Why can`t そうです and ちがいます be used to answer interrogative questions?

10 comments

1. Interesting question that I never thought of…I just accepted it as such 🤣

2. fuck I did that yesterday

3. “Did you study yesterday?”

   “Yes, I am.”

   ^this is wrong, right? I’m not saying it’s entirely identical to the Japanese case, but it might help to think of it as a roughly equivalent level of mistake.

4. I don’t know if this is exactly correct, but this is the way I think about it.

   In English:
   “Did you study yesterday?”
   “Yes, that’s right.”

   It’s a strange way to respond in English, more natural would be “Yes, I did.” (はい、しました。)

   そうです and ちがいます are essentially saying if what the person said was true or false, so it’s confusing as a response to a question about an action. I’m pretty sure any Japanese speaker would understand what you meant, it’s just not the clearest way to answer the question.

5. Those are weird rules that feel true most of the time – but certainly not all the time. I think you’re seeing two phenomena:

   – usage is mostly about patterns and fads; it doesn’t have to be logical

   – textbook authors may fall into the trap of presenting a rule as more ironclad than it actually is

   そうです has usage that doesn’t mesh very well with answering a question. Like, it *can* be used to answer a rhetorical question, [YouGlish found this example for me](https://youtu.be/ITcMQSULpXQ?t=51). If you’re providing information it does feel pretty weird to use そうです – at least to me.

   ちがいます though? It’s rather strong in response to a question and I think that’s why they’re steering you away from it, but it’s definitely a thing people actually say. [Here’s a discussion](https://youtu.be/TAR7IPf7NaI?t=255) of the usage, timestamped to take you directly to an example of how いえ、ちがいます can be perfectly natural and not rude.

   Minna is, at the end of the day, a textbook for beginners and cannot give a complete picture of the language – a language that isn’t required to make logical sense in the first place. I think you should approach its rules with a healthy dash of skepticism. It’s more useful as a starting point for your own observations than as a definite prescription.

6. … I think this might an exception to thr rule. Like saying全然大丈夫です. Not grammatically correct, but colloquially fine.

   There is a nuance, I think, in saying そうですvsしました… I’d say そうです to be very blunt/annoyed and everyone would understand and know what I meant. My native SO will do this when I’m asking clarifying questions too many times to get me to stop. I wouldn’t sya “it’s wrong” just different in intention (no research or anything to back it up, tho)

7. Definitely doesn’t cover anything because it’s not like I learned the language linguistically, but if I see

   勉強しましたか?
   はい、そうです

   The biggest “this is weird” aspect comes from *not acknowledging the verb*. As in, the question asked about [verb], why does the answer not mention that?

   Perhaps the same idea with the following:

   Did you *study* yesterday?
   – Yes, I *did*. (sounds alright… right?)
   – That’s right. (weird answer)

8. そう is generally used for hearsay or conjecture. It’s closer to “like that”*†*, but when translating to English “that’s right” is sometimes good enough.

   *†* Source: A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar

   そう and 違う(ちがう) are more like agreement and disagreement, respectively. When someone asks you a question, they’re not asking for agreement or disagreement but for an answer: yes or no.

9. A very unknowledgeable answer, but in my mind そうです has nuances of “yup, its exactly how you said it is.”

   eg
   田中さんは学生ですね
   tanaka’s a student right?

   はい、そうです
   yes, thats right.

   In this situation you can see that soudesu is merely just used to reaffirm something that the asker already knows or has already formed an opinion of. The question is not really of an interrogative nature.

   where as “田中さんは学生ですか。” “はい.”

10. My Japanese spouse said はい、そうです would be an ok formal response as in “Yes, indeed” but informally would just say うん.