That should be を, not が.

Questions can end in だ but it's very blunt/rude and mostly shows up in anime/tv stuff.  It's not something you probably ever need to do in real life.  I'm not sure they ever have the question intonation, though.

I don't see questions ending in だ a lot. But I do see a lot of だな.

For example.

彼の友達は静かだな
His friend is quiet
   *With a extra bump

mrbryce wrote:

bottom point being, however tempting it might be, dont learn from anime.. at least thats what i  keep saying to myself...

What's wrong with learning from anime? You can hear/read questions ending in だ outside  the realms of anime & movies. Try going to a Japanese forum, listening to a Japanese podcast, or hanging out with some Japanese people...?

kaizer wrote:

mrbryce wrote:

bottom point being, however tempting it might be, dont learn from anime.. at least thats what i  keep saying to myself...

What's wrong with learning from anime? You can hear/read questions ending in だ outside  the realms of anime & movies. Try going to a Japanese forum, listening to a Japanese podcast, or hanging out with some Japanese people...?

I've hung out with a lot of Japanese people and never heard anyone ask a question with だ.  It may be something that younger people use, if it is in fact used in real life?

（だな is common but that's not a question, it's just a rhetorical statement like ね.)

yudantaiteki wrote:

kaizer wrote:

mrbryce wrote:

bottom point being, however tempting it might be, dont learn from anime.. at least thats what i  keep saying to myself...

What's wrong with learning from anime? You can hear/read questions ending in だ outside  the realms of anime & movies. Try going to a Japanese forum, listening to a Japanese podcast, or hanging out with some Japanese people...?

I've hung out with a lot of Japanese people and never heard anyone ask a question with だ.  It may be something that younger people use, if it is in fact used in real life?

（だな is common but that's not a question, it's just a rhetorical statement like ね.)

Interesting... It could be the age differences, I've heard 何やってんだ　＆　何しってんだ being used by people my age and younger.

It is actually considered rude though?  I never thought of it that way - then again, I probably wouldn't say it to some one much older than me.

yudantaiteki wrote:

I've hung out with a lot of Japanese people and never heard anyone ask a question with だ.  It may be something that younger people use, if it is in fact used in real life?

I've heard it once when two Japanese were fighting, but the quarrel occurred in the U.S. They were screaming, throwing things, and one even punched through his bedroom door in rage.

Other than that, only on TV. I've never heard anyone besides foreigners use it as a joke, but it at least seems possible that Japanese may use it in a joking way too.

I just asked the Japanese person next to me, and this is what she said:

何してるんだ？ = "What the eff are you doing?"

It's male speech, often used when the speaker is angry.

JapaneseRuleOf7 wrote:

I just asked the Japanese person next to me, and this is what she said:

何してるんだ？ = "What the eff are you doing?"

It's male speech, often used when the speaker is angry.

Even if your friend is a native speaker, I can't really agree with her. You can change your intonation a bit and you'll actually end up sounding rather surprised than angry.

I'll defend my argument with following: Let's imagine you and your friend (doesn't matter whether it's female or male as long as you're male) walk around when you see yet another friend who's doing something funny / strange. I think that in such situations many Japanese men would say something like あいついったい何やって（る）んだ？ So you don't have to necessarily rude or be an anime character in order to use ～んだ at all.

EDIT:
Added the quote

Last edited by Arupan (2013 September 15, 5:01 am)

kaizer wrote:

Agree with the above poster. I remember being discouraged by text books not to use the な negative command form, but it seems (as the above poster says), if you use a different intonation, it doesn't sound as rude.

You should hear how sweetly I can say "What the eff are you doing?" in English.  Hardly sounds rude at all.

JapaneseRuleOf7 wrote:

I just asked the Japanese person next to me, and this is what she said:

何してるんだ？ = "What the eff are you doing?"

It's male speech, often used when the speaker is angry.

Is that so?

It seems there's been a lot of debate about this here. Perhaps I'll ask on Lang-8 to see if I can get a few answers from more natives. I wonder if it has to do with different dialects, too, but I don't know much about that.

I can certainly say "What the **** are you doing?" with the right intonation in the right situation to some of my male friends and it won't be taken as rude or insulting.

Your question is a little confusing; 何だ in a sentence like それは何だ is a combination of 何 and だ, so it would be an example of this だ question.