Page 399 - Basic Japanese

All of the interrogatives except demonstrative adjectives

such as dono ‘which’ and donna ‘what sort of’ occur followed
by ka, and the resulting phrases have an INDEFINITE

meaning, something like ‘some’ and ‘any.’ For example, Itsu

ka asobi ni kite kudasai ‘Please come to visit us sometime.’
Expressions with ka and mo are often used with additional

particles as well, but the particles wa, ga, and o usually do

not occur. The meaning of the wa, ga, or o is carried by the
juxtaposition of the phrase with the rest of the sentence and

the general context. For the expressions ending in ka, any
additional particles usually come AFTER the particle ka. For

the expressions with mo, the additional particles usually

come BEFORE the particle mo. Thus we find Doko ka e

ikimashita ‘He went someplace,’ but Doko e mo ikimasen deshita
‘He didn’t go any place.’ An exception is the way you say ‘in
some way,’ dō ni ka, for this follows the pattern of dō ni mo ‘in

(not) any way, in no way; in every way.’ The simple
expressions dō ka and dō mo are not used with these

meanings, perhaps because of the existence of the special
expressions dō ka ‘please’ (an old-fashioned form of dōzo)

and dō mo ‘ever so much, very much’ as in Dō mo arigatō

gozaimasu ‘Thank you very much.’

“Dare ka ni iimashita ka.”

“Did you say it to anyone?”

“Īe, dare ni mo iimasen deshita.”
“No, I did not say it to anyone.”