Socky wrote:

According to "Tae Kim's Grammar Guide," a question cannot end in the declarative だ, which would seem to make sense. However I faintly remember hearing sentences such as '何をするんだ？' while watching anime. Of course 'da ka' is incorrect, but can you not create a question ending in だ with simply a questioning tone?

Thank you.

FYI:

From Wikipedia concerning the dialect used in Shizuoka Prefecture(遠州弁）:
〜だ？
〜の？。話者により、上昇調・下降調のいずれも用いられる。「書いただ？」と言うと、「書いたら？（書いたでしょ？）」と聞き間違えてしまう場合もある。
「昨日、朝ご飯食べただ？」（＝「昨日、朝ご飯食べたの？」）
「朝ご飯食べんくて何が悪いだ？」（＝「朝ご飯食べなくて何が悪いの？」）

Also, 〜だか is used for questions when a person is talking to his/herself.  For example,
昨日、彼は来ただか？

As always, it's depends on the person and whether the environment they grew up in used such language or not.

I don't understand why anyone would even try to come up with a "one and only true translation." Sure, you can translate it like that depending on the context and the situation but claiming that it's going to be the same every single time is nonsensical in my opinion. Plus, as someone already mentioned above - you can use a lot worse grammar, such as ～やがる. And since there are rather many Japanese girls out there who use ～やがる as well we can probably somewhat safely assume that they would use ～んだ too.

Last edited by Arupan (2013 September 22, 1:25 am)