Using the command form “Nasai” to make orders politely in Japanese : Hello everyone and welcome to another awesome online Japanese lesson from Bondlingo. We hope that you are feeling motivated and ready to put in some serious work on todays grammar point. Today we are going to be looking at the command form なさい “nasai” to form polite commands in Japanese.
“Do your homework!” This is something you might of heard your parents saying to you at some point in your life. “Fill in the form” says the teacher at school. It’s these types of polite commands we are going to be looking at forming in Japanese today.
First we are going to be looking at the usage of なさい to help you understand the right situations to use it in. Secondly, we will be looking at how to form なさい commands to ensure you know the rules behind the grammar. Next, we will create some great sample sentences to ensure that you know how to actually use なさい for yourself. Lastly, we will look at an effective study tip to help you remember the form allowing you to use it effectively anytime you like.
Contents
What is Japanese command form なさい and when should I use it?
As mentioned earlier, “nasai” is the polite command form in Japanese and is used in a variety of formal situations. You can use “nasai” when you are giving an order to someone younger or of lower status than yourself.
For example, a mother might say to her child
野菜を食べなさい
Yasai wo tabenasai
Eat your vegetables
It’s not so far as to be aggressive but gives a sense of a strong command.
Let’s now look at how we form nasai verbs to show you how you can start making sentences of your own and using it for yourself.
How to form a なさい command.
To form a なさい verb all you need to do is take a “masu” form verb, drop the “masu” and add “nasai”
Take a look at the table below to see some examples.
| 食べます | Tabemasu | 食べなさい | Tabenasai |
| 飲みます | Nomimasu | 飲みなさい | nominasai |
| します | Shimasu | しなさい | shinasai |
| 聞きます | kikimasu | 聞きなさい | kikinasai |
| 言います | iimasu | 言いなさい | iinasai |
As you can see here it’s really easy to create this polite command form. You should try to list down 10 – 20 verbs that you know and practice getting faster at conjugating them into なさい verbs. This way you will become really proficient at doing this in the future.
We will now look at some example sentences to see なさい at work in some real-life situations.
Example sentences with なさい
Take a look at these example sentences below to see the type of situations where you can use なさい。
Imagine you’re a teacher and you want your students to solve a problem. You could say:
この問題を解決しなさい
Kono mondai wo kaiketsu shinasai
Solve this problem.
Imagine again that you are a teacher and you want to firmly tell your student to answer a question, you could say.
質問に答えなさい。
Shitsumon ni kotaenasai
Answer the question.
For the next situation, imagine that you are a mother and your child has come in with something they are dying to tell you. They want to tell you so much that they are speaking to fast. You can say:
ゆっくり話なしなさい。
Yukkuri hanashinasai
Speak slowly.
Now it’s late, you need to tell your child that it’s time to go to bed. You can politely command them to do so with:
もう寝なさい。
Mou nenasai
Go to bed now.
Now that you have a good understanding of some example sentences, try and come up with a few of your own to further your study and to help reinforce the grammar point. We are now going to take a look at a great study tip for you to implement to help you learn the phrase more effectively.
Effective study method to help you remember なさい
Today’s effective study method is all about creating your own sentence. You want to create as many sentences as you can with なさい. Once you have created 10 or so, read them out loud in Japanese over and over again until you can recall them without looking, Once you have done that you will have remembered them off by heart. You can then go out and use なさい properly without worry. This can of course be translated unto anything else you learn.
Thanks for reading todays online article everyone. We hope you have taken away a lot from it and if you have any questions at all please do not hesitate to get in touch. We hope that you enjoy the rest of your day and be sure to check back for more lessons soon!
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