A Comparative Analysis of "に行く" and "へ行く"

Abstract

Thai learners of the Japanese language often struggle with acquiring useful vocabulary terms, particularly, "に" and "へ,” both of which have similar meanings, referring to moving to a designated location. When these two terms are combined with the verb "行く" (to go), students frequently have confusion while selecting the appropriate auxiliary word. Hence, the researcher conducted an analysis of the phrases "に行く" and "へ行く" in order to determine their simplicity and identify some differences between them. This analysis was carried out using a corpus (specifically, a text corpus) obtained from two sources: The Chuunagon corpus and NINJAL -LWP. The findings revealed that both corpora exhibited a greater frequency in the usage of the term "に行く". Both spoken and written languages utilize "に" to a greater extent than "へ" as it conveys a sense of direction or goal, and other goals, aims, or purposes.