Lesson 74
Ta Form + bakari
To express "someone (did something) just now," put bakari after a verb in its ta form:
- Okaa-chan wa kaetta bakari. (Mom just got back.)
- Watashi wa tabeta bakari. (I just ate.)
- John wa deta bakari. (John just left.)
- Kono heya o souji shita bakari. (I just cleaned this room.)
- Sono kasa o katta bakari. (I just bought that umbrella.)
In fact, now that I think of it, it's more common in Japanese to use katta bakari to say that something is new than to use atarashii, the adjective for "new." In other words, if you wanted to say "that's a new umbrella," sono kasa o katta bakari would be the natural way to say it, while the direct translation sore wa atarashii kasa desu sounds awkward, like something memorized from a grammar book.
There is another flavor of bakari that I'll introduce here, since this seems to be the best place to do so. It's a colloquial expression that means "all (someone) ever does is...," usually as a complaint. This is used after the Te Form, like this:
- Tabete bakari. (All you ever do is eat.)
- Ano ko wa terebi geemu o yatte bakari. (All that kid does is play computer games.)
- Shizuka wa eigo o benkyou shite bakari. (All Shizuka ever does is study English.)
As you can see, the meaning of -ta bakari is quite different than -te bakari. Once you get these sorted and memorized, you'll find them very useful.
Word Check
okaa-chan: Mom, mother (familiar)
deru: to leave; to go/come out
heya: a room
souji suru: to clean
ano: that (thing over there); that (subject we're talking about)
ko: child, kid (familiar)
terebi geemu: computer game(s) (wasei eigo for "TV games")
yaru: to play (games or sports); to do (familiar, not as polite as suru)
eigo: the English language
(Verbs are shown in their plain form.)
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