Hello peeps,
I’ve started learning Japanese about 2 months ago. I’m using a combination of duolingo, wanikani, and Japanese from Zero.
There is a japanese to english translation in Duolingo that doesn’t make sense to me. It’s related to use of ない to make い adjectives negative.
4 translations:
1) 遠いです -> It is far
2) 遠くないです -> It is not far
3) 遠いですか -> Is it far?
4) 遠くないですか -> Isn’t it far?
The 4th one seems wrong to me because “Isn’t it far?” in British english means something else then “Is it not far?”
Is the translation suggested by Duolingo correct?
Thank you,
4 comments
Yeaaaahhhh, I suck at this in particular so I can’t answer, but in general, try not to get your gramma from duo. It’s decent for practice, but the material isn’t terribly clear.
Yes, that’s an appropriate translation. Negative questions in Japanese are used in a very similar way to negative questions like “Don’t you think so?” in English.
same vagueness issue as with english. “is it not far?” can go either way. particularly because
Xないでしょうか
is a clear “isn’t it surely the case that X is true”, i.e. “really, seriously, X is true”
you can disambiguate it a bit more strongly with the の/ん grammar:
遠くないんですか？
that’s more clearly “is it that it’s not far” (i.e. is it the case that it’s rather close)
vs
遠いんじゃないですか？
that’s more clearly “isn’t it that it’s far?” (i.e. isn’t it the case that it’s far, i.e. is it far)
or to be even clearer, if there’s an antonym, just use that
近いですか？
The negative question implies you bias to the adjective’s affirmative.
I believe surfing is hard. My friend casually invited me to go surfing:
Me: 難しくないですか。It isn’t hard? (I believe it’s hard)
Friend: ぜんぜん難しくないですよ。It isn’t hard at all! (He believes it’s easy)
Me: 高くないですか。It isn’t inexpensive? ( I believe it is)
Friend: うーん。ちょっと高いです。Ummm… it’s a little expensive.