Ok, so recently I heard someone say that in conversational Japanese, if you put ですが on the end of certain sentences it can make that sentence a sort of request.
For example:
交番を探しているんです。 (I’m looking for a police box.)
交番を探しているんですが。 (I’m looking for a police box, (implying) can you help me.)
Is this right? I tried to find any example of this but had trouble finding anything as ですが is usually used as ‘but’. If it is correct, when do you use it rather than using どこですか? Also please excuse any Japanese mistakes, my Japanese isn’t very good yet. Thanks!
6 comments
Yes you can use ですが but it’s more like implying the question like you said. So its more like ですが。。。
Also, it’s どこですか
が used after the end of sentence is just like “but”, which imply some sense of (but I can not found it). So people might help you though it sounds a little weird if people don’t get it. It has nothing to do with です which is used to mark the end of sentence.
You would be implying that you can’t find it (depending on pronounciation) and need help but I would just ask for directions.
Yes, you certainly can. In fact, it’s a very polite way of doing so, however as someone might have already said, it usually implies a question. Say your entering a hotel and are greeted
by the worker at the front desk. You may say something like チェックインしたいですが。meaning “I’d like to check in.” It’s important to understand what’s actually happening here. As you may know, が is another word for “but.” That’s no different in the sentence above. The ですが is actually implying another part to the sentence here, that being “is that okay?” In fact, you may here that very phrase tagged on like so: チェックインしたいですが、いいですか。As you can see, the が still retains its function meaning “but.” Hopefully this makes sense.
“I’m looking for a police box.” Is a complete sentence, and without anything else (follow up questions, etc), it’s kind of blunt. If you said this to someone on the street, they might be like, “…Okay? And?” because you just approached a stranger and said some declarative sentence lol.
“I’m looking for a police box, but…” is not how we’d really phrase this in English, so it’s not something that can be easily explained with a one-to-one translation. But, rather than a plain statement, it’s open-ended, which invites a response from the other person.
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If you said this on the street, you’d probably say a couple other things too, like, “Excuse me, I’m looking for a police box–do you know where it/one is?” (すみません、交番を探してるんですけど、どこですか？）It would be weird (in either language) to say something like “I’m looking for [x]” by itself. But at least with the desu ga/kedo, it kind of opens it up to the other person.
*Also, you’ll have more luck with the “requesting help” type thing if you look for “n desu ga,” I believe. の in the のですが construction is an explanatory particle, so the police box question is more like, “(The reason that I’m asking is) I’m looking for a police box, so… (open-ended; or follow-up: can you help me? where is it?)
The ん in んですが is a shortened の！ Just btw, if it wasn’t something you’d seen already.
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Can be almost literally:
(It’s that) I’m looking for a police box (so…)
交番を探している（のですが）
You get that kind of “explanation” feeling/meaning because の is nominalizing the whole sentence. Can be visualized like
（【交番を探している】の）です。
It is (that [I’m looking for a police box]).
So then, ～のですが is “it’s that ～, but/so… *follow up/etc*”
(don’t get too hung up on the English translation–it’s important to grasp the Japanese meaning at first, but one-to-one translations are meant to help you understand the japanese logic, and then you focus more on the Japanese and less on the English. It’s fine if it sounds weird in English, you just have to see it enough to make the connection with the Japanese meaning.)
Sorry if this is too long and/or confusing. If it doesn’t make sense, I could be bad at explaining–don’t feel weird if it’s hard to understand!
Very common, similar to “I am looking for the bathroom buuut”
Definitely doesn’t translate well but still, very common