In the noun related particles he says:

静かな部屋が、アリスの部屋だ。
Quiet room is room of Alice.

becomes:

静かなのが、アリスの部屋だ。
Quiet one is room of Alice.

Can 静かな部屋が、アリスの部屋だ become 静かな部屋が、アリスのだ。?

And I'm kinda confused about these 2 charts in the same section (sorry it's a bit messy when copy/pasted):

「んだ」 attached to different conjugations (Substitute 「の」 or 「のだ」 for 「んだ」) Noun/Na-Adj Verb/I-Adj
Plain 学生なんだ 飲むんだ
Negative 学生じゃないんだ 飲まないんだ
Past 学生だったんだ 飲んだんだ
Past-Neg 学生じゃなかったんだ 飲まなかったんだ

「んだ」 is conjugated (Substitute 「の」 for 「ん」 and 「の」 or 「のだ」 for 「んだ」) Noun/Na-Adj Verb/I-Adj
Plain 学生なんだ 飲むんだ
Negative 学生なんじゃない 飲むんじゃない
Past 学生なんだった 飲むんだった
Past-Neg 学生なんじゃなかった 飲むんじゃなかった

I don't understand what he's saying in these charts. What is the difference between 学生じゃないんだ and 学生なんじゃない, 飲まなかったんだ and 飲むんじゃなかった, etc?

learningkanji Wrote:Can 静かな部屋が、アリスの部屋だ become 静かな部屋が、アリスのだ。?

Yes.

Quote:I don't understand what he's saying in these charts. What is the difference between 学生じゃないんだ and 学生なんじゃない, 飲まなかったんだ and 飲むんじゃなかった, etc?

When you add んだ, you give a reason.
Why didn't you go out today? - It rained. <- This would be "Because it rained", thus you can use んだ
You also use it if you wanna know more about something.
その本、面白い？ is your book interesting?
その本、面白いんだ？ is your book interesting? if yes, what's interesting about it?

learningkanji Wrote:In the noun related particles he says:

静かな部屋が、アリスの部屋だ。
Quiet room is room of Alice.

becomes:

静かなのが、アリスの部屋だ。
Quiet one is room of Alice.

Am I the only one who thinks Tae Kim's particle choice is a bit strange here? I can think of a million reasons someone might say 「静かなのは、アリスの部屋だ」. But in what context would you say 「静かなのが、アリスの部屋だ」?

Maybe I'm just having a brain fart.

It would have to be a context where you're looking for Alice's room, and someone tells you that the quiet room is Alice's.

yudantaiteki Wrote:It would have to be a context where you're looking for Alice's room, and someone tells you that the quiet room is Alice's.

Yeah, that's right. For some reason I couldn't come up with that kind of situation in my head a few minutes ago.

If I was him I'd probably change that sentence, to be honest. I think it's a bit confusing for beginners, and the lesson is about something unrelated. It's not wrong of course, but I can imagine beginners getting the wrong idea about its nuance.

I agree. が and は cannot be understood through single sentences out of context, and if you're targeting some other grammar point you should stick to the sentence that would occur most often (which would be something beginning with Xは).

(Incidentally, のだ is the same way; it's impossible to tell how のだ is used from isolated sentences since in 95% of uses it has no meaning except as a response to the context.)

yudantaiteki Wrote:I agree. が and は cannot be understood through single sentences out of context, and if you're targeting some other grammar point you should stick to the sentence that would occur most often (which would be something beginning with Xは).

(Incidentally, のだ is the same way; it's impossible to tell how のだ is used from isolated sentences since in 95% of uses it has no meaning except as a response to the context.)

I think the goal of grammar is to understand what is going on when something is used, not to teach someone how to speak.

So it's fine if a grammar guide doesn't fully explain how and when to use のだ, as long as it explains enough that you know what it means when you see it.

Ideally it should serve both purposes. But even for understanding, it's good to have a little bit more than "this explains things".

andikaze Wrote:

learningkanji Wrote:Can 静かな部屋が、アリスの部屋だ become 静かな部屋が、アリスのだ。?

Yes.

Quote:I don't understand what he's saying in these charts. What is the difference between 学生じゃないんだ and 学生なんじゃない, 飲まなかったんだ and 飲むんじゃなかった, etc?

When you add んだ, you give a reason.
Why didn't you go out today? - It rained. <- This would be "Because it rained", thus you can use んだ
You also use it if you wanna know more about something.
その本、面白い？ is your book interesting?
その本、面白いんだ？ is your book interesting? if yes, what's interesting about it?

I kind of get that but I meant more about why んだ in 学生じゃないんだ is at the end and why なん is right after 学生 in 学生なんじゃない. And what it means.

