Thread: Study Japanese
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Coda Coda is offline
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Default   #1919  
Okay, yeah, as a sentence final that matches what I was talking about -- a sort of "talking to yourself" kind of sound; that's a description I hadn't thought of and it does match reasonably well. One might still use it when talking to someone else but it's not necessarily inviting a response.

〜かな is usually translated as "I wonder." For example, あめがふるかな means "I wonder if it will rain." 〜かしら is the same but is considered more feminine.

〜かも is... well, I'm not sure exactly what it is on its own, but in most sentence-final contexts I've seen it's just being used as an abbreviation of 〜かもしれない, which is... kinda fuzzy to translate. The meaning is clear -- it's used to indicate that the speaker is uncertain about the statement. In that sense it's sort of the inverse of だろう/でしょう which indicate that the speaker suspects the statement to be true but isn't sure. (Used non-sentence-final, I actually don't know; it may only be part of the set phrase "nanimo kamo" which means "anything and everything".)
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Mega Man: The Light of Will (Mega Man / Green Lantern crossover: In the lead-up to the events of Mega Man 2, Dr. Wily has discovered emotional light technology. How will his creations change how humankind thinks about artificial intelligence? Sadly abandoned. Sufficient Velocity x-post)
Old Posted 11-26-2012, 05:32 PM Reply With Quote