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Original sentence: 審判がクズなだけ！ Google translates it as "Referee just scrap!" So if we analyze the sentence:

審判(referee) が(GA particle) クズな(???) だけ(only?)

What part of speech is クズな and what does the sentence really mean?

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1 Answer

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クズ(屑) literally means ゴミ, waste, trash, litter, garbage, rubbish... and it's often used like "crap" or "a piece of crap". I think it means something like [役立]{やくた}たず or [無能]{むのう} (worthless, good-for-nothing..?).

審判 The referee
が the case particle as a subject marker
クズ crap, rubbish
な The auxiliary verb だ
だけ！only, It's only~~

So I think it's like... "It's only he's a crap referee!" "It's only because the referee is rubbish!"

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Would you like to comment on the part of speech (品詞)? Dictionaries list it as a 名詞, and yet it is followed by な as if it were 形容動詞. – Dono Dec 22 '12 at 14:03
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Google shows lots of results for both 屑な and クズな.　Is it possible that the word has only recently become popular as a な-adjective? – Billy Dec 22 '12 at 16:03
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@Dono, you must be playing the devil's advocate here, I cannot imagine that you don't know that な here is the attributive version of copula. – dainichi Dec 22 '12 at 19:32
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@Billy, yes, that might be recent usage, however, that's not relevant for the question. You can also say nounなだけ with non-な-adjectives, e.g. つまらない男なだけさ, it's just that I'm a foolish guy. – dainichi Dec 22 '12 at 19:42
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@dainichi If it were "kuzu na no da", then yes. However, try another noun: *inu na dake, which is simply ungrammatical. So, if kuzu is a noun, as dictionaries state, then that does not really explain the na here. Lets try a 形容動詞: kirei na dake -- this is grammatical. So, is kuzu also 形容動詞? If so, why do no dictionaries categorize it as such? I think there is more that needs to be said here. – Dono Dec 23 '12 at 1:35
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