なん + (X)... なに?!?

Japanese Language Questions
1

Hello.

勉強するなんて好きですけど「なんて」という事はどうですか？

I have found myself identifying a lot of なん + ‘X’ words while practicing reading. Any tips on learning the difference between all of these words? Perhaps we could use this topic as a means to document all of these words and their meanings.

Here are the ones I have identified so far (not certain on all definitions):

なんて - emphasizer appended to nouns / verbs.
なんですか (なんだか) - What?
なんか (何か) - something / anything
なんで - why (and sometimes how?)
なんだ - probably just a な adjective directly preceding a んだ (contraction of のだ)
なんでもない - nothing?
なん + counter - for/how many + counter (ex. なんにち)

Again, any tips for distinguishing these words would be much appreciated!

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2

Or a noun.

なにか means something. なんか is more of a word you put in to downplay whatever you’re saying.

何ですか in kanji. Also usually you don’t put か after だ. Not sure if it’s absolutely not allowed, but I never hear it. なんだ？ means ‘what is it?’

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Most of these are just contractions of なに. It changes to ん in many cases where something immediately comes after it. A “raw” なに？ like the memes is one of the few situations where it isn’t shortened to なん.

Some clarifications I guess:
なんて means “things such as”, and it often has negative connotations. Such as そんなことするなんて… “to think you’d do such a (terrible) thing…”
なんです、なんか are all just contractions of なに + some other grammatical phrase. No special meaning.
なんでもない means “not anything” literally. なんでも is なに + でも
なんだ is typically a contraction of なのだ, yes.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen なんで to mean “how”, where did you get that from?

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4

They use this in Minna no Nihongo in one of the earlier chapters instead of the more common どうやって. One of its few flaws. I haven’t heard it used like thst in other contexts, I don’t think.

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5

Both of those mean “why” though, at least in all the cases I can think of… usually to say “how” they’d use どう or どうやって or something like that, no?

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That’s what I meant, yes. I will be fine doing N1 in a couple months.

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7

Oh, good luck! I was a bit confused at first. Was trying to think of any way that どうして could be translated to “how” in some situation. :sweat_smile:

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8

Maybe as どうしても… however you do it…

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9

Right… I do know that it literally means like “how do?”, but I think どうして by itself typically is asking why and not how. There’s also like どうしたら which means “how can/could (one do something)”.

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10

Though なにか can be contracted to なんか, no?

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11

Yes, but I wouldn’t in most contexts. Only in casual speech. Since it can come off as rude, for above mentioned reason.

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12

Yeah, I should have added that was mostly the context of my question. For example this sentence from a manga:

ん‥‥なんかくさくねえか？

I would expect that would be the contracted なにか since the other なんか is mostly used as a suffix, right?

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13

Oh yes, I agree there!

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14

Cool. Just confirming my understanding. Thanks!

15

It can mean “how” in the sense of “by what means”?

There are indeed other ways to say how, but なんで is one of them.

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