Can you tell me all about the 「い」 ending particle?

This is just a quite simple question I think; I'd like to know about the usages and nuances of the 「い」 ending particle, as in the one that usually comes after 「か」, but apparently not always. I tried my best to find info on it myself, but I only see results about the sentence ending particle combo 「かい」 and not 「い」 when on its own. Please, tell me everything I should know about it, because I have rarely encountered this particle before except in a song (which used 「かい」) and I would really like to know what it does on its own. Also if there's any history behind it to explain how it came to be an ending particle, that would be cool to know as well, as well as providing this information more openly on the internet, because it's quite hard to find info about this particular particle, at least for me.
Thanks
(should I ask more questions? I've recently been typing them out instead of forgetting them. so now I have a growing list of questions to ask here, but I don't want to spam the site )

Haruto Uzumaki said:

(should I ask more questions? I've recently been typing them out instead of forgetting them. so now I have a growing list of questions to ask here, but I don't want to spam the site)

Click to expand...

That wouldn't be considered spam!

Just make sure to start new threads for each topic/question.

い is not a particle. What specifically are you referring to?

If you are referring to the -かい (for yes/no questions) and -だい (for Wh-questions) particles, these are kind of rough masculine sentence-ending question particles.

-い in itself is not a "particle" in the sense that you can stick it onto anything. What gave you the impression that it was some kind of universal particle that can be attached to anything?

Haruto Uzumaki said:

This is just a quite simple question I think; I'd like to know about the usages and nuances of the 「い」 ending particle, as in the one that usually comes after 「か」, but apparently not always. I tried my best to find info on it myself, but I only see results about the sentence ending particle combo 「かい」 and not 「い」 when on its own. Please, tell me everything I should know about it, because I have rarely encountered this particle before except in a song (which used 「かい」) and I would really like to know what it does on its own. Also if there's any history behind it to explain how it came to be an ending particle, that would be cool to know as well, as well as providing this information more openly on the internet, because it's quite hard to find info about this particular particle, at least for me.
Thanks
(should I ask more questions? I've recently been typing them out instead of forgetting them. so now I have a growing list of questions to ask here, but I don't want to spam the site )

Click to expand...

Probably you're having difficulty finding info about it because it's not a particle. Please put some example sentences of what you're asking about. The most common「い」you would encounter is the one at the end of adjectives that can be conjugated into the various tenses.
There's some info about that here:

bentenmusume said:

い is not a particle. What specifically are you referring to?

If you are referring to the -かい (for yes/no questions) and -だい (for Wh-questions) particles, these are kind of rough masculine sentence-ending question particles.

-い in itself is not a "particle" in the sense that you can stick it onto anything. What gave you the impression that it was some kind of universal particle that can be attached to anything?

Click to expand...

mdchachi said:

Probably you're having difficulty finding info about it because it's not a particle. Please put some example sentences of what you're asking about. The most common「い」you would encounter is the one at the end of adjectives that can be conjugated into the various tenses.

Click to expand...

I see... the reason I thought it could be separated from the か is because of this site alluding it:

The sentence ending particle かい is a grammar structure that is used in Japanese to highlight a question. Despite commonly being thought of as one word, it is actually the combination of か (the sentence-ending particle) and い, another sentence-ending particle that is primarily used by men (in a similar way to ね and よ).

Click to expand...

This made me wonder if it could be used separately from other particles, or at the very least, used with other particles than 「か」. I also vaguely remember about the 「だい」 ending, but I had no clue it was the same 「い」 as in with 「かい」. Is there anything else this い may present itself attached to? Or is it only these two ending particles which contain that 「い」?
Weirdly enough, while searching for that site, I found a jref thread about this from 2007 asking pretty much the same question, even though I searched online and directly in the jref site before asking to make sure there were no duplicates

thomas said:

Just make sure to start new threads for each topic/question.

Click to expand...

