Page 336 - Basic Japanese

When the content of a quotation is a question, it ends in

ka, and the particle to is optionally placed after ka:

健二は私に映画を見に行くか(と)聞きました。

Kenji wa watashi ni eiga o mi ni iku ka (to) kikimashita.
Kenji asked me if I was going to see a movie.

It is more common to use a PLAIN form before the
quoting particle to, but sometimes you will hear the POLITE

form, especially if the speaker is trying to quote the exact
words (direct quote). Sometimes you can’t tell how much of

the sentence is to be included in the quotation, except by
context. The sentence Watashi wa kyōshi da to iimashita can

mean either ‘I said that (somebody) is a teacher’ or
‘(somebody) said that I am a teacher.’ Unless the situation

indicated otherwise, the topic watashi wa would probably be

taken to refer both to the subject of the quotation and to the
person who said it: ‘I said that I was a teacher.’
The quoting particle to, not to be confused with the

particle meaning ‘with’ or ‘and,’ or with the particle

meaning ‘whenever, if,’ is often pronounced with a special
high pitch and an abruptly clipped vowel. You will
sometimes hear this special high pitch used with other

words. It shows that the speaker is injecting an added
liveliness, a special color, to his words. Japanese often make

a slight pause before, and sometimes after, the quoting
particle.

In quoting a question, you use the verb kiku ‘asks’ or the

phrase kiite miru ‘tries asking, asks to see, finds out.’ The
verb kiku also means ‘listens, hears’:

マネージャーからききました。