does "ni" (に) in japanese translate to "at" in english?

Question

Update:

for example could i say "ni ichi gozen" (at one am)?

Answer 1

Favorite Answer

In some cases it does, in some it doesn't. Prepositions in general are often hard to give a one-size-fits-all translation as they will be used in different situations from one language to the next.

Depending on the context, "ni" can mean "at", "in", "by", "for", "to", "by way of".

Rather than simply asking for a simple translation, you really just need to learn when it is used, and when you should instead use a different proposition. In the case of your example, you would use "ni", but that word order is wrong. In Japanese, particles always come after the noun. Also, "gozen"/"gogo" (am/pm) comes before the number, and "ji" should be suffixed into the number to indicate that it is a time.So: "Gozen ichiji ni" would be correct. Be aware that this is a sentence fragment, not a full sentence, but the same is true of "At 1am" in English.