じゃないですか

Hey everyone,

Lately I've been finding the phrase じゃないですか at the end of a lot of sentences. Would I be right to assume it's a tag sentence, like "isn't it", or "aren't they".

おいしいじゃないですか = It's good, isn't it

If I'm right to assume that, then what's the difference between じゃないですか and ね as a tag question?

Also, this sentence:

去年の秋に、東京の千駄ヶ谷で教員研修があったじゃないですか。

could be translated into something like, 'last autumn, there was a teachers' training conference in Sendagaya, Tokyo, wasn't there?'??

That's what I suspect it means anyway, but it doesn't really fit the context of the thing that I'm trying to translate - a woman explaining to another woman how she knows the new male teacher (the male teacher is present). Why would she say じゃないですか?

Bucko said:

Hey everyone,
Lately I've been finding the phrase じゃないですか at the end of a lot of sentences. Would I be right to assume it's a tag sentence, like "isn't it", or "aren't they".

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You would be right.

おいしいじゃないですか = It's good, isn't it
If I'm right to assume that, then what's the difference between じゃないですか and ね as a tag question?

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ね is asking for somebody's agreement with the prior assumption that they know what you're talking about and will agree with you.

じゃないですか can be quite demanding or forceful (not always so of course).

Also, this sentence:
去年の秋に、東京の千駄ヶ谷で教員研修があったじゃないですか。
could be translated into something like, 'last autumn, there was a teachers' training conference in Sendagaya, Tokyo, wasn't there?'??
That's what I suspect it means anyway, but it doesn't really fit the context of the thing that I'm trying to translate - a woman explaining to another woman how she knows the new male teacher (the male teacher is present). Why would she say じゃないですか??

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She's explaining, in what might be a rather defensive manner, how they had the chance to meet.

ポール, once again, thanks

Actually I have one more question. Can you use a more formal structure like ではないですか or ではありませんですか or じゃありませんですかか for this purpose? (the last two sound weird)

How about ではないか?

You can make it more formal. ではないでしょうか I have seen used quite often I believe.

Bucko said:

Actually I have one more question. Can you use a more formal structure like ではないですか or ではありませんですか or じゃありませんですかか for this purpose? (the last two sound weird)
How about ではないか?

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I don't think so.

じゃないですか is very modern usage that is not actually a question and simply added to seek the listener's implicit confirmation of a fact. The speaker is already confident of what he/she is saying and is not asking a question. It adds little to the essential meaning of the statement.

On the other hand, ではないですか asks a question, meaning the speaker is not confident whether the statement is true or not.

ではありませんですかー＞ではありませんか
じゃありませんですかかー＞じゃありませんか

These two also ask a question, to which the listener must respond with affirmation or denial.

HTH!

PS ではないか（じゃないか）is more an exclamation/assertion of a fact.

My understanding is that there isn't a difference between ではない and じゃない.
However, じゃありません is generally for more formal, academic situations as opposed to じゃないです. Of course, I could be wrong...

quamp said:

My understanding is that there isn't a difference between ではない and じゃない.
However, じゃありません is generally for more formal, academic situations as opposed to じゃないです. Of course, I could be wrong...

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じゃ is contracted (?) form of では and sounds more casual/informal.
In formal/academic situation ではありません should be used.
じゃありません would sounds a little childish.
ではございません sounds super formal, by the way.

じゃないです／ではないです (or generally i-adjective + desu) is regarded "not grammatically correct" by the sticklers of "authentic/correct Japanese" but I think it is generally "accepted" usage nowadays.
And you are right, ではないです is not formal compared with ではありません.

undrentide said:

じゃないです／ではないです (or generally i-adjective + desu) is regarded "not grammatically correct" by the sticklers of "authentic/correct Japanese" but I think it is generally "accepted" usage nowadays.

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I've seen and heard this many times, and it never fails to boggle my mind.

So these sticklers want to say that （では／じゃ）ないです is not grammatically correct Japanese, and it should always be ～ありません. This would mean that countless millions of educated native speakers are speaking "ungrammatical" Japanese on a regular basis, but fair enough -- let's give them this one.

