Does adding い after a color make it an adjatiave?
It just happens that many of the colors do take that form… い as an adjective, no い as a noun. There are exceptions… Generally the “main” colors are like that and other colors never have い.
It can be a bit confusing since in English there’s no difference in form between the noun and adjective forms of colors.
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Hey guys, I’ve been studying よう and みたい from Tae Kim. From what I understand, よう is used to say something/someone appears to be a certain way (which may or may not be true), while みたい is used to say something/someone looks like something/someone but in actuality isn’t.
Tae Kim says that “「みたい」 is a grammar used mostly for conversational Japanese. Do not use it in essays, articles, or anything that needs to sound authoritative. You can use 「よう」 instead…” So I was wondering if みたい and よう have two separate functions, how can this be the case?
Also, I’ve heard that らしい can be used to say something/someone seems like something based on their behaviour? So I was wondering if it (in this regard) covers the same function as よう?
For example,
彼は学⽣のようだ
彼は学生らしい
The most important thing to remember with のよう and みたい is that みたい is more casual. That’s really all that matters. Getting bogged down in linguists’ analyses of precisely how they get used isn’t worth the effort. Their basic meanings overlap a ton. If there are slivers on the outside of the venn diagram where they are technically less natural for reasons other than casualness or formality, it’s the least of your concerns.
らしい is definitely distinct though. You use らしい when remarking on a characteristic that is core to the essence of that thing.
You wouldn’t use 学生のよう and 学生らしい in the same situations.
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Thank you!
(First time posting in this thread, so I hope this is the right place!)
Here is a sentence from my game:
とーさんの方も何もなかった？
Context: The character is talking to her father who just came home from a long trip.
I’m having a tough time putting it all together. I know that 何もなかった means ‘was absolutely nothing’ or something to that effect (despite the double negative), but I don’t know how it applies here. I’m also not 100% sure what 方 (ほう, based on the voiceover) means in this context, or what the first particle も is doing. To sum up, I’m very confused. Could someone point me in the right direction (方)?
The best guess I have for meaning is: ‘Dad’s direction was nothing?’ as in the journey/act of moving in a direction took no effort? Maybe?
This reads like a significant part of context is missing. Like the dad is accusing her of something and this is the rebuttal from her by reflecting the accusation back to her dad. Could you provide some more context please?
EDIT: Or more like they were doing something and her part was unsuccesfull and she asks how the dad part went ^^
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The father just got home and asked her if she was a good girl and took care of the house. She responded ‘Of course!’ and then asked him this. It is translated in the English game as: “Did you run into any trouble, Daddy?” This is clearly not a direct translation, though
Based on your edit: Oh, so maybe it’s like this:
Dad: Did you take care of the house like a good girl?
Girl: Yes, of course!
Girl: And what about your part (aka the trip you just came back from)?
Edit: updated the translation to be the correct one
It feels like you’re reading 方 very literally. It’s more like “In your case” if the person is talking directly to their dad.
See definition 2
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Yes with your clarification it makes more sense. Literally it’s “And when it comes to you (dad), all went well also? (there was nothing?)”
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ほう doesn’t only mean direction, it can also be used for comparisons. The context you gave is a bit limited, but it does sound something like “So dad, nothing happened to you (either)?” or “Did anything happen to you?”.
Also I’m confused at what you mean by “double negative.” There’s no double negative in this sentence. 何もない only has one negative in it, it’s just that なにも pretty much always pairs with a negative ending.
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@Leebo Yes, absolutely. I got hung up on the context of ‘trip’ -> literal direction. I read that definition a bunch of times and even articles explaining how 方 can be used for comparisons, but I couldn’t make it make sense in my brain.
@phyro I mean ‘double negative’ in the sense that it looks like “Nothing wasn’t” to my English brain which feels like a double-negative. I’m still getting used to that phrase. 
And thank you also, @downtimes !
I think I see it all now. The dad is asking about the daughter’s experience. She says she took care of the house aka nothing bad happened. Then the daughter turns around and asked if nothing also happened on dad’s side of the experience.
Thank you all for your help! 
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It’s actually more like “everything wasn’t” (if you excuse my butchering of English here). 何も on its own does not have a negative meaning, it only gets that when paired with a negative verb.
(Which is the standard use case, like phyro said, therefore the non-negative meaning is not mentioned in dictionaries as much.)
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Thank you and phyro for the clarification! That helps me a lot. 
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I scanned through the replies, which were very helpful, and just felt the need to add something:
何もない and its derivatives (like what you have here) literally mean ‘not anything there’
何でもない and its derivatives literally mean ‘to not be anything’
The former involves a form of ある, while the other involves a form of である・だ. That’s how I remember which is which. I believe it would be more accurate to say that the daughter asked, ‘Was there nothing for you either?’, possibly in the sense of ‘did nothing interesting/dangerous/particular happen on your end, like it was for me?’ Asking if the trip was ‘nothing’ would indeed be very strange, unless the daughter’s tone was dismissive.
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When do I use conjunctions vs Te-form? Like for example, けど vs じゃなくて?
Strictly speaking the て form is also a conjunction. It’s just one of many ways to connect a sentence, and the one you choose depends on how you wish to connect them. けど expresses something like “but”, “however”, or “although.”
て form as a conjunction has more than 10 different possible meanings. The most common ones are probably just “sequential actions” or “light causative relationship” though.
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Too add to leebo, generally you use AてB for:
- One of the many idiomatic usages (ie: てください, ている, てはいけない, etc)
- A light causal relationship, where A causes B
- A chronological sequence of events (A and then B)
- B is the manner we in which you do A
- Simultaneous events/states
- Contrasting the two things
There are more, but those are the most common.
けど doesn’t really have much of an overlap at all except in things like んだけど where it does act like an and. But there it is a specific case.
You typically Invoke things for “and” when they fall outside of て’s perview, but I’d say you usually see て in spoken speech when possible, while written stuff is more likely to switch it up more.
For causal stuff, you typically use から or ので when you want to emphasize the cause or effect, respectively.
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I don’t understand this statement. I thought ので and から were nearly synonyms, with ので being slightly more formal (and more typically being expected with the dictionary form than から, even if masu-form + ので does exist in polite speech). Could you provide an example of ので being used to emphasise the effect of something? I’m not aware of any such difference in emphasis (though it could just be that I haven’t read about it yet).
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From DoBJG entry on ので:
から and ので differ in the following way. ので is used when the speaker believes that the information he provides in S1 as cause or reason for S2 is valid and is also evident and acceptable to the hearer. S1 から S2, however, does not have that assumption.
It is added in an entry in DoAJG (I don’t remember where and don’t feel like looking it up) that ので has the same feel as んだから. Etymologically, this makes a lot of sense, since ので originated as the て form of のだ.
So it is a little more nuanced than what I said, but the fact that the first half of ので has to be information that isn’t disagreeable makes it so the emphasis tends to be on the second half. I think some other sources just skip the the emphasis on the second half part.