Questions regarding the special words or particles which allow a noun to be the predicate of a sentence, somewhat equivalent to English "am", "be", "is", "was", "were".
14
votes
2answers
527 views
What connotation does なんだ add?
Specifically, in the expression 好きなんだ (I love you) why not just say 好きだ or 好きです?
15
votes
4answers
3k views
What exactly is “なの” (nano)?
I asked a female Japanese friend to translate a sentence for me and it ends in "nano" which I took to be either an alternative question particle to -ne or -ka; or possibly two particles I don't know ...
8
votes
4answers
553 views
のだから vs のだ (んだから vs んだ）
When I learnt this grammar point a while ago, my teachers told me not to use it with "から". There reasoning for this was that のだ already implies a reason or supporting information for a conclusion.
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8
votes
3answers
195 views
correctness of い adjective + です
Generally, in all Japanese language classes, the rule you're taught is that です does not follow い adjectives. Instead, い adjectives can act like stative verbs, and as such terminate a sentence by ...
27
votes
6answers
741 views
What does っす at the end of a sentence mean?
I saw a sentence like "それ使ってるっす" and none of my dictionaries have an entry for just "っす". Is it a verb form, gobi, or something else?
6
votes
1answer
166 views
What makes using ある for people okay in this context?
Yep, I'm reading a lot of Tintin in Japanese recently, and he keeps throwing me curve balls with the language. Here's another one.
The situation is that the car he was in has been run off the road ...
4
votes
1answer
151 views
「こわいだから。」 versus 「こわい、だから[…]」
In an answer on another question, @TsuyoshiIto wrote:
[U]nlike commas in English, 読点 in Japanese is rarely (if ever) grammatically required. Authors are free to use 読点 wherever they feel that it ...
3
votes
1answer
385 views
Why does replacing だ to である changes the meaning of a the sentence?
「彼は映画スターであり、政治家もだ。」 means "He is a movie star, and a politician is a movie star, too" (from Tsuyoshi's comment below this other post)
「彼は映画スターであり、政治家でもある。」 means "He is a movie star and also a ...
