Hi all
I was recently reviewing しか and だけ because I came across some sentences where I didn’t understand why しか was used.
My understanding is that しか usually carries a negative nuance to the sentence. I think I get that from the examples usually given in textbooks. One example sentence where I’m having a bit more trouble is the following:
経験でしか人は学ぶことはできないんだ。
Man learns from experience alone.
I spoke to some native Japanese speakers about this and the sentence seemed quite natural to them. I wanted to turn this into a sentence using だけ and the sentence they came up with was:
経験からのみ人は学ぶことができる。
The explanation was that だけ couldn’t be used because it must follow a noun. My search on the internet only mentioned that のみ was more formal then だけ, not that it could be used differently grammatically.
So my questions here are:
1. What are your thoughts on the original sentence using しか? Does it have a negative nuance to you? The English translation does not carry a negative nuance to me.
2. Can anyone provide any additional information about the differences between だけ and のみ?
Thanks for your help.
3 comments
しか is just the opposite of だけ, it’s used with negative verbs
経験で学ぶ = learns by experience
経験でしか学ばない = doesn’t learn but/except by experience
you could translate しか__ない as “nothing but” or “doesn’t unless”. you just need the negative verb after it. it doesn’t get used with positive verbs.
Or if you know french it’s directly equivalent to the “ne __ que __” construction.
English translations here are tough because the first statement implies something that the second doesn’t.
My take on the first sentence is that “Man learns from experience alone” and implies other ways of learning are not sufficient. If you followed it up with something about how poor book learning is then you’re really emphasizing how important experience is.
The second one is just a neutral statement “Man only learns from experience”, but lacks any hidden meaning.