Thanks, I'll add the rest of my questions then

I think its wrong to think of い as a particle. Better to think of 「かい？」as a contraction of 「ですか？」
If you like, call the word 「かい？」an ending particle, but it functions as a soft (in some cases colloquial or very familiar) interrogation.
だいじょうぶですか？
だいじょうぶかい？
Its kind of so casual as to only be appropriate among close friends, or when talking to juniors or children - although you probably hear it more often in Kansai where the language in general is spoken with more familiarity (without intention of being rude).

Majestic said:

I think its wrong to think of い as a particle. Better to think of 「かい？」as a contraction of 「ですか？」
If you like, call the word 「かい？」an ending particle, but it functions as a soft (in some cases colloquial or very familiar) interrogation.
だいじょうぶですか？
だいじょうぶかい？
Its kind of so casual as to only be appropriate among close friends, or when talking to juniors or children - although you probably hear it more often in Kansai where the language in general is spoken with more familiarity (without intention of being rude).

Click to expand...

Understood... and I've read in multiple places that the question becomes a "yes/no" question when it's contracted like that, and will almost never be used in a non "yes/no" question (unless it's next to a follow-up question). Is that true as well? It seems to hold up from all the example sentences I've seen as well as the one I found 「かい？」 in originally.
The last part of what you said makes so much sense, because almost all the people I know are from the 関西 region. They speak relatively casually even with new people coming in, although I assumed this was mainly because online interactions are much different than real life Japan. I even have a friend from 大阪 that asks everyone she meets to talk without 敬語 to her because she doesn't like the distant/fake feeling of it. I've almost never seen her use 敬語
So I just want to clarify one more thing, as a contraction of 「ですか」, I assume that means だい is the only similar contraction that exists, assuming です and だ are the only two copula mainly in use, right? Thanks, everyone

Haruto Uzumaki said:

So I just want to clarify one more thing, as a contraction of 「ですか」, I assume that means だい is the only similar contraction that exists, assuming です and だ are the only two copula mainly in use, right? Thanks, everyone

Click to expand...

There's a sh*t tone of dialects in Japan and they all play around with the copula ending.

For the first part of the question: I wouldn't say its exclusively for a yes/no question. Its just commonly found in casual situations, where the speaker is almost asking ironically, and the answer is likely to be a yes/no. But you could use it in more complex sentences too.

Yes, だい is a very similar contraction. Well, almost identical, I would say.

mdchachi said:

There's a sh*t tone of dialects in Japan and they all play around with the copula ending.

Not Just Kansai Dialect, Find Out How Many Japanese Dialects Are There | WeXpats Guide

A dialect is a language form specific to a particular place or group of people. Japanese may be the de facto national language of Japan, but what you may not know is that there are several dialects to it aside from Kansai-ben. Some are unintelligible even to Japanese living here.

we-xpats.com

Click to expand...

... I should've studied other dialects more, I can only understand 東京弁 and 関西弁。。。 and it's crazy enough that the other copula are that different from standard Japanese, but the entire thing feels like a completely different langauge I've seriously got a lot of work to do...

Majestic said:

For the first part of the question: I wouldn't say its exclusively for a yes/no question. Its just commonly found in casual situations, where the speaker is almost asking ironically, and the answer is likely to be a yes/no. But you could use it in more complex sentences too.

Yes, だい is a very similar contraction. Well, almost identical, I would say.

Click to expand...

Understood... For now I guess I won't bother worrying about contractions in other dialects if I haven't even mastered them in standard Japanese...

Majestic said:

For the first part of the question: I wouldn't say its exclusively for a yes/no question. Its just commonly found in casual situations, where the speaker is almost asking ironically, and the answer is likely to be a yes/no. But you could use it in more complex sentences too.

Click to expand...

Unless I'm misunderstanding you, the point isn't "casual/simple" vs. "complex", it's yes/no questions vs. content questions, with だい used for the former and かい for the latter.

どうだい？
何言ってるんだい？

欲しいのかい？
君はそれでいいのかい？

There might be occasional exceptions, but you generally won't hear the reverse (どうかい？ それでいいのだい？, etc.)

