I'm currently reading some of "Tae Kim's Guide to Japanese" and I'm a little confused about the section that describes "い Adjectives", or adjectives ending in い. Apparently, the declarative だ (casual version of です) cannot be attached/written at the end of い adjectives.
The exact sentence:

"Well, just like the negative state-of-being for nouns, you can never attach the declarative 「だ」 to i-adjectives...
Do NOT attach 「だ」 to i-adjectives."

I assume this also goes for です.

Anyway, I just wanted to ask what exactly he means by this, because I'm sure I misunderstood.
Is it therefore incorrect to say:
"高い[だ/です]" ... (It is high)
or
"優しい[だ/です]"... (It is kind)
or だ/です after any い adjective?

I have a feeling I'm misunderstanding this... I would appreciate any answers. Thanks

Hi there,

You understood correctly that the declarative だ is never attached to い-adjectives.

So the casual version of 'It's high.' would simply be 高い。

です, on the other hand, can be attached to い-adjectives. I know it's easy to see です as the formal version of だ, but really they work in different ways at times, so it's best not to assume the same rules apply to both of them.

The formal version of 'It's high.' would be 高いです。

Does that make sense?

solongsekhu Wrote:Hi there,

You understood correctly that the declarative だ is never attached to い-adjectives.

So the casual version of 'It's high.' would simply be 高い。

です, on the other hand, can be attached to い-adjectives. I know it's easy to see です as the formal version of だ, but really they work in different ways at times, so it's best not to assume the same rules apply to both of them.

The formal version of 'It's high.' would be 高いです。

Does that make sense?

Thank you very much, for the simple and quick response!
I understand now
ありがとうございます!

[Edit] Sorry, but one more thing.
Is 高いじゃない correct, or should it be 高くない or 高いではない?
What's the deal with negatives?

Socky Wrote:[Edit] Sorry, but one more thing.
Is 高いじゃない correct, or should it be 高くない or 高いではない?
What's the deal with negatives?

Plain form would be 高くない
and polite would be 高くないです or 高くありません

Ash_S Wrote:

Socky Wrote:[Edit] Sorry, but one more thing.
Is 高いじゃない correct, or should it be 高くない or 高いではない?
What's the deal with negatives?

Plain form would be 高くない
and polite would be 高くないです or 高くありません

Oh, that's easy enough.
Thank you very much.

the only times i can think of where you can stick on da is
だなんて or だの ie
遅いだなんて
遅いだの

just so you know...
and there's also takanai in kannsai-ben or oosaka-ben or both? for their version of takakunai with their own intonation

howtwosavealif3 Wrote:the only times i can think of where you can stick on da is
だなんて or だの ie
遅いだなんて
遅いだの

just so you know...
and there's also takanai in kannsai-ben or oosaka-ben or both? for their version of takakunai with their own intonation

There's a reason beginner's textbooks don't mention stuff like this. And anyway, I'm not really sure that the だ in things like だの or だに is really the copula (I assume someone on this forum knows).

My advice to the OP is to ignore this post. You can't use だ after い-adjectives, but you can use です. It's as simple as that.

Yeah, no need to worry about sentence patterns like that when you're starting out, but now you've got me curious about 遅いだなんて and 遅いだの.

What do these mean and when would you use them? I've never seen them despite studying Japanese and living in Japan for a while.

Curiosity is a funny thing. Plugging 遅いだなんて into Google, and the top result lead to an article here:
http://www.gizmodo.jp/2012/06/shutterstockwi-fi25.html
Title:
もうWi-Fiが遅いだなんて言わせない...なんと毎秒2.5テラビットの世界最速無線通信が開発中

So I'd say that it would/could be used similar to something in English like "how/why is [x] so slow?", as in 'why is wifi so slow when we're living in a time of 2.5Tb network connections'- or something like that.

It's pretty much "is slow"+"how/why", isn't it?

For the second, following the same process:

https://twitter.com/Nozomi0606/status/34...3455581184
みんなiphone4のこと 画質悪いだの遅いだの 文句ばっか言うけど、 うちの携帯「質かなりよし」 なんだからね(｡-_-｡)笑

Almost seems as though you could relate it to でも as 'something like' (or maybe とか if it's easier to understand that way) and can at least in this instance use it to list attributes/verbs. As in 'hey guys, the image quality of the iphone 4 isn't really good and slow. My mobile is better (in this respect), you know. lol'

Those sentences make me feel like 遅いだ is just short for 遅いんだ in cases where another ん・の・なの・なん follows and the speaker is trying to avoid sounding like they are interjecting a 'n' sounds between every other mora. I'm supposing it's strictly used in casual speech, internet posts, etc. That grammar 'rules' are 'broken' in slang and casual speech isn't a big surprise though.

だの is not restricted to casual speech as far as I know; I think the reason it can go after i-adjectives is that it's just become a fixed unit, ignoring the grammatical origin. That happens sometimes in language.

there's an entry in yahoo dic for dano but not for danante
here's dano
［並助］体言や用言の終止形などに付く。
全体の中からいくつかの事柄を同列に並べあげる意を表す。「出張―会議―と毎日忙しい」「好き―嫌い―とわがままばかり言う」
だ

howtwosavealif3 Wrote:［並助］体言や用言の終止形などに付く。

This is the interesting bit maybe cus yahoo dic normally breaks down combinations of particles but there's nothing for this one. Like for だに it says ［連語］《断定の助動詞「だ」＋接続助詞「に」》　or for ので it says　［接助］《準体助詞「の」＋格助詞「で」から》
But I guess we can't read too much into this. What's a 並助 anyway? First time I've seen that I think.

same here but you know it's pretty obvious what it means from the meanings of the individuals kanjis and yahoo dic's definition for dano. and i don't care what the kanji reading is for that word lol. heijo? eh it doesn't matter.