～なん

[Rei Yahya]

A word I see tossed around a lot, especially colloquially, is nan. It goes all over the place in various ways and has no clear contribution to the sentence. What is the meaning of and usage of nan?

 

[Mike Cash]

Give us an example or two, please.

 

[Rei Yahya]

Yes, sorry, here is one, I will find more!

なんてきれいな花なんだろう。What a beautiful flower it is.

 

[visser300]

Yes, sorry, here is one, I will find more!

なんてきれいな花なんだろう。What a beautiful flower it is.

This sentence is completely wrong. Japanese is totaly different from English. MikeCash would help you to fix it

 

[Toritoribe]

That sentence is COMPLETELY FINE and CORRECT both in Japanese and English translation.;-)

The first なん(て) is a colloquial form of 何と/何という, and the second one is the euphonic change of なの(the adonominal form of the copula だ + the explanatory の).

 

[Rei Yahya]

I think I'm getting it a little more...I just heard a sentence, 'she's a stalker' said in an explanatory way, 彼女がストーカーなんです. So nan is a transformed form of what was eventually da no? I'm familiar with 'no da', 'nda', 'ndesu', but I've never heard to my knowledge 'da no' 'desu no' etc.

 

[Mike Cash]

This sentence is completely wrong. Japanese is totaly different from English. MikeCash would help you to fix it

Mike Cash wouldn't fix it. He would point out that the two different usages of なん are what makes it "What a beautiful flower!" instead of "It is a beautiful flower".

 

[Toritoribe]

I think I'm getting it a little more...I just heard a sentence, 'she's a stalker' said in an explanatory way, 彼女がストーカーなんです. So nan is a transformed form of what was eventually da no? I'm familiar with 'no da', 'nda', 'ndesu', but I've never heard to my knowledge 'da no' 'desu no' etc.

だのだ, だんだ are grammatically wrong.

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