4.3. MORE PARTICLES 179
lecture from a boss, for instance, might never involve any yelling or even
exclamations, but might be interspersed lavishly with.
- Rhetoric
This particle is placed at the end of a sentence, when the speaker wants to
provoke the listener into agreeing with them. This is a rhetorical agree-
ment though, and using typically means you already expect the re-
sponse to be something that sounds like an affirmative muĴering:
”Sakaki is really beautiful, isn’t she?”The unlikely event of hearing ”no” as a response to this type of
rhetorical confirmation seeking is typically met with much surprise and
disbelief, sparking new depths of conversation since you responded dif-
ferently than what was expected of you.
This particle can be drawn out to form (also found wriĴen
or ), in which case it does the same thing, but expecting less of a re-
sponse:
”Holiday’s nice isn’t it...”A response to this is typically just something simple like ” ” (a
colloquial ”yes”), or ” ” (in meaning similar to ”indeed”) without
the response having been given much thought.
A secondary use is mid sentence, to draw the aĴention of the lis-
tener(s). This use is, sadly, completely and uĴerly untranslatable, so the
translation has mapped to commentary instead:
”Sakaki (are you still listening to me?) is actually from Oosaka.”This use can be overdone, too, similar to how a well placed ”like”
is fine in English, but sticking it in every other word makes you positively
obnoxious:
”So like, then, like, once I got there like, Matsuda had been like, wait-
ing for over half an hour, apparently.”