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You know the "conversational interaction," んです？ My book introduced it as something like,, "to show statements related to previous sentences" and when asking "Why," we must answer using it.
So I have a few questions:
1. In the book, the examples are written as:
’どうして日本に行きたいんですか’ ー 日本の文化が好きだからです。
What exactly is the purpose of using ndesu? Can we not simply say, "どうして日本に行きたいですか"?
2. ....... how do you pronounce it? I mean, do you say it as "iki tai ndesu" or "iki tain desu" or something.... my brain can't comprehend that orz
3. When asking questions, is there a particular difference between 何故、どいして ＆ なんで？ The book only taught the first two and left out "nande", and used "doishite" above "naze", so does it really matter?
-Thanks :) -
1. n da (n desu) is short for no da/no desu. It technically turns the sentence into a statement, it's used for explanations. You could simply answer like you did, but answering like in the book emphasises that you're explaining something, and the n desu in the question emphasises that the question is asking for an explanation.
2. Japanese is quite regular in pronunciation. Every mora (kana) should be pronounced as long as any other. It should thus be pronounced ta-i-n-de-su.
3. I don't think there's any real difference between using doushite, naze or nande. I would recommend doushite for polite situations, but I don't know if it really matters. Nande does sound sort of slangy to me however. -
3. I asked my Japanese friend about it some time ago, and the answer I got was that doushite is more casual while naze is more formal. At that time I didn't know about nande so I didn't ask about it. Hopefully someone can give a more detailed explanation on the differences.
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From looking at the net there do seem to be some slight differences in meaning but they're pretty subtle, and to be honest I wasn't interested enough to hammer out what they were. Besides, when someone starts talking about etymology, I rather suspect that they're talking about what they think a word should mean, rather than how it's actually used in real life. Look in a Japanese dictionary and you find that doushite is included in the definition for naze, naze is included in the definition for doushite, and both are included in the definition for nande.
They are pretty much synonyms, but their usage is different. Naze is most likely to be used in written language, while nande is casual spoken language. Doushite falls between the other two. -
Concerning the differences between どうして、なんで and なぜ, I asked a Japanese foreign exchange student at my school about this because I too wanted to know the difference. She could not tell me, and it seemed that she did not even notice there was one. However, I am as yet unaware of her own aptitude within her own language. There will always be those who do not understand the rules of their native language on any plane higher than instinctually, after all.
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Nande is infinitely more casual and should be avoided when speaking to people you wish to pay respect to. Richard explained it succinctly.
They are pretty much synonyms, but their usage is different. Naze is most likely to be used in written language, while nande is casual spoken language. Doushite falls between the other two.Posted By: Richard
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