But if i-adjective + desu is ungrammatical as a rule, then what do the prescriptivists propose as the "correct" alternative to, for example, the ubiquitous 「寒いですね」? Do people have to go around saying 「お寒うございますね」 if they want to speak "proper" Japanese? I suppose something like 「今日は冷えますね」 or something like that would also work, but it just seems ridiculous to argue that such an incredibly common construction as 「寒いですね」 is outright _ungrammatical_ (at least as far as the modern, spoken language is concerned.)

Well, I suppose this is why I've never been a prescriptivist with English, either. (Still, I can't think of any prescriptivist arguments in English that are quite as mind-boggling as this one.)

jt_ said:

I've seen and heard this many times, and it never fails to boggle my mind.
So these sticklers want to say that （では／じゃ）ないです is not grammatically correct Japanese, and it should always be ～ありません. This would mean that countless millions of educated native speakers are speaking "ungrammatical" Japanese on a regular basis, but fair enough -- let's give them this one.
But if i-adjective + desu is ungrammatical as a rule, then what do the prescriptivists propose as the "correct" alternative to, for example, the ubiquitous 「寒いですね」? Do people have to go around saying 「お寒うございますね」 if they want to speak "proper" Japanese? I suppose something like 「今日は冷えますね」 or something like that would also work, but it just seems ridiculous to argue that such an incredibly common construction as 「寒いですね」 is outright _ungrammatical_ (at least as far as the modern, spoken language is concerned.)
Well, I suppose this is why I've never been a prescriptivist with English, either. (Still, I can't think of any prescriptivist arguments in English that are quite as mind-boggling as this one.)

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I'm not among those who insists that い形容詞＋です is not grammatical, and use い＋です on daily basis because I cannot find appropriate "polite form" otherwise. I think those sticklers are a kind of "diminishing species". (haha)
As to a phrase such as 寒いですね, they would say お寒うございます.
Likewise not 美しいです but 美しゅうございます as a polite form of 美しい.
But ～う／しう（しゅう）ございます is getting quite old-fashioned, and is not used so often now.

undrentide said:

I'm not among those who insists that い形容詞＋です is not grammatical, and use い＋です on daily basis because I cannot find appropriate "polite form" otherwise. I think those sticklers are a kind of "diminishing species". (haha)
As to a phrase such as 寒いですね, they would say お寒うございます.
Likewise not 美しいです but 美しゅうございます as a polite form of 美しい.
But ～う／しう（しゅう）ございます is getting quite old-fashioned, and is not used so often now.

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It may only be accepted without question as more than functional grammar by the prescriptivists when い＋だ also comes into common use. Otherwise there is still no satisfactory explanation for the disparity of being able to say 寒いです without its corresponding 寒いだ。

Elizabeth said:

It may only be accepted without question as more than functional grammar by the prescriptivists when い＋だ also comes into common use. Otherwise there is still no satisfactory explanation for the disparity of being able to say 寒いです without its corresponding 寒いだ。

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What I can think of is as the reason/background are
(1) (unlike na-adjective,) i-adjective stands on its own
花は美しい、空は青い、今日は寒い
(2) です is added after i-adjective to make it polite, while だ is not used for polite form.

undrentide said:

What I can think of is as the reason/background are
(1) (unlike na-adjective,) i-adjective stands on its own
花は美しい、空は青い、今日は寒い
(2) です is added after i-adjective to make it polite, while だ is not used for polite form.

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Tacking on だ would be for emphasis or masculine usage, not politeness I agree. Even given the basis for it, considerations of connotation or levels of speech are a bit outside the realm of basic grammar. Perhaps if い + でしょう had been introduced into the language as a substitute for です it would have been a more logical solution.

undrentide said:

I'm not among those who insists that い形容詞＋です is not grammatical

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Oh, I certainly didn't mean to imply that you were -- if my post came off that way, I apologize. Any frustration in the tone of my words was directed entirely at (other) people who would make such a claim.

undrentide said:

and use い＋です on daily basis because I cannot find appropriate "polite form" otherwise. I think those sticklers are a kind of "diminishing species". (haha)

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This is exactly how I feel. If someone is going to say that 「寒いです」 and the like are ungrammatical, I'd like to hear what they propose people say instead.

undrentide said:

As to a phrase such as 寒いですね, they would say お寒うございます.
Likewise not 美しいです but 美しゅうございます as a polite form of 美しい.

