ホールに電話がある。

Sentence Discussions Japanese
#1
English Translation

There’s a telephone in the hall.

ホール: does this mean “hall” as in English? The entrance passageway of a private house. (Where the telephone always used to be kept.) Jisho, however, says it means “dance hall” or “concert hall”.

#2

@Terence
ホール, loaned from English and evolved in a strange way, does NOT usually refer to any place in a private house unless the house isn’t like a spacious palace. ホール in Japanese refers to

  1. Concert hall or dance hall

  2. Civic auditorium or convention center

  3. Foyer of any large buildings such as museums, movie theaters and city halls

A public pay telephone used to be in a foyer. I interpret the Japanese sentence as the third definition.

If you mean a passage of a private house, we usually say 廊下. We used to have a phone at an entrance, so 玄関に電話がある also works.