But again, to the OP @Haruto Uzumaki these are patterns more to be generally aware of than something you'll really need or want to make a part of your own spoken "repertoire". To reiterate, it's characteristic of a very certain type of rough masculine (and older masculine?) speech and there are many, many native speakers (especially young people) who basically never (or almost never) use this.

(P.S. Back on one of the previous points, in my experience Bunpro is a pretty good resource, but I strongly, strongly disagree with its characterization of い as a "particle". Maybe it kinda-sorta is in a historical/linguistic sense, but in any practical/meaningful sense -- i.e. as something that can be regularly used on its own -- it really isn't.

Haruto Uzumaki said:

... I should've studied other dialects more, I can only understand 東京弁 and 関西弁。。。 and it's crazy enough that the other copula are that different from standard Japanese, but the entire thing feels like a completely different langauge I've seriously got a lot of work to do...

Click to expand...

Honestly, the main reason it feels like a "completely different language" is because you're still a relative beginner at Japanese.

If it makes you feel any better, a Japanese native speaker who had only started learning American English would probably be completely lost hearing British English. But you, as a native speaker, even if the accent, some vocabulary/grammar, etc. is widely different, you're able to understand it, right?

That's because you have a (relatively) universal knowledge of English, and thus there are enough commonalities that you can recognize, so your brain can recognize certain words as the same (even if they're not pronounced exactly the same) your brain can infer the meaning of the occasional word or phrase that you don't know or wouldn't say yourself.

It's the same with Japanese. You should just focus on learning "standard" Japanese (標準語) and worry about picking up other dialects later on when and if you have a need to (and emphasis on the "if" -- even if you live somewhere outside of Tokyo, pretty much everyone except older people will be able to speak and understand standard Japanese. In such cases, picking up and using a bit of dialect here and there might further endear yourself to people by making you seem more like a "local", but it's not like you need to speak perfectly accented 津軽弁 to get by in Aomori, or whatever.)

bentenmusume said:

But again, to the OP @Haruto Uzumaki these are patterns more to be generally aware of than something you'll really need or want to make a part of your own spoken "repertoire". To reiterate, it's characteristic of a very certain type of rough masculine (and older masculine?) speech and there are many, many native speakers (especially young people) who basically never (or almost never) use this.

Click to expand...

Yeah I agree, and also since I do creative works I also learn about these things for use in those works (as it fits), not intended for use in real life. When I ask these questions I either want to make sure there's no loss of meaning due to being unaware of the grammar point, or it's because I want to understand all the possibilities I can for my creative works in order to make them richer and more natural instead of bland and... "reeking of learner".

bentenmusume said:

(P.S. Back on one of the previous points, in my experience Bunpro is a pretty good resource, but I strongly, strongly disagree with its characterization of い as a "particle". Maybe it kinda-sorta is in a historical/linguistic sense, but in any practical/meaningful sense -- i.e. as something that can be regularly used on its own -- it really isn't.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I won't think of it that way anymore if it doesn't make sense to do so

bentenmusume said:

Honestly, the main reason it feels like a "completely different language" is because you're still a relative beginner at Japanese.

If it makes you feel any better, a Japanese native speaker who had only started learning American English would probably be completely lost hearing British English. But you, as a native speaker, even if the accent, some vocabulary/grammar, etc. is widely different, you're able to understand it, right?

That's because you have a (relatively) universal knowledge of English, and thus there are enough commonalities that you can recognize, so your brain can recognize certain words as the same (even if they're not pronounced exactly the same) your brain can infer the meaning of the occasional word or phrase that you don't know or wouldn't say yourself.

It's the same with Japanese. You should just focus on learning "standard" Japanese (標準語) and worry about picking up other dialects later on when and if you have a need to (and emphasis on the "if" -- even if you live somewhere outside of Tokyo, pretty much everyone except older people will be able to speak and understand standard Japanese. In such cases, picking up and using a bit of dialect here and there might further endear yourself to people by making you seem more like a "local", but it's not like you need to speak perfectly accented 津軽弁 to get by in Aomori, or whatever.)

Click to expand...

