Clarification Edit: for people who speak English natively and are learning a second language

  • Ð Greıt Þu̇mpkin@lemm.ee
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    5 months ago

    My friend told me that a whole lot of Japanese sentences are literally just exclamations of an adjective or adverb and apparently that’s enough for most Japanese folks to intuit an entire sentence of meaning.

    • fireweed@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      That’s a funny way to put it but pretty accurate. Like, you see a cat walk up to you and you exclaim かわいい! (= cute). You wouldn’t say “that cat is cute!” or “what a cute cat!” like you would in English. Because if you did say the word-for-word Japanese equivalent あの猫がかわいい it implies something like “that cat is cute, unlike all the other cats,” because why would you go through the trouble of saying all those words that were obvious from context unless you were trying to call out this cat specifically?