Sentence Ender ね
“Too much agreement kills a chat.” - Eldridge Cleaver
The other “neutral” sentence ender we’re going to take a look at is ね. Just like よ (and all the other sentence enders) it comes at the end of a sentence. Although よ didn’t quite have a directly translatable word / phrase you could stick to it (it just gave the sentence a feeling of assertion), ね can actually be translated to a few different words (though really, it’s mostly just adding a feeling to a sentence kind of like よ does).
The sentence ender ね shows agreement or reflection. If we were to translate it to words, it would be something like adding the phrase “isn’t it” to the end of your sentence.
One thing to keep in mind is that the phrase “isn’t it” isn’t always “isn’t it” depending on the context / situation. Other phrases like “doesn’t it” and “wasn’t it” and “hasn’t it” work too. What you want to take away with ね is the feeling mainly, and that feeling is one of agreement or reflection. Let’s take a look at some examples that will help clear this idea up for you.
そうですね
It is so (agreement)
Right back to そうです. This is the ultimate “agreement” phrase. Someone asks you something, and you agree with it.
かれ は がくせい ですか？
Is he a student?
そうですね
It is so / Yes he is
Also, if you use an upward tone, like you’re asking a question, you can use ね to ask a question. Basically, you’re asking for agreement when you do this.
すし を たべますね?
(You) eat sushi, don’t you?
すし を たべますよ！
I eat sushi! (asserting that you do indeed like sushi)
ね can also be used to show reflection on something.
すし を たべましたね。。。
I ate sushi…didn’t I?
The feeling of this sentence is one of looking back. Someone thinking to the past and realizing that they ate sushi, as if they weren’t quite sure. Did I eat sushi? I guess I did… Be careful, though, the same sentence could mean something more along the lines of “you ate your sushi, didn’t you?” – the kind of thing you’d say to a child who did a good job eating their sushi. “You did such a good job… didn’t you? didn’t you?? d’awww.”
Combining ね and よ
One neat thing you can do is use both ね and よ in the same sentence. They always go in the same order, though (よね). It basically combines to two feelings together and adds it to the sentence.
すし を たべましたよね
You ate the sushi, didn’t you? (asserting)
The main thing is that you make sure to keep the ordering right (よね, not ねよ). If you do that, you can combine the two sentence enders you just learned into one!
Using ね on its own
There is one more way to use ね, though it’s not one you’ll probably be using any time soon. Instead of placing ね onto the end of a sentence, you can make it the sentence. As in, just saying “ね” to someone.
Saying “ね” all on it’s own is like saying “hey” or “yo” to someone, in order to get their attention. “Hey! What time is it?” or “Hey, what’re you doing here?” Just keep this in the back of your mind. In general, you’ll probably want to use other things to get people’s attention (things like すみません / excuse me).
At this point, though, it’s most important that you know that ね creates a feeling of agreement or reflection. You should know how to use them to a certain extent, but this sentence ender (and the others) will be most useful when you start using them in future TextFugu lessons.