Casual Questions
“Actually I walk around with the Emmy wherever I go, but I’m very casual about it.” - Larry David
One last thing to cover quickly (get your journal / note taking blog out). There are a couple rules associated with asking questions when speaking casually. You know all about the whole か thing at the end of a sentence, and how that makes it a question, right? With casual form, some weirdness happens.
Here’s the general rule on asking questions with casual noun sentence enders.
だ ＝ Remove だ altogether (you’ll see exceptions to this) and omit the か as well. At the end of the sentence, raise your voice like you’re asking a question.
だった ＝ Remove the か and raise your voice like you’re asking a question.
じゃない ＝ Remove the か and raise your voice like you’re asking a question.
じゃなかった ＝ Remove the か and raise your voice like you’re asking a question.
Really, all you need to remember is:
With casual, you’ll want to drop the か and raise your voice like you’re asking a question. With だ, you’ll want to drop the だ most of the time as well. Theory is that since だ has the feeling you’re making a strong assertion (stronger than です, even), it doesn’t mix well with か (which shows you’re unsure about what you’re talking about). That’s why you remove the だ (and usually the か, as well).
If you don’t know what I mean about “raising your voice at the end of your sentence to make it a question,” take a look at these examples.
a えぇ？ かれ は がくせい？
Eh? Is he a student?
a かれ は がくせい だった？
Was he a student?
a かれ は がくせい じゃない？
Isn’t he a student?
a かれ は がくせい じゃなかった？
Wasn’t he a student?
The whole “raise your voice to make a question” thing is actually a lot more like English than the whole か thing is, which is why I think you’ll have no trouble with it. Either way, in the next chapter (Casual Adjectives) you’ll get a lot of practice with both nouns and adjectives, so you’ll figure it out sooner rather than later.