Why is는 (dewa) necessary in the following sentence? And what does it mean?
On 2월 16, 2021 by adminThis is the sentence
나는 한국인 는 없습니다.
Watashi wa kangokujin de wa arimasen.
I “m not Korean
I was expecting something like :
나는 한국인 없습니다
Watashi wa kangokujin arimasen.
Why is the에서는 necessary? And what does it mean?
Answer
이 없습니다 should be treated as a single word (for now, at least). it is the negative form of이며, so it means ” is not “,”am not “,”are not “etc.
You may have already seen the contracted form of the plain speech version 아니다. In this form 아니 is a contraction of에서는 and 없다 is the plain speech form of the polite 없습니다.
On its own 없습니다 is the negative form of합니다 which is the polite form of있다. This means “to have”, “to exist”etc. So your sentence 나는 한국인 없습니다 is ungrammatical and doesn “t make much sense. 나는 한국인 이 없습니다 woul d mean “I don”t have a Korean person “which sounds pretty odd to me.
Comments
- I ' ve spent quite some time searching the web for a satisfactory explanation of에서는 and have not found one. This response does not provide one either. It s tempting to conclude that there is no satisfactory explanation.
- @justerman It may be worth asking another question about this. It ' s too deep for me to give an answer though.
Answer
It seems to be a double negative for emphasis as in Spanish. Hard to get used to if your native language uses a single negative as in logic.
Comments
- There is no double negative here.
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