184 CHAPTER 4. PARTICLES
- Informative
As sentence ender, this particle leads two lives. In standard Japanese,
is used as an emphatic sentence ender, similar to , but is considered an
effeminate particle and as such is used a lot by women, but avoided by
men. In the more rural parts of Japan, and most readily recognisably in
the kansai area, is also used as , but is not considered effeminate in
any way and is prolifically used by everyone.
In addition to acting as a sentence ending particle, can also be
used in a role similar to the noun particle , in which case it is an emphatic
open listing particle.
4.3.2 Further particles.
, , , - Reasoning
A combination of the genitive , permissibly contracted to , and the
copula, this ”particle” – or rather, set of particles – can be used as a way to
give a reason for something without explicitly stating so. This means you
present a normal statement and finish it with a form of , turning it
into something close to a factoid, which can be interpreted by the listener(s)
as a reason for a situation, or an explanation of a prior statement. That’s
perhaps a liĴle abstract, so an example:
A:
B:
A:A: ”You look sleepy.”
B: ”Yeah, (it is that) I fell asleep on the train.”
A: ”Ah, I see.”The ”it is that” part in the translation for line B is the literal trans-
lation for , and is usually best simply left out, or if really needed
translated with ”as” (meaning something similar to ”because”, but subtly
different by leaving out the explicit causal link described by ”because”).
While it’s tempting to translate or its other forms , and
as ”because”, this is not what it means. There is nothing in
that actually translates to an explicit ”because”, so whenever possible do
not use this word when translating. can also be used to ask for