That's true, and also I feel underexposed to other dialects than the main two, so I definitely could use some practice listening to other dialects and how the people "corrupt" their consonants and vowels and get used to the differences as well. Overall I'm really excited to be fully immersed into the language when I'm finally there and won't get to speak English and all that. I have a good feeling that once I take that next step I'll be able to make progress way faster than I ever have before. Also, I don't want to learn other dialects out of necessity or anything, but really just because I think all parts of Japanese are cool and I don't want to miss out on any content that might be in a different dialect. In general I just want to have as close to mastery as possible with Japanese, I kinda want it to become as if I was born bilingual, and I'm even willing to lose some of my English in order to achieve that. I really like Japanese, not on some weaboo energy, but just the level of expression and flexibility of it, it's extremely attractive and admirable to me, so learning anything like other dialects or even ancient Japanese (to a degree where it can still make sense) is something I would really like to do

First of all, thanks for the thoughtful reply.

As I said elsewhere, you ask interesting and thought-provoking questions, and it makes for interesting discussion about the language (which sadly I feel has been lacking here recently compared to the old days).

Haruto Uzumaki said:

I kinda want it to become as if I was born bilingual, and I'm even willing to lose some of my English in order to achieve that.

Click to expand...

I just felt the need to comment on this. I remember thinking like this way, way, back myself, but it's kind of a flawed way of thinking.

For background, I started studying Japanese back in the late Meiji Era (actually the late 1990s, but to younger people today they might as well be the same thing ) I came to Japan in my early twenties and have lived here for almost twenty years. I spent most of that time working for a Japanese company and often spoke almost exclusively Japanese in my work and private lives.

I have not "lost my English". English is still my native language, and while some people are kind enough to say that I could "pass" for a native on the phone or through email, whatever, I personally would never call myself native, nor would I use the word "bilingual" in the sense of someone who grew up speaking both languages. What I have developed over this time is the ability to understand and express myself in Japanese at a level that is close enough to my native language / native Japanese that I feel as comfortable (more comfortable, honestly) in Japan than I do/did in my home country.

So basically what I want to say is -- you do not need to "lose" your English in order to achieve Japanese fluency, and while "native level" is great as a goal to aspire to (why bother if you're not going to shoot for the top, no?), I would caution you against judging yourself by too harsh a standard, especially if it results in making you hesitant or overly self-conscious.

Strive for the top, but be content to accept small victories. Realistically speaking, as an adult learner, there is a chance you will never truly be "native" in Japanese -- but that doesn't mean you can't come so damn close that it's essentially the same for you and those around you. Even reaching that level is a true achievement (and will take a very, very long time...)

bentenmusume said:

First of all, thanks for the thoughtful reply.

As I said elsewhere, you ask interesting and thought-provoking questions, and it makes for interesting discussion about the language (which sadly I feel has been lacking here recently compared to the old days).

I just felt the need to comment on this. I remember thinking like this way, way, back myself, but it's kind of a flawed way of thinking.

For background, I started studying Japanese back in the late Meiji Era (actually the late 1990s, but to younger people today they might as well be the same thing ) I came to Japan in my early twenties and have lived here for almost twenty years. I spent most of that time working for a Japanese company and often spoke almost exclusively Japanese in my work and private lives.

I have not "lost my English". English is still my native language, and while some people are kind enough to say that I could "pass" for a native on the phone or through email, whatever, I personally would never call myself native, nor would I use the word "bilingual" in the sense of someone who grew up speaking both languages. What I have developed over this time is the ability to understand and express myself in Japanese at a level that is close enough to my native language / native Japanese that I feel as comfortable (more comfortable, honestly) in Japan than I do/did in my home country.

So basically what I want to say is -- you do not need to "lose" your English in order to achieve Japanese fluency, and while "native level" is great as a goal to aspire to (why bother if you're not going to shoot for the top, no?), I would caution you against judging yourself by too harsh a standard, especially if it results in making you hesitant or overly self-conscious.

