“Is that so?” (Receiving new information)Įxp. “Yes, that’s right.” (Response to a question)Įxp. Now that you know all three sentence ending particles, you should be able to understand all the variations of a very common Japanese expression: sou desu.
In an effort to avoid seeming overly assertive, Japanese people will often ask for the other person’s agreement, as well as a variety of other strategies to soften the message of the sentence. This highlights the softening effect of the particle ne. たのしいですよね。īasically, the yo shows the speaker’s strong conviction for their opinion, but also expects the other person to agree with them. Somewhat paradoxically, Japanese people will often use both yo and ne at the end of a statement. In summary, ne asks for agreement, and yo tells how it is. The particle is also sometimes used to answer questions using who/what/etc. When used with commands, it makes the command more forceful. In general, yo shows the speaker’s conviction towards whatever they are asserting. The particle is also translated as “I tell you”, but is often left out of the English translation. This is delicious, isn’t it? (Listener has also tasted it) The final sentence ending particle, よ “yo”, is essentially the opposite of ne, it asserts a fact that the listener may not know. It’s also used when the speaker fully expects the listener’s agreement, for example: おそいですね。 In such situations, the speaker is trying to promote a smooth conversation by giving the other person an easy way to agree with them.
If you listen to a native speaker, you’ll notice that the intonation isn’t quite the same as an actual question, but does rise at the end.Įssentially, ne asks for agreement or confirmation. This sentence ender is used frequently when making observations, as in “Ii o-tenki desu ne?” which you learned earlier. The particle ね “ne”, variously translated as “right?”, “huh?”, or “isn’t it?”, can be put at the end of a sentence to create sort of question. Questions and Negation Asking and Telling There are two other sentence ending particles that work much the same way as the question marker ka.