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ああ 水車小屋か

風情があっていいな

The character said this after stopping in front of a 水車小屋. Why is ていいな here being used here?

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  • 風情 is not "atmosphere" but "good (usually nostalgic) atmosphere". We say 風情がある or 風情がない, but we don't say 風情が良い or 風情が悪い.
    – naruto
    Commented Nov 5, 2023 at 18:04

2 Answers 2

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You appear to have parsed this incorrectly; it should be

[風情が][[あって]いい]な

the Verb/Adjective + て + いい construction meaning 'it is nice that it does/has/is...', or 'it is nice and ...'. Hence, here, 'it is nice and charming', 'it is nice that it has style' and so on.

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  • Why あって then? Woudn't it work without?
    – Kawase_K
    Commented Nov 3, 2023 at 22:42
  • My comment above explains why omitting あって results in an odd sentence. 風情 has to be related to the context, so the speaker asserts there is 風情 (風情があって) and notes how it affects him/her, 'it is nice'.
    – N. Hunt
    Commented Nov 4, 2023 at 1:45
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  1. With 風情があっていいな, you're saying that the water mill has charm, and that having that charm/style is nice. It essentially implies that the water mill is nice due to having charm, even though there's no explicit "because" or equivalent formula.

Getting away from literal translation and structure, it's roughly equivalent to: "That water mill? It's got a certain charm. I like that."

  1. If you say 風情がいいな, you're saying that the charm itself is nice.

It would be closer to: "That water mill? I like it's charm."

Put another way, the difference lies in whether 「いい」 applies to the water mill itself, or to its charm.

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    The utterance 風情がいいな, can only be interpreted as an example of 'exhaustive-listing-ga'. "It is charm(?) that is nice, isn't it?" (falling intonation), and thus odd in context. It is not an example of a neutral description of an action or temporary state like 雨が降っています, 'it is raining'. For details, see this.
    – N. Hunt
    Commented Nov 4, 2023 at 1:39

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