で Particle: Indicating the Total Time an Action/Event Took

Introduction

How long does it take you to brush your teeth? Ha! Trick question, you should be brushing for at least two minutes. No, you can’t just brush really fast and finish in 30 seconds! Who told you that? I don’t think that was a real dentist…

Today we’re going to cover the amount of time things take, and how to talk about this in Japanese! If you think about it, this is actually really important. How else would you be able to brag about polishing off an extra large pepperoni pizza in just 10 minutes?

You Did That How Fast???

Structure

• 

  Amount of TimeでVerb
  Example:
  → 10分じゅっぷんで食たべました。
  "I ate it in 10 minutes.”

Remember how I said で was super versatile? Well, this is already the third usage you’re learning, and we haven’t even covered everything yet! Don’t worry though, this one is super duper straightforward. All we have to do is put で in between an amount of time and a verb, and we’ve described how long that verb takes or took to do! This amount of time can be any expression of time such as minutes (分), days (日), or even years (年) for those lengthy activities. Check it, yo!