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What does って mean in this sentence?

世の中には、頑張っても無駄な人っていますか。

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  • I deleted my answer, yeah what i'm telling you here it's a "guess" so let's wait for someone else. But usually って+verb comes in the form of quotation, so if your sentence ended up with ってい+(said, think) I would guess って is quotating as in 彼は「僕は大丈夫」って言った. But with います i'm not sure Oct 4, 2016 at 21:57

4 Answers 4

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It means は or it can mean というものは.

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  • What changes when using って instead of は? I heard it changes the tone of the sentence, is this colloquial speech? Oct 4, 2016 at 22:14
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That usage of って is a very colloquial way of speaking and would not be seen in written Japanese.

I only speak from personal experience but. It sort of group everything i just said until now into a noun, then ask something about it.

As mentioned before it could be replaced by は or というもの or even ということ but it somehow feels a little bit stronger than that to me. Like in the usage of と to group everything before it in some sort of "speech brackets" but instead used for some kind of invisible "target of a question brackets".

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It signifies that you are referring to a class of things, or type of things rather than a specific thing.

E.g. consider マグカップ高い. When changed to マグカップって高い, it claims mugs in general are expensive. The longer form is マグカップっていうものは高い, although this sounds a bit too fancy when talking about mugs. For a more "profound" subject like 母っていうものはそういうもんだ, it sounds natural to use the longer form.

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It means "is". informal term for a "は".
Example:

  • それって高くない? - Isn't it expensive?
  • 彼ってかっこいいよね。 - Is he cool.

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