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Hmm, I realize that this would be an alternative, but it still seems like something would be missing.

I mean, in response to being asked "Do you have (something)?", one could conceivably answer:

「うん、あるよ」
「ええ、あります」
「はい、ございます」

...which would represent three levels of politeness, from direct (casual/blunt/ため口, take your pick of terminology), to standard distal (ですます調), to markedly polite speech (丁寧語?).
But the prescriptivist sticklers in question would argue that there is no ですます調 for 「寒い」 -- nothing between the direct/blunt 寒いな／寒いね and the overly formal and old-fashioned 「お寒うございます」 -- or at least, nothing that could be considered "proper" Japanese. It strikes me as very, very odd, as it would leave (i-)adjectives as the only part of speech in Japanese without an appropriate, grammatical "polite" (distal) form.

undrentide said:

But ～う／しう（しゅう）ございます is getting quite old-fashioned, and is not used so often now.

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With the obvious exception, of course.

Elizabeth said:

It may only be accepted without question as more than functional grammar by the prescriptivists when い＋だ also comes into common use. Otherwise there is still no satisfactory explanation for the disparity of being able to say 寒いです without its corresponding 寒いだ。

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This is probably close to what the prescriptivists are getting at, but I don't entirely buy it, for two reasons:
1) what undrentide said
2) There are other places where だ and です are not interchangeable, like when 「ですね」 is used in speech as a filler/pause between clauses of a sentence. The following example is from 大辞林:

これがですね、いろいろ複雑でですね、わからなくなることがよくあります

I'm not a native speaker, but I think you'll either get ですね there, or just ね (or な). I've never heard something like 「これをだね、ここに入れてだね」 But apparently, this "filler" usage of ですね is completely grammatical (at least, to the extent that it's listed in dictionaries. So the "if you can't substitute 'da', then 'desu' is ungrammatical" argument doesn't work for me.

Elizabeth said:

Perhaps if い + でしょう had been introduced into the language as a substitute for です it would have been a more logical solution.

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But い + でしょう already exists, and means something quite different from simply い + です.

(Wow, that ended up a lot longer than I intended. I guess I have a lot of free time on my hands today.)

This is probably close to what the prescriptivists are getting at, but I don't entirely buy it, for two reasons:
1) what undrentide said
2) There are other places where だ and です are not interchangeable, like when 「ですね」 is used in speech as a filler/pause between clauses of a sentence. The following example is from 大辞林:
これがですね、いろいろ複雑でですね、わからなくなることがよくあります
I'm not a native speaker, but I think you'll either get ですね there, or just ね (or な). I've never heard something like 「これをだね、ここに入れてだね」 But apparently, this "filler" usage of ですね is completely grammatical (at least, to the extent that it's listed in dictionaries. So the "if you can't substitute 'da', then 'desu' is ungrammatical" argument doesn't work for me.

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I don't think you hear だね in the above instances, except maybe in a very select context (what's a good one ? from an ill-tempered boss maybe... because it would be inappropriately or discordantly blunt as a meaningless filler phrase. So I somehow doubt they are considered ungrammatical.

Still I wonder if い adjectives are able to "stand alone" as undrentide suggests, on the politeness dimension that should put them on an equal footing with な形容詞＋です even without desu. Technically at least. In real speech of course it would sound extremely awkward. Which means い＋です ends up as more or less a makeshift solution created when ございます began to decline. I don't know enough about that transition to continue so I'll stop here, for now...

But い + でしょう already exists, and means something quite different from simply い + です.

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The meaning would had to have been (More colloquially but still grammatical isn't it "have to have been ?") expanded.