42816
> 彼には 子供が 六人 います - He has six children.

I'm used to thinking of に as "at", or at least in a sense of goal or direction
(ex.: 買い物に行く), but here it doesn't seem to work in that sense and I don't
understand its role in the sentence. What does the に do here and how would you
translate it?
CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-01-23T17:33:04.777
42803
2017-01-24T04:20:27.573
13634
question
grammar particles
Cases where "に" cannot mean "at"
> 「彼には 子供が 六人 います。」 - "He has six children."

Have you REALLY compared the two sentences? While "He has six children." is a
valid translation of the Japanese sentence, it is nowhere near a literal
translation.

"He has six children." The subject is ' **He** '.

「彼には子供 **が** 六人います。」 The subject is 「 **子供** 」. Therefore, it is directly
followed by the subject marker 「が」.

Last time I mentioned this **_fact_** in another thread, some people here
seemed to think I was crazy, but I will say it again with confidence. "He has
six children." is just a "translation" and it is even a good one in the sense
that it makes perfect sense in English, the target language of this
translation. It is, however, **_not_** what the original says as far as
sentence structure goes.

This 「に」 is actually fairly close in meaning to "at" the location marker. The
original sentence literally means "As for **at/around** him, six children
exist." Wouldn't that make good sense in and of itself? I am not asking if it
sounds natural in English. We can always fix a translation to make it sound
natural. All I am trying to do is to prove that 「に」 in the original is
essentially the same as the English "at" in this context.

Whether or not the word "at" could naturally appear in the English translation
that everyone would agree on is of a secondary nature.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-01-24T03:54:31.460
42816
2017-01-24T03:54:31.460
42803
answer
The situaion of the typical usege of 「には」 could be the following. (I'm not
good at writing English, but I believe you can understand the situation.)

> 「最近の日本人の夫婦には子供はひとりかそれ以下です」  
>  Nowadays, Japanese couple has one or less children.
>
> 「でも、彼には子供が六人います」  
>  But in his familiy, he has six children.

「彼には＝彼の場合には(as far as he is concerned)」
CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-01-24T04:20:27.573
42818
2017-01-24T04:20:27.573
19219
42803
answer