テニスをしますかvsしませんか

Hi, so I’m working on Genki 1 and I’m currently at chapter 3. One thing I was wondering is why, when making a request, you use the negative form of します instead of the positive one.

Example:
晩ごはんを食べませんか。
映画を見ませんか。

Another question I have is what ちょっと means in the following context, and how:
テニスをしませんか。
うーん、ちょっと。

I’m sorry for asking so many questions and I hope they weren’t all too obvious! :smiley:

1 Like

I’ve always thought about it like how we sometimes make sentences negative for emphasis or just added politeness in English. For example,
"Shouldn’t we take out the trash?’ for ‘We should take out the trash’, ‘Don’t you want to go to the mall?’ instead of ‘Do you want to go to the mall?’ etc etc.

As for the ちょっと, that’s a shortening for saying something like ちょっと忙しいだよね or ちょっとできない like ‘Oh, I’m a little busy’ or ‘Well, I kind of can’t’. It’s perceived as a little less rude than just straight up saying that you’re busy/can’t for whatever reason, from what I understand

Hope this helps ^^

4 Likes

That helps a bunch! Thank you so much! :smiley:

Also, テニスをしますか could be interpreted as “do you play tennis”?

7 Likes

This topic was automatically closed 365 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.