Thursday, 9 June 2016

particles - What does では mean in this sentence?


I've recently started learning Japanese through self teaching (a few different mobile apps and books, this question is spawned from using one called Memrise)


But I'm learning to say "I don't like " which is pretty straight forward, but I'm confused on the particle used (if it is a particle, I still haven't fully grasped them yet).


I'll use "I don't Like Apples" as an example, part of confusion bolded:



わたしはりんごがすきではありません




Answer




Practically you may just memorize ではない as a negative form of だ, and ではありません as a negative form of です, as shown in this chart. To break down, this では is made of two components, one being a particle and the other being an (auxiliary) verb.



So you know how to say "I like apples".



わたしはりんごがすきだ。 (plain form)



You can construct its negative version in several ways:




  • わたしはりんごがすきではない。 (sounds "plain"; see the link above)


  • わたしはりんごがすきでない。 (は may be dropped, especially when this appears as a clause of a long sentence)

  • わたしはりんごがすきではありません。 (polite form)

  • わたしはりんごがすきじゃない。 (では becomes じゃ in casual speech)



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