Strive for the top, but be content to accept small victories. Realistically speaking, as an adult learner, there is a chance you will never truly be "native" in Japanese -- but that doesn't mean you can't come so damn close that it's essentially the same for you and those around you. Even reaching that level is a true achievement (and will take a very, very long time...)

Click to expand...

No problem, I am honored to remind you of the olden days I hope to ask even better questions soon, it's just hard to collect my thoughts in an organized manner, so it takes a bit of time to ask properly (and even now you can probably see that I've left a lot of oversights in my questions which should've already been thought of or carefully explained before-hand).
I agree with you on not having to lose your English and all that. I guess what I mean is, if there's some kind of nen contract like in HxH where I could sign away some of my English skill in exchange for increased "verbal dexterity" in Japanese, I probably wouldn't give it a second thought, and would definitely do it. Also in the more literal sense, I exaggerated but people actually do kinda "lose" their English a bit when they don't use it as much, such as forgetting the word they want to say easily, but being able to remember the Japanese word for it; if that happened to me, I'd welcome it with open arms rather than maybe trying to keep up on my English skills. That would just motivate me to learn even more Japanese and see how rooted my brain can get in it

I also agree that I shouldn't be too hard on myself, although I definitely still have a long way to go and being easy on myself won't get me there faster... If I want to achieve what I say I'm going to achieve, then I'm seriously going to need to do as much as is required and maybe even more in order to reach that goal. I want to be more fluent in Japanese than in English. There's a lot of things about even English that make some sentences confusing and hard to parse, which still to this day can slow me down from instantly understanding something after reading a sentence the first or even second time, but I feel that Japanese might be structured in a way that better works in my mind, maybe. I'm just hoping to get so good that I have less issues than I have with English. I guess it's a bold goal and not even super realistic but there's gotta be something I can master, right

I was gonna say "if I can't master my creative works maybe I can at least master Japanese" but then I just realized the whole reason I'm doing this is to take my creative works to the next level... I want to master creating Japanese content in a way where it's so fluid that it would be indistinguishable from if a Japanese person made it. After all, I have the Japanese as my competition, and we all know very well that they accept nothing short of mastery. That's why... だからこそ, I have to aim that high. Otherwise everything I've done so far is kind of a waste, since I'm not trying to live in Japan just to have fun or just to live there, it goes so much deeper than that... Some of my reasons for coming to Japan transcend reality itself, and some of the reasons I create also transcend reality, so if I don't maximize my potential and sacrifice everything required to master the things I intend to, it will all basically be for nothing... But yes, I will also recognize the small victories, thanks for the reminder. It's a great victory in my eyes that I finally don't have to rely on translation software for every single sentence I haven't seen yet. It's an amazing victory that even passive learning benefits me now, so I definitely can't ignore how far I've come... at the same time it's even less possible to ignore how far I've got left

I didn't know this, but actually, い indeed is classified in sentence-ending particle in itself.

い の解説
1［終助］文末の助動詞「た」「だ」、禁止の意の終助詞「な」、質問の意の「か」、動詞の命令形などに付く。
１ 親しみを込めて質問する意を表す。「何を悩んでいるんだ―」「君も行くか―」
２ 軽蔑したり、反発したり、詰問したりする意を表す。「何度言ったら分かるんだ―」「なんだ―、君らしくもない」
３ 投げやりな気持ちやあきらめの意を表す。「勝手にしろ―」「どうせ負けるに決まっているんだ―」
４ 念を押したり、語調を強めたりする意を表す。「じゃまをするな―」「とっとと寝ろ―」「絶対に海に行くんだ―」
[補説]1（＝終助詞）は終助詞「よ」あるいは係助詞「や」の音変化という。多く男性がくだけた会話の中で用いる。

Click to expand...

The supplemental explanation "い is the phonetic change of よ or や" makes much sense. For example, 君も行くかい is from 君も行くかや, not 君も行くかよ, so it's close to 女郎言葉 "え" in Edo period.

Wow, the more ya know... Well, it's certainly good to know now, thanks for sharing! I also do want to note that this particle pops up way more than I thought it would in daily conversation, I see it like 2-3 times a week on separate occasions. Language is fun