, you need to add
の:

> ４ 今日、店{みせ}に行ったの(か)？

This indicates that the speaker is seeking an explanation of some aspect of
the context/environment (for instance, maybe he saw some shopping bags lying
around in an unexpected place).

This question illustrates the dangers of attempting to directly compare
Japanese and English sentence structures. When you realize that (3) looks
similar to (2) and you start thinking about how to translate (2), you should
consider that as its own problem, starting by asking yourself "what are the
nuances of this sentence in English?", rather than assuming that (2)
corresponds to (3) because it looks similar.
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2012-02-20T00:06:44.900
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@Tsuyoshi & @sawa - I understand how you'd be confused as to how these are
different in English. But the latter example is a question that is surprising
to the one who asks it. It has the nuance of "Oh really?" attached to it.

So for @dotnetN00b, here's how they are different in Japanese

### Did you go to the store today?

`今日、スーパーに行った（か）？` is just the basic question structure as you had it.

### You went to the store toay?

This question makes it sound as if during the conversation the asker found out
that the askee (?) went to the store today. So the asker is asking like a
surprised, rhetorical question. "(Oh!) You went to the store today?" This
would require the `～んです` form. So it would be `今日、スーパーに行ったの（か）？` or
`今日、スーパーに行ったんですか？`
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2012-02-20T00:08:04.527
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There are many ways to create questions in non-polite Japanese, and the exact
differences in nuance depend on a lot of things, including personal
interpretation. I'll list some of them here and try to give _my_
interpretation.

> 今日、スーパーに行った？

This seems to me the most neutral way to ask. "Did you go to the supermarket
today?"

> 今日、スーパーに行ったの？

This sounds fairly neutral too, but might carry the nuance that the asker did
not expect the askee to have gone.

> 今日、スーパーに行ったか？

Although this might be the most "textbook" way to ask, I feel this is rarely
used. It sounds a bit strict, like something a father might ask his son.

> 今日、スーパーに行ったのか？  
>  今日、スーパーに行ったんだ？

I feel that these are fairly similar. As similarly stated by others, these
sound like "Oh, so you went to the supermarket". The の somehow connects the
question to some context, i.e. the asker might have deduced from
context/environment that the askee went to the supermarket.

> 今日、スーパーに行ったのかよ？

This one is fairly rude. "What!? You went to the supermarket?" or something
like that.

There might be others too, and other people might interpret them slightly
differently.
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2012-02-20T10:00:39.213
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