Hi again, all!

I have another thorny question and my Japanese teacher doesn't seem to comprehend my email, so here goes.

When you use だけ and から／まで together (such as "私は　あなた　だけから、　手紙を　もらった。） does it matter what order you use it?

Basically, I'm curious if saying "dake kara" is any different than "kara dake"

If it's different, what is the difference?

Does "anata dake kara" have more of an emphasis on it being *from* only "you", while "anata kara dake" has more of an emphasis on *only* from "you"?

I saw on Tae Kim's site that he wasn't sure about this, and he suggested googling it. But I was wondering if there was an actual meaning difference based on order, since in Japanese there seems to be a stress on whatever is at the end of a fragment/sentence (seeing as how verbs and particles are all at the "end", etc)

Oh, and just out of curiosity, are you actually able to use だけ　at the end of a sentence without it sounding like you are saying "I only (do the action of) this (ever)" ?

I think saying　彼は海老を食べるだけ would sound very absolute, as in "he only eats shrimp (and never does anything else but eat shrimp, ever) but that's just my read of it.

Ukchana Wrote:I think saying　彼は海老を食べるだけ would sound very absolute, as in "he only eats shrimp (and never does anything else but eat shrimp, ever) but that's just my read of it.

From my point of view, that sentence means "He's just eating shrimp", as in he only eats shrimp, he's not watching TV or anything else, just eating shrimp. IMO, it doesn't even really imply that he prefers エビ, the sentence only really concerns how much he's doing right now. The sentence you're translating it as would be 彼はエビだけを食べる or 彼はエビしか食べない.

I feel からだけ and だけから are completely interchangeable. Only from you (by not other means but from you) and from only you (from not other things but you) at least have some difference in feelings to me, but からだけ and だけから feels almost the same.

彼は海老を食べるだけ is really abrupt by itself. What Tobberoth said, it sounds like he does nothing but eat shrimps.

masaman Wrote:I feel からだけ and だけから are completely interchangeable. Only from you (by not other means but from you) and from only you (from not other things but you) at least have some difference in feelings to me, but からだけ and だけから feels almost the same.

I checked my Japanese resource manual (aka my girlfriend) and she said the same thing. Basically interchangeable but the usage may change in different situations/grammar.

Okay, thanks guys!

I wanted to make sure so that I wasn't teaching something wrong.

You guys are the greatest. ^_^

Also, thanks for correcting my perception of putting "dake" at the end.

It was something I was curious about, but I hadn't found any resource using it that way so far.