So here is the situation: I read Duranki manga and other stuff and sometimes I just completely don’t understand what is going on with the sentences. I am around JLPT N5+ with grammar currently and yet I solve most of the problems by deep googling and ravaging through countless links. This time I just can’t understand the sentence at all.
Also I really apologize that I made a whole new thread just for one sentence, but I am lost and have no idea where to ask for help, I got no mentors.
And can somebody provide me with a link to place where I can occasionally ask for help?
And, uh, here is the sentence: 「やだ？しかも一匹二匹じゃないじゃない」
Situation is that there was a cart brought by hunters with around 4 bodies of wolves and 1 deer.
People get really excited and surprised with the catch. This phrase belongs to one of the bystanders who sees that cart.
やだ is just a surprise, しかも is just an introduction word. What bugs me* here is:
double じゃない. It just makes no sense for me.
一匹二匹 why is she counting “one animal, two animals” and then stops abruptly?
Yes, yes, I am dumb, but plx explain me what is going on here.
The じゃないじゃない sounds to me like that person is just repeating it in disbelief. Especially with the やだ in front.
So basically it’s like “No way. And yet… one two… no that can’t be”
(I have no real idea what’s going on without the page and I’m also not really much further than you in grammar but that’s my best guess.)
I checked a raw and a (jic) fan translation and it’s basically just that woman/girl being in disbelief about how many wolves 2 children were able to take down alone.
It sounds to me like “一匹二匹じゃない” is being used to say something like “it’s not just one or two animals” and the second じゃない expresses disbelief. So the first じゃない is actually just a negation.
As a whole this person is just surprised at the size of the catch, I’d say.
Very well, so these じゃない’s have different functions and work on different levels. 1st one is applied to 一匹二匹 and works locally and the 2nd one is applied to the whole phrase to add disbelief. I see. Thanks for that explanation.
Posting a small number of manga pages is perfectly fine by the way. We have a bunch of them in the book club threads to give people an idea of the difficulty.
Disbelief might be fine in this context but it won’t work in every case. This is the sentence-ending use of じゃない that can be thought of as “isn’t it?” or “don’t you agree?”
きれいじゃない Not pretty (only after a な adjective or noun)
きれいじゃない？ “Isn’t it pretty?”
きれいじゃん “Isn’t it pretty?” (じゃん never acts as a negation)
すごいじゃない Isn’t it amazing? (after an い adjective じゃない never acts as a negation)
Incidentally this is why textbooks will teach that adjective negation (e.g. 赤くない) isn’t the same as just slapping a じゃない at the end (e.g. 赤いじゃない). You might think “surely Japanese people would still understand”, but it’s similar to somebody pointing at something blue and saying “isn’t it red”. No native English speaker would interpret that sentence as “it isn’t red” – they would just get confused.
I’d like to add to this, although it gets away from the question being asked.
じゃない or じゃん used in the “isn’t it…?” way actually changes depending on dialect as well. I spent a year in Saitama 2008-2009, and all my friends from there and the 関東 region used/use じゃない or じゃん, but when I lived in Ishikawa for 6 years, I found that people from the 北陸 area don’t use these words as much; instead, they use やない or やん (actually I might be misremembering/confusing it with the 関西 dialect, as I’ve been living in this region over 2 years now and starting to forget which is which and they also share some things too)
and they also share some things too)