で vs と to represent “and”?

3 comments

1. と is to list nouns:

   メアリーとたけしは学生です。Mary and Takeshi are students.

   で is the て form of です, used for linking sentences:

   公園はきれいで静かです。The park is clean/beautiful and (it is) quiet.

   メアリーは学生で、はるかは会社員です。Mary is a student, and Haruka is an office worker.

2. The thing is, tne English “and” has no direct equivalent in Japanese. と is for nouns, and indicates either an *exhaustive* list of things (as opposed to や for non-exhaustive lists) or indicates being/doing something *with* someone.

   Be wary of that in general – translations do not indicate words are equivalent, they just indicate the English word you’d normally use to express the same thing. That doesn’t mean the reverse is also true – like here, と is often translated as “and” but you can’t really say “and” is usually translated as と because that highly depends on which usage of “and” you’re talking about.

   For listing multiple properties of something (i.e. combining adjectives rather than nouns) you use either で (in the case of na-adjectives) or the て form (in the case of i-adjectives), like in your example (note that で and the て form are essentially the same thing). So to answer your last question, no, you can’t use と here.

   As for examples, literally any sentence where multiple adjectives modify the same noun will do:

   – 彼女は奇麗で健全だ (she’s pretty and intelligent)
   – 大きくて怖い動物 (big and scary animals)
   – あの人は頼もしくて面白くて優しくて賢くて多才だ (that person is reliable, funny, kind, clever, and versatile)

3. Agree with what others have said, and wish to add:

   There is also a slight difference between clauses joined by て・で forms vs と – I’m not good enough to explain it well, but I’ll just mention it briefly so you can start to look out for good resources on it.

   ~と… to me seems to have a sequential or causal element to it, where [~] happens first, then […] later, or [~] happens, thus causing […] to happen next.

   て・で forms don’t seem to have the above meaning and they often can be used to attach a dependent clause to a main clause (though they certainly also can join two main clauses, or nouns, na-adjectives, i-adjectives etc). Basically, this form seems to be able to do a wider range of meanings, so keep an open mind as you parse sentences with them, I think!

   I hope you find a more authoritative source than my muddled ramblings!