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"ja arimasen" v. "ku arimasen"?

Eugeniu

ツ〜窶堋ゥ窶堙ア窶堙鞘?堋「ツ〜
17 Aug 2007
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Last year in my Japanese class, I learned that to make a sentence like "Kore wa ringo desu." negative, you replace desu with ja arimasen, unless the previous word has an extra i, such as in "Neko wa ookii desu.", where I should remove the last i and add ku arimasen instead. But when I decided to look into the concept online today, I couldn't find a thing about ku arimasen anywhere. I can only find ja arimasen, dewa arimasen, and a few other options. So my question is, is it actually used in the way I described it above?

Thanks.
 
Last year in my Japanese class, I learned that to make a sentence like "Kore wa ringo desu." negative, you replace desu with ja arimasen, unless the previous word has an extra i, such as in "Neko wa ookii desu.", where I should remove the last i and add ku arimasen instead. But when I decided to look into the concept online today, I couldn't find a thing about ku arimasen anywhere. I can only find ja arimasen, dewa arimasen, and a few other options. So my question is, is it actually used in the way I described it above?

Thanks.

noun/na-adjective + negative : xx dewa arimasen (ja arimasen is a bit colloquial form of dewa arimasen.)
i-adjective + negative: xx-ku arimasen.

Now does it make sense? :)
Since "ku" is a part of conjugation of i-adjective, you may not find "ku" on its own.

"Arimasen" is formal way to say "nai".
So you can replace "arimasen" with "nai".
(Just additional info.)
 
Ok, thanks. One question though, can "ja arimasen" be used with nouns ending with an extra i?
 
Ok, thanks. One question though, can "ja arimasen" be used with nouns ending with an extra i?
You don't use "dewa/ja" arimasen with 'i' adjectives, as undrentide san explained.
For the "ku" nai/arimasen ending, the final "i" is dropped. It can, however, be used with all nouns or na-adjectives afaik. What did you have in mind ?

And as a tip, in a sentence like お宅はすごく大きいじゃない(ね、ですか。。。) じゃない becomes a tag question similar to "isn't it" "aren't they" etc. which gives it the connotation "Wow, your house is really big, isn't it !"
 
"ja arimasen"

As to the question "is it actually used in the way I described it above?", there might be some exceptions and some people might not chose to use it because they do not like the sound or they speak dialect but, weather it is right or wrong, I believe people understand you when you use it.

sou ja arimasen ===> used quite often to to telling that someone is doing something wrong
inu ja arimasen ===>not a dog(presumably in response to a question or hinted possibility of something that dog has done something)
watasi ja arimasen ==> I is not me
takaku (wa) arimasen ==> not high

arimasen is a polite speach and there are other suffixes, so it is not like arimasen is always used but I think it is pretty common. Also in written language arimasen probably is less likely to be used than in spoken language.

On top of these using a same suffix too often is aesthetically bad sometimes, so you may not see it often.
 
One question though, can "ja arimasen" be used with nouns ending with an extra i?
By any chance, do you maen "nouns ending with ii"; "窶廨ヒ?甜tekii]: hostility", "窶佚戸?骸taii]: body position/posture" or like that? If so, the answer is yes. It depends on not their pronunciations but their word classes; noun/na-adjective or i-adjective. (except the usage Elizabeth-san explained, of course;-))
 
Ok, I think I've got the jist of it now. Thanks for the help everyone!
 
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