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Japanese speech abbreviations?

lv426

先輩
27 Jan 2005
180
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Ok, I have noticed in a few films and I think in some speech examples in my class some abbreviations which I want to get my head around.

どう = どうして

だ = です / ですか (どこ だ = どこ で すか) A friend said that its does always imply a questions, this confused me as I have always heard だ being used instead of ですか。

Also:
中国が = Seemed to be used in a film instead of 中国語が わかぢますか、leaving out 語 completely which would just make it mean the country China and not the language.

That's all all the grammatical abbreviations I can think of at the moment, also I take it these would all be used in pretty informal occasions e.g. friends. Thanks...
 
First off, どう does not equal and is not an abbreviation of どうして.

Similarly, だ is not an abbreviation of です. Nor does it always imply a question. I'd be leery of accepting "information" from this person in the future.

Your misgivings about the 中国 and 中国語 thing should have led you to question your comprehension of the film rather than to assume you had discovered a grammatical shorthand.
 
lv426 said:
だ = です / ですか (どこ だ = どこ で すか) A friend said that its does always imply a questions, this confused me as I have always heard だ being used instead of ですか。

だ is an informal です so they mean the same thing but I'm not sure what you mean about the question thing. どこだ is always(read usually) a question simply because どこ means "where". If that's what your friend was talking about then they are right that saying "something is where" would mean "where is it" and a か would be unnecessary. Maybe they were saying that だ when used in どこだ has the same meaning as ですか? だ itself doesn't always imply a question though.
 
ah ok I get you now, yeah that's pretty much what I suspected with だ。 Yeah I'll have to re watch that part of the film, maybe was 語 and not が. Thanks anyway!
 
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