Quote:
Originally Posted by JohnBraden
I'm trying to say, "Here in the garden, mother, Hanako, and Masao are looking at a book together."
Can you tell me where I erred badly and implied I am there too? Should I have written が instead of は? Also, it's をみています, not みてをいます？
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I already told you where you erred with your implication. 〜と means "with." So 〜と〜と〜と一緒に means "together with ~, ~, and ~." So you were saying a fourth person, along with mother, Hanako, and Masao, read. Here, I assumed it was you who is the fourth person. If you had been talking about your father before uttering this sentence, it could have been "my father, along with my mother, Hanako, and Masao..."
And yes, the present progressive is ている, not てをいる.
And finally, who is mother? Your mother? If so, in English, you capitalize it as "Mother" (and thus I'm guessing you're not a native English speaker). If not, whose mother? The word is different depending on this. Finally, who are you talking to? Someone else in your family?
And you probably want to say that they were reading the book, not looking at it. よむ, not みる. Unless they were like "oh this is a pretty book in appearance but we're totally not reading it."
Assuming it is your mother and you are the brother of the other two people and you are talking to, say, your father,
にわにはおかあさんとはなこちゃんとまさおちゃんはい っしょにほんをよんでいます。
庭にはお母さんとハナコちゃんと正雄ちゃんは一緒に本 を読んでいます。
If you're talking to someone not in the family, you'd say はは, not おかあさん. If you're talking about someone else's mother to one of her kids, you'd say おかあさん. Etc. And that's not even getting into whether you should use the plain or polite form いる vs います at the end, etc.
This is precisely why so many of us say "give us context" for questions on this board. Japanese is highly context-dependent.