学生なんじゃない comes from the structure 学生なんじゃないか (He's a student, isn't he? / Isn't he a student?).
学生じゃないんだ means (because he isn't a student), so the meaning here would be the opposite.

学生なんじゃない also has a rising intonation at the end, to form a question. The speaker assumes the subject of the sentence is a student and seeks confirmation from the listener. This is like 学生だね, only with less certainty, to make the sentence softer.
学生じゃないんだ means that the reason for something is that the subject of the sentence is not a student. いや、あの日、学校にいなかった。学生じゃないんだ。

Let me give you some background.

There are some common themes that work the same throughout all the Japanese grammar, things that never change. One of them is, that na-adjectives and nouns belong to one group and verbs and i-adjectives belong to another.

Keeping that in mind helps you to understand why you can say 病気なんだ while you say 具合がわるいんだ - or why you say 病気なのに、行かなくちゃ, but 具合がわるいのに、行かなくちゃ.

i-adjectives and verbs don't take だ directly, but nouns and na-adjectives do.

i marked them so you can see them at a glance and hopefully that will help with cementing this simple fact in.

学生だ is a noun and takes a だ
病気だ is a na-adjective and takes a だ
but
わるい is an i-adjective and takes no だ
食べる is a verb and takes no だ

when you use の to make the sentence up to that point a noun phrase, or when you use it as a placeholder for a noun, you need a な before it for nouns and na-adjectives.

学生なのだ
病気なのだ
you can do the same trick with i-adjectives and verbs, but this time, no な:
わるいのだ
食べるのだ
you see, that after a の, you can use a だ, because the thing before the の now is a noun.


when japanese people speak, they shorten stuff a lot, and のだ becomes んだ, なのだ becomes なんだ

for the のに conditional ("even if"), the same rules apply:
you insert the な for nouns and na-adjectives

学生なのに、仕事に行った
病気なのに、仕事に行った
but for i-adjectives and verbs
調子悪いのに、仕事に行く
腹減ってるのに、仕事に行く

that being said, can you guess why じゃないか becomes なんじゃないか, and んだ becomes なんだ, and when?

there are more common themes around these two word groups, but i won't overload you with info now.

regarding someone (forgot who) who said that you can't explain these and can only get them when seeing them in action: no, you're wrong. when you didn't get an explanation, it doesn't mean it can't be explained. it also doesn't mean you're a bad student. it means the teacher or book or whatever you used explained it in a bad way.

everything in japanese can be explained in any language.
it's not some ethereal alien language, but made by humans for humans.

andikaze Wrote:regarding someone (forgot who) who said that you can't explain these and can only get them when seeing them in action: no, you're wrong. when you didn't get an explanation, it doesn't mean it can't be explained. it also doesn't mean you're a bad student. it means the teacher or book or whatever you used explained it in a bad way.

everything in japanese can be explained in any language.
it's not some ethereal alien language, but made by humans for humans.

You misread that entirely.

Maybe, but when I read "it's fine if a grammar guide doesn't explain it completely, it's ok if it explains it enough so you can use it", I ask myself - then why use that horrible guide in the first place?
It leaves questions open, which confuse the learner, which then reduces confidence, and so on.

Take the time and explain something as long as it takes for the learner to grasp the concept completely. Then the learner can use the thing. Just giving them a usage blueprint doesn't satisfy everyone. And a guide that doesn't guide you should probably rename to "collection of usage instructions". I'd expect more from a resource.

Just to clarify, books like "A Beginners/Intermediate/Advanced Dictionary of Japanese grammar" is great for people to reference, but a bad source to really learn something from zero.
Tae Kim is a bit hasty at some point and a bit slow at others, so I'd recommend you take IMABI as a second resource and seek out the lessons for the grammar points in questions on both sites. Gives you more examples, different explanations and, while it costs more time to do it this way, you get a more solid base.

You can live with way shorter explanations later on, at some intermediate stage.

andikaze Wrote:Maybe, but when I read "it's fine if a grammar guide doesn't explain it completely, it's ok if it explains it enough so you can use it", I ask myself - then why use that horrible guide in the first place?
It leaves questions open, which confuse the learner, which then reduces confidence, and so on.

Take the time and explain something as long as it takes for the learner to grasp the concept completely. Then the learner can use the thing. Just giving them a usage blueprint doesn't satisfy everyone. And a guide that doesn't guide you should probably rename to "collection of usage instructions". I'd expect more from a resource.

Ah, I just meant, I don't think anybody really said what you were arguing against. I'm with you in spirit--I like complete and in-depth grammar explanations. For me they were super helpful.

But you were right, I did actually misread it a bit ... or read something between the lines that wasn't meant to be there.

Glad the explanations were helpful.